The art of espionage: Ubi Soft tweaks the graphics in its Splinter Cell title to take advantage of the hardware power of each major platform. (Gaming).

Game enthusiasts get a taste of what it takes to be a secret operative in Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, a new computer/console game from Ubi Soft Entertainment. In the game, players assume the identity of Sam Fisher, a member of the National Security Agency's top-secret group, Third Echelon. Fearing for the lives of American CIA agents who vanish mysteriously, Third Echelon activates Fisher to locate the missing operatives and, in the process, disarm an even more volatile situation involving a potential nuclear conflict.

Splinter Cell, first developed by Ubi Soft's Montreal studio for Microsoft's Xbox console, received numerous industry accolades for its graphics and action, including Console Game of the Year at the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences 2003 awards. Recently, the developer ported the game to all the major platforms, including Sony's PlayStation 2, Nintendo's GameCube and portable Game Boy Advance, and the PC. (Ubi Soft's Shanghai studio spearheaded the PS2 and GameCube efforts, while the Montreal division handled the PC and the Game Boy Advance port.)

One of more compelling features of the original title, from a technical stand-point, is the lighting and shadowing systems with real-time shadow casting, which give the game its visual identity and a sense of realism. To create these effects, the artists used numerous vertex and pixel shaders. Starting with a black scene, they added light contributions for each illumination, using a proprietary tool added to the game engine for this purpose. The shadows, meanwhile, were generated with a shadow-buffer technique. As a result, every object and character in the game casts a shadow, and these shadows interact with both characters and environments seamlessly.

"We have many different lights--parallel, point, spot, projectors, volumetric, and more working together to give the scenes a unique look," says Francis Coldeboeuf, producer of the Nintendo GameCube version, released in late spring by Ubi Soft's Shanghai studio. "Not only goes the lighting look real, but it's all interactive and actually part of the action." For example, players often have to blend into the shadows to avoid detection, and must consider even ambient lighting as a potential threat. Furthermore, players can complete a mission by choosing from three vision modes: regular, night vision, and thermal vision. "The lighting and shadowing are so integral to the gameplay that the lighting system basically becomes a character."

Because of this unique characteristic, Ubi Soft knew that players would scrutinize the lighting and graphics on the new platforms, and the company was determined not to sacrifice quality in the process. To accomplish their mission, the teams spent one year tweaking the different versions. In fact, the Shanghai studio spent three months prototyping a single mission on the PS2 before achieving the desired look for the imagery.

Real Appeal

Each hardware platform, including the PC, has different specifications that had to be considered. For instance, the GameCube has far more texture memory than the PS2. Therefore, the artists had to employ different artistic tricks and techniques to maximize the game graphics so they would look as close to the originals as possible when running on the different machines.