How roguelite shooter Void/Breaker’s destruction combat uses PS5 features https://ift.tt/5Qg4Yfn
There are two types of players. One type enjoys high-octane gameplay – fluid movement, satisfying gunplay, the thrill of pure destructive chaos. On the other side of the axis are players who like to strategize. They’re driven by a need to optimize for the most efficient outcome.
What if I told you there’s a solo developer – Daniel Stubbington – who decided to make a game for someone who has both of those in them? A roguelite shooter with fluid, fast-paced movement, where survival means mastering an environmental destruction system and combining it with a weapon modding system deep enough to create synergies crazy enough to make even the developer gasp?
That game is Void/Breaker. And it’s coming to PS5 – we think this is going to be the best way to play it.
What’s changed since we announced the PS5 version?
The arsenal has grown. To the Pistol, Assault Rifle, and a Shotgun, we’ve added the SMG and the Sniper Rifle (Daniel’s own personal favourite). These weapons are the archetypes, and each one has its own character and that’s where the gun modification system comes in place.
Every weapon has its own grid, and into that grid you place modules – weapon mods, ability mods, fire mode mods, melee mods. The modules aren’t isolated upgrades. They interact with each other, sitting next to one another on the grid to form combinations that are often more powerful than the sum of their parts. A mod that freezes enemies. Another that guarantees a critical hit against frozen targets. A proximity mine that deploys every time you slide. Some modules even expand the grid itself, unlocking more space. Stack the right things in the right place, and you’ve built something that carves through a room before your brain has caught up with what just happened.
On PlayStation 5, the developer is exploring how adaptive triggers and haptic feedback can bring each weapon’s identity into your hands – so the resistance and feedback of firing the Sniper Rifle feel distinct from the rapid pull of the SMG. Gyro aiming is also being looked at, giving players who want it an extra layer of precision for a more immersive feel.
That thinking extends to abilities, grenades, and the gravity tether too. All are being explored for how haptics could make each one feel distinct and satisfying to use.
Gameplay built with the community, not just for them
Daniel has remained firmly committed to the early access roadmap, working closely with the community and incorporating feedback to make Void/Breaker the best it can be ahead of its PlayStation 5 launch.
And the community has been a huge part of shaping where Void/Breaker is today – not in a vague, “thanks for the feedback” sense, but in ways you can point to directly in the game.
Wallrunning is the best example. Daniel experimented with it early in development, but decided against adding it. Players kept asking for it anyway. He listened, brought it back, and it’s now one of the features that gives the game’s movement the fluidity it’s known for.
Melee tells a similar story. It used to be a fallback for when in a tight spot. Now it’s a genuine playstyle. New melee-specific mods arrived alongside a rebalance that scales damage relative to enemy health, so it holds up deep into a run rather than falling off. It’s another area where the DualSense controller’s options are being looked at, in the hope of making melee combat in particular feel memorable and satisfying.
The story that grows
Underneath all of this sits a narrative that gives the gameplay real meaning. You’re a prisoner, caught up by a malevolent AI entity whose goals aren’t clear, and your goal is to break free from an endless cycle. You’re not doing it alone, though. Early into the escape, you find an unexpected ally – a chip left behind by a former prisoner makes contact and starts offering support, guiding you through the zones as the story builds toward its conclusion.
Void/Breaker’s narrative leans heavily on Returnal as an influence, not just for its gameplay loop but for how it builds a story into a roguelite structure. It’s a big part of why the zones aren’t just combat arenas – they’re chapters in something larger.
Five zones have been completed so far, each with its own distinct theme and identity, and the plan is for Void/Breaker to launch on PS5 with six zones in total, with the final zone bringing the story to its conclusion.
Try it yourself
A PS5 demo is available right now, letting you explore Zone 1 and get a feel for the core of the game. It’s running without DualSense-specific features for the moment – the adaptive triggers, haptics, and gyro support we’ve talked about here are still being built, and they’ll be ready for the full launch.
Upgraded PSSR comes to Doom: The Dark Ages on PS5 Pro https://ift.tt/KjWBLdP
Free Update 4 releases alongside Doom: The Dark Ages | Revelations on July 7, allowing all PlayStation 5 Pro players a new way to experience idTech8’s vision of medieval Hell with the advanced version of PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR). This upgraded version of PSSR, rolled out on PS5 Pro earlier this year, means players can jump straight into the cleanest image we can deliver on the platform.
The Doom Slayer moves fast, and that is exactly why image reconstruction matters. A still screenshot can show sharp armor edges, icy cliff faces, weapon silhouettes and distant demons, but the real test is what happens when the player is sprinting, turning, parrying, Shield-Sawing and filling the screen with particles. PSSR uses machine learning reconstruction to build a higher quality image from the frame idTech8 renders, using information such as motion, depth, exposure and sub-pixel sampling to keep the final picture sharper and more stable.
In practical terms, the image feels cleaner. Fine details that may shimmer with traditional temporal upscaling, such as snow patterns, broken stone, chains, spikes, sparks and thin geometry, hold together more consistently. The result is a sharper and cleaner image, even in motion.
The supplied image pairs are meant to be read less as a color-grading comparison and more as a clarity comparison. Look at the places where the scene has many small shapes competing for attention: cliff edges, weapon geometry, snow, sparks and distant enemies. PSSR’s value is that it keeps more of that information coherent from frame to frame, not just in a paused image.
PSSR gives idTech8 an enhanced reconstruction path for Doom: The Dark Ages | Revelations on PlayStation 5 Pro. The game is constantly pushing large combat spaces, dense effects, high octane combat, and a lot of fine surface detail, so stability matters as much as sharpness. With PSSR, idTech8 can preserve more of that detail in motion while maintaining the performance and gameplay feel players expect from DOOM.
idTech8 was built to scale across a wide range of hardware while keeping the things that make Doom feel like Doom. Responsive input, high framerate action, large battlefields, rich materials, dynamic physically based rendering (PBR) lighting and shadows, blistering particles, and a renderer that can react quickly to whatever the player does next. Adding PSSR to that pipeline lets us take advantage of the PlayStation 5 Pro’s dedicated machine learning reconstruction path while continuing to lean on idTech8’s dynamic resolution and temporal data.
It is extremely important because Doom: The Dark Ages is full of high frequency detail. The Slayer’s armor has scratches, grooves, and bright highlights. The world is packed with jagged silhouettes, layered architecture, cloth, metal, ice, fire and Sentinel technology. PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution helps preserve those details while reducing the visual noise that can appear when many thin elements overlap or move across the screen.
The difference is especially noticeable in wide combat arenas. Distant enemies and environmental edges stay easier to read, while surfaces keep more of their texture definition. In close-ups, characters and weapons look more resolved. During effects-heavy moments, bright particles and lighting remain less distracting because the underlying image is crisper.
The best image reconstruction is the kind players don’t have to think about. With PSSR on PS5 Pro, idTech8 can push detailed environments, aggressive combat, and effects-heavy scenes while keeping the final image sharper, steadier and true to the speed of DOOM.
For players, the short version is simple: if you are playing DOOM: The Dark Ages on PlayStation 5 Pro, PSSR is designed to give you a sharper, more stable presentation of the same brutal idTech8 action. DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations is available July 7th on PlayStation 5, with PSSR support exclusive to PlayStation 5 Pro.
Grand Theft Auto VI plays best on PS5 November 19 https://ift.tt/YebXW3r
Since Grand Theft Auto first arrived on the original PlayStation in 1997, the series has defined generations of play. We know players are excited for Grand Theft Auto VI, which heads to the state of Leonida — home to the neon-soaked streets of Vice City and beyond, in the biggest, most expansive evolution of the series yet.
Thanks to the close partnership between Sony Interactive Entertainment and Rockstar Games, Grand Theft Auto VI will play best on PS5 by taking advantage of PS5’s immersive features to deliver a deeply engaging single-player experience when it launches on November 19.
PS5 puts you in the center of the game world with the DualSense wireless controller reacting to your actions and bringing the sights, sounds, and sensations of Jason and Lucia’s story into the palm of your hands. The controller’s haptic feedback offers responsive vibrations, while its adaptive triggers provide dynamic resistance. The controller’s integrated speaker also adds another dimension to key moments and interactions, with sound effects from the controller enhanced by haptic feedback.
With Tempest 3D AudioTech, you can surround yourself in the distinct soundscapes of Leonida. From the streets of Vice City to the moments that unfold all across the state, this highly accurate audio positioning enhances your perception, helping to bring this world to life around you in unmatched ways. Grand Theft Auto VI also leverages the PS5’s ultra-high speed SSD, enabling you to experience the expansive world of Leonida with near-instant load times.
Check out the official Grand Theft Auto VI cover art reveal:
Purchases made before November 20 will also include the Vintage Vice City Pack, a collection of items inspired by Vice City’s neon-soaked past. Players who pre-order any edition on PlayStation Store will also instantly receive a redeemable free month of GTA+.
For new players who are looking to jump in, it’s a great chance to also see why PS5 is the best place to play. Players can pick up a PS5 or PS5 Pro at direct.playstation.com (where available) and at local retailers.
Grand Theft Auto VI marks an exciting new chapter for one of gaming’s most iconic series, and we’re proud to help bring the best experience to players on PS5. We can’t wait until the game arrives on November 19 and we look forward to celebrating its launch with Rockstar Games and our PlayStation community around the world. Visit here for more information on Grand Theft Auto VI on PS5.
Meet Yoshie: Revealing Denshattack!’s first boss battle https://ift.tt/CTGFm4D
Hi everyone! On behalf of our studio Undercoders, and ahead of the game’s launch on July 15, we’re thrilled to give you an exclusive in-depth look at the first boss of Denshattack!
Denshattack! is a frenetic trick-based action game where you kickflip, ollie, and grind… as a train! Set in a colorful dystopian version of Japan, you must rack up points, complete objectives, and race rivals to become the best Denshattacker of all time.
We took inspiration from some of our favorite extreme-sports series, such as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and SSX, and combined them with the energy of classic arcade hits and the fascinating Y2K, colorful, cel-shaded aesthetics seen in games like Jet Set Radio or Auto Modellista.
Denshattack!’s world is built around outsiders
Denshattack! takes place in a future version of Japan where a climate catastrophe has left the rich untouchable inside their air-purifying domes, while everyone else is forced to survive in the undomed wastelands. A rebellious movement known as Denshattack has reclaimed the abandoned legacy railroad tracks, using them to fight for recognition in underground duels of speed, tricks, and technique.
Emi, a young but skilled ramen delivery girl, discovers Denshattack when she crosses paths with a journalist and sets off on an intense journey of discovery, growth, and challenge. From the southern lands of Kyushu to the freezing north of Hokkaido, she will need to make her way across Japan, crossing the ruins of the once-powerful railway network, meeting outcasts, learning new techniques, improving her skills, and battling local gang leaders.
Gang Bosses: an epic train showdown!
When designing the game, the team had a clear vision for the story arcs: just like in a classic shonen anime, each chapter had to end with a catharsis that felt impressive, creating a challenge to put all the newly learned mechanics to the test.
In Denshattack!, each of Japan’s regions is controlled by a gang of outlaws led by a powerful fighter. Each gang has its own visual identity, personality, fashion, and musical character, directly inspired by Japan’s suburban culture. These leaders each have their own motives, signature moves and secret techniques to provide the perfect base for a meaningful boss battle.
But how do you create a boss fight with trains? Going on rails may sound like a big limitation, but when your train can defy gravity to jump, wallride, trick, or grind, it can also dodge punches, parry projectiles, stomp on a shield, or launch itself against a mecha with a force of fifty tons!
Train-to-train (or train-to-giant-machine) combat turns out to be pretty interesting. And when combined with a cast of unique characters, local folklore, and Japan’s endless source of pop culture influences and aesthetics, it opens up a lot of opportunities to create original boss fights.
Kogals Unite! Meet Yoshie from the Dashing Queens
Yoshie is an influencer from Fukuoka whose popularity became so powerful that the government branded her a threat. In reality, they simply fear her influence. Her visual design and bubbly personality clearly embody gyaru, a Japanese subculture that challenges traditional Japanese beauty standards by centering glamour, volume, and confidence. You can see this in her hair, makeup, clothing, accessories, and, of course, her train.
But most of all, you can see it in her transformation sequence. Reminiscent of classic Sentai shows or anime such as Sailor Moon, Yoshie’s train joins forces with her soldiers and morphs into a huge magical girl-esque mecha. The gyaru elements extend here too, with bows, stars, and hearts galore.
Every boss fight follows a classic structure of different phases, where players need to identify patterns, avoid damage, and look for openings to perform counter-attacks. In this fight, Emi first uses tricks and combos to access the main battle, then performs quick rail changes to avoid the punches and uses grinds and ground pounds to deliver blows to the mecha. All these techniques are introduced throughout the first chapter and then put to the test during the fight.
The level’s music reflects Yoshie too: her battle theme is a collaboration between composer Sean Bialo, leading Vocaloid producer Yunosuke, and pop singer (and real-life gyaru idol) Alice Peralta.
Onto the next station!
Our publisher, Fireshine Games, loved the duel against Yoshie when we first presented it, but raised an interesting question: if this is the first boss fight and you’re already battling a giant mecha… where do we go from here? The only possible answer was: up and beyond!
Boss fights have been one of the most fun and interesting design challenges we’ve encountered while creating Denshattack!. We’ve been working hard to create set pieces that feel intense, challenging, original, surprising, and, above all, memorable.
Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme, or be inspired by other great games featuring Photo Mode. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week?
THEME: Saros – Arjun Devraj SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on June 24, 2026
Next week, share portraits of Arjun as he explores the corrupted world of Saros. Use #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured.
Set to touch down on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 on Thursday, July 9, Granblue Fantasy: Relink – Endless Ragnarok is a massive new expansion built to significantly evolve the high-flying action RPG that first captivated players in 2024.
At a recent press event, we had the chance to experience the new additions coming to Endless Ragnarok firsthand through an exclusive developer presentation and an early hands-on gameplay session.
For newcomer captains eager to take to the skies, a playable demo of the main Granblue Fantasy: Relink title is now available on PlayStation Store.
Dynamic character synergy power-up the evolved battle System
Endless Ragnarok injects a wealth of new content into the experience, introducing an all-new story arc, new playable characters, the game-changing Summon battle mechanic, a punishing new quest difficulty, the Master Trait progression tree, and a dedicated single-player endgame mode called the Conflux.
The expansion adds six fan-favorite faces to the playable roster: Gallanza, Maglielle, Beatrix, Eustace, Fraux, and Fediel. In addition to these allies, players will square off against formidable new skybound threats, including iconic bosses like Beelzebub and The World.
The new Summon system unleashes fresh tactical depth and spectacle
The crown jewel of Endless Ragnarok’s new mechanics is undoubtedly the Summon system. By equipping summons, earned as you progress through the narrative, you can call upon various characters during battle and take control of them. Because your character gains complete invincibility while a summon is active, this mechanic works beautifully not just as a devastating offensive push, but as a clutch counter against a boss’s most lethal attacks. With a diverse lineup of summons offering specialized roles in offense, crowd control, and support, your tactical options have never been broader.
The visual spectacle reaches a fever pitch with the introduction of Primal Burst. When your party performs a full chain of Skybound Arts under specific conditions, Lyria will unleash a powerful follow-up attack through a summon.
Battles heat up under the punishing new Chaos difficulty
For our hands-on session, we booted up a save file positioned right at the opening act of the Endless Ragnarok storyline. The moment the curtain rises on this new chapter, the quest counter unlocks its highest, most unforgiving difficulty rank: Chaos. In a terrifying show of force, even the very first quest—which functions as a tutorial for the expansion’s mechanics—plunges you straight into Chaos-level danger. Quests in this tier feature merciless new adversaries, like the apocalyptic beasts ragnalia, and bosses will aggressively utilize a terrifying, unique ability known as EX Burst.
When a boss enemy’s body radiates a distinct purple aura, it is your cue that an EX Burst is imminent. Facing these catastrophic attacks for the first time brings an incredible amount of tension. However, reading the telegraphs, discovering the counter-strategies, and perfectly timing your dodge windows to turn a crisis into an opening is exactly where Relink’s combat system shines. Veterans who have completely mastered the original game and crave high-stakes encounters will absolutely live for this thrill.
Conquer the Sky Realm by mastering your Summons
During our demo run, we had the opportunity to take the primal beasts Furycane and Managarmr out for a spin.
While Furycane requires a massive chunk of the summon gauge to activate, its rapid-fire slashes and tracking tornado combos are devastatingly potent. Closing the gap with a rushing strike before immediately transitioning into a flawless, high-damage combo feels incredibly smooth, and its massive scale on the screen delivers the pure, larger-than-life thrill of a premier summon battle.
Managarmr, by contrast, moves with a heavier, more deliberate pace, but it proves immensely dependable by automatically burying the field in a ferocious blizzard just as its summon duration expires. Because this attack inflicts the Glaciate status effect, it freezes enemies dead in their tracks, giving you a perfect window for crowd control. It is a fantastic example of how summons can be used for deep, defensive strategy rather than just raw firepower.
Crucially, equipping summons does more than just let you call for backup; they also bestow a variety of passive traits and skill effects upon your captain. Once players begin amassing a vast collection of these summons later in the game, theorycrafting the ultimate combination of passive stats and active summon timings is bound to become an absolute obsession. Plus, those precious invincibility frames during a summon act as a vital lifeline when your back is against the wall.
Hands-on impressions of the brand-new roster
We also took the time to test out two of the highly anticipated new playable characters: Gallanza and Beatrix. Gallanza is a textbook powerhouse who commands the field with a massive spear-axe. While his animations swing on the heavier side, his raw attack radius is exceptionally wide, making it immensely satisfying to shatter enemy defenses with a rhythmic succession of heavy-hitting strikes.
Beatrix, on the other hand, is a highly technical fighter who forces you to actively cycle through shifting offensive, defensive, and recovery self-buffs mid-combat. While she demands constant situational awareness and fast decision-making from the player, her potential to dynamically adapt to any role in a party makes her an incredibly rewarding character to master.
The solo-exclusive ultimate endgame: the Conflux
We closed out our session with the Conflux, a brand-new piece of content tailored specifically for solo play. In this mode, players fight their way through sequential zones, checking off specialized objectives mapped to each area. Upon successfully clearing a zone’s objective, you are prompted to choose one of three temporary perks that remain active strictly for the remainder of that specific run. The gameplay loop centers on methodically conquering rooms, stacking powerful buffs, and testing your limits as you plunge deeper into the abyss.
According to the development team, the Conflux was designed for players who prefer to avoid multiplayer matchmaking, allowing them to efficiently earn rare materials and high-tier equipment solo. The objectives that appear and the perks offered change randomly with every run, creating a highly replayable loop. Combining rogue-lite randomness with single-player-focused progression feels like a promising and fresh way to experience the game.
Our brief journey with this expansion left us deeply impressed by its newfound mechanical depth—from the tactical layers introduced by the Summon system to the addictive loop of the Conflux.
The VFX tech behind Saros: from NGP to Graphite https://ift.tt/Twc6pQK
Five years ago, we wrote about how the visual effects in Returnal came to life, including the real-time voxeliser that dissolved Phrike into volumetric fog. If you haven’t read it, that post is a good companion to this one.
This is how that story continues.
With Saros, we didn’t just extend what we’d built for Returnal. We stepped back, looked at thirty years of accumulated engine development, and rebuilt it as a unified framework: Graphite.
What we had, and why we changed it
Our proprietary particle engine, NGP (Next-Gen Particles), started as a prototype for Resogun in 2013 and grew with every game since, all the way to Returnal. By SAROS, NGP was mature, but it was also a product of twelve years of incremental decisions, each one made in the context of a specific, isolated game.
Then something else changed: us. Joining PlayStation Studios meant delivering experiences at the level our players expect, and our tools, and the names we’d given them, no longer matched the studio we were becoming.
Enter Graphite. It brings GPU simulation, rendering, tooling, and DCC integration under one architecture, built directly for PlayStation hardware. NGP didn’t disappear, it became part of Graphite, evolved and more capable than ever.
Every Housemarque game has a visual identity players recognise immediately. Graphite is what makes that possible.
And what it actually does, frame by frame, is best explained by the incredible people who built it:
Housemarque Graphics Architect Sharman Jagadeesan and Senior Graphics Programmer Konsta Toivanen will walk you through the volumetric fog in Saros: how it evolved from Returnal, and the two systems we built to make Carcosa’s atmosphere feel alive.
Risto Jankkila (VFX Architect) will explain how we extended Graphite with data from Houdini, including a full breakdown of the player spawn sequence.
Volumetric fog
Fog in games is often an afterthought, something that fills empty space and hides draw distances. In Saros, we wanted it to be a living part of the world, reacting to everything happening in it.
In Returnal, our volumetric fog was already reactive, but too low frequency, and heavy temporal filtering kept it from showing fine detail. For Saros we built two complementary solutions: low frequency fog for ambient atmosphere, and high frequency fog for the character effects seen in special story rooms in Carcosa.
Low frequency fog
We took Unreal Engine’s froxel fog, a frustum-aligned voxel grid, as a starting point and rebuilt significant parts of it to meet our vision.
The first challenge was temporal stability. The hysteresis coefficient controls how much of the previous frame’s data the fog holds onto: Unreal’s default of 90% keeps the image stable but makes the fog sluggish on fast-moving cameras and lights. We pushed it down to 50%, using blue noise jitter and depth clamping to keep the resulting aliasing under control.
Saros also needed fog that could represent everything from low density ambient mist to high density ground fog. To render these faithfully we used:
A dual Henyey-Greenstein phase function, modelling how light scatters forward and backward through the fog depending on viewing angle.
A coloured absorption coefficient, determining how much light is absorbed as it travels through a medium, for a far wider range of colours than traditional monochromatic solutions.
A self shadowing system that aggregates incoming light sources into a dominant shadowing direction and ray-marches toward it.
A physically based sky lighting integral, for accurate distant lighting without sacrificing performance.
Together these gave Carcosa’s atmosphere a grounded, physical quality.
Finally, the low frequency fog is fully interactive. Advection from our player-following fluid simulation feeds directly into the density hysteresis step, making every player movement, projectile, explosion, and enemy readable in the fog in real time.
High frequency fog
For the high-frequency fog we built a custom ray marcher. To keep performance in check while preserving fidelity, we cluster the scatter data into 8x8x8 voxel groups before marching, drawing only the clusters that contain data, with a user-defined threshold keeping their number in check. While marching, empty regions between clusters get skipped, letting the marcher take larger steps where it can.
For lighting, we evaluated a light volume per scatter volume, containing irradiance from all light sources, with pre-marched self-shadowing for every light voxel. We exposed parameters for albedo, absorbance, density, and shadowing, letting artists balance visuals against performance for each volume.
The two fog systems are then merged: we sample the low frequency fog’s scatter data during the high frequency march, and feed results back so both stay consistent with each other.
Use cases
We used the high frequency volumetric fog in a few scenarios. One use case was in the Prologue in the form of a smoky skull with cables attached to it. Another use case was with what we call Mirages. In four of our biomes there are specific narrative rooms where Arjun is faced with smoke creatures.
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Fog skull at the beginning of the Prologue
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Four story rooms with Mirages
Reactivity is key to all the VFX we make, and these effects were no exception. Since impact data doesn’t need high resolution, we store it in a separate, low resolution volume, which for the skull also holds its low frequency velocity field.
The videos below show that volume on the left, and combined with the skull on the right. Impacts are evaluated as a Signed Distance Field that closes back up over time, while velocity is shown in colour, you can see both the impact holes and the turbulence they create.
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Here’s the final skull effect without the cables and other secondaries and in a different environment.
The mirage effect is similar to the skull effect. The difference is that there are so called mirage “scenes” that rotate. We also used our real-time skeletal mesh voxelizer to bring existing meshes into the scenes. The video below shows a sweep between the voxelized result and the final result with advecting data from the previous frame.
Here’s the final effect with rotating two mirage scenes in a test environment. For reactivity, we used the same method described for the skull effect.
Extending Graphite with data from Houdini
In addition to improving the rendering quality of our volumetric effects we wanted to introduce new ways for our artists to author them.
Previously, volumetric effects were created by writing per-voxel expressions for density emission, combined with fluid simulations driving the advection (the directional movement) of the density field. Because this grid-and-voxel approach is the industry standard for film VFX, it was our natural first step as well.
From Returnal days: voxelising Phrike into a grid for density emission
During Returnal’s development, we realized we needed tighter control over exactly where density is generated. Per-voxel logic let us emit density on nearby surfaces or voxelised meshes, but anything more complex came with severe runtime overhead. Emitting density from just a character’s arm, rather than their whole voxelised body, was very difficult to do efficiently in real time.
Also from Returnal: full body density emission from the voxelised mesh
To solve this, we turned to particles to drive volumetric density emission. Graphite’s fully programmable particle system gave us a solid foundation for tightly controlled volumes, resulting in two new tools:
An Offline Houdini Data Pipeline: lets artists pre-compute complex, high-fidelity data in Houdini that would be too expensive to generate at runtime.
A Runtime Point Cloud Rasterizer: a high-performance component that takes simulated points and rasterizes them directly into a volume in real time.
Together, these freed us from stateless per-voxel expressions and rigid fluid simulations. Particles can now precisely follow a character’s animated mesh, giving artists full control over an effect’s behavior and lifecycle.
In practice, an artist imports an animated Saros character into Houdini and uses its tools to compute starting positions and attributes for an effect. That baked data feeds into the game engine, where real-time simulation takes over. In the video below, points generated in Houdini closely match the in-game character, and custom runtime logic detaches them from the enemy on bullet impact, so initial positions come from Houdini, but the behavior reacts dynamically to the player in real time.
Creating point data in Houdini
Using point data from Houdini in engine
Since artists can export any kind of data from Houdini to Graphite, it’s easy to go beyond static particles attached to characters. Below, particles flow across the surface of an animated mesh: the surface was unfolded in Houdini into a 2D simulation space, then exported and mapped back onto the animated mesh in real time.
Particle flow on Arjun’s body on the left. In the middle we extract an ISO surface from the particles. On the right we have volumetric fog emitted from the particle flow.
A prime in-game example of this technology in action is the player spawn sequence in Saros. This complex effect is built in multiple layers, starting offline in Houdini, where we generate splines directly onto the player’s skeletal mesh. When exporting these splines into Graphite, we treat each control point along the spline as an individual particle.
Simulating particle positions in Houdini. These are only used as target positions in the engine and the growth motion will be re-simulated dynamically during runtime.
At runtime, our programmable particle system controls how these elements behave over time. At first, the splines drift freely in space, then gradually guide back toward their target positions on the character mesh.
We wanted the player to look like they’re physically reforming from a pool of shifting “goo.” Marching Cubes gave us that viscous, solid-surface look, and controlling it with particles let us build a sequence where the player forms from separate strands into a character.
Marching cubes constructed from particle splines
Much like the splines that generated the goo surface, we can also emit volumetric density as well. In the spawn sequence we placed a number of particle splines near the player location and spawn volumetric fog from them to simulate rising steam or smoke.
Volumetric fog emitted from particle splines
As a final touch, we added spark particles that collide with the player character, using a signed distance field computed from the player’s collision capsules. The programmable particle system again gave us flexibility here: the player attracts particles, but once they get too close, the player mesh repels them, helping sell the look of emerging from hot, lava-like liquid.
Particles colliding with player capsule SDFs
Here’s everything combined. Every element is simulated at runtime, at 60 fps on base PS5, with no baked simulation assets. This lets us ship multiple spawn animations, each with slight randomization so it looks a little different every time the player wakes up.
Final player spawn sequence
An ever-evolving development journey
Reading through what Risto, Sharman, and Konsta broke down here, the goal for us and our technology has always been the same: every simulation, every effect, every rendering decision exists to make you feel something when you play.
Making games means believing in something you can’t yet prove, and the only people who can ever confirm it are the players themselves. Saros players told us, in their own words, that what we built mattered. And that means everything to us.
Our games will keep informing the technology we develop for Graphite, always showcasing what PlayStation as a platform can do. We can’t wait to share that future with you.
