blog: developer blog #1

Jan 17, 2009 Derek Smart

These new shots show various climate zones which are varied across the game’s 400 sq. km region in which the stranded player and team have crash landed. Our goal for the terrain engine (which we wrote from scratch) was to provide high res visuals at any altitude, given that the game features first/third person, vehicular and air combat aspects. The resolution of satellite maps is good only for high altitude traversal and can look quite stunning at those high altitudes. But at low altitudes (for low flying fighters or NOE flying gunships) as most gamers know, those satellite maps look like a blurry mess. And you certainly cannot use them for an fps game. Our terrain engine has fine resolution to 2m per pixel so regardless of your altitude, be it ground zero or 40K ft ASL, it still looks great.

Another feature of our new terrain engine apart from the dynamic time of day transitions and such is that the various regions are subject to climate variations which in turn feature various weather patterns. Each region blends from one to the next (e.g. moderate to artic) in a manner that allows it to rain on one section while there is a snow storm in another – be it day or night.

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