Caption about the
iymage goes in
here
DEAD RECKONINGS
René Tschacher explains how the dev tailors simulations like Dead Man’s Diary for lower-spec PCs
where that whole thing starts.
What’s the target audience, what’s
the low spec and the recommended
spec? And what you do then is you
test for that all the time.
“If [any single] team is
responsible for the low spec, that
would be the delivery team in our
company, or what you would call
QA.” But adhering to those target
specifications is a task for everybody.
“There’s always a big combination of
QA, programming, technical artists,
and render programmers and system
programmers, a whole big team
effort to make the game perform. In
any production I’ve been on,
performance is a concept you always
work on, because when a game is
not performing, the rest of the
experience is suffering.”
Hence, among other things,
GTFO’s marvellous fog, which blends
and accommodates the needs of
artists, narrative designers and
programmers. One one level it’s a
homage to Alien’s murky corridors;
on another, a way of avoiding ‘load
steps’ or incremental environment
loading, to keep the framerate up and
minimise work for artists. “So
performance is a thing, and the visual
inspiration comes from Alien, and
we’re a small team with limitations
Low-Spec Gaming
FEATURE
“We usually get the
best results from the
resolution, or
resolution scaling.
The range of shadows
is also an aspect
that can be easily
scaled down.”
“Performance,
lighting and shadow
rendering [are the
biggest challenges for
photorealistic 3D
games]. Object
optimisation and
powerful shaders
must also be
considered.”
MAXIMUM
MAXIMUM
MINIMUM
MINIMUM
GTFO MINIMUM