Caption about the
iymage goes in
hereexample. “Where things that are far
away render at reduced detail – it’s
quite trivial to use that system as a
graphics feature, which is what we
did for geometry. If it’s lower then we
force the lower [detail] ones, if it’s
higher than we turn on the higher
ones all the time, or if there’s
particularly attractive visuals in a
cutscene, I think we added a setting
where you can use cutscene models
for the main characters in the rest of
the game.”
Lab42 added a few computing-
intensive options for beefier systems,
such as supersampling anti-aliasing,
which renders graphics at a higher
resolution than your screen, then
squashes them down to smooth out
edges. But Lab42 was also keen to
support older computers by, for
instance, accommodating processors
that don’t support the latest SSEs or
Streaming SIMD Extensions
(essentially, instructions for how your
PC thinks). “We went in and rewrote
everything to work with the second
set of instructions, implementing all
of the stuff from the third set in the
second set, so that it launched on all
the machines – that was important to
us, because we wanted to let
everybody run it.”MINIMUM’S THE WORD
The intricacy of solutions like these
reveals that optimising a game to
work on older or cheaper PCs isn’t
just about selling to a larger
audience. There’s a playfulness to it,
with different settings giving rise to
different aesthetics within the
game’s overall direction. It’s not just
about making compromises, butexperimenting with the look, sound
and feel of the simulation.
To design for lower specifications
can, moreover, be an exercise in time
travel. “Talking about SSAA in
Yakuza, we did enjoy that you could
really crunch down the resolution,
but keep the UI sharp, so it looked
like a PS1 game or whatever,”
Goodwin says. “Stuff like that was
fun to do.” GTFO, similarly,
resembles a totally different game
when you drop the resolution and
peel off the UI. “I really enjoy that
you can do that – hide the UI, go
down to 720p or below, and get this
old-style Quake feeling,” Vikström
enthuses. This is, of course,
especially the case for games that
openly try to bridge old and new in
their narrative or visual concept,
such as Trigger Happy
Entertainment’s forthcoming Turbo
Overkill (see p40), which blends a
flashy cyberpunk setting with the
chunky pixels of classic Doom.
The usual conflict between
features and performance aside,
Turbo Overkill is a tug of war
between different eras of videogame
graphics. “When I first started the
project, I made a list of rules that I
should follow,” says lead developer
and Doom modder Sam Prebble.
“Like, you can’t use any technology
like shaders, or reflections, advanced
lighting methods, that were invented
after the year 2000. I would try to
avoid putting those into the game
[...] but eventually I got to a point
where I just didn’t like the way it
looks. If I want a neon-drenched
cyberpunk city where it’s always
raining, you have to have reflective
surfaces, there’s no way around it –
well, there probably are ways, but
everything I tried wasn’t very
pleasing to look at.RIGHT: (^) Shadows are
often the first thing to
go at lower specs.
“THE FOG IN GTFO IS SO
MUCH MORE THAN JUST
A VISION LIMITER, IT’S A
MOOD SETTER, RIGHT?”
FEATURE
Low-Spec Gaming
Yakuza Zero MINIMUM
Tasomachi