Caption about the
iymage goes in
hereCaption about the
iymage goes in
hereGoddard argues that for larger
established teams, the question of
high or low spec may become
irrelevant in a few years thanks to
technologies that automatically adjust
for different hardware capabilities.
Take Unreal Engine 5’s geometry
system Nanite. “Basically, you throw
as many polygons as you want at it,
and it just figures it all out. Up until
now all the games I’ve ever made
[have been] a constant battle for
framerate. You’re always trying to
reduce polygons. With UE5 now you
don’t even think about it. You don’t
even have to make reduced polygon
versions of things any more.
Everything’s automatic.”
Features like these could
transform the industry, he says, much
like the spread of intuitive
middleware tools such as Unity. “It’s
getting to the point where it’s no
longer a programmer job worrying
about framerate. It’s basically artists
buying assets from a store and
throwing them in without even
worrying about texturing or LOD or
anything like that. Three million
polygons, ten million polygons,
whatever, just throw it in and it just
works on any hardware. So that’s the
kind of end goal of all this fighting
over settings – it’s all just handled
within this black box here.”
This certainly sounds like it would
remove much of the stress from
projects like GTFO and Turbo
Overkill. But from a player
perspective, it’s energising and
inspiring to be given more direct
control over how a game looks andruns. And as Vikström concludes,
planning out a game so as to
accommodate lower specs is a source
of creative satisfaction. “You have
expert programmers, expert artists,
expert sound designers and
storytellers, and they’re all working
together as tightly as they can. That’s
one of my favourite things about game
development – these really varied
talents that need to work together.
And also, the big challenge.”AAA TO B
Three developers offer thoughts on trends in
blockbuster game visualsTERRY
GOODWIN,
TECHNICAL
DIRECTOR,
LAB42 GAMES
“People are always
saying, how can they
possibly get better
than this? I think
there will always be
new ways of
representing some
facet of reality that
you didn’t realise
was missing until it’s
put in a game. And
everything looked
really great before
then, you just didn’t
really notice.”ALEXANDER
MURPHY,
PRODUCER,
VIRTUOS PARIS
“I think the focus will
be on small details.
Is your fox made of
four polygons with
one animation, or will
it be a fully scanned
animal with multiple
animations? I think
we’ll see more games
using unique art
styles to stand out.
Games like BioShock
and Dishonored
have ‘realistic’ art
styles but with their
own twists.”GILES GODDARD,
CO-FOUNDER,
CHUHAI LABS
“It’s interesting to
see what will happen
with 8k and
ray-traced graphics,
because I think
we’ve hit the limit
for resolution with
8k. [With real-time
ray tracing] it’s
going to be less
about turning
settings off and on
[because] it renders
the world as in real
life. It’s very hard to
turn things on and
off with ray tracing.”LEFT: (^) Wonderlands
has a huge spectrum
of graphics settings.
At the lowest, most
background NPCs are
removed to improve
performance.
FEATURE
Low-Spec Gaming
God of War MINIMUM
Wonderlands