A former id Software artist believes that today’s games face problems due to more than just technological obstacles.
PC Gamer recently sat down with Emanuel Palalic, the director of Defect and former id Software artist, as well as composer Mick Gordon, to discuss the upcoming cyberpunk first-person shooter (FPS). At first glance, it appears to be a massive game, yet its system requirements are surprisingly low. The minimum required video card is an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060, and there is no mandatory ray tracing, which is becoming increasingly common in some games. The graphics arms race is becoming increasingly costly for developers and gamers alike, while returns are declining. This is not just a question of technology and optimization.
Compressing and distorting high-resolution graphics always results in a game that looks worse than a retro-style title. Ridiculous GPU prices and longer component lifespans further exacerbate the problem. According to Palalic, Emptyvessel strives to ensure that its graphics look and perform well, even at lower settings. The team tests the latest version of Defect three times a week to check for changes, and Defect scales gun smoke and bullet impacts across different graphics settings.
“Good performance in a game isn’t just a technical problem; it’s an artistic problem, too. A strong art team can work within and lean into any shading and rendering limitations. Take Killzone 2, for example. It looks incredible even today. F.E.A.R. looks incredible today too. A lot of that is because, as an artist, you work within the limitations presented to you and lean into their strengths. That’s how we’re approaching optimization for Defect. While it looks fancy, we’re definitely doing a lot of things; some old-school techniques are mixed in there.
We’re working on the destruction and persistence of debris. There’s a lot more work to be done on that. However, being able to turn those switches off and make some optimizations to get this stuff running at 60 FPS has allowed us to make interesting cuts to lower- and mid-spec things as well. I think another helpful thing is Defect’s gritty, moody lighting. There are some dimly lit spaces. We’re doing a lot of fun stuff to reduce the destruction load and make it more optimal. This includes offloading things from the CPU to the GPU and vice versa and scaling down effects to simpler versions on lower settings. We’re even scaling down persistent bodies in the world,” Palalic said.
According to Mick Gordon, the people behind the team are the same ones who created the most optimized games of the past 10+ years. This has been an important consideration for everyone from the beginning, and these people are among the best in the field. The release date for Defect is not yet known.
Source: PCGamer
