Here we are again with the biweekly notes:
On January 4th we announced to reactivate the plans for The Haunted 2 and to work on downloadable content (DLC) for The Haunted 1. If you have read that Jan 4th announcement exactly you can imagine how happy we were to be able to present just some month later the first official preview of the DLC in the work process.
We had discussions about how to do the DLC since we reactivated the plans for “The Haunted 2” (have a look on announcement Oct 4th) and are now going to finish a DLC in the far improved style on UE3 - heading UE4 !
And while doing that - here is the next “behind the scene” info from Cedric:
Hello guys, the last post was about the process to make an asset from start to finish - today I will talk about optimizing of performance.
As you know, the PC version of the original game was released at the end of October 2011 and developed until spring 2012, when the lights went out at THQ. Although "The Haunted 1" was not my first game (I also worked on Divine Divinity Ego Draconis, Mini Ninjas, and some Nintendo DS games), I was not as experienced as I am today.
The DLC in the work process will now benefit from six years more experience and we gonna have a look at that a bit closer.
If I am going to open today the Museum map I made back then, I can see instantly things that negatively impact the performance. Even on my current computer (i5 6600k, Geforce 770gtx 4gb, 64Gb ddr4) I can't even reach the maximum framerate of 120fps allowed by my monitor while playing around with the Unreal Engine Level Editor.
Having a look at the following two screenshots (hopefully, Steam won't resize it down too much), you can see that I only get 86fps…
…looking at the entire map, the framerate drops down to 30fps, and the map is not even that big.
The next two screenshots show still a work-in-progress, but most assets are already in there and, much more importantly, the polygons count is nearly 4 times higher than in the museum map above, allowing me to add the details I was talking about (in this case, a very dense vegetation). Lastly we note that - no matter where you are in the level or even looking at the entire level from above - we reach the 120fps and it never drops below!
Besides that, from a gameplay point of view, the level is already done. Most major assets are done, those that are not just need to be properly textured. The vegetation assets are 100% done. The textures are 90% done. The detailing assets are 50% done.
What's left to do is the lighting (I think you could guess from the screenshots), the pathfinding, items placement and the level event.
I can guarantee you that this DLC will get released before “Half Life 3” ;)