What Devs Want from the Next Gen

Epic Games senior technical artist and level designer Alan Willard

The content we generate for the current generation, we make very high polygon objects, and then we crunch those down into the game version of them. As we move to the ability to render those high polygon objects, it actually removes the step of having to go down to taking this really nice thing and making it look almost as good on something that is another object we have to build separately.

The closer we can get to building a single nice object and using it in the engine, it makes the workflow more efficient for the artists. If you look at some of the source art for Marcus Fenix, we have five million polygon versions of him that have every scar modelled and all of the detail, that we then process down to normal maps and render on a ten thousand polygon model. There's a certain point at which we're just utilising things we've already built. We're just utilising them more efficiently.

We're getting closer and closer with every generation of hardware to being able to just use those source objects, which will be great from the artists' point of view because they'll no longer be bound by quite the same restrictions. There will always be challenges we have to overcome and workflows we need to devise and learn how to use, but every step forward gives the artists more freedom in those respects.

Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, Sword & Sworcery developer Nathan Vella, CEO of Capybara Games

Most of all we're hoping for consoles to beat Mode 7 and ratchet it up to Mode 8, and perhaps add way more layers of parallax scrolling.

Seriously though… One of the obvious ‘wishes’ a lot of devs are sure to list is more RAM, but for Capy that has extra importance. Since we’re working outside of the 3D norm - using hand-animated 2D HD visuals - our texture sheets take up a massive amount of video RAM. As crazy as it sounds, every game we’ve made to date on Xbox 360 or PS3 has had to be dialled back and cleverly hacked to pieces in order to fit into the max RAM allotment of those consoles. More RAM means more textures fitting in memory, which in turn means we can go even crazier with the 2D HD we love to make.

As a developer whose future is directly linked to digital distribution, we’d love to see the consoles take a more serious and intense look at how the digital shopping experience can be bettered for console gamers. Steam and the iTunes App Store have shown the power well-designed stores have to drive sales - console manufacturers really must apply all the lessons these platforms have learned, plus more, to make finding and buying a game off a console a genuinely intuitive experience.

While XBLA and PSN sales numbers are great, they only represent a portion of people who own these consoles. On top of integrating a well-designed and easily searchable store right into the core user experience, console manufacturers really should spend the time (and money) to teach their gamers about their amazing service. Reaching out and attracting more console gamers to use the embedded stores provided on every platform would be a huge win for everyone - developer, publisher and console manufacturers alike.

We’d also love to see console manufacturers streamline the process of patching games, allowing developers to more quickly and more intuitively react (and interact) with their players. As it stands, the patching and updating process isn’t especially hard or especially bad, but if more power and control were to be given to the developers, the end result would be a much better experience for gamers.