by RockstarRaccoon » Wed May 16, 2018 10:56 am
Good example of that, stuff like the portal near the beginning of C2M1, or the back office in INTERMAP, which shocked me when I was playtesting the game. It felt like the entire purpose of those portals was to give the map that non-euclidean geometry that you guys are always doing. Why not just put that part of the map where it goes logically and build the other part of the map around it? Hell, it might even be a cooler map if there was a door leading to a balcony overlooking that earlier area...
Seriously, this is one of my favorite games made in this engine, but every time I play a new level I find a spot where you guys have decided that you're going to have a whole Mountain Side detailed out and then you put some sort of portal overlooking it, just in case the player's computer could have handled that. With the amount of skill that goes into this project to make it as impressive as it is, I'm surprised that the mapping team has this much trouble understanding basic engine limitations.
The saddest part is, last night I downloaded and played Tormentor's Refinery, and that map was even more intricate and detailed than any of the maps in this game, with detailed areas beneath complicated catwalk bridges, and a section where you fall through a floor to go through a giant worm thing which goes beneath another floor and pops out in the yellow key room, which is surrounded by detailed hallway. All of that looked amazing, and was done without any portal abuse, just a bunch of 3D floors, which, by the way, use a relatively small amount of resources, even if they are transparent or sloped.
Like I said, great project, but you can do most of this without portals eating the frame rate.