Avalanche is the developer behind the successful console and PC game Just Cause. Their presentation created more questions than it answered, but still it managed to leave us wanting more. Citing non-disclosure agreement restrictions, the Sweden-based developer was very careful not to give specific information about their upcoming game, beside the fact that it would be developed for next generation consoles only.
The representatives of Avalanche were Linus Blomberg (Technical Director) and Stefan Ljungqvist (Studio Art Director). They had sage advice for other game developers, stressing the importance of outsourcing, concentrating on your core abilities, Research and Development and developing a competent tool chain.
Avalanche showed us a series of prototype scenes, all rendered in real time, which are used in the development of their next title. Sadly we were strictly forbidden to use our cameras. One prototype scene we saw featured a mix of 3rd person high-power swords & sorcery, Hong Kong movie action and a chase scene with dragons! Even though the graphics weren't completely polished, the scene was impressive indeed. Enigmatically, Avalanche commented that this was specifically an Xbox 360 gameplay prototype.
Another cool feature was that almost all of Avalanche's demos were built around the concept of procedural asset creation. Avalanche had procedurally created everything from facial expressions and character models to vast forests and entire massive cities. The driving force behind the move to procedural content comes from the major bottlenecks of next-gen consoles: limited memory and slow disc read speeds. It's pretty safe to assume that we will see these techniques again in their next release.
According to Avalanche, procedural content creation saves a lot of workload: imagine having to manually place ten million trees in a 32x32 km forest - something that was shown running in real time on an Xbox 360 during the showcasing of one of the prototypes. In Just Cause, Avalanche still did a lot of design by hand. Stefan Ljungqvist reckons that procedurally created road networks, for example, are more realistic than if the roads were designed by artists. Artists like to add interesting details and features to their design, which you won't find in the real world. On the whole, though, procedural creation lends itself best to creating organic things.
After a bunch lot of demos centered around landscape creation, we shown some procedurally created characters, varying in stature, facial features and body type (with all kinds of combinations, including male-female hybrids). Avalanche claimed to be able to animate all these models without visible artifacts. Could this be the solution that gives us an unlimited number of different NPCs in games?
Whatever their next game may be, one thing is certain: it will be very interesting from a technical point of view. Rest assured that once the NDA is lifted, you'll find out all on YouGamers!
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