Today, we proudly share a sneak peek into the growth of Transport Fever 2: Console Edition, and the way we managed to convey the full transport tycoon expertise to Xbox.
Transport Fever is a very talked-about and extremely rated transportation tycoon franchise on PC. Its newest entry, Transport Fever 2, delivers a degree of measurement and element by no means earlier than seen in the style. The objective of the sport is to construct a profitable transportation firm by setting up railroads, streets, water and air strains. Starting in the nineteenth century, the participant connects cities and industries to transport each passengers and cargo. In addition to a customizable free sport mode, there is additionally a fully-fledged marketing campaign mode with difficult missions set in real-world transportation historical past.
After the big success of Transport Fever 2 on PC, it was solely logical to convey the expertise to consoles as properly. Not solely that, however no efforts had been spared to give the console group the full expertise that made the sport nice on PC. In order to obtain this, the engineers at Urban Games had to pull some rabbits out of their engineers’ hats.
Always offering the freshest layer of paint
One of the most cherished options of Transport Fever 2 are its extremely detailed autos. The sport comes with greater than 200 lovingly hand-modeled trains, ships, and airplanes, every sporting a number of 4k textures and regular maps.
On PC, it is simply reasonably priced to have all the fashions and textures in reminiscence each time wanted, as a typical rig has 16 GB of RAM and a GPU with a devoted further reminiscence. Consoles, nevertheless, are constructed in another way. They have a unified structure with an total smaller quantity however ultra-fast reminiscence. The key to make it work on consoles is texture streaming, which permits to clear textures of fashions that aren’t in view anymore. Moreover, this know-how is utilized in Transport Fever 2 to always load textures at the highest reasonably priced decision to current the stars of the present, like the basic Class A 3/5 steam locomotive, of their greatest coat of paint always.
Keeping the floor like a console professional
A trademark of Transport Fever 2 are its big maps. During growth of the sport, it was at all times paramount to present an actual sense of scale. The engine ought to permit for maps the place a high-speed prepare, comparable to the well-known Japanese Shinkansen, can actually make use of its superior pace. So, quite a lot of effort was put into designing a extremely efficient terrain rendering pipeline that may deal with maps of greater than 120 sq miles of measurement with a element decision of virtually 1 yard. Central to this is a dynamic terrain tessellation algorithm on the CPU that, whereas costing a bit of additional reminiscence, makes positive the engine can render these maps on all kinds of PCs.
Now, enter the world of consoles with their extremely well-designed GPUs and graphic APIs. Here, the {hardware} will be leveraged very properly for terrain rendering by making use of the GPU tessellation function. This function generates the render mesh for the terrain absolutely on the graphics card, saving helpful processing time for the complicated economic system and metropolis progress simulations. While producing extra triangles, the {hardware} strategy nonetheless prices much less reminiscence total due to its effectivity. So huge maps will be seen from a chook’s view excessive up in the sky and seamlessly zoomed in down to particular person rocks on a riverbank.
Inspiring the interior architect
Finally, let’s speak about constructions, a central and defining a part of the Transport Fever 2 expertise. Constructions are giant assemblies that include dozens of belongings, road segments, floor decals and terrain modifications. Think of constructions like airports, prepare stations, docks, freeway crossings, and plenty of extra. Anything that is wanted to construct an enormous transportation empire.
For a clean development expertise, it is key that the participant actually feels that he has exact management over the constructing placement. On PC, constructions are usually constructed utilizing the mouse. As the common PC consumer is very properly adjusted to this technique of enter, it is sufficiently performant to calculate the whole development every body and place it beneath the cursor. However, on consoles, the greatest method of constructing constructions is to have them at all times stored in the middle of the display screen and transfer the digital camera alongside the map for placement. And shifting the digital camera wants to be as clean as silk.
So, for the console launch of Transport Fever 2, the development preview pipeline was overhauled. All dynamic calculations at the moment are carried out in the background whereas a static preview of the construction and its underlying floor plan are proven. Not solely are constructions now utterly steady by way of FPS, however in addition they give suggestions to the participant on what atmosphere options the development would tear down when constructed.
Let’s get tycooning on console
We are very excited to convey the Transport Fever franchise to consoles for the first time ever with the launch of Transport Fever 2: Console Edition on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One in February 2023, and we hope you’ll take pleasure in it as a lot as we did growing it.
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