At this time, we proudly share a sneak peek into the event of Transport Fever 2: Console Version, and the way we managed to deliver the complete transport tycoon expertise to Xbox.
Transport Fever is a extremely popular 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 within the style. The aim of the sport is to construct a profitable transportation firm by developing railroads, streets, water and air strains. Beginning within the nineteenth century, the participant connects cities and industries to move each passengers and cargo. Along with a customizable free sport mode, there may be additionally a fully-fledged marketing campaign mode with difficult missions set in real-world transportation historical past.
After the large success of Transport Fever 2 on PC, it was solely logical to deliver the expertise to consoles as nicely. Not solely that, however no efforts had been spared to offer the console group the complete expertise that made the sport nice on PC. So as to obtain this, the engineers at City Video games needed to pull some rabbits out of their engineers’ hats.
All the time offering the freshest layer of paint
One of the crucial 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’s simply reasonably priced to have all of 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 otherwise. They’ve a unified structure with an total smaller quantity however ultra-fast reminiscence. The important thing to make it work on consoles is texture streaming, which permits to clear textures of fashions that aren’t in view anymore. Furthermore, this know-how is utilized in Transport Fever 2 to always load textures on the highest reasonably priced decision to current the celebs of the present, just like the traditional Class A 3/5 steam locomotive, of their greatest coat of paint always.
Holding the bottom like a console professional
A trademark of Transport Fever 2 are its big maps. Throughout improvement of the sport, it was all the time paramount to offer an actual sense of scale. The engine ought to enable for maps the place a high-speed prepare, such because the well-known Japanese Shinkansen, can actually make use of its superior pace. So, numerous 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 can be a dynamic terrain tessellation algorithm on the CPU that, whereas costing a bit of additional reminiscence, makes certain 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. Right here, the {hardware} may be leveraged very nicely for terrain rendering by making use of the GPU tessellation function. This function generates the render mesh for the terrain totally on the graphics card, saving worthwhile processing time for the advanced financial system and metropolis progress simulations. Whereas producing extra triangles, the {hardware} strategy nonetheless prices much less reminiscence total on account of its effectivity. So huge maps may be considered from a hen’s view excessive up within the sky and seamlessly zoomed in right down to particular person rocks on a riverbank.
Inspiring the interior architect
Lastly, let’s discuss constructions, a central and defining a part of the Transport Fever 2 expertise. Constructions are massive assemblies that include dozens of property, avenue segments, floor decals and terrain modifications. Consider buildings like airports, prepare stations, docks, freeway crossings, and plenty of extra. Something that’s wanted to construct an unlimited transportation empire.
For a clean development expertise, it’s 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 could be very nicely adjusted to this methodology of enter, it’s sufficiently performant to calculate the whole development every body and place it beneath the cursor. Nonetheless, on consoles, one of the best ways of constructing constructions is to have them all the time stored within the middle of the display and transfer the digital camera alongside the map for placement. And shifting the digital camera must 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 within the background whereas a static preview of the construction and its underlying floor plan are proven. Not solely are constructions now utterly steady when it comes to FPS, however additionally they give suggestions to the participant on what surroundings options the development would tear down when constructed.
Let’s get tycooning on console
We’re very excited to deliver the Transport Fever franchise to consoles for the primary time ever with the discharge of Transport Fever 2: Console Version on Xbox Sequence X|S and Xbox One in February 2023, and we hope you’ll get pleasure from it as a lot as we did creating it.
