Far Cry 2 - News From GDC2008

The Games Developers Conference (GDC 2008) is happening right now in San Francisco, and this generally means loads of previews and demonstrations of upcoming games.

Of all of the news that's filtered through from the show, one game in particular caught my attention. Far Cry 2 is already shaping up to be a big hit, and IGN have posted some details of a presentation by Dominic Guay, Technical Director of Ubisoft Montreal, that suggest the game is going to break new ground in terms of its design.

Guay was talking about the developer's decision to go for procedural data generation rather than pre-built and heavily-scripted scenarios in the game world.

When I first read this I thought it meant they were generating events in the game world on-the-fly, in a similar vein to Stalker, but it turns out they're doing more than that. They've taken a radical approach and are applying it to things such as texture and model generation. I won't try to explain it, as the article covers this more eloquently than I'd manage.

Suffice it to say that this sounds like a great idea. As the article explains, it should cut down on development time and allow for more realistic simulation of things such as clouds, fog, fire and wind, and even indivudual objects such as trees.

I just hope that Ubisoft's ambition doesn't cause any holdups to the release date, as much of the delay in Stalker's release was caused by the desire to simulate the game world rather than script it, and the enormous amount of testing that required.

If Ubisoft can carry it off, Far Cry 2 will be shaping up to be an excellent game.