Developers of The Order: 1886 share information and screenshots at GDC

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Ready at Dawn studios gave GDC (Game Developers Conference) attendees an all-access look at the mechanics behind The Order: 1886.

Matt Pettineo and David Neubelt (Graphics Programmers at Ready at Dawn) gave a lengthy and technical PowerPoint Presentation which outlined different odds and ends about the game. At first, Pettineo and Neubelt were the only Graphics Programmers on the project back in 2011. However, the game now employs five and a total of 100 developers.

The Order: 1886 will feature a completely unique and in-house gameplay engine that incorporates some Windows DX11 features but was primarily tuned around the PS4. Much of the level design and overall rendering was done using the Maya 3D animation software.

Here is some technical jargon about the memory usage:

• 2 GB texture budget
• 128 MiB sound budget
• 700 MiB level geometry
• 600 MiB character textures
• 250 MiB global textures (FX, UI, light maps, etc..) Even characters have lightmap data
• 700 MiB animation

A lot of these numbers and figures don’t really make sense to the laymen. Thankfully, the developers put together a ton of pictures that really show the engine in different stages of work.

Here are four renderings (each in a different light) of the same courtyard:

Here are two renderings of the same weapon. The first is without reflection occlusion, and the second is with. You can see some slight differences in the way the light hits the wood and rusted metal of the gun.

There are also some pictures of hair, which are surprisingly impressive:

There were also two new screenshots that we had not seen before:

It is important to note that these screenshots came from a computer (as you can see in the Subterranean London picture). There were a few images from an actual PS4, but they were just recycled from the most recent gameplay trailer. The Order: 1886 does not have a final release date yet, but the PS4 exclusive is expected to drop sometime in the fall.