Marvel’s Spider-Man: A Technical Postmortem

Let’s check out a GDC 2019 talk on Insomniac’s biggest game to date. This talk with Elan Ruskin showed how their studio’s technology evolved to make it possible, and the setbacks and pitfalls along the way.

“This session will discuss the challenges of rapidly growing asset count, and adapting rendering, streaming, and lighting to build a New York City that fits on a Blu-Ray. It will cover the procedural tools for marking up Manhattan, and how their approach to building the city changed over time,” states the description.

The session also shows how the pedestrians, traffic, street vignettes, and random crimes grew from humble beginnings to an interactive part of a living city. What is more, you will learn about making the wrong vertical slice, the perils of pre-baked lightmaps, how Photo Mode came together one volunteer contribution at a time, and more.

You can learn more and find the talk here.