Techland’s Tymon Smektala talked about Chrome Engine 6 and the modding tools that prolong the life of the massive zombie action Dying Light: The Following.
Dying Light is probably one of the most visually attractive open-world experiences in the world. The game features endless maps with highly detailed environments and hundreds of zombies. The parkour, the interactivity and wide possibilities made this one of the best projects available to fans of tense action.
At Gamescom 2015 Techland presented the Dying Light: The Following – a story-based expansion to the massive hit with a couple of unique features. The game features huge environments, upgradable vehicles, new storyline about a mysterious cult and non-linear progression system. You can solve the problems any way you see fit. You will earn respect and confidence of The Following’s cult leaders and slowly learn the truth.
We’ve had a meeting with the game’s producer Tymon Smektala and discussed some of the peculiarities of the future game.
Big Huge World
Dying Light is completely built using our own proprietary engine Chrome Engine 6. It’s the technology that we’ve been working on for almost 15 years now. It started as something very deeply rooted in that old era of gaming. Slowly we developed our own games and began to adapt the engine to our needs. We’re fans of open world games and our technology brings great tools to building such products. We started to focus on supporting open world gameplay in our engine.
dying-light-the-following-80lv-interview-5
The biggest feature of our engine is its ability to create huge environments. The environment we are using in Dying Light The Following is as big as the whole world of the original Dying Light (Old Town and The Slums combined) . Actually the environment of the main game was so big that we had to split the main map into two, because of the limitation of the consoles of the previous generation. Now with the continuation of the Dying Light game we could create something really huge.
dying-light-the-following-80lv-interview-4
This whole new world is full of new places to visit, characters to meet, quests to do, and secrets to discover. You’ll need to adapt in order to survive. Gameplay is very open. You can approach the situations guns blazing or take a stealth approach. It’s all up to you. There’s also buggies to travel around the huge world. The vehicles are actually upgradable.
Importance of Lighting
dying-light-the-following-80lv-interview-1
We also worked really hard in making the lighting as realistic as possible. We believe that games don’t have to be ultra-realistic. However there are certain elements that make the game more attractive for players. Light is one of those elements. We’ve put a lot of effort in creating physics based lighting rendering. This allowed us to increase the quality of lighting effects in Dying Light The Following. Hopefully gamers will notice how the game looks right now.
Modding Prolongs The Game’s Life
Right now we are working very hard on making the engine support the mod community. We believe that games that support mods are really the most successful, because they greatly increase the game’s lifespan. You can hammer out as many DLC packs as you want, but it will never give the same longevity as the mod tools. Our community really surprises us with its creativity, productivity and imagination. We’re proud that our fans put so much effort to improve the game and make their own unique experiences. Recently we’ve released a set of mod tools for Dying Light. We’ve also increased the possibilities of this editor: users can now put their own meshes into the game! We hope to develop the technology further and increase the possibilities of our engine.