God of War’s Computer system port is an increased model of a fantastic video game, with a couple of features we adore to see on Personal computer like DLSS upscaling, a versatile FPS limiter, and ultrawide assistance. That past a single was a no-brainer inclusion for God of War’s builders as they started off operate on the Computer variation of the video game, direct UX designer Mila Pavlin informed me. “I consider this is just a remarkable recreation for the widescreen structure,” Pavlin said. “It has all those big vistas, the huge sweeping moments, and the cinematics that participate in to that… So I imagine that was something that was truly crucial to the staff, as we were being searching at how to existing the video game in the ideal probable way.”
For UI designers, producing a match operate well in ultrawide contains some pretty noticeable duties. You have to ensure that UI features that are ‘pinned’ to the corners of the monitor in 16:9 aren’t uncomfortably out of perspective on a 21:9 monitor. But that’s just a single of the concerns developers have to deal with to make ultrawide work. The industry of look at at that wider facet ratio can be a massive dilemma for online games that ended up initially only constructed to support normal widescreen.
“It truly is not just setting resolution and accomplished. I desire it was that easy,” said Matt DeWald, the senior technical producer on God of War’s Personal computer port. If you widen the component ratio without the need of expanding FOV, it just won’t seem rather right to our brains. But at the time you widen the FOV, you commence viewing items that you had been in no way meant to, like in negative ‘HD remasters’ of aged Tv set displays.
“Now you will find all this stuff that was on the edge and minimize off on 16:9 that now is in the scene,” DeWald said. “Like ‘Oh no, Atreus is warping by means of the scene because he is finding into posture.'”
“So you had to go back again and animate all all those factors. It demanded enjoying by the whole activity. And not just cinematics because we’re a no-slice camera, correct, it is really the one particular shot the full way. So it’s seriously taking part in via the full game… all these managed camera moments, like when Kratos is making an attempt to kill one thing and he goes into a locked animation, the camera’s controlled to that scene, or you will find some gameplay instant exactly where a little something demonstrates up like the Draugr popping out and Kratos whipping out the axe and it frosting up.
“Those people usually are not cinematics per se, they are just gameplay moments. You’ve acquired to go via all of individuals and check to see: Was there a Draugr on the facet of the display that popped into visibility due to the fact he’s heading to be attacking from driving? Is Atreus warping all around? Is Kratos’s skirt flipping all around due to the fact the cloth simulation just isn’t performing effectively? There is certainly all that form of stuff that you have to go by means of and tweak. It was literally just hand work to go back again and correct up all those points.”
The only way to be certain God of War seemed just correct with a broader FOV was to play it in ultrawide. A ton.
“Since it really is hard to systematically discover these troubles, it calls for a human becoming to look at it and observe it, you can imagine actively playing by means of not only a 30 hour game from the main game aspects, but also all the exploration areas and all that stuff, you are speaking about 80-plus several hours to play through the full activity to uncover the visible factors,” DeWald stated. “And you have acquired to run by means of that numerous times.”
God of War’s Laptop port was formulated by a modest team at Santa Monica Studio together with Jetpack Interactive, although most of Santa Monica is nonetheless devoted to improvement on the upcoming sequel God of War Ragnarok. As QA logged visual bugs, the Computer port team would pull in animators to repair them.
“As much as I would enjoy to say that we planned appropriately and it took specifically that amount of money of time, it did not,” DeWald stated. “QA would find some new issue that we missed the first time close to. When they opened up the hundreds of bugs ,the amount of get the job done it took to fix all of these, it was fairly a bit of hard work.”
These types of animation challenges undoubtedly aren’t exclusive to God of War’s “no-minimize digital camera” design—pretty significantly any recreation designed for a locked FOV is going to exhibit some challenges when you widen the lens. But it can be emblematic of how a great deal extra challenging life receives for games built all over a set console spec when they are brought above to the Laptop.
