Avalanche's Mad Max is releasing this September, some months after the new movie Fury Road which is in cinemas now, but the studio is taking its time to ensure the game looks and plays as well as it can.
lvar Jansson, Lead Graphics Programmer on Mad Max, spoke to DSO Gaming about the tech Avalanche is putting into Mad Max.
"The engine is optimized for open world games so you will find dynamic time of day and dynamic weather, with some big sand storms," Jansson said regarding the Avalanche Engine which is powering the game. "Mad Max is set in The Wasteland where a lot of the ground is visible, so we added parallax occlusion mapping to give some depth to the terrain material. We are always aiming to support freedom and destructibility on a level that I think makes our games unique."
When it comes to bringing that wasteland to life, "We use a classic deferred lighting system that uses hundreds of active light sources. There’s a system for prioritizing the rendering of dynamic shadows, and the number can be scaled based on performance.
"For secondary illumination from the sunlight, we use a system that filters and back-projects the ground color, this is also used to soften hard shadow edges, giving the impression of illumination from a sun halo."
Jansson said the PC version is being developed in conjunction with the console game and is "being given just as much attention." Mad Max is also coming to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on September 4th. The game was originally in development for PS3 and Xbox 360 but those versions have been cancelled.
You can check out the recent gameplay trailer here.
