Assassin’s Creed III: The tech behind (or beneath) the action
Assassin’s Creed III (ACIII) follows the story and path of Desmond Miles as he uses the Animus once again to relive the memories of his Assassin ancestors while fighting the Knight Templars. In ACIII the adventure extends for the first time to the ocean, unable to even swim in the first Ubisoft Assassin’s Creed, the gamer can now master entire sea battles. But the job of producing the fluid ‘stage’ on top of which the games action plays out, was no easy task.
“Given the fraction of a cycle time we are allowed, we could render at 200 frames per second if there was only water in shot”
Georges Torres
Ubisoft Singapore
Georges Torres, Senior Technical Director for ACIII, explained that given the fraction of a cycle time they are allowed, his team could render at 200 frames per second if there was only water in shot. In feature films just a decade ago, rendering oceans was reason enough to seek an Oscar. Today Ubisoft’s team has to render complex oceans in realtime, interactively. Actually, Torres says they need to render the water - the ships and game action – much faster than real time to allow for the new AnvilNext Render Engine to still handle the characters, their ships and sails.
Early in the game, in fact before the ACIII game titles are even on screen, we the gamers are at sea traveling to the Americas, but it is the later Naval battles that are particularly impressive. Multiple ships are riding wild waves, while shooting canon fire rains debris of fragmented ships into the water, which is also reflecting water depth, sky conditions, ship wakes and forming crashing ships. Nothing like this has ever been attempted in an Assassin’s Creed and to achieve the shots an entire new water system had to be implemented as part of a new game engine. The game play is not only fresh but the various weather conditions from calm coastal ports to wild ocean storms just look beautiful. The AnvilNext provides – or cheats – refraction, sub-surface scattering, particles, buoyancy, storm conditions and complex atmospherics. The world of ACIII is just stunning. All of this leads to some really thrilling and unusual game play, ships need to be maneuvered to fire, masts come crashing down, as canons rain fire on our hero who can raid other ships, climb rigging and of course do what he does best, stealthily engage a military presence…and fight.
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