The Planetside team has released the first of their performance updates just a few days short of Planetside 2’s 1st birthday. This is the result of months of work by the dev team, and I hope it pays off. The patch notes give an overview of what was changed, but if you have been following their video series (see below) then you should already have a pretty good idea about what is in the update.
The patch is primarily focused on improving performance, but that doesnt mean thats all it has. Other updates include changes to drop pods, balance tweaks, and Amerish has been moved forward 12 hours so it will be daytime there while the other continents are at night.
Operation: Make Faster Game Episode 1
In this first in a series of Documentary style videos, you will get to know the people behind the efforts as well as get a glimpse at the types of technological challenges and creative solutions that the team discussed and implements in Operation: Making Faster Game!
Operation: Make Faster Game Episode 2
In episode 2, we dive deep into the UI side of the game and introduce you to Amit Patel (UI lead for PlanetSide 2) who talks about his role in helping optimize PlanetSide 2.
Operation: Make Faster Game Episode 3
In episode 3 of Operation: Make Faster game we introduce you to Alex Hoffman, an Associate Programmer for PlanetSide 2. Alex’s role in improving optimization is to work on the Bot client tool which generates a bunch of bots to stress test to benchmark performance.
Operation: Make Faster Game Episode 4
In episode 4 of Operation: Make Faster game we introduce you to Rob Elam and Julio Jerez, programmers for PlanetSide 2. Rob and Julio are charged with optimizing aka “wrangling” the system interactions with the game physics engine to make PlanetSide 2 run better.
Operation: Make Faster Game Episode 5
Watch as Xander Clauss, game designer and Corey Navage, lead level designer discuss their part in the optimization process by optimizing maps and increasing game performance.
Operation: Make Faster Game Episode 6
Watch as Chad Lichty, Lead Animator and Joe Hall, Visual Effects Artist discuss how the animation and effects teams have tackled the optimization process.