Electronic Arts, widely recognized titan of the games industry, is taking the next step in bringing video game development into the future, with a new patent that could forever change the landscape in video games - literally. The patent is for new imaging software that could considerably shorten the production time needed for creating realistic gaming terrain, worlds, and maps.
Creating terrain is far and away one of the most time-consuming aspects of video game design and development, often requiring hundreds of hours of work to render realistic environmental details, obstacles, and objects, and playtesting to ensure that the entire environment is playable and without glitches or corruptions. As game worlds get bigger and consoles more powerful, more and more work is required to meet the demand for expansive, heavily detailed worlds and maps, which often results in longer and longer production time, delays, and the subsequent potential for negative reactions from fans who grow weary from waiting.
A new EA patent may give environment production the boost it so sorely needs. While terrain mapping is far from a new technology, EA's proposed system streamlines the process by combining various existing mapping technologies into a single process. As Game Rant reports, the patent claims the technology utilizes satellite images to procedurally generate terrain, which would be a tremendous boon to future titles that take place in real-world environments, particularly EA's Battlefield series. It would allow developers to forgo manual terrain mapping entirely and go straight to the fine-tuning, which would significantly shorten the needed production time for new titles.
EA, for all its other foibles, has continued to spearhead new technological patents needed to streamline and improve the game development process, such as a recent patent for improved character and facial animations. The use of satellite imagery would also be a boon to new titles that take place in outer space, with detailed satellite imagery of the Moon or Mars lending the opportunity for highly detailed and realistic extraterrestrial terrain that wouldn't have to be fully built from scratch.
As one of the largest gaming companies in the world, and the parent company of more studios than can easily be counted, any patent or advancement that EA files or builds signals a major change for the gaming industry as a whole. Since modern games, particularly open-world ones, are getting so massive that production time is often longer than the reign of a current generation console, any new technology that can streamline the process is a blessing for the gaming world as a whole.
Source: Game Rant