Something I never understood about graphical capabilities.
If the iPhone is capable of running Nimian Legends: Brightridge HD, a massive open world with console quality graphics.
Why in the world can't games like Assassin's Creed Identity be open world? Not to mention the graphics are squat in comparison to Nimian Legends.
Is it just laziness on the developers side? Or do they juse want to cater to the majority?
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I was Googling my game and found your post. Thanks for building up Nimian Legends : BrightRidge - the way you describe it is really nice to hear:) It’s a solo project I’m hoping to make fulltime, and spreading the word about it helps.
I’m also a fan of Telltale games. I think their pacing and storytelling skills are very inspiring - something for me to look up to.
I can’t speak for other developers, but I can share my thoughts about your question.
I think there are many factors as to why there aren’t more open world games on mobile. Here’s a couple from my experience:
Platform fragmentation: Making a game for IOS can mean needing to support devices back to an iPhone 4 or even earlier. Even if you restrict a game to use Metal technology (which can speed up a game) you will still need to support back to an iPhone 5S. the differences between that phone and Apple’s newest devices is HUGE. Open world games are by nature very CPU intensive games, and its very difficult to get something that big so stable on an earlier device. Even BrightRidge crashes on some devices at some point. Bigger game companies usually have higher quality assurance standards, so they would probably have to drop a project that couldn’t be reliably run on many devices. It’s possible to make open world games that run well across generations, but I think it’s difficult. Its simpler when you are developing for a single , more powerful platform (like a mid range PC or PS4) because there are less unknown quantities and less configurations to test.
Quality: Although many people think BrightRidge is beautiful, many others find it ugly. I try to find the beauty in BrightRidge with the chaos of nature, the mess and the dust and the sunlight. It's a kind of artistic approach that masks some of the technical deficiencies. Low textures, low poly objects, low resolutions. You can change many of these settings so that it looks next gen on newer devices, but the default quality i use to ensure it works across a range of devices is low. If you look at a game like Assassin’s Creed Identity you'll see it has very crisp textures and anti aliasing compared to BrightRidge on default. The better the textures and visuals, the higher the memory use. I think to take a game that looks as good as ACI’s default quality would blow the memory limits of many earlier devices. ACI also includes many more features like wonderful people pooling, challenging combat and strong AI. All of this combined can add to the difficulty of RELIABLY bringing open world to mobile.
That said, i agree with the core of your question, and i think that yes many of today's devices can absolutely run something like Skyrim given their power. But because in part of the above concerns, and the expanded difficulty and challenges of working with an open world design, i think it will take a bit more time before they are everywhere. But if you could, say, restrict development to the latest Android device or IOS device, and not worry about the earlier devices, you could easily run a gorgeous open world game without a hitch:)
Developers like telltale have moved on and discontinued supporting even the latest original iPad series. iPad 4.
I believe other devs should do the same. If people still have an iPhone 4S, it is definitely time to upgrade.
That said, I am really shocked that you actually replied. Wow!
On a side note, your game does indeed crash very frequently on default settings. Especially on Story Mode. Nevertheless, it is still an enjoyable experience in Explorateur.
Thank you:) Explorateur mode uses a more optimized adventure engine behind the scenes. I just submitted version 7 of BrightRidge to the app store and hopefully it will be out soon. It has more optimizations and new features. For example, all adventures now use the same optimized engine as "Explorateur" (i live in Montreal so that's where the french name comes from:).
What's nice about Telltale games is that they focus on the story, not the engine. I love open world games, and honestly I wouldn't want to make anything else, but i do spend about half the time wrestling with the scope of the technology instead of writing stories. I think at the end of the day, whether you focus on story telling or exploring large worlds, or both, what really matters is that you create something you believe in and that you enjoy.
Indeed, that is great to hear!
I do hope crashes will be fixed in the latest update. I really want to play on high settings, but due to the crashes, it makes it unplayable.
Also, check out the app store reviews, I feel they are quite on point.
I really do enjoy your game with amazing nature. Although the game once again immediately crashes when you want to watch any flying animals in Spirit View.
Kudos! You can do it!