The Bard’s Tale Developer Diary #9

In GameSpy’s ninth installment to their Bard’s Tale developer diary, InXile’s environmental artist Erik Jakobsen discusses building the captivating world of The Bard’s Tale. A snippet:

The biggest problem with making the world taller is that when geometry goes past 30 feet, the camera clips. This is when the camera goes inside geometry and you can see all the nasty innards. Well, 30 feet would be enough for most things, but buildings are a different story. In The Bard’s Tale we have monstrous towers, rickety three-story buildings, and many other tall structures. Other games lock the camera so you can’t rotate over and clip the buildings. And yet other games avoid the situation completely, a la the 12-foot world. I took advantage of the difficult 30-foot perspective and found a clever solution. I bent the hell out of the buildings. I mean, they are totally unrealistic . if viewed from five feet off the ground. But from 30 feet up, the results are great. You get to see all the detail AND you get giant structures coming right up to the camera. It is only an illusion of perspective.