Det er komplekst at lave spil, så derfor afsøger udviklere og deres chefer ofte muligheder for at spare, eller strømline udviklingsprocessen. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 har ikke som sådan benyttet sig af AI-værtkøjer som vi kender dem idag, men studiet bag, Monolith Soft, indrømmer nu at dele af spillets visuelle udtryk er lavet igennem en afart tilfældig generering.
I et interview med japanske CG World siger Map Model Designer Yoichi Akizuki og Support Engineer Mitsuhiro Hirose at de brugte software-suiter som Houdini til at automatisk generere dele af spillets art assets. Blandt andet Houdini kan tilfældigt generere konkrete assets baseret på regler defineret af udviklerne selv.
"The main reason for the introduction [of procedural asset generation] was to cope with the increasing volume of assets required for games. This has had a particularly significant impact on our game titles, which feature the exploration of vast and diverse fields. The conventional method had limitations in terms of cost and schedule. So we replaced the placement process with a procedural one and automated it, allowing us to focus our development resources on the actual game creation. We had been conducting basic research on Houdini for some time, but it was with Xenoblade Chronicles 3 that we were able to put it into practice for the first time as part of our asset placement system."
Selvom Xenoblade Chronicles 3 blev mødt med en flot kritisk konsensus er et kritikpunkt netop landskaber, der i det nære kan virke lidt tomme og til tider sågar idéforladte.
Måske er det derfor, og hvad synes du om den her tilgang?