Dragon Age 2 Technologies. Part 1
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BioWare published a new post on their blog, recounting the technologies used in Dragon Age 2. The article is accompanied by a number of new screenshots.

Technologies were one of the key programming issues during the transition from Origins to Dragon Age 2. After the art team presented us with their vision of the updated art style, we spent a lot of time with them determining the technological improvements that would help better convey this new style.

In this post, we will look at some of the core technological enhancements of the engine. These enhancements will please everyone who plays the game, whether they are on a PC with a graphics card that supports DirectX 9, on PlayStation 3, or on Xbox 360. In the next post, we will discuss the more advanced DirectX 11 technologies that will only be available on high-end PCs.

Lighting

Lighting is a crucial element of the visual presentation of any game. Regardless of how detailed or unique the base style is, a poor lighting system that cannot convey all the nuances will make the game worse overall. Understanding this, we conducted extensive research into lighting techniques and tried to identify the one that best fits the level of Dragon Age 2.

Ultimately, we settled on a lighting system based on a standalone global light renderer, which creates higher quality light maps than before. Global illumination means that the reflection of light in the scene is accounted for in the overall lighting. This models the behavior of light in the real world.

The levels in caves work well with our new lighting system. Rays of light piercing through cracks in the ceiling scatter light throughout the level for cleaner and more realistic lighting overall, compared to our old lighting engine.

Lighting also does a great job of conveying emotions. From the smoky alleys of the Lower City to the high-contrast lighting of the Dark City or in the Church — wherever I am in the game, I constantly stop and gaze around, examining the level and how lighting interacts with each scene.

Outdoor Environment

Interesting terrain transitions, stunning vistas, impressive skies, and an overall sense of scale are all important for our level artists when they create outdoor territories in the game. We have worked with enhanced terrain editing capabilities that allow for more freedom of imagination when designing outdoor levels.

Sandermount

Complementing our new terrain engine, our updated sky editing tools allow for the easy creation of lit and moving layers of clouds, which contribute to the look of outdoor levels. The team has also worked on enhancing water rendering technology. It now allows for physically lit water and creates realistic and accurate reflections of all objects in the scene:

And finally, our new fog technology now supports vertical smoke and adds another level of detail to various environments.

Characters

Our standalone global light renderer works excellently with static objects, but one of the goals of this technology was to ensure that characters and other dynamic objects moving through the scene have the same level of lighting as the surrounding environments. We implemented a system that ultimately works very well, where characters receive very similar lighting to the static geometry of the world around them. This makes the characters truly part of their environment; they are shaded when moving into dark areas, brightly lit when turning towards the sun, and affected by all standalone light sources as they move through the level.

The Hanging Man Tavern

Character lighting is enhanced by our improved shadow technology, which now supports self-shadowing. In addition to a more realistic appearance, self-shadowing also works well for cinematic sequences, enhancing the dramatic effect of the scene through manipulation of light and shadow.

Conclusion

Overall, we believe that the changes in technology have allowed our content creators to make cleaner, prettier, more coherent, and often more visually impressive areas that look great and transition seamlessly throughout the game.

Next time, we will look at the more advanced features of the engine related to DirectX 11, how they complement the core technologies, and how, despite being optional for enjoying the game, they enhance the visual experience for players with more powerful PCs.

Thanks to our lead environment artist, Ben McGrath, for providing the screenshots for this post. They were taken from the PC version of the game in DirectX 9, but the resulting visuals are nearly identical on consoles.

Author: Andreas Papathanasis

Translation by me.