#REDDIT COMPANY OF HEROES 2 UPDATE#
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#REDDIT COMPANY OF HEROES 2 PC#

More than just imitating the real-world though, Relic has made these deformations persistent throughout the rest of the game. Like-wise every step that an infantry unit takes on certain terrain in Company of Heroes 2 creates a small 3D deformation. When you walk in the snow every step you take compresses the fresh powder beneath your feet. One of the neatest things about ColdTech and Company of Heroes 2 in general is the way the game deals with unit movements. The concept is a simple one, but the technical implementation of periodically rendering whiteout conditions with thousands of particles rushing across the screen is not only difficult to implement, but costly from a performance perspective. Blizzards will engulf the map periodically during game-play, and infantry units will freeze to death if they can’t find a warm place to wait out the storm.

ColdTech is what Relic dubbed its new game-play mechanic that is centered around the harsh winter environment found on some of the game’s maps. It’s from this background of technical ability and industry-wide progress that the engine powering Company of Heroes 2 was created.

#REDDIT COMPANY OF HEROES 2 PC#

With Microsoft’s DirectX 11 firmly implanted in the PC gaming ecosystem and lighting techniques like ambient occlusion freely available to developers there was clearly room for Relic to improve upon Company of Heroes’s graphics. Modern graphics rendering techniques have moved far past the level of complexity and quality that the original Company of Heroes managed to achieve. Seven years is a long time in the video game industry and a lot has happened since Company of Heroes was released. It really combined the best of RTS game-play mechanics and modern graphical techniques into one package. Additionally it allowed for up to eight players to battle it out on the same map in real-time. It natively supported Anti-Aliasing, bloom, Havok-based physics, particle effects like fire and smoke, dynamic terrain deformation and destructible buildings.

#REDDIT COMPANY OF HEROES 2 UPDATE#

Upon the release of this update Company of Heroes was the first game on the market to support DirectX 10.Ĭompany of Heroes had a number of novel graphical features for an RTS. At the time it was a DirectX 9.0c capable engine, but thanks to the development of two expansion packs and a commitment from Relic for long-term support, the game was updated to support DirectX 10 in mid-2007. The original Essence engine debuted with Company of Heroes back in late 2006. Let’s step back for a moment from this discussion and delve into what makes the Essence engine so complex. When this benchmark was assembled the aim was to create a scene that was so difficult that it represented an absolute worst case performance scenario. The other half of the answer to this question stems from the quality of the game’s built-in benchmark.

#REDDIT COMPANY OF HEROES 2 SOFTWARE#

First off the Essence engine is an extremely complex piece of software and when it was designed the team operated under a singular mindset when it came to rendering complex scenes: no cheating. There are really two topics that I need to touch on to fully explain this issue. One of the most common complaints about the game is how demanding it is. I’ve learned a lot from talking to Relic about Company of Heroes 2, and hopefully I’ll do those conversations justice in this article. Since then we’ve been playing the game almost non-stop and trading e-mails with the team at Relic that designed the game’s back-end, called the Essence engine. It’s the sequel to what many consider to be the greatest real-time strategy game of all time. At the end of last month Company of Heroes 2 was released.

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