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What it's like to develop a game for Xbox Series X - according to the creator of Chorus

nikolino840

Member
What is it like to develop for the Xbox Series X compared with the Xbox One? Are things easier for you now? Is it throwing up interesting challenges?

Johannes Kuhlmann:
I've got to say, the transition from coming from Xbox One to Xbox Series X was straightforward. We felt right at home on the new devkit. There weren't any particular challenges.

You have way more freedom. You don't have to worry about the framerate as much. You can instead crank it up to a higher framerate. In the end it's easier to develop for Xbox Series X than any other console.

 
Thats great to hear but their gameplay trailer was not running on xsx yet ?

HkNgd6w.jpg
 
So, the guy being interviewed is a developer for Chorus



on XsX optimizations

Johannes Kuhlmann: It's a multi-platform title. So it's not exclusive to Xbox Series X, but it's definitely one of the platforms we are now focusing on. And of course, with being next generation, there's lots of stuff to take advantage of. One example is, of course, that we have way more power available now. Looking at the CPU side of things, we are looking into having the world more alive, simulating more physics, having everything a bit more dynamic.

So just one example, in previous games, we had debris fields that felt kind of static, because these pieces of debris, you might maybe run into them and bump off of them, or maybe they wouldn't have any collision at all. But what we are doing now is when you run into something, it actually starts moving and kind of floating away, which is I suppose what you would expect in space. So it feels like you're actually affecting the environment. And it feels a lot more dynamic that way.

And another example is with all this fighting going on, there's also lots of destruction and explosions. And we are going to be able to ramp up effects on that. We do have large ships you can destroy already that fall apart. And of course, the smaller ships you fight against also can be destroyed. And one thing we are now working on with the help of Xbox Series X is procedural destruction

Cross-gen talk

I'm just trying to get a sense of whether there are any Xbox Series X exclusive features that make use of the hardware in any unique way, that you're not going to do on other platforms?

Johannes Kuhlmann:
It's definitely a high-end feature. Definitely a generation nine feature. We don't have any Xbox Series X unique features.

Since Chorus is a cross-gen title, how do you make it meaningfully different on next-gen when you have to cater to the lowest common denominator console, like a base Xbox One?

Johannes Kuhlmann:
Of course, that's kind of a tricky situation. We want everybody to have more or less the same experience, to play the same story in the end, so that you, if you play the Xbox One game, it's also going to be awesome. But we are optimising for Xbox Series X. The base story and gameplay is going to be the same. But as I described with the CPU, how we are taking advantage of the CPU is setting the Xbox Series X version apart.

PS5 vs Xsx and 60fps talk

How would you describe the differences in making the game for Xbox Series X versus PlayStation 5?

Johannes Kuhlmann:
I can't really go into details compared to PS5. We are of course looking into that as well. But for now, we've been focusing on the Xbox Series X.

Do you feel like the Xbox Series X essentially ends the sub-60 frames per second video game? Or do you still see a case for maybe having a game run at 30 frames per second on this?

Johannes Kuhlmann:
With all platforms, it's always a balance between quality and performance in the end. I'm hoping we only see 60FPS games now. But I don't know what other developers are going to do, if they're gonna, like, I don't know, render everything twice, or crank up the detail to insane amounts and then have 30FPS or can't hold a stable framerate again.

We are targeting a 4K resolution as well as 60FPS on Xbox Series X.

As a third-party developer, what were you hoping for from the next-generation of consoles? And specifically from the Xbox Series X?

Johannes Kuhlmann:
I do feel happy because I pretty much got all I wanted. One thing as a developer I really like to see is we have a continuation of how I develop for a platform. If it's a

Loading times and pop in

Microsoft has talked about Xbox Series X having instant loading. Can you do anything with that, that actually changes gameplay or game mechanics?

Johannes Kuhlmann:
Chorus has a quite a few open world elements. You can freely roam around and explore different locations. We do load in stuff in the background. We do still have a few loading screens in place. I'm hoping with the SSD read speeds, we can either get rid of them or some of them completely, or we can at least minimise the time spent on loading screens.

Is this tech eradicating texture pop-in? For example, trees appearing in the distance as you move closer to them?

Johannes Kuhlmann:
Yeah, exactly. One part of that is performance of the GPU - if you can actually render all the trees that are far in the back. But yeah, popping in should definitely be reduced, because we can stream in whatever is in the distance faster, and it's just going to be ready earlier, so that it's not popping in while you can already see it. And on the other hand, we do have more RAM available now so we can just keep more stuff in memory as well in case we might need it.
 
Last edited:

RayHell

Member
" In the end it's easier to develop for Xbox Series X than any other console. " - He mean console from previous generation

"I can't really go into details compared to PS5. We are of course looking into that as well. But for now, we've been focusing on the Xbox Series X." - He didn't really look into PS5 yet
 

Shmunter

Member
Probably true anyway. Any game designed around PS5 ssd would be very sweaty on XsX. Targeting XsX will work on both.
 

Amey

Member
What kind of game is this? Looks like spacecraft flying part is the actual gameplay and rest is only cinematics.
 

D.Final

Banned
What is it like to develop for the Xbox Series X compared with the Xbox One? Are things easier for you now? Is it throwing up interesting challenges?

Johannes Kuhlmann:
I've got to say, the transition from coming from Xbox One to Xbox Series X was straightforward. We felt right at home on the new devkit. There weren't any particular challenges.

You have way more freedom. You don't have to worry about the framerate as much. You can instead crank it up to a higher framerate. In the end it's easier to develop for Xbox Series X than any other console.


Great news
 
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