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Deserts have various issues going towards them as environments in video video games. Listed here are two main challenges that have to be addressed for a desert stage off the highest of my head:

Deserts Lack Landmarks

The prototypical desert in your thoughts is commonly simply lengthy reaches of sand in all instructions. This tends to be dangerous for gamers who’re on the lookout for their subsequent goal – they’ll get rotated and get misplaced in a featureless desert, making it really feel irritating. To ensure that a participant to be taught the place issues are, they want main landmarks as reference factors, which works towards the prototypical desert. This may be completed (like how each Star Wars recreation will need to have a Tatooine stage), nevertheless it does take just a little away from the sensation of being misplaced in a desert. Should you can see the enormous mountain over there, the oasis over there, the ravine over right here, and town within the distance, it doesn’t really feel very like a desert anymore.

Deserts Lack Obstructive Terrain

That is extra of a technical constraint than a design constraint. If a participant can see a protracted distance away, they anticipate to have the ability to see these particulars – an approaching caravan, a city with lights at night time, and so forth and so forth. This, sadly, runs into the issue of getting to attract all of these issues. One commonplace graphics trick is to keep away from drawing issues which are very far-off – for those who don’t need to do rendering calculations on these fashions, it can save you numerous CPU and GPU time. This works nice for sewer and forest ranges as a result of there’s numerous partitions, pipes, bushes, and so forth. in the best way that may block your view of issues within the distance so the GPU doesn’t need to render them. Deserts don’t actually do this – when you get to the highest of a dune, you anticipate to see actually, actually far, which might trigger extreme efficiency hits. 

These two particular challenges make desert stage design tougher to implement than many different surroundings varieties. The dearth of landmarks impacts most types of traversal except you’re taking part in some type of recreation with scrolling development (e.g. a facet scroller or shoot-em-up) the place the navigation of the surroundings isn’t as necessary. The dearth of occlusive geometry makes for a technical problem that have to be overcome (typically by way of the position of enormous occluding rocks or warmth shimmer vfx within the distance). It’s not inconceivable to do, it’s just a few greater challenges that make them tougher to do than different environments.

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