Recently some of us at pricklypixel have been playing through Gearbox Software’s 2009 release Borderlands. Its a mixture of different game types that really comes together after playing a few hours.

Often when first playing a game I’ll wander about taking in the environment, looking at how models have been built, what shaders are being used etc. Borderlands has a unique graphic style, with many surfaces appearing to be straight off a comic page. There’s also a subtle ‘cel shaded’ outline on most objects. These efforts make the game stand out to me, where most Western developed games seem to be striving for absolute realism. I have often found myself staring at a location in admiration. It’s all the more impressive as this art style was changed towards the end of the games development.

Another thing I noticed quickly was that there appears to be Real-Time Ambient Occlusion being generated in world space, from the players point of view. My attention was drawn to this as the A.O. appears to have a slight delay. Most of the time it’s not even noticeable, but popped out due to me circling around one of the amusing ‘Clap-Trap’ robots in the starting area.

Based on my experience with baking A.O. for environments and character models, I am really impressed with this achievement. The game runs smoothly, even in the heat of battle, with explosions, and many characters on screen. Perhaps the ‘flat’ shading style without many obvious bump or specular maps left the graphics team a little room to play with?

To see the effect in action, check out the video below, which through a graphical driver glitch makes the effect, and it’s slight delay all the more obvious;

Posted on 14 Jan 2010 by Aladar Apponyi in Game art | Permalink | Comment, or Trackback.