Bringing Battlefield 3 to consoles was a "big challenge" - DICE

News From oxm.co.uk
In a new interview, Battlefield 3 rendering architect Johan Andersson has explained how DICE adapted the game's vaunted Frostbite 2 technology to fit Xbox 360.

"We've been working with both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 since the very first hardware was available so we have built up a deep knowledge how to develop & optimize for the consoles; what works well and what doesn't work well," Andersson told AMD Game Blog.

"When we started with Frostbite 2 we had this knowledge in the back of our minds when developing all the new rendering & lighting systems, but we didn't let the constraints of the consoles limit us, we instead experimented quite freely with multiple types of rendering techniques and methods of building objects & effects on PC and DX11 to come up with what we wanted to do.

"I think this was a refreshing and healthy approach that lead to a great step forward with some really good new tech; tech that we might not have thought of, or dared to develop, if we would have taken a more incremental development approach and focusing primarily on the consoles.

Having put together their vision for the game in a spec-free vacuum, the Battlefield 3 team then worked to scale the engine down for console play.

"It was a big challenge to bring up the game and engine on the consoles after that," Andersson admitted. "A lot of low-level optimization and adapting systems to the specific strengths of the platforms to try and keep as much as possible of the gameplay and visuals while both fitting into 30 fps as well as a fixed low memory budget."

Though noticeably less handsome than the marketing shots, Battlefield 3 on Xbox 360 blew us away with its draw distances, lighting and gazillions of simultaneous animations and particle effects.