Modularity - Games i've played with modular assets

Many game developers use modular assets within their games as a faster way to produce a consistent art style or to produce many designs quickly. I wish to show you some of the games that I have played myself which I feel that have used molecularity to great effect.

Modularity within games can give the game/level designer a huge advantage. They can put together a mock up level design quickly to test the basic functionality and flow of a level. Another interesting feature to modular building is that producing a game using modular assets can require less performance on the machine to draw those objects to the players screen. Performance and compatibility are important when making a game, a game designer wants to get the most out of a machine to make a visually appealing game. Many final products can go onto a variety of gaming systems which can vary in performance, because of this this, reducing the performance requirement is an important restraint to game design. Both speed and performance are both great advantages of modular assets, however there are also disadvantages to these techniques.

Creating or designing a level with limited modular assets can lead to visually unappealing design. The over use of similar assets can elaborate to the player that the building is made modular pieces, this sense of modularity to the player is something the designer needs to avoid. There are techniques a designer can do to avoid this feeling to the player and that is to also add a variety of unique assets to the scene or to the players library.

With those points established, here is some games I've played using modular assets.


Sims 3 Environment

The Sims 3

Sticking to the 'house' theme from a previous post I would like to talk to you about The Sims franchise. The Sims 3(2009, EA) is a life simulation game where a player can take control over a game character or many and live through their life, interacting with people and objects. Although the main feature of the game is to play as a character, a certain mechanic of this game does feature the use of modular assets. Throughout the game the player earns money through working with their 'sim' and can use this money to construct a house. The building mode within The Sims contains a variety of modular assets and also some assets which are not modular.

"If you are just making one room, then a non-modular room may be much faster to create than making separate pieces" Epic, (2011).

This quote from an Epic article sums up exactly why EA, the developers of The Sims used modular assets within their house building feature. The fact that players can or will create many houses consisting of many rooms through the game, modular construction assets make sense in this situation.




An example of modular assets within the building scructure


A restraint must be established before the creation of modular assets within a game. How modular do you go? For example do you create many models of the same table but vary the objects upon the table? Or just vary the table colour and texture? The article from Epic explains this.

"When making modular parts, a nice trick to help speed up the work flow process is to make subtle variations on designs, whether they are in the model or the texture" Epic, (2011).



Community made modular sofa for The Sims 2

Although this will increase the work flow process and produce many assets, these assets might lack in detail. To the right is a modded sofa a member of the community has made for The Sims 2 game. It shows modularity and small subtle changes to create a fantastic combined asset. I spotted some of these assets within the Sims 3 game. Some kitchen cupboards have slight variations such as corner pieces.

The player can create a house for their sim by using these variety of models from a 'shop'.




Dirt Showdown

The majority of racing games on the market use modular assets to create their levels. There are a few games that use less modular assets than others and those are the types of racing games that try to imitate or simulate real world racetracks. A franchise such as Forza Motorsport 4 where most of the tracks are real world, I see how this can be difficult to create a simulated racetrack using modular assets. This extract from a CNET article explain the processes that the Forza franchise developers (Turn 10) use to make a realistic racetrack for the game.

"It all starts with a visit to the track, in this case Hockenheim in Germany. Here, Turn 10's guys snap thousands of photos, record video of multiple laps from multiple angles, and collect sub-centimetre-accurate military-grade GPS data for the layout, elevation, and camber of the track. Next, the developers take the collected data and feed it to their team of modellers and artists, who bring the track to life. Actual pro race drivers are brought as the virtual track nears completion to vet accuracy and consult on the details so that, according to the Turn 10 team, it feels as real as it looks." - Antuan Goodwin, (2011).

This technique would of taken months to complete to get each track correct. I know however of another racing game that does not try to simulate real world tracks; Dirt Showdown (2012).

Different screen shot from a different track

Above is a set of screen shots from some Dirt Showdown environments, the majority of the racetracks are very similar to this images above. It displays the use of modular assets of a variety of different racetracks. This would of helped build and construct different racetracks quickly, using this method, unlike Turn 10's method with Forza. Although modular assets are used, each track has specific unique assets that are only used in that specific track. This keeps the aesthetics of the tracks consistent, but not identical. Modular assets are extremely useful and should be considered in more games production to increase work flow.

Links:

http://modthesims.info/d/416802

http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/722992/dirt-showdowns-multiplayer-focuses-on-stunts-and-challenges/

http://blog.logitech.com/2012/03/29/logitech-g27-racing-wheels-create-realistic-experience-for-dirt-showdown-fans/