Wave of Darkness - Streaming & Load Times

Venturebeat has a new article about how Aurofinity & Dreamatrix's new Hack & Slash game Wave of Darkness uses Streaming to stop load times in different zones.

Typically when I see a Kickstarter in my inbox, I ask the following questions: How is the game’s technology innovative? How is the business model different? The answer surprised me — streaming, and not of the online variety.

“The world is divided into sectors. As player/camera moves around, sectors are streamed in and out of memory,” said Igor Gajic of Dreamatrix Games Studios over e-mail. He then went into a long technical explanation, but he then realized he’s talking to a RPG geek, not a coder, and summed it up.

“To be a bit less ‘techy,’ the game engine is made in a way that player can explore everything and however he wants,” Gajic said. “If a player is tired of killing monsters and solving quests on the east, he can go north and explore it, slay northern monsters, and generally do whatever he desires. A sandbox experience.”

Waves of Darkness also offers multiclass-style character system, so you can ditch one style for another as you play.

“So basically you have a complete freedom, even with character creation. For example, you decided to start the game by creating a sword-wielding character, but after a while you realize swords aren’t really your thing. [Waves of Darkness] enables you to combine, explore and experiment with character classes however you want, without limitations,” he said. “This means that without the need to start the game all over again you can have a powerful melee/ranged or ranged/magic character even if you made a mistake by choosing a character class that doesn’t fit your RPG affinities.”