If you played Spirit of Tsushima, you probably were floored by how fast it loadsDespite taking place in a massive open world, you can quickly travel from one end to the other in seconds, which may give you the impression that Sucker Punch, the game’s developer, employs literal wizards. That is not the case. What’s more, during development, the definitive non-wizard staffers didn’t even realize how unusual Spirit‘s flashing and you’ll miss the loading screens.
This came to the fore earlier today when Brian Fleming, co-founder of Sucker Punch, participated in a digital ask-me-everything session at the Game Developers Conference Showcase. In conversation with moderator Bryant Francis van Gamasutra, he described the Sucker Punch team’s collective shock at the public response Spirit‘s loading speeds.
“We lived in this world where the game worked the way it did for years,” said Fleming. “So when we shipped, and the news was like, ‘Oh my god, the game is loading so fast,’ we took for granted how important it was.”
As for how the company was able to handle such blazing fast loading speeds, Fleming called the art and engineering teams because they “understood the gist of the game so we didn’t have to keep reloading.” The team has also implemented lower-resolution versions of textures to blur objects while the player loads in a new environment. SpiritThe naturally idyllic art style also played a role, simply by being less visually noisy than other big budget productions.
According to Fleming, the high speeds also depended on “basic principles” such as “being careful about organizing data.”
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Everything Fleming said about the trial is consistent with what Kotaku reported last summer. (Yes, we were under “the news” that “was like, ‘Oh, my god …'”) In July, writer Ian Walker spoke to Adrian Bentley, lead engine programmer at Sucker Punch, about all the work involved in the downsizing Spirit‘s loading speeds by a significant margin. If you’re interested in a deeper dive into how it all works, you should definitely revisit Ian’s piece:
Today Fleming hinted that SpiritThe loading speeds may be just a glimpse of the truly lightning-fast loading speeds in the future. When asked which development technology he was most excited about, Fleming pointed out the PlayStation 5’s new storage system.
“The charging systems there will change the way we think about how we make games,” he said. “It’s so fast that even the idea of unloading stuff just off the screen on the camera is just in time, and that could really fundamentally change how we think about making games.”