Techland confirmed 30fps at 1080p for the game

Dec 15, 2014 09:40 GMT  ·  By

Since Dying Light developers confirmed their game would run at 30fps in 1080p on both consoles, Xbox One and PlayStation 4, many fans were wondering why Techland took such a decision.

Adrian Ciszewski, Techland’s senior game producer for Dying Light, claims the game’s Natural Movement system is to blame for lowering the frames per second amount to 30.

The Natural Movement system allows Dying Light players to traverse the huge open world by jumping between rooftops, climbing buildings and using the parkour skills they have at their disposal.

Due to the fast-paced nature of the game, a stable frame rate is mandatory, hence the choice to lock the frame rate to 30fps on consoles. That should drastically reduce the input lag to the minimum and at the same time offer a perfectly smooth gameplay performance.

According to developer Techland, “when you’re desperately trying to escape from a horde of pursuing Volatiles, even the smallest drop can lead to a mistimed jump and consequently your death.”

The Natural Movement system is to blame for Techland's decision

Given the locked frame rate to 30fps, Techland will be able to deliver native 1080p graphics much easier. It looks like after many tests and experiments, developers concluded that in order to offer such a high resolution on consoles, they would need to lock the frame rate at 30fps.

Techland has already put a huge amount of work into creating the open world of Dying Light. The game was initially slated for a 2014 release, but it was delayed for early 2015. Currently, Dying Light is expected to arrive in late January on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

The main reason for the delay was the so-called Natural Movement system, which Techland thought is not ready yet to be implemented into the game.

Now the same movements system seems to be the reason for lowering the frame rate of the game to 30fps. However, Techland promises that they have been “focusing more on an enjoyable experience and less on numbers,” and that they are now certain that they have “hit the sweet spot with Dying Light’s performance on these platforms.”

Obviously, many console gamers did not take the news too well and argued that Techland’s decision was related to the fact that both consoles are under-powered and outperformed by few year old rigs.

Considering so many other developers had to lower the frame rate of their games to offer a smooth gameplay performance, there might be some truth in these accusations of Sony and Microsoft releasing less powerful consoles than we have original thought.

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