Developer Lionhead Studios announced that Fable Legends is set to receive foliage physics in order to "push the boundaries of visual fidelity" for the game.
Lionhead is working hard to ensure the best and most polished visual quality for the upcoming title, and one way to do achieve this is by tapping into DirectX 12 to increase the frame rate of the game.
Lionhead's studio director, Stuart Whyte, points out PC players who use the DX 12 can look at a considerable performance boost, when compared to the visual provided in DX 11. Although it looks like Xbox One also draws better graphics performance from the DX 12, the true difference will be noticeable on PCs. The game's developers noticed the improvements that went as high as 40 percent when running Fable Legends on DX 12.
In October 2015, WCCFTech covered the DX 12 benchmark results for Fable Legends.
To make sure the game is as lifelike as possible, Lionhead enabled the use of foliage physics to "increase the richness of ground surface cover."
In March 2016, Lionhead will hold a session detailing how the team behind Fable Legends pushed the limitations of visual fidelity. The talk will happen at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), and Lionhead's senior programmer, Sam Swain, will tell the audience all about his team's efforts to optimize the lush environment of the game.
Dubbed "Creating Lush Dynamic Procedural Foliage for Fable Legends," the visual arts session and programming talk will be an intermediate level talk, where those who are interested can find out a lot about the synergy of tools and technology.
Lionhead will demonstrate how it created the tools necessary so that technology was customized to fit the designers' hands. From an engineering standpoint, the session will highlight the techniques that were embedded into Unreal Engine 4.
The titanic project of Lionhead Studios did not go as smoothly as its developers hoped. The game was initially announced to launch before the winter holidays of last year, but the company postponed the official launch.
"We've built a unique and innovative multiplayer experience combining RPG and RTS gameplay," the company said. The developers underlined that special attention went to a seamless integration of Xbox One and Windows 10.
"On top of this, we've built a beautiful new world full of grand stories and adventures. And it's taking more time than we thought," Lionhead noted.
