Can I be real for a sec here. Smashing cars was one of the best parts of City of Heroes. Being rewarded for destroying them in Mayhem missions was especially cathartic. But even if I couldn’t get my destruction on, just seeing all the people milling around and cars driving down the road sold the world as a real place.
Ship of Heroes agrees. In its latest dev post, the superhero MMO’s Heroic Games shows off just how it’s populating the world with NPCs. And hopefully safeguarding the cars from me.
“To do this, we have to decide: how many NPCs should be active in a given area? No one wants to play in a ghost town, but each NPC adds a little more strain to running the game. In the shot below, there are over 100 civilians in the Arch Park, and at any given time, a player can see about 20. We think this strikes a good balance between immersion and FPS. As a supporter of SoH, feel free to weigh in with your opinion in the forums on whether this is the right density of civilians.”
The whole piece is worth a look – just remember, this superhero city is on a spaceship. The cars float.
