We had the chance to chat with the technical director of Two Worlds, Miroslaw Dymek. We were very impressed by the high quality of the game graphics, so we did a technical Q&A focusing on the major great visuals of Two Worlds.

Here we go:

Q: Hi Miroslaw, could you describe us your game carrier?

A: I released one small RTS game in 1996 in Poland by my own. Jusy after that I joined TopWare company.
For this company I worked as team leader for those titles: EARTH 2140, EARTH 2150, The MoonProjest,WorldWarIII, Heli Heroes.
Than the company changed his name into RealityPump. Under this name we released KnightShift, EARTH 2160 and now Two Worlds.


Q: When did you draw the first sketch for Two Worlds?

A: It was few years ago after releasing KnightShift game (RTS/RPG). I dreamed about big RPG but we had EARTH 2160 on schedule. So we did it but Two Worlds were always in our minds and we discussed it in team in free time.


Q: We assume you have your own rendering engine. Can you describe us the best graphical aspects of your engine?

A: We work on our 3D engine since 1998. Today it is one of the best game engines on the planet. It is able to render huge amount of polygons and use all latest technologies (pixel shaders 3.0, HDR rendering etc). It allows us to create huge open seamless worlds with great detail level.


Q: What is the polycount displayed by the engine while playing?

A: Between 500K to 1 milion


Q: Are the terrain textures about 2048 px? Or still to 1024?

A: We do not use big textures for terrain. We use big amount of smaller textures and blend them in realtime.


Q: Are the textures done from scratch or did you used images references? From witch country, location?

A: Textures are done from photo references. Most of the photos we do by ourselfes.


Q: For foliage and trees you use TreeGen, with spectacular results. What are the differences with other similar middleware (SpeedTree)?

A: TreeGen is an oriented tool for our grapgic engine. The internal presentation of the models is completly different than in SpeedTree.
We use more texture variantions for leaves and trunks. Export from TreeGen to our game is very simply. I just make a tree in Treegen. Name it click export and show path to game folder. And thats it. If i have the game opened on another computer i can simply reload the scene and i'll see the result . It speeds up the work dramatically.


Q: Is TreeGen controlling wind on foliage and trees?

A: Yes. With TreeGen we can add flexibility amount to every part of the tree. It will than respond correctly to the wind. We can change wind in TreeGen to see how it looks on a single tree or in the game editor to check whole forest behaviour.


Q: Did you use high poly characters and models for creating normal maps? Will those high poly characters be used for console version?

A: We did it this way at the begining. Now we use Z-Brush program to create hi level detail on our objects. Those details are than used to generate bumpmaps, and dirtmaps. Console version uses the same characters as PC one.


Q: Did you used motion capture data for your characters?

A: Yes we did motion capture session last summer. It was over 600 takes. Than they were implemented into the game.


Q: Where did you used PhysX in the game? For fx like explosions?

A: PhysX is used for hero behaviour, colision detection, flags animation etc. Explosions are done by our own particle system.


Q: Is the fog system done with ParticleGen? If not describe how you do it

A: We have 3 types of fog. One is an ordinary distance fog done by engine, the second one is a low level ground fog also done by engine, third type is an animated fog done by particles. To get best results we mix all 3 types.


Q: What handles AI inside Two Worlds? Do you use middleware for that?

A: AI is based on our C-Language script system called EarthC. This language eveolved from simple scripting tool into fully grown C++ compiler.


Q: What are the differences, from a technical point of view, with other similar games (see Oblivion, Gothic,ecc)?

A: We have multiplayer mode :)


Q: We see that you want to take control over the SDK for Two Worlds, because you cannot just download the tools, but you need to ask for permission.

A: Our SDK gives full access to the game. With it people can make it better or completly destroy it. Because game has multiplayer modes it is quite dangerous. We want to avoid such situaions.


Q: How long did take to develop the game?

A: It's a difficult questions because we move our resources from one project to another. But it was about 3 years.


Q: How many people count actually Realitypump?

A: 25 people here in studio and about 10 additional at ZuxxeZ. Plus external actors, translators, musicians etc.


Q: Witch is your favorite quest inside Two Worlds? And the better created environment in Two Worlds?

A: I like opening web of rebelion quests. Each side of Rebelion has his own point of view and player have to decide who is good and whom to help.
His decisions has impact on others. It's like real life. From the enviroment my favourite location is Tharbakin town.

Thanks Miroslaw for the quick chat!