Homefront: The Revolution could be an upcoming, first-person, open-world shooter. I say 'could be' because Crytek UK, the studio developing the title, is in some serious financial trouble according to various sources. Nevertheless, certain members of the company still seem committed to the project and have made it known that the upcoming game won't be running at 60fps on the Xbox One or PS4.
Playstationing.com is reporting that the Official PlayStation Magazine managed to get in word with Crytek UK producer David Stenton, who told them that the game would be relegated to 30 frames per second due to being open-world. PlayStationing paraphrases Stenton's comments, writing...
“...due to the open-world nature of the game, 60FPS was simply not possible, but could have been possible if it was developed as a more linear experience. The amount of objects on screen at once also played a factor in the decision to drop it down.”
That's very interesting given that the amount of objects on the screen would only seem to play a factor if they weren't static objects or baked into the map's geometry. For instance, objects that are placed in maps as individual entities take up a lot more resources, especially those with physics-based properties, than objects that are compiled or rendered as part of the actual map's geometry. You know how you go to jump over a chair or move past a table that won't budge and seems like an immovable tank of sorts? Well, that's because the object is compiled as part of the map's geometry, as it cuts down on load times and system resources.
Games (or levels) that feature per object entities usually zap a system's resources pretty quickly, which is why it's rare to see a lot of physics-based map properties in open-world games on home consoles. You'll also usually see the items fade pretty quickly to conserve on memory and free up heavy taxing on the CPU.
Anyway, all of that is to say that this could mean that Homefront: The Revolution could feature a ton of map interactivity if they have to sacrifice frame-rate for the amount of interactive objects on-screen. Having a dynamic open-world map could be a real treat, especially if there are persistent changes taking place throughout the map itself, based on player actions.
Of course, these features would be pretty cool to see in action if we're to assume that the game will be completed.
According to a recent update from Kotaku, things aren't going over too well at the Crytek UK studio where Homefront: The Revolution is being designed.
As noted in the article...
Over the past two days, I've spoken with four people connected to Crytek's UK studio, which is currently developing Homefront: The Revolution. According to those people, Crytek's UK staff have still not been paid the full amounts they are owed, and this week, according to two sources, the staff at Crytek's UK office handed in formal grievance letters and went home.”
The article ends on a sour note, stating that neither Crytek nor Deep Silver have responded to inquiries about what's happening at the studio in charge of Homefront: The Revolution. Hopefully they can get things straightened out over there because I would like to see what the game turns out like as originally envisioned by the development studio.
