![bioshock number of levels bioshock number of levels](https://guides.gamepressure.com/bioshock/gfx/word/1891793843.jpg)
We had to constantly fight to push resource budgets for each part of each level.” We couldn’t use very large assets for the levels because most of that poly/texture budget was taken up by all the characters. Any perceived variations were just clever tiling and UV mapping. “If you were seeing a large floor, it was just one polygonal asset tiled to create the entire floor. “The large level maps were literally rendered as a semi-voxel map,” Venkatramani explained. Mobile phones of the time, some of the most popular being the iPhone 4 and HTC Desire, simply didn’t have the memory or graphical processing power to deliver a direct port of BioShock, so the team employed clever tricks to get it to run at all, let alone smoothly.
![bioshock number of levels bioshock number of levels](https://guides.gamepressure.com/bioshock2/gfx/word/990581218.jpg)
I insisted on having a chat with them and explaining the reason behind it - that went well and we managed to cut a few levels.” “Initially the 2K team wasn’t aligned to it. “From the design side of things, I had actually cut down a few levels that weren’t contributing to the main storyline,” said Poornima Seetharaman, BioShock 3D’s lead designer. One of the biggest points of contention was how the team wanted to cut some levels they deemed non-essential for the mobile version, such as Arcadia and Return to Arcadia. But Tridev also continued to butt heads with 2K regarding issues of scope even after deciding on the two part split, according to the Tridev developers we spoke to.
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To do all that in a year is, frankly, amazing, and a testament to the skill and motivation of everyone on the team - design, art, code QA.” Learning How To Kill 2K's Darlingsĭesigning and rebuilding such a beloved game from scratch for less powerful machines would be no small undertaking itself. The actual game took a year to complete and ship. The initial expectation from the management was to do a ‘quick' mobile port in less than 6 months. “It’s important to note that we didn’t get any code or technical design documents from - we had to design and write all the tech stuff from scratch. They wanted a literal port of the game, but we knew we had to cut down on not only art, but also some elements of the game if we had any hope of getting the game out on a phone. Them coming from a console background and our reality of working with mobile phones led to a lot of friction initially. “2K Games had assigned an external producer to work with us to ensure that the final game matched their expectations of a BioShock game. “One of the challenges was squeezing the scale of the game to fit the crummy mobile phones back then,” recalled Arjun Nair, BioShock 3D’s producer. Tridev had plenty of mobile experience to pull from in attempting such a feat on such a short timeline, but they still had to build BioShock 3D from scratch and deal with weighty expectations coming off of the beloved reception of the original. In short, there was no way we could get the whole game out. We would be spending a lot of time repurposing tools from and adapting them to BioShock's gameplay. When development we were told that we had 6 months to get something to market a scary deadline for a project this big.
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That way people wouldn’t be put off by larger download times the download speeds were slow. “In the end, we decided to split the game into two parts. “This was hard considering all the limitations we had to work with back then,” he said. The first challenge Vijay Venkatramani, Tridev’s studio manager at the time, told us the team faced was deciding what the actual scope of BioShock 3D should be compared to the original game. According to Tridev, the developers of BioShock 3D who spoke to IGN about its creation, such a port included any number of technical, creative, and bureaucratic challenges that demonstrate the difficulties of making a triple-A game run on a phone barely able to play Brick Breaker. Though there’s a tendency to wave away the handheld or mobile versions of console games like BioShock, its mobile development is a fascinating example of the work that went into such an adaptation.
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Perhaps, most surprisingly, the acclaimed first-person adventure BioShock saw the release of a mobile port known as BioShock 3D.
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The trend hit a number of major console and PC games of the era.
![bioshock number of levels bioshock number of levels](https://guides.gamepressure.com/bioshock2/gfx/word/990762640.jpg)
Games like Need for Speed: Most Wanted, 007: Quantum of Solace, and Cars 2, alongside so many more, saw releases on consoles and PC, as expected, but also saw downgraded or drastically different versions hit handhelds like the PSP, Nintendo DS, and even mobile phones. The mid to late 2000s featured a particularly prevalent trend of extending a game’s reach by porting it to as many platforms as possible, regardless of whether or not those platforms were a good fit.