The tech behind Death Jr. 2

IGN's Death Jr. 2 blog has been revealing some real gems of info. The latest entry goes into the technical aspects of creating the game. Read the lengthy, but genuinely informative, blog to find out more on what kind of evil magic programming the team had to do to get HDR lighting running in the game. It gets pretty complicated, showing off scary XML code. I was personally fascinated by the images from the developer's tools (PB Viewer and Maya Viewpoint)-- this is the kind of behinds-the-scenes stuff that we don't get enough of. The blog also explains more complicated-sounding things like vertex lighting and light seams. Finally, they reveal some of the special visual effects the game will employ: softening, eggcrate, fisheye, ripple, and vortex.

All this technical mumbo-jumbo's being thrown around to razzle dazzle us, and I have to say it's sort of working. Although the game is going to pretty, the real test will come the game ships this Halloween, when we'll be able to test all of its gameplay.