- Overwatch 2 developers reveal the game will boost the quality of the in-game weather
- The team has developed a new Environment States system to make more varied looks for the maps
- Some maps will have dynamic weather such as rain, blizzards, and storms
As Overwatch 2 approaches, the developers have laid out more updates on the game's features. They have revealed that the game will have a more varied and dynamic environment than its predecessor.
Overwatch 2 Devs Reveal Map Environment Details
Some of the recent news for Overwatch 2 sure left some people unhappy with the planned changes, but not all is grim as the latest update reveals pleasant changes for the game's aesthetics. It turns out the development team will be drastically improving the weather effects by introducing a new system called Environment States.
Environment States will let the developers separate the atmospheric effects of sound and lighting and mash them together in numerous ways to create different weather impressions. The separation of those elements will let developers scale them as needed and use them for numerous maps in numerous ways, thus allowing to present the same maps in different lights. The system was described as having multiple layers in Photoshop that can be turned on and off at will without completely having to rework everything.
Moreover, the developers revealed that Environment States would make it easier to implement dynamic environments to some maps, like having rains and sandstorms start and end in-game. The developers share that their goal was to “create interesting new moods that would entirely change the feeling of a location.”
Marco Alamia Excitedly Spoke on the Team's Vision
The addition of Environment States will add a sense of greater variety and will most importantly let developers quickly create new weather scenarios for maps. Blizzard senior software engineer Marco Alamia gave an insight on the new system:
“After some brainstorming, we decided to allow for several Environment States to be present all at the same time, ordered neatly in a stack. This stack could change dynamically, so at any given time, and Environment State could be added or removed. The magic happens when the engine looks at this stack and blends all the Environment States together to produce the final environment look,” he said.
Alamia continued to explain that this system will be a godsend for quickly creating unique environments for specific holiday events or certain Hero Missions.
“For example, we could make the map spookier for Halloween, or have the fog become thick only around a specific area of a map, or make a sandstorm build overtime in one of our new Hero Missions.”
Blizzard software engineer Marco Alamia
The latest changes about the game switching to a 5v5 instead of a 6v6 model made some people doubt the good intentions of the developers. In light of that, it is great to see the Overwatch 2 team working so passionately on making the game look as good as it can b seen as proof that the developers do care.
The Overwatch League just returned live in China, as it was announced in April.
