Re-using assets

Post » Thu Apr 25, 2013 12:31 pm

Part of the fun of the TES games lies in being able to interact with almost EVERYTHING in the world, even useless items such as spoons, forks, brooms, etc...

Creating all these items takes quite some time during development and so does creating meshes and textures for rocks, plants, trees, etc...

In the past, each game represented a significant technological leap; however, even in the passage from Oblivion to Skyrim, we saw more subtle improvements. It comes a point where certain things are "good enough".

Take potion bottles for example: the current meshes and textures are of quite high quality (on PC they have even better textures and normal maps) and its' quite possible the next TES game will have objects of similar quality because we've already a good idea of the capabilities of next gen hardware. I think a lot of generic FX material created for Skyrim could be used for a future installment and I wouldn't mind seeing some texture and meshes again. If anything, it would create a sense of continuity, especially if the new game will be set only a few years apart from TES V

Taking this into consideration, would you be in favor of seeing some of the meshes and textures that have appeared in Skyrim used also for the next game? This would shorten the development cycle and reduce the costs a bit. Bear in mind that software developers recycle code and other data whenever possible. For example, some code found in current Windows dates back to the era of Windows 3 and NT 3.51 and it hasn't changed in the past 20 years because it still works as intended.
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