Developer Diary: The Revontuli Northern Lights

Hello, virtual Hunters!

If you’ve caught a glimpse of the Northern Lights on Revontuli Coast will surely agree they’re a sight to behold.

In this collaborative diary entry, we’d like to share a small story about the journey of teamwork and creativity that brought this feature to theHunter: Call of the Wild.

Sharing the Magic

In truth, we owe credit to this dazzling display of magnetospheric solar wind disturbances to Second Extinction. This game was developed by another talented team from our creative sister division, Systemic Reaction.

Knowledge sharing is just one of the benefits of working for a globally renowned company like Avalanche Studios Group. Sharing ideas, technology, and learnings with other in-house teams can be an incredible strength in such a competitive industry.

Showcasing the Northern Lights appearing across the twilight skies of Revontuli Coast.

Bringing the Northern Lights to Revontuli Coast

Since the Northern Lights had already been successfully implemented in Second Extinction, we hoped that porting them over to theHunter would be a relatively pain-free process.

In short: there were a few hurdles!

First, we needed to understand how we could best merge and tailor the feature in a way that functioned with our existing source code.

Second Extinction is also a younger title. Because of this, some minor compatibility adjustments were needed to make it work in theHunter’s own in-house editor.

Showcasing the Northern Lights appearing across the twilight skies of Revontuli Coast.

Enhanced Realism

Gorgeous as the Northern Lights already were, we wanted to add a few of our own flairs to make them even more realistic.

For example, our Tools Programmer added a little logic to “randomize” when the Auroras would appear. Next, our World Designer tuned its visual intensity and timing throughout the day/night cycle.

Showcasing the Northern Lights appearing across the twilight skies of Revontuli Coast.

None of this would have been possible were it not for the talented individuals who came before us to bring this feature to life – as well as those we get to work with on a daily basis.

Additionally, we’d like to give a shout-out to System Programmer, Jonathan Öhlund, for helping us pull this information together. Kudos as well to the content team for the word wizardry and polish.

We hope you enjoyed reading this dev diary. We look forward to hearing about your thoughts and experiences while hunting beneath those fantastic Northern Lights!