Dead Island 2’s release is fast approaching, with details coming at a rapid pace. Recently, developer Dambuster spoke to Game Informer about the game’s new FLESH damage system, which aims to add some flair to the act of killing hordes of undead.
The exclusive interview with senior programmer Aaron Ridge and technical art director Dan Evans-Lawes discussed at length how the new system uses procedural generation to let skin tear and bones break realistically. The developers explain that they implemented this system to give more feedback, heightening immersion. The flesh system simulates the differing layers of the human body, such as the fat, muscle, and organs so that damage can procedurally respond to the player’s hits. In the footage provided this effect is best demonstrated with slashing weapons, such as knives, axes, or swords, but the system still works with firearms and blunt weapons, which rip holes or cave in bones on the unlucky denizens of the dead.
In the interview, the developers talk about how the initial design concept came to be. Originally they looked to implement a more traditional form of dismemberment, where the models have fixed points on the body that responds after a certain amount of damage is applied. As the team debated the number of dismemberment points it became clear that a new system could achieve what they wanted and was significantly easier to implement.
Thus, the procedural FLESH system was born, the system essentially allows the developers at Dambuster to make the innards of the enemies first, sizing up and down as needed for each zombie type. Then the art team only needed to make a shell as the skin for the zombie to place over the FLESH model, this significantly reduced the amount of work to make sure every point functioned properly as the whole body became articulation points. “That all just works”, says Ridge. “It was really good to have that locked in early on.”
Ridge further explains that the system made damage modeling easy as it was a simple parameter set. He uses the examples of a sword and hammer; for the sword, it was a matter of how exactly the sword model cut into the zombie, while the hammer needed parameters set to show inward deformation. Once the parameter is set the damage model is instantly applied across the enemy roster due to every enemy using the same base FLESH model. Evans-Lawes notes that this allows them a high level of freedom to create the gameplay options they want because extra time doesn’t need to be spent on fine-tuning each element of combat because the FLESH model is applied across the board.
The rest of the interview details exactly how the damage system works in gameplay, how the damage can be used as a diegetic health bar, and more. While Dead Island 2 has had a troubled development, moving between three separate studios and being restarted at least twice, this interview shows the love and passion that the team at Dambuster is putting into their take on the title. The game releases on April 28, 2023, so players won’t have to wait too long to get their hands on the zombies carving carnage.
