We have hundreds of thousands of them in each reserve, and we use rules to generate them in an efficient way. Imagine placing all those trees by hand! Same goes for the ‘need zones’ of the animals. “It’s one of the reasons we can create these massive worlds with just a couple of people.

'There are certainly a lot of procedural aspects in our game,' says Peppe Pihl. First, Peppe creates a terrain and from there I use a tool to procedurally distribute materials across it.' “But for the most part the landscapes are procedurally generated, because the maps are so big. 'A few locations are hand-crafted, usually buildings and other man-made structures,' says Kevin Darnis. As an example, all the birds in Parque Fernando are native to that region.'Īs for the sheer scale of these 16 x 16km maps, the small team at Avalanche relies partly on procedural generation. 'We also research the fauna of each reserve to represent it in a believable way. 'A tree right next to you will sound different from one 300 metres away,' he says. Wennlund explains that, for tree sounds, the engine takes into account if the wind is blowing, the altitude, and its distance from the player. In addition the sounds need to feel like they’re coming from a place in the world, from the context they are in.” To get those files to play back in a believable way, we need them to ebb and flow like sounds do in nature in real life. We then need to edit those recordings to capture the essence of the place. “We always need to start with good source recordings of natural sounds. 'For the sound design, a lot of hard work and careful consideration goes into the process, coupled with the strength of the Apex engine for creating open worlds,' says Mattias Wennlund, sound designer.

The hunter call of the wild africa map