[News] Boundary EA Launch Q&A – Devs Explain Long Delays, Confirm Removal of DLSS (and RTX) in Favor of FSR2 and XeSS

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Yesterday, during the PAX East 2023 Digital Showcase, indie Chinese developer Studio Surgical Scalpels and publisher Skystone Games announced the Steam Early Access launch date of the zero-G first-person shooter Boundary.

 

This competitive multiplayer game first appeared on our radar at Gamescom 2019, where Chris Wray tried a demo. At that time, the developers were targeting an early 2020 release on PlayStation 4 with PC following later.In January 2020, Boundary made the news thanks to an RTX technical demo that won NVIDIA China's DXR Spotlight competition. A few months later, we interviewed CEO and Co-Founder Frank Mingbo Li to learn more about the game's features and mechanics.

 

Later in 2020, Studio Surgical Scalpels even released a benchmark (still available on Steam) featuring RTX and NVIDIA DLSS. After that, the game went dark for quite a while, only resurfacing for occasional and brief test weekends.

 

With the early access release date at last in sight, we had another chance to speak with Frank Mingbo Li. Our lengthy conversation spanned the reasons behind the delays, the features and content available on April 13th, details on the Battle Pass and post-launch roadmap, the console plans, and the technical changes on PC (RTX and DLSS have been removed, at least temporarily, while FSR 2 and XeSS are supporte

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We were also plagued by issues related to the game's level design and balance. We didn’t have any real production-grade back-end server architecture, and our servers were always on the verge of struggling and catching fire and crashing and burning.

 

At the same time, we lacked a friend system, we didn't have a mechanism to play with friends in a party, we didn't have a real matchmaking mechanism, and our interactions were a bit confusing, and players often couldn't find the options they wanted to adjust. In the previous development stages, we felt that bug fixing and detail polishing became more and more difficult because of the architecture.

 

Basically, a few years back - what we were facing at the time was a game that had an amazing first impression but lacked any real lasting power. In the past two years, we have carried out a major overhaul of the game. The changes involved operations, combat shooting, and the overall game cycle.

 

We have established a network service system that’s both stable and efficient. We optimized CPU usage, optimized network, and server deployment (dynamic expansion of loads and other features). We’ve included player records, a friends system, team formation, voice communication, and matchmaking are all now being finalized, optimized, and debugged for launch.

 

At the front end, we restructured the product. We redesigned and programmed the weapon system and shooting mechanics, material and penetration system, and the role partition injury mechanism. We referenced and absorbed the new technologies and designs of the industry in the past two years. Boundary plays so much better these days compared to when we first planned to launch - in a lot of ways, I’m very glad we were forced to delay the launch around COVID.

 

During this process, we are also constantly conducting testing and user research, and the feedback we have collected has also been corrected and revised in batches in the new version. We are very excited about the new version that will be brought to players and we sincerely hope you all can enjoy the fun of space zero-gravity combat.

 

In the meantime, we're always listening to further feedback and stand ready to fix any issues we find. Even though we’re calling this “Early Access”, we’re treating Boundary as a live game, and we’ll be rolling out content updates, QOL fixes, and balance changes throughout the months leading up to the 1.0 launch...

 

https://wccftech.com/boundary-ea-launch-qa-devs-explain-long-delays-confirm-removal-of-dlss-and-rtx-in-favor-of-fsr2-and-xess/