Inside Xbox One X Enhanced - X-Morph Defense Small Image

Inside Xbox One X Enhanced: X-Morph: Defense

Many of gaming’s most compelling stories come from those who’ve helped to create our favorite Xbox One games. In our Inside Xbox One X Enhanced series, these creators will share the behind-the-scenes accounts of the work involved in enhancing these epic games for Xbox One X, how they’ve helped chart the course of the world’s most powerful console, and what that means for the future of gaming. Today, we’ll be chatting with Pawel Lekki, Chief Operating Officer at Exor Studios about enhancing X-Morph: Defense for Xbox One X.

What specifically is your development team doing to enhance X-Morph: Defense for Xbox One X?

Thanks to the power of the Xbox One X we were finally able to run the game in native 4K resolution. This in turn allows us to use the maximum texture resolution that we’ve created for all of the models that you see in the game. Without 4K there simply aren’t enough pixels on the screen to show all of the detail that we’ve put into the game. Our proprietary Schmetterling engine can really tap into the power of Xbox One X to give the players the snappy and responsive gameplay experience, while not giving up on the visual aspect of the game. We wanted to make no compromises and deliver our Xbox players the best version of the game yet.

How do these enhancements impact the gaming experience, and why did your development team choose to focus on these enhancement areas?

X-Morph: Defense is a really dynamic title. We require our players to make split-second decisions while trying to take control of the mayhem on the screen. Since the number of units, explosions, and debris on the screen is enormous, even the slightest dip in performance would be immediately noticeable and divert the much-needed attention from what’s happening on the screen. It’s frustrating and tiring when the game becomes choppy. We decided that the smoothness of gameplay was the most important for us. Luckily, the Xbox One X did not require us to cut any corners and took everything we threw at it like a champ. Thanks to its raw power we were able to deliver 4K native rendering at 60 frames per second.

How do you expect fans of X-Morph: Defense will respond to playing it on Xbox One X with these enhancements?

With more and more players gaining access to 4K-capable gaming setups we simply want them to feel that they are getting what they deserve. We think our players will appreciate the fact that the game uses the full potential of their powerful hardware.

What enhancement were you most excited about to explore leveraging for X-Morph: Defense on Xbox One X?

We wanted to make sure that the console could handle all the physics calculations while maintaining a stable framerate in 4K. We think it won’t come as a surprise when we say that it did. Also – we support local co-op with split screen in X-Morph: Defense. This solution requires the console to handle almost twice as much data, and again, not even the slightest problem! This makes us excited for the future, as we know we can push these boundaries even further!

What does 4K mean for your game, games in the future and development at your studio?

4K support means we can create highly detailed environments and not worry about the game screen becoming illegible. The devil is in the details, as they say, and we believe that the small intricacies we put into our games resonate with the fans and make them come back for more.

We’re still not done with X-Morph: Defense. Our community is great, providing feedback all the time. Thanks to them we could introduce improvements to the difficulty level of the survival mode, making the experience more accessible to new players. We solved the main problem with this mode – it was geared to the more hardcore players. Now everyone can enjoy the uninhibited destruction and jump in for a quick fix of fun. The difficulty rebalance has just been released alongside the Xbox One X enhancements which were also requested by the community.

Together with that patch, we have also released a new DLC map pack – Survival of the Fittest. It features 5 maps, specifically crafted for this adrenaline pumping game mode: Britain, Finland, South Africa, Netherlands, and France. All of them have been adapted to the survival mode specs and offer unprecedented challenges and hours of fun. But that’s not all! Soon, X-Morph: Defense will be one year old, we are working on some really cool stuff for that occasion. Now we know, that there’s a large fan base out there, that will appreciate all of the eye candy that we’ll put in the next update…