10 Hidden Video Game Mechanics That Will Blow Your Mind
8. The Game Secretly Loads When You're In A Tunnel - Tony Hawk's American Wasteland
In 2005, Neversoft launched a loud marketing campaign advertising that their newest game, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, had no levels, no limits, and most importantly, no loading time. In truth, the loading was obviously still happening, but the player was completely unaware of it, thanks to a pretty nifty trick game developers use all the time.
The secret to Tony Hawk's no-loading feature lay inside the tunnels between each location in the game. While the player was skating through them, the game would load all of the necessary assets in the background. When the player would finally emerge out of the tunnel, the map would already be there, and it would appear as though nothing had happened at all.
This feature is actually a common mechanic in gaming, and it's referred to as "dynamic loading." Game developers use things like long corridors, elevators, and doors that take a long time to open in order to load up new stages of the game without subjecting the player to a boring loading screen.
Famous examples of this feature include things like the elevator shafts in Portal and the door animations in Resident Evil. That's the secret to why these games ran so smoothly.