CD Projekt quest designer discusses the "challenge" of developing Cyberpunk 2 for Unreal Engine
Article based on the interview at by The Neon Arcade at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b_o5ueZRF0
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/cd-projekt-quest-designer-discusses-the-challenge-of-developing-cyberpunk-2-for-unreal-engineOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
16 replies
I understand why they are, but now that CP2077 is more stable I'm going to miss red engine. It gives night city such a unique feel, and I worry unreal is going to make it feel like all the other unreal games. I'm not a game engineer so I'm assuming that will be much easier, but still, will miss it
The only reason why an Unreal game looks like an Unreal game is because the developers just use the default settings for environmental lighting and LUTs.
If your intention is to make a game with a specific look you can absolutely create your own lighting and LUTs. You can make an Unreal game look like whatever you want.
Case in point the first Dishonored. Unreal engine, and yet one of the most stylish games I've ever played.
They had such a strong art direction, it was amazing.
Unreal games can feel unique it's just that most use generic default stuff.
Aka "we don't know the engine well enough yet to be aware of bottlenecks during our concepting phase and that's challenging."
They haven't even seriously started on implementation with the engine yet for Cyberpunk. This is somewhat of a nothing article that's trying to get clicks by making a very normal thing seem like a potential controversy.
I don't see where it's trying to make it sound controversial. Switching game engines isn't a "normal" thing developers usually do very often, especially after releasing such high-profile games with an in-house engine.
And with how often you see gamers demand developers "just use a different engine" to solve some specific complaint I think it's reasonable to remind people why that isn't usually a good idea.
It's not completely uncommon for a company to transition to a new engine between games when one fails to provide a sufficient solution for where they want to take the sequels.
Or just if daddy EA decides everyone needs to use Frostbite.
There's an old adage in programming that you should almost never rewrite everything: https://www.onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/2596/Why-You-Should-Almost-Never-Rewrite-Your-Software.aspx
Going from their existing RED engine to Unreal is basically the same idea. Almost nothing from the original Cyberpunk game is going to be easily translated to the new platform. I think CDPR just set their development timeline back by at least 3 years.
This is based on the assumption that they'll finish the game before releasing it.
To be fair, in this case there is increased value because eventually the engine work requirements will be significantly reduced.
This isn't rewrite everything, it's basically remove a bunch of stuff and rewrite the rest.
Given how massive their game is, I'm doubtful. So much of what they did in the first game will have to be rebuilt. Compared to just reusing most of the original assets and code, this sounds like a lot more work.
Maybe, it might also be easier to reuse portions of the engine in Unreal Engine while using parts of Unreal (like its rendering engine) than you think though. Assets largely I'd expect to be portable or at least comvertable with a custom asset loader.
I'm talking a little out of my ass though, and neither of us is familiar with the code. Point being though, it's a little different moving engines than rewriting a complicated web server (a project I have been a part of and would not recommend).
In terms of performance if the game has the same visuals does Unreal do better in that department than red engine?
Absolutely not. Their latest version of the RED engine is far better at utilising the resources available than UE5. UE5 is still to some degree limited by its render thread and doesn't scale as well with more CPU cores the same way CP2077 does.
Most UE5 also seems to launch with major performance issues, and many of the recently launched games will be borked for all eternity as shader compilation stutters aren't something more powerful hardware will fix.
It's a real shame that the executives at CDPR doesn't want to continue investing in the RED engine.
The real reason is obvious why they want to be on UE5: There's a clear consulting and contractor pipeline, so they can continue to farm out work to Technicolor and Platige.