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CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

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Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#181

Post by ethbr0 »

daemin wrote: post #147
danschuller wrote: post #100

Remakes make business sense. Every game is a risk. A portfolio of products that includes remakes reduces that risk. A game that was previously popular is easier to remaster than trying to make some new that's less tested. There are always brand new gamers to introduce to your IP as well as existing gamers who may have missed or want to replay earlier games. If you're a mature studio it's almost irresponsible to not d…

You'd think using Unreal Engine makes it easier to hire but that's not the case, it just means there's more competition for the people knowledgable in it, and it drives the people that want to work on something different to other studios. It also doesn't cut down on development time or the needed number of engine programmers since studios pretty much have to modify and enhance the engine, often replacing several comp…

For employees of the game industry, aren't standardized engines a net positive?

I can't think of many things worse in software development than "I'm an expert on my employer's obscure, only-used-here system."

Your employer knows you can't work anywhere else, and assuming they don't shoot themselves in the foot by allowing one person to become mission critical, they've definitely got the power in negotiations.

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#182

Post by kranke155 »

daemin wrote: post #164
profile53 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh that’s super interesting — full rewrites aren’t super common. Do you know why they elected to rewrite the engine completely?

I have to be careful here, but the simple reason is that the previous engine was not designed to handle the density nor the verticality of the CP77 world. Not that Unreal Engine 5 can handle a world like CP77 either, despite what people may think with the Matrix demo.

How is Unreal limited in a way that prevents it from doing something like CP77?

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#183

Post by Cyph0n »

daemin wrote: post #164
profile53 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh that’s super interesting — full rewrites aren’t super common. Do you know why they elected to rewrite the engine completely?

I have to be careful here, but the simple reason is that the previous engine was not designed to handle the density nor the verticality of the CP77 world. Not that Unreal Engine 5 can handle a world like CP77 either, despite what people may think with the Matrix demo.

Interesting! I’m not at all familiar with game engine design or even game dev, but the only game series I can think of that reliably handles large, open-world scale well is GTA.

Here’s a dumb question: in theory, would Rockstar’s internal engine (RAGE) have worked for CP77, or are the technical challenges simply too different?

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#184

Post by rubyist5eva »

sorenjan wrote: post #156
danschuller wrote: post #100

Remakes make business sense. Every game is a risk. A portfolio of products that includes remakes reduces that risk. A game that was previously popular is easier to remaster than trying to make some new that's less tested. There are always brand new gamers to introduce to your IP as well as existing gamers who may have missed or want to replay earlier games. If you're a mature studio it's almost irresponsible to not d…

I don't follow game development closely anymore, but my feeling is that UE5 with features like Nanite, Lumen, etc is so advanced that you can't expect an inhouse engine to come close. Or are there other engines that's at the same level? Frostbite used to be cutting edge years ago, but some of the developers left EA and I haven't seen any excitement about it since. Add to that things like huge install base that should…

Recruitment is part of it as . It’s not possible to find people that haven’t worked at your company to have experience with your custom engine - but you can hire people with years of experience with Unreal already and ramp them up for your specific game quickly.

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#185

Post by somat »

msbarnett wrote: post #144
WorldMaker wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more interesting part of the story is Unreal is being used. For a while Unity and Unreal have been pushing out in-house engines. This is exactly the case for CD Projekt Red. They built their own engine (RED Engine) for Witcher 1 and built on top of it for the two Witcher sequels and also pushed it to its very limits for Cyberpunk 2077. A lot of useful criticism of the technological pains (delays, marketplace re…

> This is exactly the case for CD Projekt Red. They built their own engine (RED Engine) for Witcher 1 and built on top of it for the two Witcher sequels and also pushed it to its very limits for Cyberpunk 2077. Close. REDEngine was created for Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Witcher 1 was built on a modified copy of Bioware's Aurora Engine (the Neverwinter Nights engine). REDEngine versions were: REDEngine 1: The Witc…

And if i remember correctly the aurora engine started life as MDK2.

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#186

Post by giobox »

Tade0 wrote: post #73
giobox wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Witcher 1 not so much, but Witcher 2 had a pretty good 360 port that a lot of people played in the West, and PC version did well too - across all platforms 1.7 million copies sold by 2012, another article I saw suggests 8 million by 2014. I think thats getting towards very roughly ~1/4 the success of Witcher 3, volume wise. Not bad, considering Witcher 3 volume includes a portable Switch release. > https://www.euroga…

> Not bad, considering Witcher 3 volume includes a portable Switch release. I've seen the Switcher. Wasn't actually half as bad as I anticipated. All the more surprising that CDPR is abandoning their own engine in favour of UE5.

their "own engine" I think is a euphemism here - its arguably several different ones. By many internal accounts, engine development has been hell (see the Cyberpunk launch issues), with each game CD Project Red start being in many ways a complete rewrite to the extent its not charitable to describe it as a single engine.

I think less time on game engine tech and hopefully more on shipping creative features sounds good to me, although it is sad to lose yet another independently developed game engine.

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#187

Post by nmfisher »

serf wrote: post #31
4pkjai wrote: post #6

I don't know why, this makes me a bit sad. You can sort of feel a game engine when you're playing a game. The GTA trilogy lost a lot when they did their remastering project with a different engine. Although I'm sure it can be done well. StarCraft remastered was done really well, but I believe they built on top of their existing engine.

>don't know why, this makes me a bit sad. You can sort of feel a game engine when you're playing a game. absolutely. whenever a friend is playing anything with specific shader/specular/lighting styles I always yell "Unity!" while watching him. I'm generally dead-on accurate with those guesses. It's definetly not coincidence at this point; there is some default behavior or lighting gimmick I can generally always cue i…

Given how poorly XCOM ran, I was convinced it was written in Unity. Eventually looked it up one day and nope, Unreal.

Great game though.

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#188

Post by seba_dos1 »

joseda-hg wrote: post #174
sorenjan wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow game development closely anymore, but my feeling is that UE5 with features like Nanite, Lumen, etc is so advanced that you can't expect an inhouse engine to come close. Or are there other engines that's at the same level? Frostbite used to be cutting edge years ago, but some of the developers left EA and I haven't seen any excitement about it since. Add to that things like huge install base that should…

You're pretty much on point, unless you're making something really specific/that needs every bit of performance that it can get, you're better served by an existing engine A good example of something that was better served by inhouse engine is Factorio, but that' uncommon

Another case is doing something technologically simple enough that benefits from having a fully customized workflow outweigh having to write some stuff by yourself. This can happen with content-heavy genres like, say, 2D point'n'clicks - you don't get much by using an existing engine there, but you have to follow its idiosyncrasies which may or may not work well for you and your team.

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#189

Post by seba_dos1 »

WorldMaker wrote: post #143
danschuller wrote: post #100

Remakes make business sense. Every game is a risk. A portfolio of products that includes remakes reduces that risk. A game that was previously popular is easier to remaster than trying to make some new that's less tested. There are always brand new gamers to introduce to your IP as well as existing gamers who may have missed or want to replay earlier games. If you're a mature studio it's almost irresponsible to not d…

> The more interesting part of the story is Unreal is being used. For a while Unity and Unreal have been pushing out in-house engines. This is exactly the case for CD Projekt Red. They built their own engine (RED Engine) for Witcher 1 and built on top of it for the two Witcher sequels and also pushed it to its very limits for Cyberpunk 2077. A lot of useful criticism of the technological pains (delays, marketplace re…

> Using off-the-shelf Unreal to remake Witcher 1 sounds like a smart way on paper to get their feet wet and move on from the old engine to the new one using a project they are already familiar with and can help them realign from old pipelines to new ones.

You're wrong in more than one way. As others already noted, Witcher 1 did not use REDengine - but also, it's not CD Projekt RED who is remaking Witcher 1; they outsourced the development to another studio.

Re: CD Projekt is remaking the first Witcher game in Unreal Engine 5

#190

Post by seba_dos1 »

giobox wrote: post #186
Tade0 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not bad, considering Witcher 3 volume includes a portable Switch release. I've seen the Switcher. Wasn't actually half as bad as I anticipated. All the more surprising that CDPR is abandoning their own engine in favour of UE5.

their "own engine" I think is a euphemism here - its arguably several different ones. By many internal accounts, engine development has been hell (see the Cyberpunk launch issues), with each game CD Project Red start being in many ways a complete rewrite to the extent its not charitable to describe it as a single engine. I think less time on game engine tech and hopefully more on shipping creative features sounds goo…

> with each game CD Project Red start being in many ways a complete rewrite to the extent its not charitable to describe it as a single engine.

That's normal and fully expected. You generally don't maintain an in-house engine the way general-purpose engines are maintained. You don't make it as generic as possible to accommodate for various uses, like Godot, Unreal or Unity do. Instead, you make games and then your engine is an optional byproduct of those games. It gets to be as specific to your game as you need or want it to be.

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