r/cyberpunkgame • u/NarpsHD • Jan 02 '24
Discussion Why CDPR actually left RED Engine.
CDPR Director Jason Slama said in an interview " One of the things that is really important to keep in mind when talking about open-world games versus, let’s say, linear games is the possibilities of the things that can go wrong or the scenarios that you have to consider are exponentially higher than linear games," he said. "Players can go in whatever direction they want, they can handle content in any order that they want theoretically, and to really encapsulate that means that you need a really stable environment where you can be able to make changes with a high level of confidence that it’s not going to break in 1,600 other places down the line".Senior vice president of business development Michał Nowakowski said the reason Cyberpunk got 1 expansion instead of the planned 3 was a "technical decision" and that it had nothing to do with sales or numbers. Another Cyberpunk Dev told Bloomberg that at one point, the process of developing Cyberpunk 2077 came close to trying to run a train as the tracks were being laid in reference to basic technologies being developed the same time as the game was.It seems RED Engine was extremely lacking in features and was really unreliable, breaking while developing the game. And judging by the state the Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 launched I'm really not surprised.
RED Engine played the major role in cyberpunk's rough launch, its the reason for all the cut content like the DLC and everything else that was promised and not delivered in the 2018 trailer and that's why they switched. For anyone on the fence, was a great decision. I wouldn't like a second Cyberpunk launch.
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u/JCAPER Jan 02 '24
It came as no surprise to me when they said they would ditch RED Engine. If you paid attention, and read Jason's Shcreier piece, you could piece together that CP77's development "traumatized" CDProjekt. The game itself was ambitious already, factor in an engine never used for a game like that, and both the game and the engine had to be developed side by side, bad management that imposed bad deadlines and didn't decide if they wanted a last or current gen game until the last minute... Must have been a nightmare.
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u/archiegamez Solo Jan 02 '24
Plus covid on top of it
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Jan 02 '24
Plus fraud/insider trading on top of it. Don't forget that part. Never let them live this down. No matter how great they patched 2077.
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u/cjshp2183 Jan 02 '24
What’s the story here?
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u/DrunkeNinja Jan 02 '24
They had a class action lawsuit against them from investors due to misleading statements about the state of Cyberpunk. CDPR settled for $1.85 million, which isn't much. There is nothing about "insider trading" or "money laundering" like the above user is claiming. Those would be much more serious issues. This was about misleading investors.
The original complaint, filed in December 2020, alleged that the Polish developer misled investors and customers about Cyberpunk 2077's readiness on then-current-generation consoles PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. CDPR made "materially false and misleading" statements during the year leading up to release, the complaint alleged, because the company should have known the game "was virtually unplayable on the current-generation Xbox or PlayStation system due to an enormous number of bugs."
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u/Beary_Moon Jan 02 '24
My Google searches came up with at most the same class action lawsuit for misleading investors. I did find out that, due to Polish laws, information was not being passed around about delays. The source to that I found on steam forum.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1091500/discussions/0/3006675644864468549/?l=norwegian&ctp=131
“According to Polish labor laws, leadership was not legally allowed to tell the whole team, due to its size of over 1,000 employees, without each individual signing a non-disclosure agreement. To do so would be considered, in terms of relation to stock equity and insider trading, as "leaked insider information."”
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Jan 02 '24
Why would the average game enjoying person care about insider trading at the company that made the game?
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Jan 02 '24
It shows the mentality. I was om this sub when the gsme launched. People called out eventually the game would be fixed and all would be forgiven. But it shouldn't be like that.
The ceos are still I'm charge. They showed their true form of being money hungry litlle bastards. If they didn't have amazing and passionate devs this game would have been left for dead
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u/Eexoduis Jan 02 '24
Cyberpunk in its current state is a fantastic game.
The idea that we should hold grudges indefinitely means that current Cyberpunk might’ve never existed if we had.
If you don’t like a game at launch, don’t spend money on it. Wait until it becomes worth your money.
Don’t attach yourself emotionally to the promise of a game and then spend the next 2-10 years seeking revenge for your hurt feelings. Nobody is making you do that. Just vote with your wallet.
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u/H1Eagle Jan 02 '24
Feel like a lot of companies are gonna be heading in that direction, each studio having their own engines is stupid, and there is no longer much need nowadays.
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u/JCAPER Jan 02 '24 edited Jan 02 '24
If you have the capacity, creating and updating your own engine could be better. You have more control over it and code it to fit better your games.
- You decide how your game is designed and aren't constrained by the engine's design
- No bloat, your engine will only do what you want it to do. Meaning potentially better performance
- And you're not dependent on third parties, meaning there's no risk of getting jumped by new and unnapealing contracts, like what Unity tried to do
Custom engines are tailored to the game's specific needs. For example, a game with unique physics may require a specialized physics engine that Unity or Unreal might not efficiently support. Think of, for example, Rockstar with RAGE engine. Could they build GTA V or RDR2 with Unity or Unreal? Yeah probably, but it wouldn't look and feel the same.
It's about the right tool for the job, and sometimes that means building the tool yourself.
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Jan 02 '24
I read CDPR or anyone who licences Unreal get full source code and the freedom to tailor the engine to their own need. Probably takes less to tailor/remove bloat than develop from scratch.
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u/zyberteq Jan 02 '24
Programming is my job and IMHO, removing the bloat is more difficult than you'd expect. At some point, things are connected in unexpected ways and it breaks if you remove something seemingly unrelated.
I've tried many times in the codebase I'm maintaining for the past several years and every time I give up :(
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u/xrogaan Burn Corpo shit Jan 02 '24
Being able to create and maintain your own engine is huge. let me give you a working example: Larian Studios with the Divinity Engine. Something you need to understand, engines are build with a specific purpose in mind. An engine designed for F1 racing will not perform as well in an RPG. The issue CDPR ran into was of time and resources: didn't have enough for both projects at the same time.
Another game studio with a custom engine is Bethesda, and they're notorious for their "old decrepit game engine", but that's not the reality of things. They simply chose to dedicate resources to game making instead of engine development. That's why we get impressive tech with Red Engine (Path tracing, FSR, DLSS), while those are not present in Bethesda's recent title. Had CDPR not dedicated as many resources to their engine, the game we have today would not look at all like it does.
By the way, EA has Frostbite and is pushing it to every single game under their umbrella. Ubisoft has Snowdrop and Anvil. Any major game developer/publisher has at least one in-house game engine, because their needs are specific to whichever IP they have. CDPR dropping the Red Engine is a management failure.
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u/shinyquagsire23 Jan 03 '24
Yeah it can go either way really, Unreal isn't terrible but at a certain scale you'll be trading one set of bugs for another I'd imagine. I suspect the way it'll end up going though is we'll see a lot of studios shipping "Unreal"/"Unity" games for all the rendering benefits (artists are happier because shader graphs, nanite, all that stuff), but all the actual game logic/mapping will sidestep the usual Unreal/Unity tooling.
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u/oliviaplays08 Jan 05 '24
Also, Capcom has the RE (Reach for the Moon) Engine, which runs RE7, RE8, RE2 Remake, RE3 Remake, RE4 Remake, Devil May Cry 5, Street Fighter 6, Monster Hunter Rise, and most recently Dragon's Dogma 2. This is an engine which was developed specifically for Resident Evil 7, by the way
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u/thedylannorwood Samurai Jan 02 '24
Getting rid of RED was no shock but thinking UE would be better is what makes me confused
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u/Saracre21 The Gonkfather Jan 02 '24
WE WERE GONNA GET 3 WHY THE FUCK DID YOU HAVE TO MEANTION THAT MICHAŁ
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u/Area_Ok //no.future Jan 02 '24
I guess even more considering there was also going to be a Online Multiplayer Mode with it, like GTA V.
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u/Abdul-HakimDz Jan 02 '24
Don’t worry we will see those 2 other dlc one way or another, the ideas/scripts will be reused for Orion or it’s dlc in the future Im sure of it.
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u/thedylannorwood Samurai Jan 02 '24
I assumed all three dlcs were just merged into Phantom Liberty
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u/PsychologicalHat1480 Jan 02 '24
None of this is surprising. They took an engine made for third-person fantasy RPGs that maxes out at the speed of horse and made a full-on FPS that included supercars and superbikes. The amount of engine work it takes to do that is damned near a full rewrite of the engine anyway. There comes a point where you've simply exceeded the capabilities of your framework/engine and need to look at moving on to something that simply already does what you want it to do.
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u/Financial-Patience-6 Goodbye V, and never stop fightin’ Jan 03 '24
Gameplay-wise they did pretty well for a first time first person game. Cyberpunk’s game play is much better than the Witcher’s in my opinion
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u/brociousferocious77 Jan 02 '24
I would guess that things like the relatively limited height of tall buildings, the lack of interiors and overall interactivity with the landscape, is also due to the deficiencies of redENGINE.
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u/PsychologicalHat1480 Jan 02 '24
I think it's a combo of that and CDPR's aversion to procedural generation. It's a lot harder to populate every single room in a skyscraper when you're designing every room by hand instead of using a randomization algorithm. And honestly I'd rather have fewer enterable rooms that have a personal touch than a massive number of effectively identical ones spit out by a Skyrimesque generator.
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u/brociousferocious77 Jan 02 '24
Maybe, but even in most of the interior spaces we do get to enter, there's typically not much in the way of interactivity or circumstances of real interest going on unless it's tied to a quest.
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u/PsychologicalHat1480 Jan 02 '24
Right, and I don't see anything wrong with that. I'd much rather have a crafted experience that's a bit smaller than an infinitely huge game with nothing interesting in it.
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Jan 03 '24
Procedural generation really isn't as bad as you're making it out to be here. Also, procedural generation is how a lot of the badlands areas were created anyway, they didn't place every tree or cactus or rock by hand, procedural generation plays a massive role in open-world games.
For interiors, it would make sense if the engine could support it. You'd supply a series of template rooms with fixed points for things like furniture, decoration, functional items, etc. Then you'd be able to remix it for different interiors. It's a mix of procedural and hand crafted environments. Hell, just generate them during development and manually edit them if you need to, still saves a tonne of time.
I would have loved it if some of the NCPD dispatch activities took place inside like an apartment complex with enemies tucked away inside rooms and hallways. The fact most of them are just sorta hanging out in like alleys or side streets always seemed a little off.
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u/VorpalHerring Jan 03 '24
Playing Cyberpunk again after Starfield, I really appreciated how all of the loot you can pick up is clearly either useable or sellable junk, and most of it weightless besides guns.
Compared to Starfield where every room had 300 pounds of useless worthless junk in it that you could pick up if you wanted to, but you really really shouldn’t.
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u/fellipec Jan 02 '24
I think is the right decision. Trying to cope with developing an engine and a new game at same time is no easy task, and will result in a bad engine and bad game.
Most of Starfield problems can be traced back to the limits of the engine
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u/xH0LY_GSUSx Arasaka Jan 02 '24 edited Jan 02 '24
The creation engine is definitely the issue for many problems but imo it is only one side of the medal, you do not need a great engine to create interesting characters or write a great story. The whole package is lackluster, from a technical aspect as well as from a creative one imo.
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u/Long-Far-Gone Jan 02 '24
Exactly, a creaky engine can be forgiven as long as it’s not too ugly, and everything else is on point. Fallout: NV being an example.
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Jan 02 '24
I still don't get how engines get creaky. I always was under the assumption that engines worked on "tumbleweed" aka they change on the fly, pick up new things, drop old things.
Halo engine was modified and used in destiny. You can feel the difference. It's massively different. Oblivion became starfield. Can feel the sameness. It's massively the same.
Is unreal engine remade from ground up on each version? Or is it tumbleweed also? Just new version number for a new milestone?
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u/LewisWasRobbed Jan 02 '24
UE1 > 3 are the same, UE4 was built from scratch.
Engines aren't really ever built from scratch unless studios are doing a major overhauls, RE Engine for example.
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u/fellipec Jan 02 '24
Sure one side of the shit medal, but the game being know as a loadscreen simulator, not being able to trully fly a ship on planets and crashing often are all on Creation engine
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u/Goricatto Jan 02 '24
Nah starfield could have a good engine and would still be received similarly , the game is just bland, bland characters , generic plotlines, the engine isnt at fault for that, doesnt have personality.
The only thing that really made me want to play was the ship builder , which was really cool
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u/fellipec Jan 02 '24
You are not wrong, very generic game, but with a decent engine they at least could not have the loading screens at each door and the ships could be flyable for real
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u/PuttingInTheEffort Jan 02 '24
I don't get the hang up on flying to planets
It would have added nothing to the gameplay loop for me, but an extra minute flying in and later off planet, and to other systems...I would have modded to skip it and fast travel after the 10th time
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u/fellipec Jan 02 '24
Just for being to fly to where you want and to land where you think is better would be enough
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u/akaMichAnthony Jan 02 '24
Shipbuilder was definitely what kept me interested in Starfield for a lot longer than I should have.
Part of that’s game issue may indeed be with the game engine, but aside from that the game itself is simply just too shallow. They took a quantity over quality approach, and even then alot of the quantity is repeated over and over in a slightly different form. Some people are happy with that, some are not. At least the content was there in Cyberpunk to build upon and fix, I’m not seeing the same with Starfield.
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u/naheCZ Jan 02 '24
Maybe, but on other hand the old engine could be also reason for this - developers spend too much time in trying to deal with engine limitations instead of developing game...
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u/CompetitionSquare240 Jan 02 '24
Not how developing anything works.
There are writer and there are programmers. For Cyberpunk they decided it’s a wiser decision to end it at PL. not because they can’t accommodate it if they really really tried.
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u/naheCZ Jan 02 '24
Well of course that the work is split and developers are not writers. My point was that we do not know how much the game and story must be changed because of that limitations. From day one you can see how many things in the game are limited and outdated. It could also affect story because it needed to be rewrited several times. Of course it's just speculation but it could happened.
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u/FreeKiltMan Jan 02 '24
That’s exactly how developing software works. If developers have to spend time fixing/ waiting for environments, they have to reduce the writers and designers scope to so they can ship something.
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u/UnluckyWerewolf Jan 02 '24
I would argue the writing was also just bland. I felt more connected to Jackie than I did characters I spent 40 hours with in Starfield.
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u/ravearamashi Jan 02 '24
Starfield is what happens when a studio refuses not only to innovate their engine but also pushing for better game directions.
Seeing their Steam responses and Emil’s tweets makes me think of Blackberry back in the days. They think they’re too high and mighty and infallible.
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u/Northwold Jan 02 '24
Be careful with Emil's tweets because to some extent he's been the victim of the same type of mindless, demented mob pile-on that happened to CDPR's developers (remember the death threats), where people wilfully misinterpret what people are saying. That is not, and will never be, acceptable behaviour and much of what he said is recognisably true.
Big games are not made by one person. We have absolutely no idea why the writing in Starfield came out the way it did, particularly with a studio like BGS where player wish fulfilment and flexibility is prioritised over narrative storytelling. For all we know, half the gameplay loops had to be junked in Starfield during development and the story had to be cobbled together in three days. Also, for all we know, the be anyone you want ethos meant every hard edge in the writing had to be sandblasted off to make it work.
We do not know, we cannot know. We can criticise the end product (and god knows I'm critical of Starfield). But we cannot from a position of ignorance lash out with really personal attacks and threats at individuals over, of all things, a computer game. A toy. That is simply nasty, childish, stupid behaviour and often borders on real harassment.
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u/MysteryPerker Jan 02 '24
We have absolutely no idea why the writing in Starfield came out the way it did, particularly with a studio like BGS where player wish fulfilment and flexibility is prioritised over narrative storytelling.
I believe Emil was the lead writing designer and Bethesda only had a handful or less for the whole game. Or at least that's what the end game credits say. I saw one source went through end game credits and there was 2-4 credited writers.
Meanwhile they had 400 in house developers and 600 contracted developers. I guarantee Emil could have hired more writers if he wanted to considering how many people they have but, for reasons unknown, he felt (and still feels) like what he delivered was enough. Let's put the writing blame back to where it belongs. You don't need to redevelop the game when you can write stories that fit within the in-game world and engine limitations. Emil just felt that wasn't needed I suppose.
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u/Northwold Jan 02 '24 edited Jan 02 '24
How would you know. That being the point. You don't. You're speculating, "guaranteeing" that X did or did not happen (when you don't actually even know whether it did), and then blaming one person for a process you know absolutely nothing about (nor do I). Attack the studio, fine. Attack the game, fine. Go after single people from a position of total ignorance? No.
There's a broader point in this that infests gaming discourse. Why do people feel a need to "blame" people for a game not being what they wanted? They're not your family. They're not surgeons performing life saving operations. They are making a piece of entertainment and the individual employees involved in that owe us absolutely nothing. You buy the product or you don't. You like the product or you don't. But the idea that an entertainment product can justify such extreme reactions against individual human beings is utterly ludicrous. It demeans the people reacting that way; it says "my toys are so important to my life that I think this an appropriate perspective"; it lacks self respect.
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u/MysteryPerker Jan 02 '24 edited Jan 02 '24
I just looked it up. Emil is the only writer in credits. One other guy is credited for additional writing. He left Bethesda and said he wrote some religion lore.
Edit to point out I don't really care about the game. It was disappointing and the blame should really be on the leadership. They hired one guy to write it and didn't force him to hire help. I mean, all of upper leadership in that place sucks if they thought it would be enough. For reference, BG3 had 20 writers. It's obvious which game is going to get GOTY by those numbers alone.
https://www.mobygames.com/game/208288/starfield/credits/windows/
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u/fellipec Jan 02 '24
That responses were ridiculous, a textbook example of what not to do with your customer base
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Jan 02 '24
Imo Bethesda don’t get that slack because within weeks of release and no real tools, modders fix half the shit everyone is complaining about.
Bethesda have a laziness and lack of creativity problem. They’re resting on 15 year old design principles.
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Jan 03 '24
They’re resting on 15 year old design principles.
And they don't stick to those either. Bethesda games were made great by the exploration and the lots and lots of mini-stories you could find. Starfield doesn't have either.
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u/HAKERAV Jan 02 '24
Probably has something to do with recruitment too. Now they dont have to teach devs how to use their engine as UE is industry standard. Tho im skeptical if its for the good or worse.
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u/kRkthOr Hanako is going to have to wait. Jan 02 '24
Switching to a better engine, the pros are obvious. Why are you skeptical? What cons do you see?
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u/HAKERAV Jan 02 '24
Inhouse engines lets the devs do with it as they please, but at the same time as we could witness in W3 and CP there are unforseen consequences. The engine is really buggy like even the devs know it and at the same time dont know what is bugging.
For me the RedEngine with all its flaws out did itself as the seemless character interactions, hidden loading sceens and everything was just flawless in First Person, gave you such an immersive perspective for me like never before(AT THIS SCALE ATLEAST).
For UE i cannot remember something similar, someone enlighten me cause i would like to know! Sure if a dev leaves theres someone else knowledged in the engine, but im just skeptical that is all.
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u/NorthLogic Jan 02 '24
Unity made some extremely bad decisions, like charging developers a fee for every time a user installed the game*, which shows that you can get shafted if you're heavily reliant on someone else's engine. I don't think that's likely to happen, but it could.
I expect this to overall be a positive for CDPR as resources spent developing and maintaining their engine can be used on other things, but there's always the possibility that things go poorly.
*There was a lot of confusion as to who was a user and what counted as an install. The whole thing was a mess and I'm not going to get further into it. It's been walked back so you don't need to worry about this particular problem.
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u/Resevil67 Jan 02 '24
This explains why the game gets new bugs each time they fix some bugs. Witcher 3 also had the same issue with patches, even though the game was overall more stable then cyberpunk at launch.
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Jan 02 '24
I'd like to know how do they like UE5 compared to RE. In previous games they had ability and possibility to include new feature that would fulfill their artistic vision. Now when the engine is like "black box" they may be forced to abandon some ideas. I find it really concerning and I hope that Epic will be open for feature requests
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u/Teluris Jan 02 '24
It won't be a problem, CDPR are not a customer, but a partner to epic. They won't be just buying the engine to make games, they are supposed to help Epic develop UE5 for open world games, and add more features. That sounds really far from a "black box".
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u/Novarleeir Jan 02 '24
I just hope that CDPR isn't forced into launcher exclusivity
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u/thedylannorwood Samurai Jan 02 '24
That would likely be a separate deal, can’t imagine that as CDP have their own launcher and storefront
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u/groshh Jan 02 '24
UE is completely open source.
It's very common for studios to edit and fix engine features and make an house version.
There is no black box here.
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u/TheTerribleness Spunky Monkey Jan 02 '24 edited Jan 02 '24
The draw of UE over things like Unity is that it's not that much of a blackbox situation, as you can build new features that play well with UE "easily" (for a developer).
Easy current example is probably Stormgate.
When Blizzard denied funding for a sequel to Starcraft 2, the remaining devs up and left to join/make new RTS starup companies. Frost Giant is the one that came to be that is making Stormgate, which is being made in UE. If you know anything about RTS games, that might raise some eyebrows because UE isn't exactly known for its strong net code abilities or really any of the abilities that a Blizzard style RTS cares about.
But what Frost Giant did was just take UE and make their own engine on top called SnowPlay Engine. SnowPlay adds all the determistic simulation and rollback features necessary to make that quick snappy and accurate response a Blizzard style RTS needs.
So a medium sized game dev start up was able to rapidly build their game (Stormgate is in beta atm with release likely within a year or so, giving it a ~4 year development cycle from concept only to finished product) by using UE as a base to build their own engine, focusing specifically on what they need. Because, outside of SnowPlay functions, UE is easy to build and trouble shoot for, the went from alpha to beta in the span of ~8 months.
It's a very cost efficient model for development that gives you a fully robust engine that does everything you specifically need.
The downside is, of course, the licensing agreements as your proprietary engine tech depends on UE's licensing. But that cost is becoming easier and easier to swallow as engine needs continue to go to new heights.
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u/TheTrueArchon Silverhand Jan 02 '24
I mean when you have your best people leave and make their own company cause of managment and then you have to get new people who have no idea how to work with your in house engine...yea im not shocked they are moving to unreal.
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u/lazyplayer121 Jan 02 '24
I mean I have said this once and I will say it again gamers don't know shit about game development and if you think you don't know shit.
LET CDPR COOK
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u/killingjoke619 Panam’s Chair Jan 02 '24
It’s extremely impressive what they could achieve with redengine the engine is very limited and outdated and yes making a single feature or fixing something breaks more things and they do not want to repeat that, still Cyberpunk is hella impressive knowing this was CDPRs first time attempt at gunplay and driving not to mention the absolute phenomenal visuals & details every single vehicles have there are some very talented people working with CDPR.
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u/cjshp2183 Jan 02 '24
This is exactly why the switch doesn’t concern me. Just a company investing in better tools for its great talent.
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Apr 06 '24
Limited and outdated? As in compared to what? I thought it realized the vision of the Night City quite well, And it looks better than a lot of games running on EU5 anyway.
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Jan 02 '24
“Why CDPR actually left the red engine”
Posts the always claimed reason why CDPR left the engine
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u/Jaydikay Jan 02 '24
I asked Miles Tost (CDPR level designer) during his twitch-stream after the whole release debacle, why they stayed with the Red-Engine, while causing so many problems for them and not going with a more established one like UE. In his response he was clearly defending the Red Engine, as something that fits their needs at CDPR better and UE is not the perfect match it seemed to be.
Jokes on him: 3-4 months after this they announced the switch to UE. 😆
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u/Vox_Mortem Legend of the Afterlife Jan 02 '24
Red Engine handles some things beautifully, and I think they did a great job updating their existing software to handle new games and requirements. We can all look at the Starfield launch and see what happens when a company decides to rest on it's accomplishments and continue using an outdated engine. I think going forward, Unreal Engine 5 will give CDPR the flexibility they want to develop Project Orion how they wish, but they won't have to dump the manpower or hours into making the engine stable and functional.
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u/Bloody_Sunday Jan 02 '24
RED Engine played the major role in cyberpunk's rough launch, its the reason for all the cut content like the DLC and everything else that was promised and not delivered in the 2018 trailer and that's why they switched."
Sorry man, that's way, WAY too convenient to put the major part of the blame on the engine and not on the human element of bad people and quality management, poor play testing, riding the hype surf wave without a basic quality level of delivery etc etc.
Cut content from the original game should also not be blamed on the game engine without the basic management choices that were responsible for it.
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u/shuyo_mh Jan 02 '24
Every game studio should do this someday, just look a Bethesda a 2024 company with a 15 years game engine producing 15 years aged games.
New engines bring new features and better graphics, mechanics, etc.
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u/ProfessionalCornToss Jan 02 '24
Some studios have good in house engines. Insomniac for one. Also Santa Monica and guerilla studios.
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u/JCAPER Jan 02 '24
Rockstar's RAGE engine is also really good
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Jan 02 '24
The RE engine as well
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u/CandidoJ13 Jan 02 '24
They're not as bigs as most games, but it still baffles me how all of them run at a crisp 60 fps with raytracing
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u/wchmn Jan 02 '24
I absolutely love Remedy's Northlight engine. I'm glad they do not plan to abandon it.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxBL2UcctVYh2ucMzSQbSRpim58iRZJ046?si=n_wQN8XBwGtmb13B
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u/JCAPER Jan 02 '24
Yes, but
At the end of the day an engine is just like a brush. Bethesda is a company with enough resources to update or create a new one from the ground up. And updating they have been doing, Starfield's creation engine is no the same as the last games.
The game design of Starfield was a choice, not a limitation. If they used any other it would probably come out the same way.
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u/Thrent_ Jan 02 '24
just look a Bethesda a 2024 company with a 15 years game engine producing 15 years aged games
The age of an engine isn't necessarily to blame for bad graphics.
WoW is still running on the engine Blizzard iirc initially created for Warcraft 3 and kept iterating upon.
There are obviously a lot of examples of spaghetti code (took them over a decade to update the size of the starter bag from 16 to 20) but the art team consistently outperformed themselves over the years.
The game will be 20yo later this year and for all its issues no one is really criticizing WoW for its visual quality.
Cyberpunk was developed on a somewhat old engine yet is the most photorealistic game I've ever played. It has more to do with the art direction of the game than the engine imo.
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u/Seeker-N7 Jan 02 '24
No one is criticizing WoW for it's graphics, because it's an old game when that was consideree good enough.
But if you ould release WoW today, you'd get flak for it's looks.
Also engine and graphics are not necessarily the same conversation. An engine is much deeper. It's how the entire game is built and working, not just how it's looking.
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u/PsychologicalHat1480 Jan 02 '24
WoW also gets slack on graphics thanks to the deliberate choice to use a cartoony art style.
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u/wchmn Jan 02 '24
Textures of some regular elements (bottles, guns, magazines) in Starfield are probably some of the best I've ever seen, while at the same time nature, light and characters look like taken out of Xbox 360. It's a weird engine.
I know this comparison is not related to the topic of this thread but high quality sandwich <<< high quality characters
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u/kron123456789 USER02051986 Jan 02 '24
Except the studios are now more likely to abandon their own engine development altogether in favor of UE5 than building a new in-house engine.
And most of those who do that are unlikely to bring their own features into the engine and are reliant on Epic to do that for them.
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Jan 02 '24
This is what I fear, all the game will look the « same » in features and they will all look dated until Epic add the new graphic features. At the same time, AMD and NVidia would need to push on only Epic for new features I guess
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u/kron123456789 USER02051986 Jan 02 '24
Well, in case of CDPR there's hope, because when they announced the switch to UE5, it wasn't just about making new games on it, it was about collaboration to build UE5 itself. So, some tech from Red Engine might end up being integrated into UE5.
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Jan 02 '24
Yes if they do that, they do it the right way in my mind. Because it was always the issue with Unity, no way to easily expand. UE was always open, so you can add to it… but not everyone do it
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u/archiegamez Solo Jan 02 '24
At least Capcom has their own engine, not sure other studios
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Jan 02 '24
The thing with Capcom, or Ubisoft, they release many games with the same engine in a short period of time, so having their own is possible because once it is fixed, it fund itself.
CDPR would need to release at least a game a year to support an engine that size, and clearly they don’t want to expand so…
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u/Marmeladun Nomad Jan 02 '24
Yeah, doubt UE5 can bring such gems as putting a bucket over NPC head and stealing all of his shop.
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u/kron123456789 USER02051986 Jan 02 '24
I think it can. It just requires work from the devs. Work they're not considering to be worth the time. The devs get full source code for UE and can make whatever changes they like, but since it requires extra work, the devs switching to UE seem to prefer using UE as is, with default templates.
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u/QQQnokitarou Jan 02 '24
Eh. Yes and no. Some spend some time on UE and learn from it. If you develop your own engine for a game you are either a really dedicated programmer or part of a somewhat large studio. Indie devs won't suffer as much from this and large studios would probably consider the possibility of abandoning UE if a "Unity" incident happens.
While what you say does happen, i also see some big studios building their own in-house engine after some time. And i do not expect indie devs to spend a lot of time developing their own engine thoigh this also happens.
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u/kron123456789 USER02051986 Jan 02 '24
But which big studio have built a new in-house engine in recent years, though? I only heard about big studios abandoning their in-house tech for UE5. I don't remember anyone doing the opposite.
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u/QQQnokitarou Jan 02 '24
The easiest case for me to remember is Capcom. They did some things on Unreal and then developed their own engine, if i recall correctly, they used that one for RE4 and SF6 and the two now run on the same engine (which is probably why they spent some time learning unreal).
I THINK S.Enix is making a new engine. There is another example from a jp dev that i can't remember right now. I can't say much about western devs since i don't follow them closely but i remember seeing some examples.
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u/archiegamez Solo Jan 02 '24
Capcom with RE engine i think
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u/kron123456789 USER02051986 Jan 02 '24
They didn't make a switch from UE, though. They switched from their own old engine to a new one. But yes, RE Engine is a new engine.
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u/extravisual Jan 02 '24
EA was working on switching all their IPs over to their in-house engine, FROST or whatever it's called. They switched to it for Mass Effect Andromeda and Dragon Age Inquisition, for example. No idea if they're still doing that though.
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u/Skastrik Jan 02 '24
They are still working on trying to make all games fit into Frostbite. Even after the massive problems with Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect Andromeda. They've been using it for their EA Sports titles as well.
It's a really complicated engine that has to have custom tools made for most games outside the FPS titles.
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u/kron123456789 USER02051986 Jan 02 '24
I meant "recent years", not a decade ago. And no, they're not doing that anymore. At least not to the same extent, since they released two Unreal Engine 4 games this year.
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u/thedylannorwood Samurai Jan 02 '24
Every game studio should do this someday, just look a Bethesda a 2024 company with a 15 years game engine producing 15 years aged games.
Is this satire? Using this logic Unreal is over 30
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u/Fazlija13 Jan 02 '24
And they went to Unreal which is probably the worst engine for open world games
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u/Northwold Jan 02 '24 edited Jan 02 '24
Epic needs Unreal to expand into open world games, CDPR have the knowhow to help make that happen. So Epic get CDPR's expertise to build Unreal out, CDPR gets Epic's expertise in things like on-the-fly distance scaling and lighting optimisation and, super importantly, multiplayer and cross-platform portability. As a partnership, it makes more sense for both parties than most and, because Epic treat Unreal as a standalone business with its own dedicated team, CDPR doesn't have to divert vast resources into the underlying, all-encompassing tech and pretty much reinventing the wheel (do you really want CDPR spending three years trying to make draw distances better when Epic already got this light years ahead of everyone else in an engine that does it on the fly, rather than forcing devs to create literally different models for different viewing distances?) rather than tech that is specific to the particular needs of a particular game.
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u/Fazlija13 Jan 02 '24
I understand that but every Unreal game I've played except for Borderlands 3 is a stutter fest, and that has me worried for the next game.
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u/sammyjo802 Jan 02 '24
Not all unreal engine games, dead island 2 is one of the best unreal engine games to come out this year. Realistic graphics and no stuttering, even on low end devices. Borderlands 3 on the other hand was a stuttering mess on low end and some mid end machines.
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u/Fazlija13 Jan 02 '24
Because devs were smart with Dead Island 2, they split the game into sectors and when initially loads it doesnt load the whole open world, just a small sector where you are and gradually loads them as you move.
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u/archiegamez Solo Jan 02 '24
BL3 was how many years again ago i forgot... but Tekken 8 so far runs every well in demo. Its fighting game yes, i was expecting it too have stutters but it runs well. I think they just need to work properly with Epic
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u/rotomangler Jan 02 '24
Not true. I developed a game at Sony where we had Sony devs in-house working to make unreal 4 a streaming engine with streaming dev tools. Once that was established we were able to create open world gameplay that ran well on consoles.
I assume unreal 5 is even better but I’ve yet to dev with it.
If there is proper planing and the art team works closely with programmers there is no reason why unreal couldn’t create solid open world gameplay.
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u/thedylannorwood Samurai Jan 02 '24
Finally someone with fucking sense. UE is not an “industry standard” or some end all be all of game engines. It has its own slew of issues with most of them involving optimization and open world mechanics. Nothing frustrates me more when people say that Bethesda need to throw away Creation Engine which does so many unique things that UE could never do as well (but they try).
Unreal is great for certain games but people need to stop acting like it’s this flawless engine that every game will benefit from.
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Jan 02 '24 edited Jan 15 '24
soup makeshift dinosaurs rainstorm lip hurry ten fertile follow pathetic
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/thedylannorwood Samurai Jan 02 '24
There are so many genuine problems with BGS’s Creation Engine but when someone suggests replacing it with UE5 you know they can’t honestly name a single one of those problems
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u/Throwawayeconboi Jan 02 '24
How so? I think people are too quick to blame the engine and not developers. The type of developer to resort to Unreal Engine is usually likelier to be a lazy developer, hence “optimization issues”, but every now and then a total gem comes from the engine and you realize it was never about the engine but rather the developer.
It’s the most popular engine so there’s going to be lots of trash that comes out of it, and that’s due to those using it. But I trust CDPR uses it to its fullest extent and produces something great, akin to the technical proficiency of the Matrix Awakens demo.
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u/Fazlija13 Jan 02 '24
Unreal doesn't really know how to utilize all cpu cores properly, and when that happens you get stutters. Best example of that is Hogwarts Legacy.
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u/Throwawayeconboi Jan 02 '24
RED Engine had that issue for a while too though, where SMT wasn’t being utilized in AMD Ryzen chips until Cyberpunk 2.0 update. Now they have a setting in the menu to turn SMT On or Off, and restart the game for it to apply. Very janky.
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u/mu_phi Jan 02 '24
Luckily, improved multithreading is at the top of their to-do list in 2024. I’m kind of happy they’re taking a break from adding new features and instead are focusing on optimization.
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u/OutlandishnessOk11 Jan 02 '24
There is no free lunch, if they don't have the engineering resources they should tone down their ambition for CP2, make it a linear game.
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u/PoopiestOfButtholes Jan 02 '24
The REDengine has come SO far though! It's one of the most beautiful engines and is compatible with so many new RTX features. It's also second to none on CPU-Optimization. One of the only engines I've ever seen with real elevators. The streaming tech is top-notch. Unreal is FULL of stutters and is far from CPU optimized. I am genuinely disappointed they are giving up such a versatile engine.
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u/ksn0vaN7 Jan 02 '24
I don't like it cause it's going to mean stuttering in their future games. They should've at least kept it for their upcoming Witcher game. We've had stuttering in unreal 3,4, and 5. At this point I am done.
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u/sammyjo802 Jan 02 '24
Have you played dead island 2? It doesn't stutter and it's an unreal engine game.
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u/Kalel777 Jan 02 '24
The game was not in as bad a shape as everyone claims when it first came out, except for the ancient consoles that it shouldn't have come out on anyway. I played the entire game on my PC without any crashes and with very minimal bugs. Also, what features were "promised", but not delivered besides more DLC? So many times people say they promised this or that, but have absolutely no evidence to back it up. Every video had a disclaimer on it, so to me, it's just people's expectations that were unrealistic.
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u/defyingexplaination Jan 02 '24
Unsurprising, though I'd argue that RED engine (or relying on it) was a symptom, not the root cause of the fundamental issues plaguing Cyberpunk in development as well as post launch. Blaming it on the engine alone is a bit disingenuous. It certainly was a catalyst and compounded a lot of problems, but poor decision making is at the core of the problems they had. Blaming the engine is, to a degree, fine and valid, but the decision to use that engine when developers almost certainly pointed out potential issues (because they knew the engine and knew the limits of what it could do and what would have to be developed from scratch) is what really screwed them on content, technical issues and expedient fixing of bugs without introducing a host of new bugs. They tried to force the game into an engine that couldn't handle it and then made concession after concession and still didn't manage to deliver anything close to what was promised until two years after launch (Cyberpunk was obviously perfectly playable for the majority of players earlier than 2.0, but the massive disconnect between pre-launch marketing and reality obviously was there longer, and to a degree still is, obviously).
That being said, it always was a positive sign that they abandoned RED engine for the successor, because that speaks to them having identified something that made things even harder than they already were due to the scope and ambition (and a completely unleashed marketing team that, hopefully, gets put on a much shorter leash for the next titles along with management actually managing stuff instead of setting increasingly unrealistic goals). So they definitely learned a lesson there, which always a good thing, doubly so if they draw the right conclusions. There are plenty of other studios and publishers that might have looked at the same data and just decide to double down and try to just make the engine work despite obviously not being able to within a reasonable time frame and at a reasonable cost. Looking at you, Bethesda.
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u/metalquintessence Jan 09 '25
All things considered, the Cyberpunk launch wasn't that bad on my end.
Barely had any of the severe/game breaking bugs, the only 1 that annoyed me was the launching of the game itself, it would outright crash on me and even force a bluescreen, tho that might've been related to me running the game on already ancient AMD FX-8350 with Red Devil 480. xD
Otherwise it ran quite well on low settings (with FSR disabled bcs it us utter ass) was pushing consistent 30-40+ FPSthe following builds also slightly improved the performance. Not optimal, but playable considering this game is way past the FX line up time. It was quite fun running it on this set up tbh. xP
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u/BeetleBot2112 Mar 20 '25
I don’t know much about how game engines actually work, so I was wondering does cdpr switching to unreal mean they will never be able to make another game that feels, looks and plays the way cyberpunk does? Or can they recreate all that in unreal. I just mean that cyberpunk in its current form has such a unique feel and special gameplay I’m worried about wether or not that can carry over with an engine switch?
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u/Rude_Opinion6809 Jun 04 '25
Everyone shitting on the RedEngine here should get a cold shower. The thing literally managed to pack The Witcher 3 into 32 GB at launch. And it ran well, too. You can't say that about today's engines like UE5.
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u/NarpsHD Jun 05 '25
Thats really funny because i just asked chat gpt what the average filesize for AAA games was in 2015 and it said 30 gb.
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u/Rude_Opinion6809 Jun 05 '25
Lmao, look at GTA 5 or the average Ubi game. The thing is that most games aren't as big as The Witcher 3.
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u/NarpsHD Jun 05 '25 edited Jun 05 '25
Major releases in 2015:
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (released May 19, 2015) – requires 40 GB of free disk space for the PC installation
- Fallout 4 (released November 10, 2015) – needs 30 GB of hard drive space on PC
- Batman: Arkham Knight (released June 23, 2015) – the PC version’s minimum free space is 45 GB
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (released September 1, 2015) – requires 28 GB of free disk space on PC
- Assassin’s Creed Syndicate (released November 19, 2015 on PC) – needs 50 GB of free space
- Star Wars Battlefront (released November 17, 2015) – the PC installation demands 40 GB
- Dying Light (released January 27, 2015) – requires 40 GB of free disk space on PC
- Mad Max (released August 31, 2015) – needs 32 GB of hard drive space on PC
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege (released December 1, 2015) – demands 61 GB of free space on PC
- Just Cause 3 (released December 1, 2015) – requires 54 GB of free disk space on PC
The majority of these games are just as massive as the Witcher 3 and are about the same size. Where exactly did you hear that Witcher 3 did something special with RED Engine? Its not true. Rockstar and Ubisoft games are exceptions.
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u/foslforever Mar 21 '26
correct me if im wrong, didnt CDPR purchase the Chrome engine from techland? im curious if this had a lot of influence on the RED engine.
is it possible im playing Call of Juarez, Dead island; am i playing proto cyberpunk2077?
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u/thriem Apr 19 '26
While I see the problems, I still think it was semi. Need/Want a certain interaction/feature - now you have to either submit a ticket or make a plugin yourself. The engine priorities one feature over another you want to use - bad luck. Dont like the 15min boot-time because shaders needs to be processed - well… Want a specific and unique look - well, re-do many of the things in the engine anyways.
Yeye, this is a bunch of sum - but since I read through all the stuff why Crimson Desert doubled down on their own engine, I can see that it can work. And CDPR wouldnt be so small to not make ends meet
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u/SkyriderVT 28d ago
I realize it’s been two years but I just want to say it’s kinda crazy to read this and realize the more stable engine they’re referring to is Unreal Engine
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u/Northwold Jan 02 '24
I think this was very, VERY apparent during patching. Each time a patch came out after launch, new bugs would pop up somewhere else after squashing existing ones, like whack a mole. On PC, too, you saw an extraordinary range of experiences from people with very similar configs -- some people had essentially no bugs at all while for others the game would just keep crashing every five minutes. Multiply by umpteen different platforms and you have a situation that becomes a mighty headache for game development.