With the SSD in these new consoles we could have seamless loading across the game.
The biggest change to the new consoles was the speed of the storage device. Have the previous-generation versions presented any key hurdles to overcome? That said, we’ve always maintained a scalable content generation approach to guarantee that we are able to deliver a great looking and sounding game no matter what generation you play on. We have embraced technologies such as positional audio, the lighting-fast storage, and of course the ray tracing-capable GPUs as part of the design. We wanted to concentrate on the advanced hardware features that these consoles delivered. We created TCP with the new generation of consoles in mind.
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With this being a cross-generation game, how has the team found the transition to the PS5, Series X and S based on the previous generation? UE5 took a very different approach for lighting with Lumen that didn’t fit the internal corridor model we wanted for the game, but I’ve been very impressed with the quality of the UE5 demos so far. So instead we created a Hybrid Ray Traced Shadows solution that applies ray traced shadow detail to areas of the screen that matter to the overall scene quality. We looked at the UE4 ray tracing solution at the time and found that for the number of shadows we wanted to create, we needed to create our own solution. Unfortunately, we found that UE4 was limited to four shadow-generating lights, so first we worked on modifying the engine so that we could support a higher number of lights at a lower cost per light. Using our corridor-based scale of around 20 meters we found that around eight lights could be affecting a surface of the environment. Contrast and occlusion make great horror. It was important for us to achieve a physically consistent lighting and shadow model in the game. Can you share if these are lighting and shadow-based elements from Unreal Engine 5 or have you gone in another direction? The game utilizes ray tracing for some of its visual elements. In the Callisto Protocol even losing is a visual feast! Not only was this be used on enemies, but we also used this to represent the gory player deaths. We wanted Gore to be a diegetic health bar for each enemy representing realistic flesh, muscle and skeletal wounds. Our Gore system blends blood spatter, chunk creation and dismemberment to create the most realistic system we could. We knew we wanted a gore system that hit all the components of a great horror game.
This was an area we created from scratch. What are some of these customisations, and does this extend to the dismemberment system in the game? You use Unreal's Simple Demolitions System and have customized this for The Callisto Protocol. When you start a project you want to keep taking engine drops over the development cycle and consulting with Epic on the best way to make their changes made subsequent integrations much easier. Not that we did this in isolation, we communicated with Epic on a regular basis on these changes to ease the integration.
There are always certain changes you want to make to the base engine based on the needs of the product, and at an early stage we decided on key areas we wanted to enhance. Workflows and tools are widely understood and experience using a commercial engine makes hiring easier. Mark James, CTO, Striking Distance Studios: Starting with an engine that has shipped hundreds of games is a great advantage.
IGN: With the immense challenge of setting up a new studio and team, how has the use of Unreal Engine been an enabler in your three year schedule?