When it comes to creating a new game, an important development choice is deciding between using an in-house proprietary engine or one of the well-established and supported game development platforms. . In the case of Striking Distance Studios and the upcoming game The Callisto Protocol, the team opted for the latter – namely Unreal Engine version 4.27.
I had the opportunity to speak with Mark James, Technical Director of Striking Distance Studios to discuss the business and development side of creating a new game, why and how Unreal helped, and a number of individual improvements the team made to the engine.
IGN: With the enormous challenge of starting a new studio and team, how has using Unreal Engine become a driving force in your three-year schedule?
Mark James, CTO, Striking Distance Studios: Starting with an engine that has shipped hundreds of games is a big plus. Workflows and tools are widely understood, and experience using commercial tools makes hiring easier. 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 the key areas where we wanted to improve. Not that we’ve done this in isolation, we’ve been communicating with Epic on a regular basis about these changes for ease of integration. When you start a project, you want to continue to reduce the engine in the development cycle and consult with Epic on the best way to implement their changes, making subsequent integrations a breeze. much easier.
You use Unreal’s Simple Demolition System and have customized this for the Callisto Protocol. What are some of these customizations and does this extend to the split system in the game?
This is an area we created from scratch. We knew we wanted a gore system that had all the elements of a great horror game. Our Gore system combines blood dispersion, fragmentation, and fragmentation to create the most realistic system we can. We want Gore to be a bountiful health bar for each enemy that represents actual skin, muscle, and bone wounds. This is not only used for enemies, but we also use it to represent bloody deaths of players. In the Callisto Protocol, even losing is a visual feast!
The game uses ray tracing for some of its visual elements. Can you share if these are light and shadow based elements from Unreal Engine 5 or did you go the other way?
It was important for us to achieve a physically consistent lighting and shadow pattern in the game. Contrast and congestion create great horror.
Using our corridor-based approximately 20 meter scale, we found that about eight lights can affect the surface of the environment. Unfortunately, we found that the UE4 was limited to four shaders, so we first worked on modifying the engine to be able to support a higher number of lights at a lower cost per lamp. .
We were looking at the UE4 ray tracing solution at the time and found that for the amount of shadows we wanted to create, we needed to create our own solution. So instead, we created a Hybrid Ray Traced Shadows solution that applies ray-traced shadow detail to areas of the screen that are important to the overall scene quality.
The UE5 took a very different approach to lighting with Lumen that didn’t quite match the interior corridor model we wanted for the game, but I’ve been impressed with the quality of the UE5’s demos so far.
With this being a cross-generational game, how did the team find the transition to PS5, Series X and S based on the previous generation?
We created TCP with the new console generation in mind. We wanted to focus on the advanced hardware features these consoles offer. We’ve included technologies like geolocation, flash memory and, of course, ray tracing GPUs as part of the design.
That said, we’ve always maintained a scalable content creation approach to ensure that we can deliver a great and sound game no matter what generation you play.
Did previous generation versions present any major hurdles to overcome?
The biggest change to the new console is the speed of the storage device. With the SSD in these new consoles, we can seamlessly load in the game.
This reverting to the slower HDD of the previous generation was the biggest design challenge. We need to figure out where to put load volumes and in some cases load screens where we don’t need them on the current generation.
Are you planning to extend the Console and/or PC versions with any technical enhancements other than ray tracing, loading, and possibly frame rates. For example do you have denser geometry or such for current generation machines?
As a team, we wanted to make the most of every hardware specification we were given. We show more material details, geometric densities and light interactions than any of our previous projects. One of the goals we achieved at the beginning of the project was that “every step is different.” We wanted to represent an already inhabited world and show the actual design of a space prison. This means investing in kit-based geometry and a complex material system to represent diversity.
You mentioned that you incorporated Unreal Engine 5 elements in your own push of UE 4.27. Can you share any details about these please?
As we worked to complete TCP on UE4, we looked at areas of UE5 that we felt would be useful for both development iterations and new console features. Epic even helped us port some of these features back to the engine version we built. No major components stand out but instead lots of smaller optimizations and workflow improvements that have helped over the past few months.
The character models, post effects, and general rendering of the characters, faces, and movements are superior to most other games I’ve seen, with the main protagonist Jacob (Josh Duhamel) really. looks like a live actor on video in spots. What are some of the key technical improvements here that bring about this?
The goal of photo-realistic characters begins with capturing models and materials with accurate light response. We’ve invested heavily in a photography confirmation system that allows us to switch from photo settings to easily review technology and author status. Using this approach, we focus our technology investments in areas other than photo reference and character rendering. For example, one of the key areas of technology investment for us is accurate rendering of opacity. This is manifested in areas as simple as the way light is shown behind a character’s ears but also in our enemies creating translucent films on the skin.
The horror and tension in the demos really comes out. How much work has your audio team worked on the game and rendering technology to improve on this, and are they using any new techniques with new hardware, such as Tempest 3D Audio?
Sound is an important part of expressing horror, we wanted to give this a technological evolution as much as the rendering. We think of sound like a game feature.
Our goal is a physics-based acoustic model that represents both directional and interactive acoustics with geometry and materials. Traditionally, these models were too CPU intensive to perform quickly for real-time gaming. With new dedicated audio hardware in the new console, we now have the power to do this.
Sound alone gives us a tremendous sense of space even without the visual component. Doing this right will create more immersion in the game. We use sound to create fear and tension whenever possible.
What is the main area of the game that you are most proud of, is it gameplay, technology or something else?
I am very proud of the game that we have to offer. Whether it’s the lighting engineering, the immersive sound, or our combat gameplay, it’s hard to pick a favorite game. The team is what I’m most proud of. We built a new studio and IP during a global pandemic without compromising on quality. That takes real passion.
