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Considering their size (a few hundred people for the whole studio AFAIK), Remedy consistently punches above their weight when it comes to graphics. Off the top
by kg 3y ago
Considering their size (a few hundred people for the whole studio AFAIK), Remedy consistently punches above their weight when it comes to graphics. Off the top of my head only Remedy and CD Projekt Red are able to compete with the big dogs (Unreal, Unity, EA Frostbite) when it comes to image fidelity and performance. Their GDC/siggraph/etc presentations are fantastic for anyone interested in computer graphics or technical art.
Alan Wake 2 is easily one of the most beautiful (from a technical perspective - IMO also from an artistic one but that's a 100% subjective thing) games ever released and it still looks good even when you turn all the settings down, which is a true achievement. It's hard to make a game scale down to older hardware while still looking good.
Though as commentators like Digital Foundry have noted, the game runs really badly if your GPU doesn't support Mesh Shaders (they mention the use of those for culling in the article). Mesh Shaders in this case enable a lot of really smart culling and dynamic level of detail so that things like coffee cups or tires can be perfectly round without having the 'every NPC has 10k-poly teeth in their mouth' problem that's currently sabotaging Cities Skylines 2's performance, and this is one of the big advantages offered by Unreal 5's Nanite.
- dharma1 3y agoSome extremely good GPU devs in Finland, demoscene prob has a lot to do with it. Remedy rocks. Isn’t CD Projekt Red moving to UE5 for future titles? Shame, Cyberpunk was gorgeous - would have loved a multiplayer game with that engine.
- capableweb 3y agoFunnily enough, both Colossal Order (Cities: Skylines 2 devs) and Remedy are Finnish companies, yet only one suffers from GPU performance issues.
- dharma1 3y agoOne is a small company developing a city builder in Unity, the other are ex demoscene GPU gods building a custom state-of-the-art engine themselves. Nuff said!
- spywaregorilla 3y ago> would have loved a multiplayer game with that engine. this strikes me as an extremely silly statement. Their engine doesn't seem to have multiplayer.
- dharma1 3y agoREDengine doesn’t do multiplayer at the moment, but it could in the future if they kept developing it / more games with it. I’m sure they’ll make great games with Unreal too
- xu_ituairo 3y agoYour reply would have been a lot nicer without the first sentence
- spywaregorilla 3y agothat's ok
- rstat1 3y agoOnly for the next Witcher series. Cyberpunk 2 (w/e it ends up being called) is still on their in house engine. (Don't ask me for a source, I don't remember where I saw that info)
- justinclift 3y ago> Cyberpunk 2 (w/e it ends up being called) is still on their in house engine. How sure of that are you? There are several reports that the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 will be using UE5 as well. As in, CD Projekt Red have purposely switched all future projects to UE5. * https://screenrant.com/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-dlc-launch-release/ https://screenrant.com/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-dlc-la... * https://kotaku.com/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-expansion-unreal-engine-1850789686 https://kotaku.com/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-expansion-...
- rstat1 3y agoOk then they changed it. At one point it was still on the in house engine.
- justinclift 3y agoNo worries. :)
- daemin 3y agoI can confirm that all future games at CD Projekt RED will be using Unreal Engine. Unless of course something changes during the development of the next Witcher game and they decide to go back to RED Engine.
- justinclift 3y agoThanks. :)
- fennecfoxy 3y agoDo people still trust CDPR? I bought 2020 when it came out and was incredibly disappointed at the unoptimised buggy shitshow that it was. I'd waited for it since it was first announced, and am even into the genre enough to feel a little angry buzz in the back of my head at how much that franchise (obviously including the RP game) rips off Stephenson/Gibson etc. Have they pulled a No Man's Sky, since, or something?
- z3phyr 3y agoYes, there are still bugs, but Cyberpunk is actually great now, and the new expansion Phantom Liberty is chef's kiss.
- fennecfoxy 3y agoHmmm, maybe I'll have to give it another try sometime then! Although I'm starting to prefer retro games, great modern releases are so few, now.
- simbolit 3y agoRemedy has 360 employees. CDPR has 1236 employees. DICE (makers of Frostbite) has 714 employees. Epic has 2200 employees (before the recent layoffs). all numbers from Wikipedia.
- jguegant 3y agoFrostbite is its own sub-company within the E.A umbrella. While Frostbite is used by the titles from DICE and we share parts of our offices, the two companies are rrally distinct for a couple of years now. Frostbite had roughly 300 employees when I joined 2 years ago.
- simbolit 3y agoThanks for correcting me, I am just an idiot with a Wikipedia addiction.
- treprinum 3y agoRemedy are basically Future Crew famous for Unreal/Second Reality (demo). Who else should push GPU to its limits than the ones who defined/popularized modern computer graphics?
- Centigonal 3y agoIf you haven't seen Second Reality, it's definitely worth a watch, even as a historical artifact. Pushing the limits of what was possible in 1993. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFv7mHTf0nA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFv7mHTf0nA
- Flow 3y agoHere's a 60fps video of the same demo. The demo-sceners work really hard to make everything 60fps(1 vbl), so watching it in any other frame-rate feels wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw17c70uJes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw17c70uJes
- phs2501 3y agoNitpicky: for a lot of parts that would have actually been 70Hz (from the 320x200 VGA mode 13h), and having run the demo back in 1993 it definitely was not as smooth as in the video above on my 486/66MHz (and the Pentium had only been out for a few months at the time).
- katbyte 3y agoShame I won’t be able to play it as it’s only on the epic game store, which I refuse to use
- kevingadd 3y agoThe console versions are quite good
- squidsoup 3y agoI usually can't stand playing anything at 30fps, but the combat and pacing are deliberately slow in Alan Wake II, and I've been surprised how little it has bothered me (quality mode on PS5).
- eddythompson80 3y agowhy?
- p1necone 3y agoNot OP, but after getting used to Steam and GOG I don't really want to use anything that doesn't have text reviews.
- eddythompson80 3y agoThat's fair, as it's your preference. It's my preference too to use steam just because it's where I have the most games and I like keeping things tidy and in 1 place. Though it's not an ideological stance, which "refuse" leads me to believe. I'm genuinely curious about the reason an adult would take that position. Last time I asked (a couple of years ago) on Reddit I didn't get, ummm, mature responses. If there is a game I'm interested in, I'd use whatever is cheaper/available for it.
- shinymark 3y agoI agree with you. I want to play Alan Wake 2 on PC and since it is only sold on the Epic Store I will buy it there. If it was on Steam I would have likely bought it on Steam. But it’s not. So in my case at least, this exclusive is effectively driving me to buy on the Epic Store. I find it sort of funny that many (not all) complaints about the Epic Store are the same things gamers complained about when Steam was released 20 years ago.
- boppo1 3y ago>Alan Wake 2 is easily one of the most beautiful (from a technical perspective - IMO also from an artistic one but that's a 100% subjective thing) games ever released I just don't see it. Looks like RE2make to me. And as far as art direction Dishonored 2/DOTO are dramatically better looking
- wilg 3y agoI see it!
- stuckinhell 3y agoCapcom's engine is extremely impressive especially the fact it can handle extremely beautiful triple AAA games then they can also go around and port old nintendo DS games as well.
- capableweb 3y ago> without having the 'every NPC has 10k-poly teeth in their mouth' problem that's currently sabotaging Cities Skylines 2's performance Sad to see an otherwise good comment end with a misconception. The problems with the performance is much grander than just "teeth rendered but not visible" (https://blog.paavo.me/cities-skylines-2-performance/ https://blog.paavo.me/cities-skylines-2-performance/), although I guess it's a illustrative point. Missing LODs and lack of culling are the grander issues.
- lloeki 3y ago> Missing LODs and lack of culling That is the exact start of the sentence of which you quoted the end of: > Mesh Shaders in this case enable a lot of really smart culling and dynamic level of detail
- Sharlin 3y ago"Teeth rendered but not visible" is just saying "missing lods and lack of culling" in a rhetorically more effective way. I don't think anybody thinks it's the teeth specifically causing the perf issues, they're merely a concrete example.
- dymk 3y agoThe article you linked specifically points out how expensive and unoptimized the teeth are. I'm not sure why you linked it, if it undermines the point you're trying to make?
- sundvor 3y agoThis article was just discussed here, might be a better link? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38153573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38153573
- Cu3PO42 3y agoInsomniac Games (Spider-Man (2), Ratchet&Clank: Rift Apart) and Guerilla Games (Horizon Forbidden West) also both have amazing looking engines.
- Centigonal 3y agoRemedy was started by Demoscene hackers, including a bunch of Future Crew folks. You can draw a pretty clean line from the incredible Second Reality demo[1] in 1993 to Alan Wake 2 thirty years later. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw17c70uJes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw17c70uJes
- pixelpoet 3y agoNot to mention crucial middleware like Umbra visibility, the development of Nvidia's RTX, an AI revolution or two, ... As I've commented before on HN, honestly I could write a small book about these Finnish demoscene gods.
- pjbeam 3y agoIf you do please advertise it on HN. I'll buy a copy.
- dharma1 3y agoyou should!
- qiine 3y ago> development of Nvidia's RTX like convincing Nvidia that dedicating silicon to RT calc was worth it, or writing part of the acceleration structures they use now ?
- pixelpoet 3y agoSome key publications, already quite old: https://research.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/pubs/2009-08_Understanding-the-Efficiency/aila2009hpg_paper.pdf https://research.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/pubs/2009-08... https://research.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/pubs/2012-06_Maximizing-Parallelism-in/karras2012hpg_paper.pdf https://research.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/pubs/2012-06... https://research.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/pubs/2013-07_Megakernels-Considered-Harmful/laine2013hpg_paper.pdf https://research.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/pubs/2013-07...
- Sharlin 3y agoYou don't exactly need Mesh Shaders or any other state-of-the-art techniques to cull 99% of C:S2's polys. Just some simple stuff that games have done since the 90s.