Suggestion on how to improve the next sequel of KCD from a technical point of view

Hardware & System
#1

Hi guys,
I’d like to talk with you the possible future (even tough I’d prefer that it was the present or near future) that is TRULY NEEDED to keep the original promise of delivering KCD on all the major platforms we all know (and also by improving general performance):

  • Windows
  • Consoles: PlayStation/Xbox
  • Mac
  • Linux

The main goal would be to develop KCD by using another engine that is more reliable than the infamous CryENGINE that has a lot of difficulties for developers to develop in it (there is a joke around the engine that it is called this way because it makes you want to cry when you try to develop on it).
I’m not a developer yet, I’m studying for one day become it (so don’t take my words for granted because I’m not a veteran nor an expert) but from what I learned through reading many threads online today there are better engines compared to the CryENGINE, the most famous is the Unreal Engine 4 that could be a good solution to choose for the following motivations:

  • improving the performance in game

  • keeping a good quality of foliage/forests and in general good details of 3D objects

  • allowing an easier way to develop games for multi-platforms (for example I know that it’s almost impossible to develop games for Linux in CryENGINE because the engine doesn’t support it really well nor the devs that update the engine are interested in a better support for the moment, and then I suppose that is the same story for MAC)

  • Another good idea (this one is a big challenge because it’s really hard to develop on it because it’s still “new” for the industry) it would be to swap the API from DirectX to the new Vulkan API that supports all kind of platforms avaiable and also delivers a better performance among the available choices (and yes UE4 supports this type of API).

Do you think that Warhorse will continue to develop KCD next sequel with the CryEngine?
Do you think there are better choices available today to develop games?
Let me know what you think about it in the comments and maybe who knows one day someone from Warhorse studio will read this thread and remember that they wanted to deliver this game for all the platforms available.

P.S. Yes after I finish studying I’d love to work with them but first I need to finish studying computer science at university :smiley:

1 Like
#2

Not a developer, but I’ve a few friends that work in the industry…so I still don’t know anything. :laughing:

For KC2, I’d be happy if they moved to an engine that’s easier to work with, and provides less opportunity for the kind of development issues they’ve run into with KCD.

From a business/logistical standpoint, it would be a gamble for them…do they stick with the engine they’ve built custom processes for, and that they now have several years’ experience working with? Or do they take the leap and learn a new one, on the hope that bugfix and development will be easier? Correct me if I’m wrong, but at that point they wouldn’t be able to migrate any of their work from KDC, right?

I personally think that your reasoning is good for moving to UE4; I know they chose CE for the foliage, but if they’re breaking their game to the point that no one can see the foliage, trying to make it work…

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#3

Someone should create a meme with the devs saying how cool foliage is but because of poor performance no one can see it :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

#4

They will stick to CryEngine because they have adjusted it and another reason is both KCD & KCD2 will look similar, when you see a character from KCD appearing in KCD2, you will recognize it.

1 Like
#5

What do you mean with that? They’re not the devs of Crytek who develops the new versions of CryENGINE.

You don’t need the same engine to keep the same 3D models. Of course you could argue by saying that it’s not copy and paste to the new engine but that doesn’t mean that if you swap engines all characters will look different from an artistic point of view.

#6

Suggestion on how to improve the next sequel of KCD from a technical point of view- simple, grab the phone and ask todd howard if hes busy lolololol.

#7

Why Unreal Engine4?
Only more ambitious games that I know that they are running on UE4 are: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and ARK: Survival Evolved, and they have problems with performance and look like shit.
Perhaps there are better examples of games which have great performance and look nice (I can’t remember any now) on UE4.

I guess you have deeper understanding of engines in question, if you are proposing they should switch to UE4.

So what are the main disadvantages of Cryengine and advantages UE4, when developing open world RPG with innovative mechanics and nice graphics.

#8

Well what about Fortnite? It looks good and runs sooo good that even an Iphone/Nintendo Switch can run it. Of course you could respond by saying: well too easy Fortnite has a cartoonish graphic and the devs are the same who develops the UE4.
Well then how about Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice? Here is what the game on full settings can deliver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr_NpDq_1ME
It doesn’t look bad or am I wrong?

CryENGINE is one of the best engines for photo-realism but that comes with a poor rate quality/performance and bad multi-platforming across devices that aren’t windows systems (at least for the moment). So as the devs of WH said during the documentry: we picked CryENGINE because the forest was cool… You see now when someone only comment that about an engine it is probably that they didn’t like it 100%. More importantly when they started developing UE4 didin’t exist so I do understand their motivation back then.
On the other hand UE4 doesn’t have such high level of photorealism but it’s good enough in my opinion to be picked in order to deliver a better ratio between quality/performance among all of the platforms plus it supports the Vulkan API.
With that being said it will be a lot easier to just deliver another KCD sequel by using CryENGINE because you don’t have to convert all of your work to another engine but we will end up again sooner or later with people trash talking on how their latest super cool NVIDIA 5k series with an Intel/AMD CPU that has 300 cores (like the same amount of their chromosomes :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:) can’t achieve 12K 60 FPS at full settings.

#9

They can copy of course, the models will stay same, they import them from art editor programs anyways, the thing is, if they picked Unreal, they would make environment different, it would look different, because they can, but they chose CryEngine for nice visuals. They edited CryEngine with new tools, so they kind of post developed it. I do not know correct term.

#10

Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice characters were filmed by many cameras that also included one in front of their face, so they captured their emotion. It is nice and I will probably pick it up sometimes, but I saw gameplays and how did they make it, so really nice, but the visuals are really thanks to cameras.

#11

They chose it in 2011 (more or less) because back then only CryENGINE was “cool for forests” not for general visuals (they chose it for vegetation and country side) if you go watch the KCD documentary from gameumentary skip to 12:11 and you’ll see Viktor Boran the Lead Designer talking on how they intentionally avoided the other engines and how difficult it would be to develop in it.

Yes they modified it because the CryENGINE was meant only for FPS with a military based genre

I wasn’t talking about the face animation captured by many cameras (which WH did something similar by using motion capture for KCD but it’s another topic) I was referring to the vegetation that can be developed on UE4 and as an example I picked Hellblade by proving my point that are better choices compared back in 2011.
At the end of the day the lead designer chose this engine with the rest of the team just for fancy foliages (that consoles can’t even properly display because it’s a heavy rendering task for such low performance platforms).

#12

Forgot to answer sorry :sweat_smile:
A way to convert there is but I don’t know how easy it would be to convert everything (easy guessing it would take a lot of time and effort).
At the end of the day this is what happens when you are inexperienced (or just stubborn) to pick an engine cool for forests that doesn’t allow you to travel with your horse in Rattay without dropping from 90 fps to barely reaching 45 fps (I play with the lowest settings possible), and I forgot to mention but I remember when there was the mission where you had to fight inside the castle of sir Radzig where for the first time I reached 20 fps. It’s a nightmare thinking that the next KCD involves of fighting in big wars with probably more than 5 times the maximum number of people fighting simultaneously and having grass under your foot that requires extra rendering effort because it looks “too cool to be left aside”

#13

Maybe the UE4 Engine is not as good as CE regarding plants and trees, however it beat it by several length when it comes to stability.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYYfIYDqsDA

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#14

I’m not sure if there would be some adjustments in model orientation (like if both use the same axis for horiyontal/ forward bacward etc…)
But you would lose all materials and some textures as Cryengine and Unreal uses both different reflection approach (specular VS gloss)

That respond would be correct. Fortnite do not use realistic global illumination. Sky creates shadow that has the same intensity same all over the world (under a single tree or in a deep forest). That is then improved by Distance Field that makes surface close to another surface darker. Great for Fortnite, not amazingly realistic.

It looks great and I like the game. They could afford (I do not know but I’m sure they did) to use static lighting that is baked shadows into a special texture so you don’t have to simulate it every frame. That way you can simulate almost any complex lighting with bounce light and such for cost of a texture.
But there is a catch. Two at least:
Your shadow-casting lights cannot move (sun and sky, small like torch could be made movable).
Every object in the level has it’s unique shadow texture.

Those things practically makes this approach unusable for open world with dynamic day/night cycle. But ideal for “tunnels” games.

For open world gmaes Cryengine offers SVOTI (voxel based global illumination). Unreal does not have anything like that so far (though there are options like Nvidia VXGI, just not out of the box and I do not know much about them nor any game that uses that)

I’m not sure this is an engine issue. Consider that all the people around have their routine, decisions, layers of clothing and such.

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#15

Yes the engine was meant only for few NPCS to be rendered simultaneously, in KCD sequel it is possible that 200 Vs 200 people would fight in your screen and that wouldn’t be even comparable to what Rattay can offer for multiple NPC moving all together in a small area.

There could be a solution for that but it would mean taking the long run (for the better) by building they’re own engine like CD Projekt Red did for The Witcher 3 by developing the REDengine 3. That would be a great solution to the problem (yes I’m suggesting that WH need to build their engine) because CryENGINE it’s not “performance oriented”

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#16

When UE4 game runs poorly, it is not because the engine, and when game Cryengine game runs poorly it’s because of the engine?

Yes it has and I don’t find very impressive that UE4 can run well game which looks like this.

No it doesn’t look bad, it looks very good. But not very good example, it is linear game with closed environments and very few NPCs at the same time, look at Ryse: Son of Rome very similar type of game (with more NPCs and more epic scenes).

UE4 is actually one of the best engine for photorealism, but mostly for interior scenes with static lighting.

No, what Victor Bocan said was very simplified.
Something about choosing engine from Daniel Vavra’s blog:

“We were looking for a complete package which included engine with good tools, especially for the terrain editing and scripting, AI, some pretty lighting and a sophisticated animation system. Some engines offer all of this in one package (Cryengine) and some rely on 3rd party solutions (Havok Vision). Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. In the first example, you have everything under one roof for one price, but you might end up paying for something you don’t need. You also don’t have the choice to select the component that suits your game best if you’re not happy with the built-in one. In the second example, the initial price is lower and there is much more choice, but when you need everything anyway you may end up with a higher price, than the one for the complete package and lots of solutions from various providers may not work as well together. Even then there is a possibility that the option to choose different components to your liking will be more important than the final price.”

“We ended up with six different engines for evaluation and several middleware solutions for lighting, animations and AI. We were testing everything for two months (not long enough) and the final decision was not easy. I would have loved to work with the new younger developers like Unigine or Bitsquid, since one could easily see that they have a lot of talent and enthusiasm and what they provide looks great, but on the other hand we had to play it safe. Our game is going to be huge and we need proven and advanced tools from day one. I also liked the combo of Unreal + Enlighten lighting middleware which looks totally awesome (Enlighten was used in Battlefield 3), but it has its shortcomings when you have a game with realtime time of day changes and huge (huuuuge) environments.”

“In the end, we decided to go with CryEngine 3, because it has a little bit of everything we need. It has great tools for building large worlds, very impressive real-time lighting, great looking foliage, supports all the platforms we’re interested in, plus our lead artist worked at Crytek before leaving to come work with us, which is also a great advantage. For a game of our size and scope, CryEngine was (hopefully) the best choice. If we were developing a different game or had a different budget, our choice might have been different because all of the tech we tested had their strong points.”

I’m not saying developing on Cryengine was not problematic and maybe they encountered some problem and limitations of engine that made development difficult and resulted in the bad technical state of the game.
But development of game like Kingdom Come would by difficult on any engine and developing their own engine was not even an option.

You provided zero information that would suggest KCD would run good on UE4. I don’t have deeper knowledge about technical side of the engines, so I don’t know. But I’m quite interested in graphical side of engines and I can tell that I would look much worse (mainly because already mentioned dynamic global illumination).

3 Likes
#17

Yesterday, I entered the Rattay swordsmith’s place. He’s a firm believer in transparency. Accordingly, the building around us didn’t render until I was inside his store and had fully engaged him in the price of Herod’s sword. So as to be considerate and not overload my senses with too much detail, he sensibly retained his gummy bear textured face and clothing for a few seconds.

Some hours later I left the south to return to Pribyslavitz. The breath taking scenery was enhanced by the beautiful and abundant flowers and the ever so slight but detectable flashing of trees in the distance. Occasional stutter along the way was also a friendly game reminder that I need to trim my saves files.

By the time I had reached Rovna, dusk turned to darkness. The darkness there along with the starry sky was stark and captivating. The rain was an innovative touch. Though, as the rain was slightly pixelated, there’s still a little room for improvement.

So, what you may not know if WH studio gave a like to a tweet that Viktor was being sarcastic.
Blessed be Viktor’s sarcasm
God willing, the trees will keep looking cool

#18

Yes, the game is in bad technical state, we all know that.
And your point is?

#19

You presume to know relative performance even as WH doesn’t have a handle on its own engine implementation :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

In SDLC speak, WH qualification/stress testing was inadequate, and we (especially console users) are paying the price

#20

Where did I state that?

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