Unreal Engine 5 demo video

[Redlynne]

Unreal Engine 5 Revealed! | Next-Gen Real-Time Demo Running on PlayStation 5

Edited May 14, 2020 by Redlynne

[ArchVileTerror]

That's making my stomach churn.  I thought videos of over-hype like this died out a couple of generations ago.  ugh

 

Edit:  He's annoying some times (most of those times), but frankly . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_tUYiK-0IM Jim Sterling hits a few points which sum up my feelings pretty well.  This tech demo isn't really anything -new- . . . it's just more iterations of the same old cycle.  I don't want photo-realism from my games; I want an enjoyable experience!  I do understand that not all resources are equal, of course . . . but there's something to be said about plunking down thousands of dollars on a graphics engine, and then even more cash and work hours to "live up to" that engine's "full potential."

And what's to be said is:  "ugh"

 

Maybe I've just seen behind the veil too much.  The horrid downward spiral which the cycle of new "upgrades" in hardware or rendering brings about.  It used to be that I just wasn't very interested, but lately it actively makes me grow weary.

Edited May 15, 2020 by ArchVileTerror
Additional Sterling.

[nihilii]

^ I'm as excited as you are disappointed, haha. I think the workflow upgrades they're talking about are incredibly exciting for developers - and by extension, for the players; as less time spent on dumb stuff ought to mean better games.

 

Baking lights, counting triangles... These are the kind of dumb optimizations no human should ever think again, and yet most devs have to lose hours on it (more like thousands of hours than dozens, when all is said and done).

Current conventional wisdom for level design is so inefficient. You build the level in white blocks, take care of the gameplay, then make several art passes until the environment looks proper. Human nature being what it is, the mort art passes you make, the less likely you'll throw everything away even if it turns out later on the gameplay just doesn't work.

This is why modded levels from old Doom and Quake (built directly in BSP, which is like whiteblocking from start to finish) play so much better than many modern games. It's not just the base games being great, it's also that this traditional BSP workflow allows for constant iteration on the gameplay loop until things actually work right. Room is too small? Draw the vertices around and you've carved out additional space in just a few seconds, without distorting the looks. Level designers get feedback from testers and architectural changes can happen quick even post release.

I see UE5 as a glimmer of hope we might see a return to sanity in that regard.

[ArchVileTerror]

-Maybe- the engine will deliver on some of those promises, but I honestly don't think it will have as much as a positive impact on workflow as some are hoping.

And efficiency and optimization are still VERY important.  Just because an engine can allow a dev team to be sloppy, doesn't mean they -should- be.  For example, Darkest Dungeon is a fantastic game, with a beautiful aesthetic that doesn't require a lot of processor power . . . in theory.  But the game is so poorly optimized that is ravenously chews through active memory like some kind of shambling monster.  Shortcuts are only beneficial if the trade off doesn't end up causing more severe issues, as far as I'm concerned.  Bloat is a horrible, horrible thing that needs to be carefully pruned.