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When it comes to making a new game, a significant development choice is deciding between an in-house proprietary engine or one of the established and well-supported game development platforms. In the case of Amazing Remote Studios and the upcoming game Callisto Protocol, the team opted for the latter – specifically Unreal Engine version 4.27.
I had the opportunity to speak with Mark James, Chief Technical Officer of Strike Remote Studios, to discuss the business and development side of making a new game, why and how Unreal has helped, and some of the improvements the team has made to the engine.
IGN: With the huge challenge of building a new studio and team, how has the use of Unreal Engine been instrumental in your three-year schedule?
Mark James, CTO, Remote Studios: Starting with an engine that has loaded hundreds of games is a huge advantage. Workflows and tools are widely understood and experience using Business Engine makes hiring easy. Depending on the needs of the product, you’ll always want to make some changes to the base engine, and we’ve decided on the key areas we want to improve on first. We didn’t do this in isolation, we regularly communicated with Epic on these changes to simplify the integration. When you start a project, you want to consult with Epic about the best way to take engine drops in the development cycle and make their changes very easy.
You use Unreal’s Simple Demolitions System and adapt this to Callisto’s protocol. What are some of these customizations, and does this extend to the fragmentation system in the game?
This was an environment we created from scratch. We knew we wanted a gore system that hit all the elements of a great horror game. Our Gore system combines bleeding, slicing and cutting to create the most accurate system possible. We want Gore to be a nutritional health bar that represents actual flesh, muscle, and bone damage for each enemy. Not only was this used against enemies, but we also used it to represent a gory playful death. Even losing in Callisto’s protocol is a visual feast!
The game uses ray tracing for some of its visual elements. Can you share if these are lighting and shadow based elements from Unreal Engine 5 or did you go in a different direction?
It was important to us to achieve a physically consistent model of light and shadow throughout the game. Contrast and compression make for great horror.
Using a distance of 20 meters based on the corridor, we found that about eight lights can influence the environment. Unfortunately, we found that UE4 was limited to four shade-generating lights, so we first worked on modifying the engine so that we could support a larger number of lights at a lower cost.
At the time we looked at the UE4 ray tracing solution and found that the number of shadows we wanted to create, we had to create our own solution. So instead, we created a hybrid ray tracing shader solution that applies ray-based shadow detailing to areas of the screen that are important to overall scene quality.
UE5 took a very different approach to lighting with Lumen that didn’t fit the indoor corridor model we wanted for gaming, but I’ve been very impressed with the quality of UE5 displays so far.
As this is 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 generation of consoles in mind. We want to focus on the advanced hardware features that these consoles offer. We’ve embraced technologies such as spatial audio, lightning-fast storage, and of course GPUs with ray tracing capabilities.
That said, we’ve always taken a scalable content generation approach to ensure we’re able to deliver a game that looks and sounds great no matter what generation you’re playing on.
Did previous generation versions present key obstacles to overcome?
The biggest change for the new consoles was the speed of the storage device. With the SSD in these new consoles we can have seamless loading into the game.
Bringing this back to the previous generation’s slower HDD was the biggest design challenge. We have to figure out where to put loading sizes and in some cases load screens that we don’t need in the current genre.
Do you plan to extend the console and/or PC versions with any other technical boosts beyond ray tracing, mounting, and possibly frames? For example, do you have a dense geometry or for current generation machines?
As a team we want to get the most out of whatever hardware specification is given to us. We represented more material detail, geometric density and light interplay than any of our previous projects. One of the goals we had at the beginning of the project was “Every step was different. We wanted to represent the world they lived in and showed a functional design of a space prison. This means investing in kit-based geometry and a complex material system that represents the difference.
You mentioned that you included Unreal Engine 5 elements in your UE 4.27 requirement. Can you please share any details on these?
As we worked to finalize TCP on UE4, we looked at areas of UE5 that we thought would be useful for both development iterations and new console features. Epic helped us bring some of these features back into our custom built engine. There are a lot of small improvements and workflow improvements that have helped over the last few months, with no major components that stand out.
Character models, post effects, and the overall look of characters, facial expressions, and movement are superior to almost all games, with the main character Jacob (Josh Duhamel) looking like a live actor on video at points. What are some of the key technical improvements you are offering this?
The goal of photo-realistic characters begins with capturing the models and materials in the correct response to light. We’ve invested heavily in a shot proofing system that allows you to switch from photo editing to easily assess the technology and author status. Using this approach, we focused technology investment on areas that differed from photo reference and character rendering. For example, one of the key areas for our technology investment is the right interpretation approach. This can be seen in simple areas with how light is represented behind a character’s ears, but when our enemies have clear skin coverage.
The horror and tension in the demos really comes out. How much has your audio team worked with gaming and audio technology to improve this and are you using new techniques with new hardware like Tempest 3D Audio?
Audio is an important part of delivering horror, and we want to give it that much technological advancement. We think of audio as a game feature.
Our goal was a physically based sound model that represented both directional sound and sound interaction through geometry and materials. Typically, these models are too CPU-intensive to run quickly for real-time gaming. With the new audio hardware in the new consoles, we now have the power to do this.
Sound alone, even without a visual component, gives us an incredible sense of space. Getting this right creates great immersion in the game. We use sound to create as much fear and tension as possible.
What is the key area of the game that you are most proud of, be it gameplay, technology or something else?
There’s a lot to be proud of in the game we’ve put together. Whether it’s our lighting techniques, immersive audio or combat gameplay, it’s hard to pick a favorite. It’s a team I’m very proud of. We built a studio and new IP in the global pandemic. All regardless of quality. That takes true love.
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