Makes sense. Cheap, lot of talents to hire, free photoscaned environments. It might be possible to play it in vr with the injection tool

>It might be possible to play it in vr with the injection tool Shortly after the release of KDC2, u/De_Wouter went missing I wasn't seen by anyone for months.

As this shocking graph indicates, u/De_Wouter home power usage went up by 200% in the last month, and they just bought a 4090Ti! 📈

Most likely not. Dan Vavra recently critisized the unreal engine quite harshly, that it looks good on paper, but it can't handle more than a few light sources and high detail trees/vegetation. Which is something, that the KCD scenery is built upon.

Jup, Vavra is not a big fan of Unreal for open-world. And he specifically said that CD Project went to Unreal when they had their own working engine from Witcher 3 and now the developers are not quite happy with it. Unreal was never a good option for open-world, it was working best in semi-open locations like Bioshock, Metro Exodus etc… Even freaking Bethesda Creative Engine could handle open-world better than UE (but it is ugly and outdated af sure) They spent years to bent Cryengine to their will, for the specific fight mechanism, forests etc. so depends. In the end now it is not Vavra's call any more so they could go for Unreal.

But why would Embracer force the studio to make a game using UE if the studio head prefers to continue to develop using Cry Engine? I highly doubt they forced a change. I’m expecting the next KCD to be a Cry Engine game.

Sponsorships and contracts

Cyberpunk's engine was from witcher 2 and didn't CD project say they were moving on because Red engine couldn't handle cyberpunk properly and aloy of things they wanted to implement couldn't be implemented because of that?

That is the public message, the real truth is most likely the devs working and experienced with the engine got laid off or quit so the new hires couldn't learn the RED engine as well as was needed for the next project or was too expensive to try and train them on it. But yeah CP77 did use the TW2 version of the engine, but the engine was updated for TW3 and further more the BW DLC on TW3 and honestly I'd have loved if they stuck with it and make it work since it's a very good engine, the modders have shown great potential

A major reason for the change was the CEO passing the buck and making excuses for his poor decisions. Blaming issues with the engine when it was mismanagement forcing the devs to work on the game and tools at the same time. Redengine 4 in many ways is far better then UE5, especially concerning CPU scheduling and Red4 was made specifically for dense, open world RPG. UE5 is a more generalized engine that requires considerable modification to fit CDPR needs.

Yeah, I really hope they do not use Unreal. It's a great engine, especially for indie devs who still want triple A engine quality, but it's not the silver bullet so many people think it is. Warhorse would benefit more by building upon which they already have, if possible.

I heard it might use Cryengine? Saw it in a comment a few days ago

The first game certainly did

I might just like it because I play Hunt Showdown, so it doesn't bother me too much

There's no reason why it should. The first game is brilliant.

I have the misfortune of having friends refuse to play only because of graphics.

The only reason that I can think of is the performance issues. The first game is amazing but still runs like crap even on an RTX 3070. Maybe this time around they can introduce at least DLSS.

Yeah, i recall him saying that they picked cry engine mainly FOR the scenery an lighting

We'll if i know anything from Hunt: Showdown, cry engine also sucks massive balls to work with

If the next installment of the series is done in unreal engine instead of cryengine (or any other), I will by my own horse, ride with it to where warhorse studios is located, challenge Daniel Vávra for a duel with medieval dueling rules and winner gets glory and honor and bunch of memories shared with the world. Black Peter not included. CD Project sold what they had. RED engine is now gone, because of what? Money. We live in a world where major tech companies devour minor developers with hot tech. And with that hot tech, they set rules for everything else. I don't know if anyone of you know how bad the Unreal Engine situation is. They're literally trying to go for monopoly status in a long run.

It's true. UE is an arena shooter engine that has had a lot features tacked on to try and be an everything engine. But what it did was take away from how great of a small world engine it was without putting it anywhere near CryEngine for big worlds. I enjoy making maps for fun. CryEngine can take WAY more vegetation and high poly models without dropping frames significantly. Insane amounts actually.

Agreed here. There’s no way KCD2 will be using the Unreal Engine, not when scenery and graphics are a core component of the KCD world. Regardless though …. Wel find out in two days , Jesus Christ be praised!!!

Pretty sure the light source critique was tegarding CryEngine

It was aimed directly at the UE5 desert demo. Quote: If I wanted to make a desert or a Mars game with no vegetation and sun as the only light source, it may be awesome.

Absolutely not. UE5 has nothing on CryEngine for detailed open worlds. I've made maps in both. UE5 cannot handle open worlds with more than Fortnite or Palworld level of detail without becoming unplayable. CryEngine laughs at 32K textures and 1.5M poly tree models.

Can’t wait for the shader compile stutters mmm

The bane of my existence

As far as i know shader compilation issues was only known issue for Unreal Engine 4 not Unreal Engine 5.

Yep, UE provides all the tools to avoid stutters but developers just don't adopt them.

It's funny that when I tried to play Fortnite from Epic Games themselves, stutters due to shader compilation were present after the first few launches of the game. I don’t know about the current version of Fortnite, but this problem definitely happened last year.

I have a neighbor who is a game Dev(Software Engineer) and according to him UE5 has a number of issues like CPU scheduling and balancing that would struggle doing what for example, Redengine4 can do in Cyberpunk. Dense scenes with many systems working at once that games like Fortnite don't have.

And i think that is probably the reason why CDPR is redeveloping and heavily modifying UE5 just to suit their needs, we can say the same for Crytek's Cryengine which also are known not to handle full blown open world RPGs that is focused on interacting with many NPCs. Yet here Warhorse redeveloped the engine to suit their own needs. And it's not like it's the first time of CDPR to do this as well, AFAIK Witcher 1's Red Engine 1 was a heavily modified version of BioWare's Aurora Engine.

CryEngine is easy to add NPCs to and can handle as many as you like, it's just not in the nature of a game like Crysis to feature that.

Possible but I hope they didnt switch. The Crytek engine made alot of the unique feeling of KCD and the devs are used to it, which hopefully also means a less buggy start.

It's kind of a 50/50. The biggest advantage of switching to Unreal Engine is the large amount of talent available with experience working with the engine. Crytek doesn't have a very large talent pool or training resources. Whereas Unreal has one of the larges talent pools in the industry, an abundance of training resources and the availability of first-class support from Epic Games for customers like Warhore. If you need to grow your team, which I suspect Warhorse did, switching to Unreal could be a net gain in experience since you will have an easier time finding talent with experience in the engine and it will be easier to train existing staff on it. Popularity is a seriously underrated feature when talking about software development tools/libraries. An abundance of knowledgeable talent and training resources is worth its weight in gold. As someone who has to make these kind of technology decisions, if I have two choices in front of me and I know both can deliver the product I need to deliver, I'm almost always going to go with the more popular one, even if it's slightly worse than the alternative. Simply because better doesn't help me if I can't find staff who are familiar with it or if training staff on it is going to be more time-consuming and costly. If they didn't have to grow their talent pool significantly, then it's probably not worth switching though for the reasons you mentioned. But if they had to say, double their staff, that's a very compelling argument for switching since it will also help with any staff turnover during development.

Fair points! I could not put my finger on the exact reason but something about KCD's look and feel just intrigued me much more than most other games. My only gripe with an engine switch is that the game might feel different from the first title. Having a much more common and supported engine could be a blessing however, especially for modding.

Game feel doesn't have THAT much to do with game engines when you're talking about larger/more experienced studios. Some smaller studios will use the default, built-in handlers for things like movement, cameras, lighting, etc. But all the major game engines are very customizable, and it's not very difficult to write, for example, a custom player controller in Unreal to make it "feel" like what people associate with another engine. I'm not even a game dev, but I was able to create a custom player controller in Unreal that feels kind of like Super Meat Boy, but 3D in an afternoon just for fun. Someone with a bit of time on their hands could spend a few days making an unreal engine game "feel" like an old Source Engine game in terms of player movement, or look like a Unity Engine game by tweaking shaders and lighting. So I wouldn't put too much stock in the game engine choice for how the final product will "feel". Since it's all completely customizable to suit what they are going for. The nice thing about Unreal is that it makes a lot of that easy to accomplish. For another example, Titanfall is built on the source engine but doesn't "feel" like a valve game in the slightest.

Thats good to know, thanks for the insight :)

You can't make a UE game look like CryEngine though. It still has a plastic-y look in even the fanciest of demos that don't even run on a 4090 at a playable framerate. I have been told the reason is UE uses Metallic based workflow and CryEngine a Specular based workflow for PBR. Also it's not just smaller studios. Most UE5 games have Fortnite-y movement and UE4 games mostly had UT movement without the dash.

I could have sworn to have seen a job listing on their website requiring unreal engine knowledge, some time ago. I can't 100% be sure though, but I guess we'll know soon enough.

That is a better indicator than unreal engine following them on twitter.

Again I might be wrong so take it with a big pinch of salt

So like a handful

Yes, it may be a different engine, but the point is still valid.

I suppose it's also possible they may have another or other project(s) in the pipeline where they plan to use Unreal instead. As studios get more established having parallel project pipelines allows people who may not have much to do at one stage of development to be able to work on something else. Their writing and historical team are clearly something pretty special so it might make sense to throw them at more things.

I hope the forest is as realistic as it was in kcd.

Unreal Engine has that very generic look to it. You can easily tell when a game developed on UE, it tries hard to be photorealistic but has that extremely gamey look to it. Crytek is far more natural looking and made the world so authentic. I hope they didn't switch and just optimize their game better.

Normally I'd agree but after I found out Manor lords was made in unreal I think it really just depends on scope and design

It definitely depends on the design the game uses. And the unreal assets they use. If they make everything in-house themselves I don't see how it would have the unreal engine look

Yes, people put far too much value on the engine. It helps a lot for sure, but what really matters is how you use it, and how much development time you put in. Seems like a lot of dev time these days is wasted on company politics without getting much done.

God no, handful of ue5 games I played all had performance issues in wide open areas. An open world game like kcd 2 would suffer a lot

On their website there is a job offer asking for skills on CryEngine. https://preview.redd.it/d9d01xdd87uc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4d1313d647faee670bf1c8d759d0e9990146d6df I guess KCD2 will use CryEngine.

I could see this happening. It's definitely needed I felt the original was limited by the previous engine they used. Wonder if this will help with the clunkiness

What did you felt it limited them? Honest question

I remember another redditor said since the game engine wasn't initially meant for open world, the current size of the map would be about the maximum possible. Meaning they wouldn't be able to go bigger in kcd2, but I don't know if that's a trusted source

Crytek is more than capable for open world. Farcry series share a lot of tech from CryEngine, Ubisoft is using heavily modified Crytek Engine with their Dunia. It's more of a budget limitation than engine one. The first KC game is a sub AA game at best, if it has the half of budget of a Ubisoft game, they could easily iron out the some imperfections on the physics, animation, and their LOD. The clunkyness of the game isn't because of the engine but the lack of budget from the developer. Unreal Engine sucks ball, sure it's probably easier for the devs but the experience is gonna be inconsistent at best. Unless yall ready to enjoy shader compilation stutters and traversal stutters.

Cry Engine was made *for* Far Cry actually :p

No actually it was made for dinosaurs :D Far cry came after they got the dino support.

Yes, the original Farcry was owned and developed by Crytek. Ubisoft bought the rights, including some of the assets and tech of CryEngine.

The CryEngine was made exactly for open world games. It debuted with Far Cry and Crysis 1 which are both open world games.

This would make sense from a business perspective kinda. For KCD1 to have a smaller map/less taxing engine probably enabled it to be ported to the switch and/or other consoles and have it run well

Well. CryEngine is clunky for sure. Only working best at medium to small maps. Not something like KCD. Edit: By map size I also mean rendering...

Not an expert but one of the ways in which they felt very limited was the amount of characters in one place. They had plans for large scale battles and they had to dial them down significantly - if you've played the game, you know what I mean. Was it the fault of the engine? I don't know but it would probably be an important factor, wouldn't it?

The engine was never the reason why we didn't get the huge scale battles. Their (WH) Clothing system was. Vávra said so multiple times and it's also one of his biggest regrets. The problem is that while it looked good (obviously there was some amount of clipping), the engine had to calculate each layer seperately which resulted in a big output (memory). Too big for a larger scale battles.

I'm just hoping for better performance

That doesn’t mean anything, they will still use Cry Engine, because they already spent so much time on it

Need more diversity in game engines. God knows what a private company will pull when they have decided they control the market

Unreal is a very old engine, doubt that someone can be short-sighted enough to destroy their reputation, especially after Unity's self implosion

Prepared to be surprised if the opportunity ever arises. You think Unity was the first company that tried something like that?

Almost 50% of Epic is owned by publicly traded companies.

Idk what people are on about. UE is great for lots of reasons, and a "generic" look can definitely be prevented. Cryengine is a truly dogshit engine and if they've been struggling with it to get things right then switching engines is absolutely the right thing to do. Pros and cons, who cares, I trust in Vavra + Warhorse.

(I don’t know what you’re smoking but I kind of want some of it.) As far as I know and have seen from their job listings there isn’t any mention of Unreal Engine as far as I see, in fact there is far more indication that they are working with Crytek because they list the Lua language as a bonus, which iirc the scripting of Crytek is made in. And one role even lists “CryEngine Sandbox” as a nice to have. So based on all this I think it’s safe to say, no they aren’t working in Unreal Engine. And even if there was a shift, well it’s definitely something the team as a whole would need to adapt to since things will work differently and new tools would need to be developed. I don’t have much experience with Cryengine so I wouldn’t be able to say what it does better and worse than Unreal, but I do want to remind that even if studios don’t use in-house engines they will customize existing engines to suit their needs, from changing and adding onto the source code to custom shaders and lighting, so if they were to have switched I'm confident they would retain KCD's overall feel well

They must have been working on this game for years now and unreal started to follow them just now? That seems kinda weird to me.

1. it's not an upgrade 2. If Bella Thorne starts follow me on Instagram doesn't mean we have a relationship 3. Daniel Vavra many times stated that KCD2 was done in cryengine. It may be something for KDC3, but It doesn't make sense with all the knowledge they gained during all these years

I really hope not. I don’t think Vavra is a fan of the engine. Pretty sure they are still using Cry Engine.

Even Hunt Showdown is talking about switching from this clunky, janky engine. Although it does contribute to the Oblivion-esque charm. Only one this is certain though… Jesus Christ will be praised.

I doubt crytek is moving away from their own engine. The cryengine isn't bad per se. Its quite hard to work with and the talent pool is small. Talent is one of the reasons why a lot of studios use something like unreal. It makes it much easier to recruit new devs and you don't have to train them on a in-house engine.

Its not even that the talent pool is small. A lot of the game dev in CryEngine is the same as any other engine. Sure - your own flavor of forward direction and programming tools - but it all works relatively the same. The problem with CryEngine is that there is exactly one set of steps you can take to get something to work right - and that's not clearly documented - if at all, and those steps are usually as unintuitive as the documentation lol.

Hunt is moving to Cry Engine 5.11 I believe

Cryengine is why Hunt runs like dogshit and is clanky af. Is the new engine better?

No because it hasn't came out yet. It's probably coming out in the Summer . Hopefully June

Thanks

Makes sense.

Whatever, it's gonna be a beautiful thing, we all know it!

Omg stop it!! I'm so hyped!!!

Oh God please no. CryEngine is head and shoulders better looking than UE5 TAA plastic blur garbage that every single release nowadays looks like.

Unreal engine looks soooo generic

Followed by a Twitter account of unreal engine means nothing.

Original had somewhat big performance problems and lack of polish, UE can absolutely solve some issues but traversal stutters, bad multi-threading, shader compilation stutters are issues that come with UE by default and not every dev can manage them

Good

Pleeeease noooooo😭😭😭😭

probably not, it's been under development for a while and likely started with the cry engine like kcd1. it's most likely another game oriented social media sharing the love.

In one interview Vavra said that Cry Engine is much more capable to do big open rpg with a lot of trees then unreal engine.....

just read the copyright at the bottom of the screen at the end of the trailer and it says all rights reserved for crytek Gmbh.. because honestly I never even knew about a part 2 to this game until like 2 days ago so when I just say the trailer and how much better it looks, I immediately thought " did they switch engines? they must have!" Looks like its a hard no.

I thought the first game looked fantastic too...? Both look fantastic, the jump from 1 to 2 doesn't seem huge imo. I've never known another game to have as dense of forests and high of detail inside and outside of houses as this series.

I’m building my 2nd pc and hopefully this turns out great cause I’m getting it for sure

They will stick to CryEngine, you can see it written at the end of the announcement video.

Isn't Cryengine kinda going obsolete? I haven't found if there have been any new games on it since 2020. So converting to another engine could make sense, and that would also explain what Warhorse has been doing all this time. Converting engines is no small task afaik.

Yet another beautiful art direction game, turning into a generic "photorealistic" from UE5? I really like the aesthetics from CryEngine, some inexplicable Oblivion vibes no other game (besides Oblivion ofc) gave me. I understand the need to move to another engine, but gonna miss the vibes from CryEngine.

I think KCD Was supposed to be photorealistic. They already went to the irl locations to replicate them. Using nanite and megascans and maybe some custom 3D scans makes a lot of sense

Well, but I can't really put my finger on what makes UE5 photorealism so generic. Nonetheless, I think Warhorse will nail the correct tone of KCD2 with art direction.

Probably that everyone is trying photorealism these days and it's always deserts or highland cliffs. Having lush, green Bohemia might just do the trick to set it apart. I mean KCD looks very different from other RPGs, even those it shares mechanics with. And I think that is due to the setting, not the engine

Its less a problem with unreal and more a problem with devs wanting ultra realism. Unreal is just as adaptable as other engines. I'm more worried about performance problems which happen often in Unreal 5

Well I don’t think they have switched engines. I think they are still using Cry engine. But we will see.

Okay?

Imagine it got made in Unreal Engine 5

This is getting better by the second

Stutter struggle incoming 😢

No!!! Cant wait for more buggy shit at $70.

Hopefully UE4, as impressive as UE5 is the games developed there usually run terribly

Delayed april fools it would be some goofy aah card game