December 23rd Livestream Transcription
– Intrepid Studios provides a large milestone development update, including upgrading the game engine
Quick Updates:
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- Ashes of Creation will officially be moving from UE4 to Unreal Engine 5.
- Parkour mechanics have been added to the game.
- Huge character customization updates will be shown in upcoming months.
- Large hiring phase begins early next year for Intrepid.
Studio Updates: Studio morale is incredibly high as we’ve come to the end of the year and are able to see the progress over the many months all come together. We’re going to be kicking off the new year by going into a rather large hiring phase once more. It’s been lovely to be back at the studio in full, while keeping an eye on covid of course, it’s definitely a whole different feel working in person once again.
Design Team Update: We’d like to officially announce that we have begun the migration from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5. UE5’s signature Lumen and Nanite are beginning to be put in use. Additionally parkour mechanics such as climbing and rolling have been added in alongside tweaks to character movement, root motion animations and character movement tilting. With UE5 utilizing the world loading in cells, it allows us to work in the world unlike previous engines- Making our workflow process a lot easier.
QnA Session
Q: Will the upgrade to UE5 affect the supported operating systems? (Like Linux)
A: No, not really. Unfortunately the reality is there’s not that many linux users out there, they make up less than 1% of PC users.
Q: Will the upgrade to UE5 affect recommended specs?
A: We want to make the game as accessible as we can to everyone. To that, UE5 allows us to scale down the graphics. However the full extent, we don’t know yet, but if there are changes to the recommended spec, we will let you know.
Q: What exactly is the process of upgrading from UE4 to UE5?
A: The process begins with vetting the codebase and project and what bugs it might face during migration to UE5. It is a comprehensive process and has implications on the art side. We have a significant amount of assets that need to be taken stock of to see which are compatible with Nanite.
Q: What is Nanite and how will it improve the visual effects of the game?
A: Nanite brings us to a new approach to rendering art. An artist can import high quality meshes without having to reduce the poly-count.
Q: What is Lumen and how will it improve lighting?
A: Lumen gives us a much more realistic approach to lighting. It gives us dynamic global illumination and brings the world to light. Raytracing is resource heavy, but lumen is way more efficient. Lumen does an incredible job especially in dungeons, increasing the fidelity and improving the performance of the game.
Q: How will the new parkour implementation affect PvP?
A: PvP is an important aspect of AoC. We want the parkour system to not affect PvP negatively. We want it to add additional dynamics to combat.
Q: Is UE5 gonna change any aspect of class abilities or require reworks?
A: Nothing comes to mind. However from a VFX standpoint, we will be implementing lumen into skill effects.
