Gaming Engine

Overview

The game engine being used for Project Silence is Unreal Engine. The engine provides us with the tools and features we need to create a high-quality game. The pipeline for creating assets, implementing gameplay mechanics, and testing the game is streamlined, allowing us to focus on creating a fun and engaging experience for players.

Features

Some of the key features that we'll be utilizing in Unreal Engine include:

• Metahumans: Unreal Engine's Metahumans tool allows us to create realistic human characters with lifelike animations and facial expressions. For our game, we'll be using custom Metahumans that match our visual aesthetic and style, but allow us to utilize the advanced animation and rendering capabilities of the tool.
• Pipeline Toolkit: The pipelines between our DCC tools (Digital Content Creation) and Unreal Engine are well-established, allowing us to easily import assets, animations, and other content into the engine. This streamlines our workflow and ensures that we can quickly iterate on our game.
• Houdini Engine: We'll be using Houdini Engine to create procedural content for our game. This will allow us to generate complex environments, effects, and other elements procedurally, saving time and effort in the content creation process.
• Cinematic Tools: Unreal Engine's cinematic tools allow us to create high-quality cinematics and cutscenes for our game. We'll be using these tools to create engaging storytelling sequences that enhance the player experience.
• Audio Driven Animation for MetaHumans: Unreal Engine's audio-driven animation system allows us to create dynamic animations that respond to sound and music. This will allow us to create immersive and interactive experiences for players.

We will go into more detail about how we're using these features later in the 'Tools' section found here.

Game Integration

Unreal Engine provides us with a robust set of tools for integrating gameplay mechanics, AI, and other systems into our game. We'll be using Blueprints, Unreal Engine's visual scripting system, as our main driver for planning out gameplay scenarios. This allows us to quickly prototype and iterate on our game mechanics without needing to write code.

Unreal Engine also allow us to access PCG (Procedural Content Generation) to populate the game world with dynamic content, such as loot, enemies, and other interactive elements. This helps keep the game world feeling fresh and engaging, even after multiple playthroughs.

Houdini is one of the main DCC apps being used in our pipeline to create procedural content for our game. Our custom made tools allow level developers to place geometry into the game level (like boxes for walls, floors, etc.) and then use Houdini Engine to procedurally convert those elements into game assets by generating the final geometry. This allows us to create complex and detailed environments quickly and efficiently, while not getting bogged down in the details of asset creation.