Executing a multiplatform launch can be challenging, with lack of bandwidth being a common hurdle to launching a game on multiple platforms. We’ve gathered industry-leading experts to provide advice and share their multiplatform game creation experiences.
Join us on October 4, 2022 at 11:30am ET / 8:30am PT for a free roundtable to learn about common challenges that could affect your multiplatform launch. Plus, get expert insights and tips to help you overcome these obstacles and ship successfully.
Listen as experts from Roll7 and Navegante provide insight on:
Understanding the future costs of multiplatform games
Proactively identifying potential problems when developing a multiplatform game
Identifying the skills a team needs to be successful in multiplatform development
Ensuring the best player experience when bringing your game to new platforms
Planning the marketing for a game’s multiplatform release
April 5, 2022 – During today’s State of Unreal livestreamed virtual event Epic Games announced that Unreal Engine 5 is available today for production-ready use, marking a generational leap in technological capabilities and workflows delivered to millions of creators across games, entertainment, and beyond. Production-proven in Fortnite and The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience demo, UE5’s many feature and performance improvements enable users to create next-generation real-time 3D content and experiences with greater freedom, fidelity, and flexibility than ever before.
Previously accessible in Early Access and Preview releases, Unreal Engine 5.0 is available today for download from the Epic Games launcher. UE5 includes groundbreaking features Nanite and Lumen for bringing incredibly realistic interactive experiences to life, plus new systems for creating massive open worlds, and new developer-friendly authoring tools and workflows to speed up the creative process. Alongside UE5, Epic is releasing two new sample projects: the Lyra Starter Game and a City Sample from The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience.
The Lyra Starter Game is a sample gameplay project available as a free download. Designed to serve as a starting point for building and shipping UE5 games, Lyra is a hands-on learning resource that incorporates many key engine features, includes multiple maps and modes, and comes with a fully networked multiplayer environment. Epic will continually update this living project alongside future UE5 releases.
The City Sample is a free sample project that reveals how the large open world from The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience was built. The project—which consists of a complete city with buildings, vehicles, and crowds of MetaHuman characters—demonstrates how UE5’s new systems and workflows made building this experience possible.
As developers from independent teams to AAA powerhouses create their next-generation games, Epic has confirmed that over 85 game studios are already part of the UE5 community, with more on the way—representing a deeply talented pool of creative and technical talent around the world. This group includes The Coalition, CD PROJEKT RED, Crystal Dynamics, and many other world-class teams.
Check out the Unreal Engine blog for more details and watch the State of Unreal:
"In a game with no
enemies or combat of any kind, the possibility of getting lost adds an
element of risk and challenge. The risk of failure is what makes success
meaningful, and it's one of the necessary elements of any game."
Sailwind
is a physics-based sailing simulator, largely made by one person. Your
character is onboard a boat, and operates it by pulling ropes and
spinning the wheel. There is a map (in your inventory), but it doesn’t
tell your exact location. Instead you have to use other means to
discover where you are and where you’re headed, and it’s up to you to
figure out how to get to your destination.
Sailing isn't only about controlling a ship on the the open seas,
however. Along the way, you are faced with survival and trading elements
that help to create emergent tales of exploration and adventure. Of
course, opposed to those meager trading efforts are the forces of wave
and wind, storm and starvation as meaningful accomplishment can't truly
be felt without a little risk thrown into the mix.
Coming from a background of VR development and immersive experiences, developer Raw Lion Workshop calls Sailwind
their most ambitious project to-date. The dev explores that complexity
in this chat with Game Developer, digging into what brought about this
open-world sailing simulator, its realistic sailing physics, and the
elements of survival, trading, and adventure that define this journey
across the sea.
Game Developer: Sailwind is a full
3D sailing simulation made primarily by one person! How long have you
been going, and what technology do you use to put it together? How do
you handle creating the game's content?
Raw Lion Workshop: It's been close to three years
since I started the project, though only the last two years were full
time work. The game is made in Unity, using the Crest ocean asset for
rendering the ocean and basic boat physics. Most of the other features I
have developed on my own. The models and textures are made in Blender,
and for sound effects I use creative commons and public domain sounds
available online, often heavily edited to fit into the game.
All games that simulate some real-world activity must do so through some degree of representation, but Sailwind
does a good job of exposing players to the details of how sailing
works. Most nautical-themed games take a more game-ish approach to this
subject, while Sailwind almost seems like it wants to teach
players how to actually sail a boat. What caused you to think about
going in this direction with the development, focusing on the kinds of
details that triple-A games would strive to eliminate?
The project started as a simple prototype - I was just having some
fun playing with a realistic sailing physics model. At this stage, I
didn't really consider any game design or player experience aspects. As I
played with my prototype, I realized that it was actually quite fun and
satisfying to handle the sail, watch how it reacts to the wind and how
it affects the boat and its movement, and that's when I decided to build
a full game around it.
It was only after the game was released that I discovered how
challenging this realistic sailing model was for many players. To be
honest, it was quite a big surprise to find out just how much people
struggled with it. After all, I thought, sailing really isn't that
complicated, compared to, say, flying a plane in a flight simulator. If
anything, I was worried the game would be too simple, and I was
considering adding more complexity to the controls to make it more
interesting and engaging. After many complaints about the steep learning
curve (and a relatively high refund rate), I understood why the
triple-A game studios often have to simplify their games so much. Big
studios have to appeal to the widest possible audience in order to make a
good return on their investment, and that means the barrier to entry
for new players has to be as low as possible and the learning curve very
forgiving. Unfortunately, such design generally makes the game less
appealing for those who are looking for a deeper and more challenging
experience.
I'm still trying to find the happy medium between making the game
approachable and pleasant for new players with no sailing experience,
and keeping the complexity, realism, and integrity. There is certainly a
lot of satisfaction to be had when you master the techniques of sailing
and navigation, and the learning and struggles can add to the
experience and make it more meaningful. Games that hold your hand, give
you lots of hints at every step, and pretty much play themselves don't
provide that same sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. However, if
faced with too much challenge at the start, many players will just quit
in frustration.
Sailing is complicated. How does Sailwind go about helping players get their feet wet, so to speak, in learning to operate a boat?
Currently, the tutorial is quite basic - there's a scroll on your
boat which contains text and pictures describing the basics of gameplay
and sailing.
Improving the tutorial is definitely something I'm working on. It's
all about finding the balance between smoothing out the learning curve
to avoid the initial frustration, while still challenging the player to
figure things out and learn by themselves. I've recently added a new
tutorial feature which visually shows you the no go zone when trying to
sail upwind, which is a very important concept when learning to sail.
This new addition was controversial in the community for a good reason -
features like this can diminish the sense of accomplishment and make
the game feel too cheap and easy, so I am very cautious not to move too
far in that direction.
Actually operating and manipulating a boat is just part of
sailing of course. Some other games find it challenging to enable the
player to find his position and get oriented in the world, even with the
use of UI aids, but Sailwind don't use those on purpose! The
possibility of getting lost, as in real life, is another part of the
game. How does a player handle navigation, getting bearings and figuring
out the best direction to head in?
Getting lost is fun! That's often when the real adventure starts, and
it's a great opportunity for emergent challenges and organic stories to
develop. Also, in a game with no enemies or combat of any kind, the
possibility of getting lost adds an element of risk and challenge. The
risk of failure is what makes success meaningful, and it's one of the
necessary elements of any game.
In Sailwind, there are many ways to navigate, and you'll
have to choose between them depending on your current situation. There
is of course the compass, but if you accidentally drop it overboard
(which does happen to many players, apparently!), you can also use the
sun, or even the stars in the night sky, to find the cardinal
directions.
There is also the quadrant (a simpler version of the
sextant), which you can use to determine your latitude, and the
chronocompass, a rather complicated tool which uses the sun and its
shadow to find the latitude and longitude. More instruments will be
added later on. Skilled use of these instruments is necessary in order
to successfully complete long ocean voyages (which can take many hours
in real time!).
It's easy to focus just on the sailing and neglect talking
about the non-sailing aspects of the game. There's survival elements,
and a basic trade simulation where the player takes on delivery jobs,
and attempts to complete them for money while keeping his reputation up.
How much of the game do these aspects make up? Are you considering
deeping these elements of play, like, are there plans in the offing to
require that players carry limes to prevent scurvy?
I actually don't consider those features as separate from the sailing
aspect. For me, sailing is more than just controlling a boat. When I
think of sailing, I think of adventure, travel, exploration. I think of
brave men confronting the forces of nature on an epic journey towards
the unknown. Without these aspects, sailing is reduced to just pulling
ropes, turning the wheel, and steering the boat towards no particular
goal. Those things aren't all that fun by themselves, it's exactly that
context of the epic adventure that makes sailing so appealing.
The survival and trading elements in Sailwind serve that
goal, they are there because without them the sailing wouldn't be "real"
in some sense. The need to stock up on food and other supplies adds an
element of risk and strategy, the trading and delivery missions mean you
have a destination, a goal which is a part of a bigger story.
In Sailwind,
you're not just sitting there watching your boat move through the water
- you're on an epic voyage across a vast ocean, battling storms and
overcoming challenges to deliver vital goods to people living in distant
settlements. That's what sailing is really about!
This is also one of the main areas I want to develop further.
Expanding the trading system is a high priority item on the roadmap at
the moment, and there are also plans to expand food and drink systems,
such as introducing the need for balanced nutrition and adding food
spoilage.
One of the interesting design decisions you're made is to
enforce the need to sleep. It's amazing really how many games handwave
sleep away. A one-person vessel on the ocean has unique strategic
requirements. The boat doesn't stay still while the player's character
is unconscious, but continues to travel. What would you say this brings
to the game?
As with most features of Sailwind, I didn't consciously
think about the game design implications of the sleep system. It is
simply something that just... made sense. After all, that's how sleeping
works in the real world! As it turned out, it fits in the game quite
well, but this is more of a happy accident than a planned decision.
First, it adds another layer to the challenge and decision making
aspects, which is pretty important in a relatively simple game like Sailwind.
Second, it gives players an opportunity to take a short break, maybe
stretch a bit, shift their attention away from the game for a moment,
which is probably a healthy thing to do in a long gaming session.
A concession it seems Sailwind must make to physical
reality is the nature of the time scale compared to player's life. 24
game hours cannot equal 24 real hours if the game is to progress at a
reasonable rate. How does Sailwind handle this? Does it make day lengths shorter, distances shorter, or speeds greater than in real life?
Sailwind takes place on a planet which is significantly
smaller than Earth, and the distances and time are scaled down
accordingly, but I've tried to keep this scaling somewhat consistent.
That is, sailing around the globe in the game (not possible currently,
by the way) might take a similar amount of days as it would in the real
world on Earth.
The boats are generally slightly faster than they would be in real
life, but not nearly as much as in most other sailing games. This
slightly faster speed is purely a game design decision - realism is good
and all, but going very slow can often feel frustrating and just not
very fun.
Sailwind is a fascinating game even at this early
stage. Part of what I find personally exciting about it is, it feels
like a simulation of an ancient real-world activity that used to inspire
a whole genre of literature. Sandbox games are kind of like a self-told
storytelling device, a way to have imaginary adventures that can
actually be affected by the player's actions, and Sailwind's
concept is unusually powerful here. But that's just me; why did you
decide to make this, what is it about the idea that pushes you to work
on Sailwind every day?
I think the biggest advantage video games have over other media is
precisely this potential to create dynamic and unique stories. These
stories can be important and meaningful, they're more than just "fun".
For me, it's these stories that can make playing a game a worthwhile
experience, and that's why these are the types of games I'm interested
in. I'm not really into games that try to capture your attention with
highly engaging visuals, instant gratification or cheap rewards. That
type of entertainment feels good in the moment, and can be highly
addictive, but it leaves you drained, tired, and often feeling like
you've just wasted your time doing nothing productive.
On the other
hand, when you create and experience a meaningful story during your
gaming session, it feels fulfilling - the time is not wasted, it was
well spent. That's always my goal when making games. To provide more
than just entertainment. I want the player to feel like they've spent
their time well, and experienced something meaningful.
