Maybe it's all Red Engine's fault?

[Guest 4402625]

I mean what else can be? I don't have any other proper explanation?! They had all the money and all the time to create this game. They hired well over 800 game-making professionals from all over the globe. And the final game has no " enemy AI " and no " traffic AI " at all.

Bioware employees were always complaining about how Frostbite doesn't play well with RPGs. Maybe we have the same issue here, but this time it's vice versa. Maybe RedEngine 4 had no capabilities to create the necessary physics and the AI.

Or maybe RedEngine 4 was so advanced that inexperienced Devs didn't know what to do


" The fourth generation of CD Projekt’s RED Engine, which includes “new solutions which will be employed for the first time” in Cyberpunk.

“Work on the fourth generation of REDEngine involves, among others, development of new technologies co-financed under the GameINN umbrella (part of the Intelligent Growth Operational Programme). The Company secured funding for these projects in 2016 and they successfully continued throughout 2019”

• City Creation – comprehensive technology enabling creation of massive “living” cities playable in real-time and based on the principles of artificial intelligence and automation, including innovative processes and tools which assist in the development of top-quality open-world games.
• Animation Excellence – comprehensive technology facilitating rapid increases in the quality and e!ciency of creating complex body and face animations for use in open-world RPGs, including innovative process solutions and a unique dedicated toolkit.
• Cinematic Feel – comprehensive technology which delivers exceptional cinematic quality of cutscenes set in open-world RPG environments, including innovative process solutions and a unique dedicated toolkit.
• Seamless Multiplayer – comprehensive technology facilitating immersive multiplayer gameplay with support for matchmaking, session management, object replication and various gameplay models, along with a unique dedicated toolkit. "

 

[mbrto]

pretty sure the issue is just harware limitations
night city is massive and some places have huge crowds

complex npc ai would never work on that scale on console hardware
they had to cut corners where they could

i think redengine is pretty impressive
try spawning that many npcs on bethesta´s creation engine on a moderatly sized map, turn on their ai packages and see what happens.

 

[GrimReaper801]

Well, it's their own in-house developed engine. Whether it can or can't do what they wanted it to do is entirely up to them.

I don't think that what happened here.

I see a lack of focus compounded by mismanagement.

 

[TintelFruit]

pretty sure the issue is just harware limitations
night city is massive and some places have huge crowds

complex npc ai would never work on that scale on console hardware
they had to cut corners where they could

i think redengine is pretty impressive
try spawning that many npcs on bethesta´s creation engine on a moderatly sized map, turn on their ai packages and see what happens.

People always forget AI runs on the CPU and the PS4/Xbone contained Low end, low power Jaguar cores that were old by the time they were put in the Last gen consoles...

 

[Mentos3]

try spawning that many npcs on bethesta´s creation engine on a moderatly sized map, turn on their ai packages and see what happens.

Ow, comparing the bethesda engine is a bar that hits the ground
Even a Texas Instruments calculator can outperform this engine....

 

[ArvGuy]

pretty sure the issue is just harware limitations
night city is massive and some places have huge crowds

complex npc ai would never work on that scale on console hardware
they had to cut corners where they could

i think redengine is pretty impressive
try spawning that many npcs on bethesta´s creation engine on a moderatly sized map, turn on their ai packages and see what happens.

It seems a bit unfair that you want to spawn NPCs with AI on the Creation Engine when the NPCs in RedEngine don't have any AI to slow things down.

 

[mbrto]

Well, it's their own in-house developed engine. Whether it can or can't do what they wanted it to do is entirely up to them.

I don't think that what happened here.

I see a lack of focus compounded by mismanagement.

i agree with your point about mismanagement, but thats a different story

complex npc ai on that scale is just not going to happen with current gen console hardware
no matter how efficient the engine is

 

[Trykz]

I'm more inclined to believe the rumors on this one.

That being the game was rushed after being largely rewritten to "stitch in" what was likely once a significant side quest as the new main story. Leaving no reasonable period of time for polish and thorough QA before the hard release date set by management.

The narrative fits the current state of the game.

 

[Mifa0_0]

The engine made them create hundreds of identical jobs in the worst Ubisoft style?
No, it was their creative decision.
All the worst problems of this game, linearity, boring side quests, lack of choice in dialogue, these are not problems of the engine. This is a deliberate creative decision of an untalented team.

 

[Krul2k]

Blaming the OG systems and/or the game engine i think is lazy, regardless if theres a hint of truth to it

They knew what they were working with and for, RDR2 managed AI, gfx, immersion etc etc perfectly fine and so did Witcher 3 on these systems (after updates).

While i still enjoy the game im not blind to it, the problems lie not in 1 place but multiple and what them multiple ones are are anyones guess outside the studio's.

What we do know is advertising never helped as it pictured a game noone got but some still liked and others didn't, showed of and spoke about features not present and even showed PC's not available to pick for some reason on character setup, but thats advertising for you and ppl just expected better from CDPR as if there some sort of good friend instead of a company looking to make money and well i guess that realisation hurt most so love quickly turns to hate and ridicule.

Game needed more time thats a giving

 

[yota71]

probably before Johnny silverhand the game was different (most likely the one of the trailers) after johnny all things has changed, the result was a rushed product, but i am sure that they have the originals files, so with some work, they can add them to the current game

 

[DOSS216]

Nahh, I don't really it's the fault of the engine. At first I thought it was possible until I compared CP to Witcher 3 which used Red Engine 3. Witcher 3 had a lot of NPCs on screen at once in big cities like Novigrad and Beauclair that don't disappear if you get too far from them. NPCs in smaller towns like Crow's Perch actually have daily routines and would go too sleep at night. NPC's would also do other things that help with immersion like taking cover when its raining. Witcher 3 also had really good water effects and physics while in Cyberpunk it's literally nothing. The remnants of cut content can still be found in Cyberpunk like police car chases that actually work, it's just not finished. So all this amounts to me is that there is no problem and the devs, it's just they rushed the game before it was ready.

 

[ottffss1]

Red Engine is really impressive at creating moving lifelike paintings as we say in TW2, TW3 and nor RE4 in CP77. Adapting it to a first person experience and more of a first person looter-shooter was probably quite the task.

 

[strangerism]

thank god for RedEngine

 

[GrimReaper801]

complex npc ai on that scale is just not going to happen with current gen console hardware
no matter how efficient the engine is

I both agree and disagree.

A thousand(was it thousands, I don't remember right now) NPCs with full dynamic day/light cycles like they originally sold it was never going to happen on current gen consoles. That's a fact. It's also something that even the beefiest of 2020's PCs would struggle with.

CDPR bit off more than they could chew, which goes back to mismanagement.

Problem is, these NPCs are brain dead background actors right now and it's not because of current gen consoles. There are plenty of console games that contain way more reactive and believable NPCs.

CDPR lacked the focus and management to properly react and adjust the "AI" to the realization that their original plan isn't feasible without restricting the game to only the high end tier PC market. Which is a way too small market to make the game viable financially.

They should've adjusted and at least delivered the level and quality we have previously seen in other games.

 

[Draedark]

It seems a bit unfair that you want to spawn NPCs with AI on the Creation Engine when the NPCs in RedEngine don't have any AI to slow things down.

I think what he is trying to say is, you can either have fewer NPCs with complex AI, or you can have more NPCs with simple AI (in either engine).
CP2077 is a crowded city so they needed many NPCs and most likely had to sacrifice some AI.

 

[Mentos3]

I think there was a point at the beginning of development when they recognized that the Red3 can't handle the verticality that was needed and than they coded the RedEngine 4.
I can't imagine that it is simple to develop a (new) engine. Location disadvantage and underpaid, too. Not so easy getting (enough) skilled people.

The menu is 85% the same as in Witcher 3 and especially for XBox-Controllers not optimized. Hitting a button 2x to look at the map and another 1 time to go to the main-menu is meh. No remapping on PC? Hm
Inventory is a garbagecan, because you loot way more then in W3 and is not functional. I don't know if Map-Markers is a part of the engine. But the graphic design is... underwhelming. Everyone with a little experience can see that the map is overloaded. So much, that it works against the game-experience (buying cars as ?-Mark, pfft)
Etc.

So if they didn't get this little things like the UI right, how there could be a proper Police-AI, water/car-physics?

To make it short: The RedEngine is not finished, imho. They made it so far, that the skyscraper and billboards looks fine and then - it dropped over the edge. With a little scream for help, maybe.

 

[Attidd]

pretty sure the issue is just harware limitations
night city is massive and some places have huge crowds

complex npc ai would never work on that scale on console hardware
they had to cut corners where they could

i think redengine is pretty impressive
try spawning that many npcs on bethesta´s creation engine on a moderatly sized map, turn on their ai packages and see what happens.

Can you guys stop coming up with excuses for them? It's up to the game dev studio to understand the scope of their game and the limitations that they will encounter before they even MAKE the game. Failure to do so is not a hardware limitation, at that point it's a developer problem. If hardware is limiting what you can do with your game, then you make a game that doesn't have to worry about those hardware limitations or you simply don't release your game on a hardware with the limitations.

You guys keep finding ways to defend CDPR and are failing to acknowledge they made a choice here. Also if red engine has any issues well it was their choice to make the game on red engine. If this community really thinks that CDPR didn't know the limitations of their own engines or the consoles they were developing on. Then that actually points to a bigger problem, that they're completely incompetent and don't know what they're doing.

 

[Kyron_Lee]

I'm a bit of an outsider in regards to Witcher, someone might have to explain it to me;

From my POV Witcher 3 was critically acclaimed as a piece of art.. How did Cyberpunk so quickly bring hate on CDPR and does the Witcher 3 with all it greatness not reflect on CDPR in turn gaining faith and trust between CDPR and CDPR fans?

Like I said I'm not I'm the know but it appears to me as if Witcher 3 was never any good, warranting the huge amount of hostilities toward Cyberpunk.

 

[Attidd]

I'm a bit of an outsider in regards to Witcher, someone might have to explain it to me;

From my POV Witcher 3 was critically acclaimed as a piece of art.. How did Cyberpunk so quickly bring hate on CDPR and does the Witcher 3 with all it greatness not reflect on CDPR in turn gaining faith and trust between CDPR and CDPR fans?

Like I said I'm not I'm the know but it appears to me as if Witcher 3 was never any good, warranting the huge amount of hostilities toward Cyberpunk.

After Witcher 3 came out CDPR lost a massive chunk of their employees due to crunch and low pay and replaced them with a mostly new team of amateurs. The quality between Witcher 3 & Cyberpunk is different because they have different people working on the game and a far more unrealistic scope than Witcher 3.

It's not a company that makes a good game, it's the people who work on it and if you have different people working on a game you can expect a different outcome. The same has happened with Bioware. well known for mass effect 1 & 2 and Dragon Age Origins. Then their later games were not as well received with many people now calling bioware garbage. This is what happens when you lose your main team.