So today I want to bring the attention to one topic that is not discussed often: the game engine.

Let me say that I love the engine, I think its beautiful, its seamless, its scalable and makes good use of both modern hardware as well and older machines.

However, in what ways is it weak and in what way can it be improved?

I will say tfour things to start:
1. Lack of characters in screen: There is some pivotal scenes in which the game tries to create epic environments, however, it seems that the engine isn't very good at having multiple characters at the same time, and this kinda ruins the mood.
The scenes this was most noticeable to me were the climax of Iorveth path and the climax of chapter 3.

2. This game looks amazing, but it would look even better if it had some tessellation. Because of that, its kinda disappointing that it doesn't support DX11 and hope that it is included in the future.

3. There are some more minor graphical effects that aren't there, such as no reflection on mirrors or other surfaces.

4. I don't like how the characters move when on water. The water looks stunning but it doesn't "feel" like the character is actually moving through water by the way how it reacts and how the character moves.

Agree/disagree/thoughts/other weaknesses?

1. This is a weakness of any engine. RED Engine actually does rather well at scenes with many actors, like the crowd at the hanging or the battle for Vergen.

2. Big deal. Hardware tessellation is a gimmick until it's shown that it can render a scene more artistically than earlier technologies, without itself being a huge waste of resources.

3. Reflections (and multiple lights) are a weak point, but this is likewise a weakness shared with other engines. These raise the computational cost of a scene dramatically.

4. Yes, moving in water is a very noticeable weakness. Morrowind did this so well so many years ago that I can't believe others can't do it better now.

So in general, you're right, but these are not weaknesses specific to RED Engine.

I would rather prefer to discuss the strengths of the engine rather than its weaknesses…
But hey, it’s your thread :)

So, let’s put it in context and compare it to other currently used engines.
Obviously BioWare games come to mind…

Lack of characters on screen?
What about the beginning of Chapter One the hanging scene or Henselt’s camp?
While we are on a subject, name other game in which you see more than 10 non stationary characters at the same time that actually look different?
In ME or DA they just stand there looking pretty much the same and waiting for you to click on them…
In Oblivion, some of them walking about… discussing Mudcrabs… :)
So are we talking here about the engine not being able to handle more characters or the designers not designing crowd scenes?

Engine features?
Again, I ask you to compare it to other products. Is there a better one on the market at this time?
This is not modified Unreal Engine (as used by BioWare in ME) but a brand new, builded from the scratch engine with room to grow.
Of course more features are always nice and given the quality so far I expect them to come…
In the end the purpose of the engine should match the game requirements.
No point having an awesome engine but crappy game to run on it is there :)

Minor Graphical Issues?
Are you aware of an engine, a current on the market engine that does not have any kind of issue?
I use both nVidia and ATI cards and every modern engine has small glitches here and there, it has been my personal experience that RED is the same.

Character Movement?
I agree, it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good, again, this is the first version of the engine, Unreal one is at version 5,
There is a room for improvement and given a constructive criticism and feedback I am sure CDPR will listen :)

Summary…
I do realise I am playing a Devil’s Advocate here, and my comments may appear fan boyish in their nature,
The first is intended, the second is not… For honestly in a market without perfection the best one can do is compare existing products.

Kind Regards

I think that the strengths of the engine have been pointed out in many occasions and on many reviews.

Perhaps you read this wrong. I love the engine, I just want us to think together areas where it could improve.

Doors.

So many problems with doors. You go through a door, and sometimes the lighting is suddenly totally different from where you came from. Some people with controllers have a spinning bug when they enter a room. Also, the fact that only one person can go through a door at a time (sometimes I managed to squeeze in, but for the most part they would slam the door in my face before I could go through).

Love the engine, but there's always room for improvement. Hope this topic stays constructive :)

1. I suppose you are right, I didn't remember the Flotsam scene particularly, but when it comes to the Vergen scene, I felt that the game was trying to have a really epic battle but it didn't really succeeded in achieving it as much as it would have wanted (IMO), the other scene is the meeting at Loc Muine, I don't know if it was the poor direction of the scene or the fault of the engine, but the story lead to this epic conclusion where the fate of the kingdoms would be decided and it ended up feeling like 4 dudes talking casually.


If you want to compare it to other games, then yeah, I suppose that Bethesda games never did epic battles or stuff like that. Though I remember Dragon Age (beginning and end) being more successful at this.

2. I'm not an expert on this stuff, but I do think that the textures in this game are beautiful but feel a bit flat. If they had tessellation it would look amazing. The huge waste of resources may be a problem that we may not solve for some time though, I don't know.

3. Well the original had it. I'm not sure if it would be impossible for this one to have it.


Where would YOU like to see the engine evolving? Of course the aim of this topic is to be constructive. I love the engine.

And I agree completely, and I forgot about it. The transitions really bug me, specially the lighting changes, but I feel that the behaviors with characters regarding doros is something that could be fixed without really changing the engine but I don't know.

I would love to advance to a truly seamless engine in which there is no loading screen (not even a minor one) with every door.

Are you saying you get a loading screen with every door? That sounds more like a hardware thing than an engine thing, because I can go through most doors without any kind of loading screen at all.

I think that this engine is one of the best engines ever, at least for an RPG, but I would have to see how Skyrim ends up to see how it matches up.

However, I'm not trying to argue that the engine sucks or that there are better ones, not at all, I'm just asking about the weaknesses to see how we would like it improve, perhaps to give CDPR some feedback (other than the usual bug reports).

It is a good point to compare it to other engines, because we can't do everything we want and hardware is limited. But we also can think of the future and of what changes we would like for The Witcher 3.

As for asking the same to other engines, well, the original witcher had mirror reflections. Not a loading screen like the one in the beginning but I get a transition to black and half a second wait when entering indoors. Of course, this doesn't happen when exiting cities or in specific indoor areas (the one with the La Valette's citizens in the prologue comes to mind)

I was under the impression that this happened to everyone.

I seem to remember it being mentioned that the game only has four (I think that's the number) loading screens. Something like that. If your hardware is powerful enough (or, like me, you play using a lower resolution that your card can handle), you can get through the game with only those few mandatory loading screens. They seem to be adaptive, only popping up when your hardware needs to catch up.

Does anyone have confirmation of this? I don't remember where I heard that, honestly.

EDIT: Maybe these links will explain it better than I can.

GOG thread about it
Story about it before the game's release

I was under that impression too, and I was a little disappointed that there was transitions when entering/exiting outdoors but it wasn't such a big deal to me since it was actually quite well done, and everything was smooth and fast (and a huge improvement from the first witcher).

But I'm almost sure that you get transitions (even if a split of a second), and it would be awesome if we could get rid of them in the future. Can someone confirm, though?

I definitely get more than four loading screens in the course of the game. Then again, I'm running with bog-standard WD Caviar Blacks. The loading screens might be reduced drastically by running the game from an SSD or even a RAMdisk.

Anyway, the only place where I think the engine is weak enough to warrant significant near-term work is responsiveness of controls. Many others have commented on this as well.

Better interaction with water? Nice to have. More lights and better shadows indoors? Nice to have. Better lipsync? Nice to have. Getting knocked headfirst into the next county because the controls took a holiday while something much bigger than you is bearing down on you? Big problem.

Control responsiveness, and having to exit just to change control and grapics options are the two biggest weakness for me.

Those scenes are actually videos made using the engine and pre-rendering the event on a very powerful rig… it is why they do not feature you as your appearance changes... The battle in the Witcher 2 is done all in engine… so I do not thing it is fair to compare the two…

The ending is a different story though.

They probably mean 4 loading (from save game) screenshots lol. Some doors doesn't seem to have transition at all, but a lot has at least a black screen transition . Loading times are reasonable, but exiting town for example will cause a brief period of stutter. The worse of all is the very noticeable change in lighting between loading cells though. As to the number of loading screens, all are in .\CookedPC\globals\gui\loading screens, there are a total of 6 unique loading screens.

Also I didn't enjoy the fact that some loading screen occurs in the middle of wilderness. Many a times while I was dodging several endregas I see a loading screen pop up in my face.

I have few other niggling issues such as the prominent pop-ins, but I'm not sure whether it's the engine's limitation or just some coding issues. For all we know, the engine might be capable of much more but the game was not coded to take advantage of all of it.