An Inside Look at Hogwarts Legacy Unreal Engine Extensions | GDC 2024

hi everybody my name is Jose Veta from Avalanche software uh one of the makers of the horor Legacy game I'm coming here to tell you a little bit about the inside look at the horor Legacy and how we extended the real engine we are a studio based on Sak City Utah uh we are achieved hor Legacy in multiple Platforms in light of your unique situation joining us as a fifth year we've devised something extraordinary to ensure your success a lot to absorb on your first day can't believe I'm here Professor Weasley has asked that your professors give you instruction outside of the ordinary [Music] curriculum you have much to learn you have the benefit of an exceptionally skilled team of witches and wizards to guide you a surprised opponent is a weak opponent they will test your abilities both innate and learn you've done it I am wary of how much time the new fifth year seems to be spending away from the castle no need for theatrics I'm only here for this one anyway what do they want with the Hogwart students I have a rare ability to see Whispers of ancient Magic extraord ordinary it's a powerful magic that should only be wielded by a select few the path we're on is terribly dangerous but I do not know where it leads repairo I'm afraid you're on your own I've ensured that we have a moment to [Music] ourselves let's even Herod shall we we leave our Legacy in your [Music] hands so uh there's a couple presentations that we did on a real fest last year uh that I think it will be worth for you guys to check it out again my name is O jeta we presented uh on real Fest 2023 uh we did a an inside look at developing the AC crossplatform open world uh in onreal engine and by Rob Nelson myself and Eric Brown that is on the audience over here he did the extending of the onreal engine to create a story teex so if you want to go a deep dive on the uh horest Legacy is a great place to check it out uh quick uh info about our game uh is we developed this from the PC uh we did a steam steam deck epic game store build uh we also shipped on PS5 Xbox series X and X we also develop it for the PS4 and Xbox One and then we shipped it on Nintendo switch it's an action RPG single player game uh five years of development and it localized around 40 languages so one of the first advice I have is about how you go about to make an unreal game engine so uh game so the best advice is first find the unreal way Embrace in real way find out how uh they do the all the data tables how they do the actors look at the othered tools and workflows um we use World composition landscape tools we use Niagara as you can see from all those pictures over here all the B FX were done by Niagara for spells and emerging magic we use chaos physics for Destruction ragd doll and cloth and I'll show you a little bit of that later on and then we have extensive platform support but there are times where you have to extend the onreal engine so here's some few of the extensions that we did uh we use Python uh validation tools to validate the assets from textures to static meshes we develop our own Quest editor I will show that a little bit Character Creator and then a physics in viewer Master tick throttle a skin effect system and a render visualizer debugging modes and story Tech ederal tools story graph and scenery and I would show some example of those as well we have an animation architect and then we Leverage The SQL like database so here's the first one we're going to talk about is a mission Tech so we have two major things that we did is a mission Quest editor plugin it's an extension of the real engine and then we did also an automation for daily captures so in here we're going to played out the life of an ad Mission designer at Avalanche so in this case he loads the game he's playing the editor he's going to try to um kick off a mission that he's working on he's already load the whole environment he decides now to to launch the the quest editor the quest editor is accessible from the windows uh section and then now you get exposed to the whole system in here you will see a variety of missions he's trying to find his mission the mission is a fig1 is a professor fig that is the main Professor on the storyline and then in here you can start going through all your tasks you can set up checkpoints you can actually find the the character that you want to bring in this case he trying to set up uh a fake into our game he now he trying to set up a scheduling you can schedule any way you want it you know if he needs to approach you to the office whatever it might be and then not only that then you can say okay well I'm going to be working on a on a subsection of the mission so he can jump the level in whatever place he wants and all this is being powered by a SQL like database so as he is making any these changes then he can actually uh write to database so he hit play Mission and now he jumps into the game exactly where he needs to be and now he's gonna play and then see how it goes so in this case he's gonna um approach the the start of his mission that is uh meet Professor fig at his office so it approach the mission marker and then interacts ah there you are hello sir you'll be pleased to know that I worked on my defensive magic with Professor heckit so I hear she tells me you've taken rather well to your new wand you must continue to work with her and your other professors to improve your skills that said I don't wish to postpone our visit to the library any longer so shall we proceed fig I have work for you come Headmaster I'm with a student and my schedule your schedule will wait indefinitely as will your student I would think that after all the trouble you caused me with ozich you'd be eager to make amends my office 5 minutes that man is exasperating unfortunately our trip to the Restricted Section will have to wait a bit longer but Professor we have no choice it would be unwise to provoke our illustrious Headmaster further I shall find you when I've completed whatever toils I must endure so at this point uh the player gets control um you know in this case he already had the Cinematic the conversation the setup now um the mission designer wants to move to the next step so instead of being able to play through the whole process he decides to teleport the player he moves himself to whatever the location as you can notice we're playing the editor we have not left the editor at all we interacted with all the assets loaded all our environments being loaded behind the scenes and then he can just finish the the mission and in this case he need to meet Sebastian Salo the NPC and then he stops the other area that we did a a mission is called the automation for da captures in this one what we did is we did The Continuous execution of the home missions that you saw there and we capture them and render them in 4k and upload it to our tracking software and sharre that allows to do dailies and we these dieses we able to get feedback from the players so it's a great way to just a big game like ours that has hundreds of hours of of gameplay you can capture the whole game and all the missions and people get feedback on it now Switching gears a little bit to the character Tech so this is one of the areas that we spend the most we move ourselves to chaos physics we use the cloth for all our R um uh and all our kind of our cloth and rag doll and the structure in the game but in the case of the characters we wanted to create a plugin that we can customize our character creator in this case also we did a physics Sim viewer so let's go into deep into one of those uh plugins so here's a customizable character creator um this is a plugin uh that you can add on your own game site it's not added on the engine so it's an expansion of the of the game by adding this plugin without a need to change the engine directly and here you can see a variety of characters that that we had on the game from NPCs to any other uh Professor or your avatar so as we go through here you will notice that we're going to do a lot of uh testing over here you can actually load in the character you can change the background in this case we want to test how the ropes on the physics work so you can see that he moved from idle to Sprint and run you can change and do multiv region material parameters I can change the silk component of the tie I can change the color if I wanted to and then you can really customize however you want so this is the main tool not as an avatar creator but for a character creator and here we're going to change some region presets where I can change the roow materials I can change different swatches and then I can pick whatever I want and then make it available for the character you know in this case now we're going to switch to now to localize audio in here I think that now might be a good time to head back to the castle so in this case what happen there is you can actually view all all your localization now we moving to gear creation here you can actually change and test all your gears so you can change your mask that you get on the game you can see your cloth you can see um you know your scarf whatever you might be needed and it's all running at Real Time with the physics enable so you can see how well it behaves on it so this a good way for us to be able to see the different uh Dynamics and in this case we have capes we have ropes so a variety of cloth pieces that were needed and then you can turn on the different animations and see how well it behaves at different [Music] speeds so now Switching gears a little bit we did a take a the cloth uh Not only was important but it would be important to know how it behaves in different mounts and brooms so we build this physics SE viewer primarily what it does is allows you to to not only change your outfit and put whatever your outfit want you can change the wind direction you can W the speed and um of the of the wind and see how well the Rob is holding up and in case this is an standing uh test we're going to change the direction and then change the speed as you can see the direction of the wind is coming from Northwest and then we see how well the the simulation is holding up we all the visualizer to make sure that the physics asset was built right and then you can move the directions and then show your sim cluff as well so that's a simulated Sim cluff that is driving the renable uh piece behind it now this is a great Hol de where you can just not only see um the the physics at work but you can also see it at the different Avatar mechanics you know you can just go and see jumping on Ledges climbing climbing ladders so you can really exploit and see how well the the physics are holding up all right so it's a good way to make sure that it's battle tested the physics and to see if we have any adjustments needs to be done to the physics Assets Now not only we have to deal with a character in a standing position but we also have to uh handle it with running and walking or whatever it might be but but in our game we have more than just a player on the U running around like like you will see here we also have brooms and mounts and we'll show you in a second right now so you can actually jump in your broom and we have a special system where we keep the cloth really well protected around the broom with no interpenetrations going into the on it you can mount on this Mount we also have a a ground Mount so he's riding she's riding now the grab horn is one of our mounts that we have and you can just walk around with it and see how well the the physics asset is actually being behaving on the back of the grab horn on it and you can see how it jumps off and comes out but not only the mounts on the ground we have mounts that you can actually fly as well so nor only you can just walk it but then what happens when you take off so we want to make sure that the physics are still holding up now you're going to have larger wind speeds different directions of of of the wind conditions so we want to make sure that the all the cloth pieces that the player can uh get dressed that it looks right and not only uh during flight but also on the ground and we come in and out of Mount and Dismount out of it so it was very important tool that we needed to make sure that the physics assets look correctly on it and now this is mountain and then you're good to go now Switching gears a little bit to the Cinematic story Tech Team on it um we did a bunch of stuff on it U we we went a little extra mile over here we tried to do a lot of performance capture we did a conversation system it's a whole branching conversation system we use Odyssey to to do all the branching conversation but we also have story graph and scenery plugins so we're going to go over that right now um here's a a video I'm going to be playing of all the different parts that we use our story [Music] Tech [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so so you saw there was a bunch of different type of cinematic storytelling elements our asset pipeline is uh we do performance capture you know peap and we do a bon full body we use Maya and R real for live preview we use all the classic DCC apps you guys familiar with Maya motion Builder C brush Houdini speech graphics for all procedure generated on it we did a uh Team City farm U is our build Farm on it we used spare force and then we used a real engine 427 Chaos on it and with the Houdini engine and for production track and we had shot grid and software and here is just example of our some of our moap as you can imagine you know we have all these different kind of creatures and um enemies that we need to make sure that it works we have all these wow moments or funny moments in the game that we want to bring that Ambience level on it so we have to make sure that we Mo up not only for for our our game and an avatar but also for the different NPCs on it so we can see a live preview of um of our Moab on the set and we can actually adjust the performance and they have different props this is on on Broom flight and this will drive directly our game now switching a little bit to two plugins that we extended it's probably one of the the best plugins that we added on it one is we call the story graph um our game is all about storytelling so we developed this plugin called story graph and you can see from the uh on you have a variety of elements you have the script you have the details panel and you have a timeline on it so I will play a little video here to show data in action so we have a graph navigation on the on the middle section where you can actually see the your branching conversation you can see your script on the right hand side so as you um navigate the graph you can actually move around the script and it's very helpful for the either designers or the the story team and the story team can actually do script variations and you can modify right here on the story graph so these are very helpful for the story team now we have a bottom one we have a timeline that timeline is a relative timeline it's a very important thing that we did to make sure that we can adjust it proced generated cinematics and adjust the time without worrying about being an absolute time and that's one of the reasons why we build a special timeline widget on it we can all select and edit the script dialog and adjust accordingly our our procedure generated so this is a very high level plugin to handle the mission um uh story graphs Ian don't think I've forgotten about your Goblin friend I haven't but I appreciate you setting our earlier discussion aside for now of course I can't believe my uncle wants to leave felcra Anne's going to stall him she must we need time time for what I've learned more about the Relic I cross reference Slytherin Spellbook with everything in the library on relics and dark sacrifices that's when I realized something I believe the Relic will only work inside the that's good so now moving to the SC ring so now this is a more lowlevel plugin now same concept behind it that we have the same kind of setup we have detail panel the timeline and we have the uh viewport and then the game uh game Port as well here's a video showing in action so we have editor viewport on the left hand side we have the gameplay preview on the middle one and we have the object selection via viewport or the outliner so we have outliner on the right hand side and we have the same relative timeline on the bottom uh on it you can expand it out you have nested actions you can see the different animations you can see the different facial body uh combination of things so this is kind of the Workhorse on it but let's say if you want to put in an element in the middle and you want to modify it you can actually adjust the whole timeline you can say okay I need to wait for the player to interact you can modify the timeline and it automatically will move accordly so it's very important because allows to really be more um Dynamic and interactive with the player and then you can of course play it you will see it on the on the on it and then you see also of course the setup on the left will be the G the viewport you can see how elements were placed lighting and whatever else you may need um and this is it for us thank you very [Applause] much

Channel: Unreal Engine

Views: 62,981

Keywords: Unreal Engine, Epic Games, UE4, Unreal, Game Engine, Game Dev, Game Development

Id: M-Xoa4shre4

Length: 18min 46sec (1126 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2024