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Sony Bend's next game using Unreal Engine

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Nirolak

Mrgrgr
I noticed this in some Sony Bend job postings while looking at what studios who might be at E3 are doing.

It says "current", but doesn't specify 3 or 4.

Sony said:
Sr Animation Programmer (Job Number: 03766)
We are looking for an Animation Programmer to help develop next generation animation systems for a current working title being developed by Bend Studio.

Preferred Skills & Experience
· Current and Next Gen game console experience strongly desired.
· 3-5 years industry or related experience.
· 1 or more published titles.
· Strong understanding and familiarity with current UNREAL technology desired.
Source: https://playstation.taleo.net/careersection/sceaexternal1/jobdetail.ftl?job=03766

Sony said:
Sr AI Programmer (Job Number: 03748)
We are looking for an AI Programmer to help develop complex Human AI Behaviors for a current working title being developed by Bend Studio.

Preferred Skills & Experience
Current and Next Gen game console experience strongly desired.
3-5 years industry or related experience.
1 or more published titles.
Strong understanding and familiarity with current UNREAL technology desired.
Source: https://playstation.taleo.net/careersection/sceaexternal1/jobdetail.ftl?job=03748
 
That's so strange. I was under the impression Sony's teams shared a lot of technology, with studios like SSM, GG, and ND sharing tech between their own individually created engines.

You'd think Sony Bend would mostly borrow tech from their fellow WWS studios, or use some new PS4 variant of WWS' PhyreEngine, like From Software used to created the Demon's Souls.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
That's so strange. I was under the impression Sony's teams shared a lot of technology, with studios like SSM, GG, and ND sharing tech between their own individually created engines.

You'd think Sony Bend would mostly borrow tech from their fellow WWS studios, or use some new PS4 variant of WWS' PhyreEngine, like From Software used to created the Demon's Souls.

Presumably they evaluated their options versus the type of game they wanted to make and came to this conclusion.

Why are they looking for current and next gen experience?

Their game will be cross-gen?

Not everyone has shipped a PS4/XB1 game yet.
 

VanWinkle

Member
Weird having a Sony first-party using a third-party engine.

But they are a relatively small first-party studio, so it kind of makes sense.
 

SilentFlyer

Member
Weird having a Sony first-party using a third-party engine.

But they are a relatively small first-party studio, so it kind of makes sense.

Maybe that suits what they want to achieve. But yes, it is weird given every 1st party is using WWS engine shared across, If I'm not wrong?
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Maybe that suits what they want to achieve. But yes, it is weird given every 1st party is using WWS engine shared across, If I'm not wrong?

They're mostly separate engines that share some tools and libraries like the Authoring Tools Framework and PlayStation Edge.
 

jayu26

Member
Just as long as it doesn't look like an Unreal Engine game...

jb2hTWlE6aMsWL.png
 

SilentFlyer

Member
They're mostly separate engines that share some tools and libraries like the Authoring Tools Framework and PlayStation Edge.

They each make their own engine, but the studios will share tech with each other.

Got it. So it may be possible they don't have their own engine yet or because rebuilding engine would take quite a lot resources then buying a UE4 $19/m subscription.
 
Hmm, i guess it must be more cost effective for them to use UE at this time. Bend have been doing portable titles for a while now, so they probably don't have an engine ready for the current crop of consoles.
 

GQman2121

Banned
I wonder the major differences and difficulties are developing for UE4 over 3. I thought it was odd when it was revealed that New Batman is on still using UE3. I suppose it's cheaper, safer and minimizes risk, but what are the negatives?
 

Radec

Member
Ehh doesn't really confirmed just by the job description.

Maybe their in-house engine is similar to unreal engine.
 

darkside31337

Tomodachi wa Mahou
Ehh doesn't really confirmed just by the job description.

Maybe their in-house engine is similar to unreal engine.

Agree with this. Obviously they aren't going to find people who are familiar with their own in house engine so they might be looking for folks who have experience with something similar. The fact it says its desired and not required makes me thing along those lines as well.
 

Protome

Member
Unless I'm blind, I could not find anything about engine Knack uses in that article.

So what does it use? Modified UE3?

From that article.
He’s Knack’s Technical Director and Lead Programmer, and noted during the presentation that Knack’s engine was built from scratch to show off the PlayStation 4’s architecture.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Wouldn't it just be smarter to let the ICE team guys/gals work on a gfx engine for first/second party studios?
Well, there's a couple notes there:

1.) Graphics engines are actually a very small part of what an engine is. You need networking, AI, lighting, audio, streaming, level building tools, AI planning tools, asset management tools, physics, debugging tools on a per feature basis, scripting tools (preferably visual), concurrent editing tools, performance profiling tools, I/O tools, and more.

2.) There is an argument to mostly unified tools across a product portfolio. However, usually you're trading off some visual quality/performance in favor of more functionality/development efficiency. Like for EA it's far more important that Battlefield and Dragon Age can have 5000 features and seas of content than it is for them to look better than The Order 1886. For Sony, since their games tend to be notably smaller in scope, they tend to focus on things like best in class visuals to show off the horsepower of their system. This is why similarly you see all of Rockstar's games built on RAGE (so say, Red Dead 2 can use all the advances from GTA 4 and GTA 5 can use all the advances from Red Dead 2 and Max Payne 3) and almost all of 2K's games built on Unreal Engine. It also makes transferring staff between projects much easier. Like 2K Marin and 2K Australia could be pulled in by Irrational to finish off BioShock Infinite.
 
I don't know anything about this field, but couldn't it just be for the job description?
Maybe it's a similar engine regarding usability or they have to list SOMETHING as a reference / industry standard? Surely they wouldn't limited themselves with "Strong understanding and familiarity with current Sony WWS toolset/engines desired".
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
I don't know anything about this field, but couldn't it just be for the job description?
Maybe it's a similar engine to use or they have to list SOMETHING as a reference / industry standard? Surely they wouldn't limited themselves with "Strong understanding and familiarity with current Sony WWS Engine desired".

That type of statement is common in job postings, but it's written as "experience with modern 3D engines like Unreal/CryEngine/Unity/internal toolkits" or so.

When only one engine is specified and there's no "engines like" statement, it's almost always because they're using that engine.
 
I wonder the major differences and difficulties are developing for UE4 over 3. I thought it was odd when it was revealed that New Batman is on still using UE3. I suppose it's cheaper, safer and minimizes risk, but what are the negatives?

UE4 is supposed to be easier I believe. The new batman probably uses UE3 because it's cross gen?
 
That type of statement is common in job postings, but it's written as "experience with modern 3D engines like Unreal/CryEngine/Unity/internal toolkits" or so.

When only one engine is specified and there's not "engines like" statement, it's almost always because they're using that engine.

Ok gotcha.
 
Well, there's a couple notes there:

1.) Graphics engines are actually a very small part of what an engine is. You need networking, AI, lighting, audio, streaming, level building tools, AI planning tools, asset management tools, physics, debugging tools on a per feature basis, scripting tools (preferably visual), concurrent editing tools, performance profiling tools, I/O tools, and more.

2.) There is an argument to mostly unified tools across a product portfolio. However, usually you're trading off some visual quality/performance in favor of more functionality/development efficiency. Like for EA it's far more important that Battlefield and Dragon Age can have 5000 features and seas of content than it is for them to look better than The Order 1886. For Sony, since their games tend to be notably smaller in scope, they tend to focus on things like best in class visuals to show off the horsepower of their system. This is why similarly you see all of Rockstar's games built on RAGE (so say, Red Dead 2 can use all the advances from GTA 4 and GTA 5 can use all the advances from Red Dead 2 and Max Payne 3) and almost all of 2K's games built on Unreal Engine. It also makes transferring staff between projects much easier. Like 2K Marin and 2K Australia could be pulled in by Irrational to finish off BioShock Infinite.

Okay thank you for the info, so what you are saying is that a universal engine might actually hold back some of Sony's first party games? Because they are so different from each other?
 
Wouldn't it just be smarter to let the ICE team guys/gals work on a gfx engine for first/second party studios?
That was actually the ICE team's original purpose - Initiative for Common Engine. Apparently it wasn't practical, and they abandoned it in favor of just developing more targeted tech.

There's no point having a satellite office like Bend's with a large(ish) headcount and not producing AAA content.
Bend was barely large enough to make Golden Abyss (they had to outsource a fair bit), and Yoshida has indicated that they're moving their "mid size" studios towards developing multiple smaller downloadable projects (ala. Double Fine).
 
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