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[Comandr]

FYQD-Studio, the developer behind Bright Memory: Infinite, put this incredible looking demo together in UE5 with a few thousand 8K photos used for megascans, less than a half hour of mo cap and a couple hours to throw it all together.

I think we are starting to get to a point where so much work that would previously take artists and programmers an enormous amount of time to accomplish is largely being handled by the engine itself. And that's going to mean big time and budgetary savings down the line when these tools really mature.

The content of the demo aside, I think being able to throw all of this together in such a small amount of time is truly noteworthy and exciting for what it may lead to in the near future.

 

[coffinbirth]

That's what Bright Memory Infinite felt like too.

 

[Fredrik]

I think we are starting to get to a point where so much work that would previously take artists and programmers an enormous amount of time to accomplish is largely being handled by the engine itself. And that's going to mean big time and budgetary savings down the line when these tools really mature.

The content of the demo aside, I think being able to throw all of this together in such a small amount of time is truly noteworthy and exciting for what it may lead to in the near future.

Seems to be easy to make a demo or virtual slice but difficult to make a game based on how few UE5 games that has so far been released.

The Coalition is known to be great with Unreal Engine and was there doing deep tests for UE5 with GDC talks early on. They still haven’t shown anything from their next game and Gears 5 came out in 2019.

 

[Elder Legend]

Seems to be easy to make a demo or virtual slice but difficult to make a game based on how few UE5 games that has so far been released.

The Coalition is known to be great with Unreal Engine and was there doing deep tests for UE5 with GDC talks early on. They still haven’t shown anything from their next game and Gears 5 came out in 2019.

The Coaltion will be the ones who will raise the standards for UE5 titles. They always do it with every Gears title. Can't wait too see Gears 6.

I believe there is a decent chance we will see the game next year with a 2025 release.

 

[Esppiral]

Now release that demo on consoles and let's see if this is realistically possible on consoles....

 

[Hudo]

Are there any Unreal Engine 5 games out there that are actually fun to play? Because games looking good is not something that gets me excited anymore.

 

[Fredrik]

The Coaltion will be the ones who will raise the standards for UE5 titles. They always do it with every Gears title. Can't wait too see Gears 6.

I believe there is a decent chance we will see the game next year with a 2025 release.

I enjoyed Gears 5 so I’m sure I’ll be great but the wait is killing me. And in general I just wonder if it was the right choice for most studios to move over to UE5. All I see right now is long dev times and, for the few releases we’ve seen, unstable performance even on PC. And now that we see what CDPR can do with their own engine. Will they move forward or backwards with a swap to UE5?

 

[Drizzlehell]

Are there any Unreal Engine 5 games out there that are actually fun to play? Because games looking good is not something that gets me excited anymore.

Immortals of Aveum

 

[acm2000]

Seems to be easy to make a demo or virtual slice but difficult to make a game based on how few UE5 games that has so far been released.

The Coalition is known to be great with Unreal Engine and was there doing deep tests for UE5 with GDC talks early on. They still haven’t shown anything from their next game and Gears 5 came out in 2019.

Ue5 only released April last year, games take many years to make

 

[Perrott]

What exactly did they "put together"? A shaky camera moving along a predefined path decorated with marketplace assets, a fake UI and a few scripted hand animations to give the illusion of this being an actual game?

Fuck these Chinese studios, their crap is always smoke and mirrors with zero substance.

 

[Pegasus Actual]

Yeah but can he make it so that every time an NPC gets shot, check to see if they were on the list of people that had shot them, and if they weren't add them to the list with the amount of damage? And if they were, add to the previous damage the new damage taken? And then when they decide who to attack they attack the person at the top of the list?

Probably not.

 

[Hudo]

Immortals of Aveum

Not gonna lie, Immortals of Aveum (I haven't played it myself, just watched a review) just made me reinstall Dark Messiah again (one of my favorite games of all time).

 

[StueyDuck]

Bright memory: infinite you say... I don't need to say more I already know what to expect, big flashy graphics, essentially non-gameplay and poorly designed just like all Korea/China Jank

 

[nkarafo]

I was expecting a ton of motion blur, endless fake grass, slimy textures and the usual, atrocious, auto exposure. You know, like almost every similar UE demo ever made.

I was pleasantly surprised i got none of that. It actually looks good. Especially the lack of auto exposure, i absolutely hate that thing in games.

 

[mrmustard]

That's what i was expecting from console games thin gen, but there is only FS2020 when it comes to realistic graphics.

 

[Black_Stride]

This is more to do with game dev tools that are relatively cheap these days.

He didnt make the models from scratch because he likely used RealityCapture and all those photos to "scan" the environments.
Something like substance or mixer will also quickly turn photos into textures, so authoring textures becomes a breeze.
Quixel Megascans also end up shortening dev time because they have models and texture for pretty much everything someone might find in the real world, that team is constantly out in the world scanning stuff and you can remix it to fit your enivornment.

Unreals Nanite means the user also doesnt have to worry about LODs or even optimizing models so he can just inject those million poly models into Unreal.
Realtime Global illumination means he doesnt have to worry about baking any lighting data so its plug and play effectively.
Inertial Capture Systems arent very accurate but are pretty cheap so you can get the mocap done quite quickly.
Epics MetaHumans means making human models is pocket change now, where before human models were some of the hardest things to make (Might be personal opinion because im a hard surface modeller and doing any sort of sculpting fucks me up)

Unfortunately most of this doesnt really work if you are actually making a game with any soul, cuz real life isnt actually anywhere near as interesting as people think it is.
The environment is graphically amazing sure, buts its more rocks and shit he found while out on his walk.
The demo has near no art direction.

Most of these techniques when skipping the actual game dev work dont help much if you are making say a stylized game, photoreal textures will look out of place.


EDIT: Looks like I was on the money with most of what I assumed he was using.

Unreal Engine - Obviously
Quixel - For textures and other models
Rokoko - For motion Capture
Motion Builder - To "fix" MoCap
RealityCapture - To turn photos into 3D models
PBRMax - For other textures and models



EDIT2:
Yes I do agree with OP that these tools make game dev alot easier and faster, certainly should reduce the budget needed to create "AAA looking" games.
Theres even sound repositories now so needing a dedicated composer is less of an issue for a indie developer.

 

[Whitecrow]

I can see the resolution going to shit everytime the camera moves. A bit nauseating for me.
But yeah, the engine, when in good hands, can do some incredible stuff.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Now if only they could make a decent game

 

[ChiefDada]

Ugh, not this shit again... Calling this amazing and giving kudos to this type of work is like labeling someone a great author for "writing" a novel via ChatGPT prompt.

 

[Zekra Dezivad]

It is chinese what I'm hearing? Who could have guessed that

 

[Dream-Knife]

Yeah but can he make it so that every time an NPC gets shot, check to see if they were on the list of people that had shot them, and if they weren't add them to the list with the amount of damage? And if they were, add to the previous damage the new damage taken? And then when they decide who to attack they attack the person at the top of the list?

Probably not.

Pretty much a JudgeSim from Perfect Dark.

We had that 23 years ago.

 

[Black_Stride]

It is chinese what I'm hearing? Who could have guessed that

The title of the thread didnt give it away?

 

[Zekra Dezivad]

The title of the thread didnt give it away?

Never heard about the developer

 

[Kuranghi]

Actually fucking sick of pish like this now, this isn't a game being played, it's not even a cutscene really.

Also, Secluded Orchid? dev sounds nearly as horny as me. About as subtle as this RTJ music video:

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Never heard about the developer

There was a lot of talk about this dev and their game - Bright Memory Infinite - a few years ago since it was one of the first next-gen titles showcased for the Xbox Series X.

 

[The Cockatrice]

Nice visuals, now remove the wobbly camera cuz no one likes that garbage and zoom out A LOT because my eyes dont have binoculars attached. Why the fuck does every dev need to use 40 FOV? Jesus

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

What this tells me is that indie devs will now have an easier job at doing immersive walking sims with AAA visuals (but not necessarily as polished as big productions) due to having access to robust tools like UE5, Quixel, Metahumans and better motion capture solutions. That sounds good in my book!

 

[yamaci17]

you wont get those textures on 12 gb vram budget consoles sorry

 

[Keihart]

the UE5 indie horror games are looking pretty good, cant wait for the whole new wave of UE5 games to hit, first time im actually looking forward to playing games made on UE.

 

[Black_Stride]

you wont get those textures on 12 gb vram budget consoles sorry

The textures dont look particularly high resolution.
Shouldnt be an issue getting them to work on console.
The GI and internal resolution are probably gonna be the most expensive part of this demo.

 

[LostDonkey]

Wow a professional programmer puts together a demo using his skillset and the newest iteration of an engine!

If I handed a carpenter all the top of the line new tools I'd expect him to make a table.

 

[Zuzu]

He needs to charge his phone

 

[Lux R7]

I think he's very talented, and the final version of Bright Memory was fun to play

 

[Black_Stride]

Wow a professional programmer puts together a demo using his skillset and the newest iteration of an engine!

If I handed a carpenter all the top of the line new tools I'd expect him to make a table.

He was a level designer before going into solo dev work, and is basically self taught.


Using your analogy it would be like having the guy who makes tables suddenly carve out the green lake, yes hes always worked with wood, but this is another level.

Yeah hes using the latest diamond tipped chisels, gouges, mallets and sandpaper, but that doesnt detract from the talent and skill needed to do it.





P.S
A programmer making these demos would actually be more impressive considering most of these demos actually use very little to no actual programming, so said developer would be completely out of their comfort zone.

 

[Fredrik]

Ue5 only released April last year, games take many years to make

Fair enough but it’s not like devs just started their UE5 projects last year, Matrix demo was out in 2021, the engine has likely been developed side by side with the known UE5 games.
I just doubt that things are going any faster. We just heard last week that AA State of Decay 3 was planned for 2027

 

[SmokedMeat]

Demo? That’s probably the full game for that studio.

 

[acm2000]

Fair enough but it’s not like devs just started their UE5 projects last year, Matrix demo was out in 2021, the engine has likely been developed side by side with the known UE5 games.
I just doubt that things are going any faster. We just heard last week that AA State of Decay 3 was planned for 2027

mate, fortnite and matrix demo were made by epic themselves as a demo for the engine hence why theyre were the only things using it for ages, thats the whole point.

 

[Black_Stride]

Fair enough but it’s not like devs just started their UE5 projects last year, Matrix demo was out in 2021, the engine has likely been developed side by side with the known UE5 games.
I just doubt that things are going any faster. We just heard last week that AA State of Decay 3 was planned for 2027

UE5 literally wasnt production ready.
They just introduced and completely new material system thats gonna replace the old system soonish, Nanite and Lumen have evolved so much over that past few iterations......the engine is basically still in preview and only smaller studios and Epic are gonna guinea pig actual releases for a minute.

I wouldnt be shocked if The Coalitions project doesnt even make 2024.

 

[ZoukGalaxy]

Honesty, I must be alone, but I'm really not interested to get 3D worlds that are just real world locations, that's killing mostly the point of videogames with all these imaginary worlds we are loving, this demo does not impress me at all and I find it quite boring.

Now if they are going to make unique alterations and iterations from a real world scan to create something truely new, that would something else and would be really interesting.

 

[64bitmodels]

I mean, until indie devs really start releasing games that take advantage of UE5 capabilities these will ultimately stay tech demos. A bit disappointing for me honestly

 

[K' Dash]

very pretty, meanwhile we have to play cross-gen shit that look like PS4 games.

 

[DaGwaphics]

There were a few parts where I'd say that was real. Well done for an ultra realistic presentation.

Eventually we'll get a developer that builds a game in a relatively small environment and will push the limits of detail like this. I can see a classic horror game mansion setting where everything is indoors outside of verandas. Maybe the project Mara game as well.

 

[Pimpbaa]

I’m guessing it doesn’t have HDR.

 

[Dirk Benedict]

I liked the lighting, overall. The rest... well, sometimes it looks crazy-real, other times, looks realistic-game. Still, it is very impressive. I don't want to take any positives away from this quick demo.

 

[Fredrik]

I wouldnt be shocked if The Coalitions project doesnt even make 2024.

They haven’t even shown a teaser as far as I know, they did the alpha point showcase a couple years ago and the GDC deep dive evaluation thing. Have they shown anything else? I would be very surprised to see anything released next year from them. If as you say UE5 is still getting big updates that change major things we might not see anything until late gen.

 

[peish]

that head bobbing, who walks like that?

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

What this tells me is that indie devs will now have an easier job at doing immersive walking sims with AAA visuals

That sounds good in my book!