I’ve been seeing quite a bit of comments recently around various forum boards saying that Cyberpunk 2077 is well past its initial stages, which is likely false. With a new job hiring posted for CD Projekt Reds upcoming Sci-Fi RPG, let’s take a look at why the 2012 version of Cyberpunk 2077 was likely scrapped/reworked and how animals and creatures will be in the game courtesy of a job post by CDPR on May 4th.
I know what I’m about to bring up may bore some people, but I need to use something as reference to kinda drive a point: You see, CD Projekt Red upgraded the once old REDengine 3 to the brand new REDengine 4. So what does that mean? A lot had to be scrapped.
This is the part where I may lose some folks, but a game that we cover on this very site named War of Rights went through the same engine changes. The team shifted from the CRYENGINE 3 to the CRYENGINE 5 and a lot had to be reworked almost from the ground up. Switching engines takes precise calculations in that you can’t just do it too early nor do you want to do it too late. The post by the developers behind War of Rights, Campfire Games, update sits below:
“But what exactly is and means an engine upgrade? How does it benefit the development of the game and thus also you, the players?
Ever since the first release of the Technical Alpha, we’ve been using the final CRYENGINE 3 version (at the time offered through Steam). This version of the game engine is nearly a year old now and since Crytek, the creators of the engine, is one of the technological leaders of the industry, the engine has naturally evolved quite a bit in that timeframe. Timing in regards as to when to upgrade is also a considerable factor. We feel like now is the right time to upgrade as CRYENGINE 5 is getting ever more stable and our amount of code written is still manageable (the further along a game is in development the harder it generally is to upgrade the game engine).”
Meaning if the devs made the switch with Cyberpunk 2077 back in 2012, not all that much was done to do such a switch. Here’s a link to the page explaining changes to WoR engine, which is accompanied by an image showing the act of changing code.
This coincides with the most recent notice indicating that the Polish government granted CD Projekt Red $7 million for building new tech with an aim to release the game sometime between 2018-2019, and if the dev team wants to they can prolong the use of the grant to release the game in 2021. The grant is also being used to help upgrade the RED Engine 4.
This also links into what CDPR’s Visual Effects Artist, Jose Teixeira, had noted to Kotaku (archive.is) back in 2016 when he stated that…
“I mentioned that we were upgrading the engine based on the feedback everybody gave from The Witcher 3,” Texiera said. “We’re upgrading the engine. It’s a pretty thorough upgrade. Almost every aspect of the engine is getting upgraded. My particle effects editor is getting upgraded, as is almost every other tool.”
When I use the word “scrapped” think of it as a building with an old exterior but with an all new interior… except replace the interior with game code. In other words the code that was put in place back in 2012 or 2013 is more than likely gone and replaced with more stable and less janky code. Model files (although it was a CGI trailer) are likely to stay like the ones seen below.
Moreover, as of May 4th, the developers posted up on their Twitter account that they are now looking for Gameplay Animators, Cinematic Animators and experienced Animators.
Unleash your artistic freedom and create awesome animations!https://t.co/Y2mWFO0SNHhttps://t.co/3Ft71e9ZcIhttps://t.co/IlrASZI4F1 pic.twitter.com/vnuye8O8zi
— CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) May 4, 2017
Now it was noted in a previous report sometime back by SlimLarnaout that CDPR handles things differently and goes about creating things in an unconventional way at times (but not always), which includes putting together the official trailer released back in 2013. So this means that nearly anything could be going on with the game while the devs are looking for Gameplay Animators, Cinematic Animators and experienced Animators. With that said here’s the new job listing description:
“CD PROJEKT RED is looking for an exceptional, talented and experienced Cinematic Animator to join our outstanding team. Person on this position will be responsible for character animation in cutscenes and dialogs, so good acting skills are necessary. You will also be responsible for the preparation of mocap materials, their dynamics and overall quality as well as for the implementation of animations into the game.”
In addition to the above, we get a hint that four-legged robots and creature will be in the game as well as animals and stuff that are referenced in the new job listings:
“We’re giving animators a lot of freedom in terms of creativity – we have our own motion capture studio and animate everything in-house. You’ll have a shot not only at animating humanoids and animals, but also machines and creatures that are a real challenge to bring to life. At RED, every animator is responsible for a piece of the project, so you feel you’re a a part of things. If you’ve been looking for change, you just found it!”
You read right, there will be four-legged animals and creatures which that are further elaborated on in the job listing:
“Experience in animation bipedal / quadruped characters and other organic and inorganic forms.”
If I had to give a wild guess — though please take this with a grain of salt — the devs are reworking code and getting ready to make a trailer for E3 or something — due to the hiring of an Event Manager — so that they can move on finishing up the gutted code from 2012 and implement it manually through the REDengine 4 as we speak. This could make the road going forward next year (or in 2019) much easier when tackling more complex mechanical or graphics implementations.
Cyberpunk 2077 is set to come out when it’s ready.
