Cinematic Feel: a comprehensive technology enabling the delivery of a unique cinematic quality in open-world RPG games, also including innovative process solutions and a unique set of dedicated tools
Project title
Cinematic Feel: a comprehensive technology enabling the delivery of a unique cinematic quality in open-world RPG games, also including innovative process solutions and a unique set of dedicated tools
Name of Beneficiary/Beneficiaries
CD Projekt S.A.
Name of programme
Operational Program “Smart Growth”
Competition
Competition GAMEINN
Project value
PLN 9,198,388.93
Funding value
PLN 3,691,692.24
Project delivery period
02.01.2017 – 31.05.2020
Results of our work
Video
Issues addressed
The aim of the project was to develop an integrated set of tools for creating interactive film-quality scenes and a technology that would enable gamers to become actively involved (and not just have games played in front of their eyes). The key goal pursued by the Cinematic Feel technology is to ensure film-like quality of scenes and deep immersion while maintaining high process efficiency in large role-playing games with an open world and a non-linear plot.
It is worth noting that achieving the required technology features in each of these aspects separately is not enough. It was equally important to ensure harmonious interaction of all its components and maintain an appropriate balance between them, because maximizing the capability within one aspect usually means lowering the capabilities in other aspects.
The use of fully choreographed cutscenes allows for a cinematic quality, but such scenes interrupt the game and take away the player’s freedom, which weakens the sense of immersion. In addition, the production of cutscenes is expensive in terms of time and money, which is a problem especially in the case of complex games with non-linear plots (due to the number of cutscenes necessary in all possible variants of the game). Abandoning conventional cutscenes allows to reduce costs and avoid interruptions in the game, but too simple or formulaic scenes will not provide film-like quality; they can also “emaciate” the game world and reduce its credibility, thus negatively affecting the effect of immersion.
Cinematic Feel addresses this problem by allowing you to create a variety of interactive cutscenes using a range of editing techniques and reusable elements. The latter are crucial because they allow the production of more scenes while reducing costs. The multitude of techniques and elements creates the risk of disturbing immersion if the points of combining elements or changing techniques are too visible (a classic example is the use of artistically unjustified editing cuts), but Cinematic Feel solves this problem by using appropriate blending methods.
Project beneficiaries
The first group to benefit from the project results are members of the company’s own development team. Cinematic Feel tools and process solutions enable developers to create higher quality scenes in less time. This is an obvious benefit for the company, as it allows the creation of larger and more challenging games. The second group are players for whom Cinematic Feel will enable deeper immersion and, therefore, more intense gameplay experiences.
Major implementation challenges
The greatest difficulty was to properly balance efforts while working on the aspects that were crucial to us: scene quality, immersion and process efficiency. Cinematic Feel is a multi-faceted optimization challenge. Excessive focus on one aspect may have impaired game capabilities in other aspects, For example, it would be possible to create high-quality scenes while maintaining deep immersion, but too low process efficiency would prevent the technology from being used at its full performance.
Our advice to other applicants
It is important to clearly define the key goals of your project. Their number must be limited, a few at most. They must be reasonably general, but also concise. Everyone involved in the project must clearly understand what they are trying to achieve. This will make it easier to “stay on track” – there is a risk when you have many different issues that need to be addressed within the project. Some issues may seem important, and perhaps they are, but are they important in the context of the key project goals?