Developer Ninja Theory explains how Epic Games technology has enhanced the new Devil May Cry game.
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In order to improve the overall game experience, Ninja Theory built new technology on top of Unreal Engine 3 to improve lighting and shadowing and create faster and more accurate cloth simulations and faster particle systems. They also worked with Epic Games and its Unreal Developers Network (UDN) throughout the process.
“UDN is great for quickly looking up some documentation, but it’s the community forums that are invaluable,” said Matthews. “All UE3 licensed developers have access to the forums so there’s a lot of experience to draw upon, which always helps when there is a tricky bug to fix or issue to solve.”
Gamers will have to solve some very big problems to save the world in the game’s story. DmC introduces a unique setting comprised of two visually divergent worlds, one inhabited by the demons that Dante can see and hunt, and the real world that’s completely clueless about the dangers that are always around them.
“This game is set in real world, but the action takes place across two worlds,” said Tameem Antoniades, game director, Ninja Theory. “Another world lives on top of our world called limbo. People in the real world aren’t aware of Limbo. We’ve embedded clues within the environment of how people might be affected subliminally in the real world by actions in limbo.”
Matthews said the team wanted to keep DmC grounded to a certain extent, whilst still making it a fantastical world. Dante gets dragged into limbo by the demons, and when this happens his only choice is to fight his way out to survive.
“We wanted limbo to feel like a world that is alive, evil and out to stop Dante at every step,” said Matthews. “Inspiration for limbo came from a number of sources from surrealist artwork, to eerie time-lapse plant growth, to video references of violent implosions and fragmentation that helped us to create a world that feels like a living creature in its own right.”
