GDC is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

View, browse and sort the ever-growing list of sessions by day, pass type, topic, and format. With this Session Viewer, you can view GDC 2023 session details and speakers, and share your favorites via social media. You will be able to build your schedule and access it during the show via export or Mobile App, once live. Sessions do fill up and seating is first come, first serve, so arrive early to sessions that you would like to attend.

Building Night City: The Technology of 'Cyberpunk 2077'

Charles Tremblay  (Technical Director, CD Projekt RED)

Location: Room 301, South Hall

Date: Thursday, March 23

Time: 11:30 am - 12:30 pm

Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass

Topic: Programming

Format: Lecture

Vault Recording: Video

Audience Level: Intermediate

Night City is one of the most ambitious virtual cities realized in a video game to date. Since it has a scale that, from the technical perspective, makes even The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt seem small, the tech team at CD Projekt RED had to re-design many parts of their in-house engine.

This talk describes the challenges faced and solutions developed when building Red Engine 4—from using a prefab-based hierarchy to build and assemble the world, to the approaches taken for streaming different game systems, as well as how the team managed memory and CPU performance. In addition to covering the technical decisions that were made, this talk will dig into the "why" behind those decisions, as well as look at where the technology succeeded and what could be done differently.

Takeaway

Attendees will see the approaches and considerations for performance and engine technology faced when building Night City. They will have a view into why certain technological decisions were taken, what the challenges were when developing such a large game, what worked well and what could be done differently.

Intended Audience

This is for programmers, engineers, and developers who have an interest in world building and performance—especially in an open world context. Basic knowledge of topics such as streaming, memory management, and CPU will be a benefit for attendees to get the most out of the talk.