GDC 2023 Session Viewer

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.