World of Darkness Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 - VTMB sequel from The Chinese Room - coming early 2025

[RagingNomad]

Dev Diary #5

 

[whydoibother]

Next-Gen Game Development

Oh my god, when the light source moves, so do the shadows and reflections!!! Its magic!!!
But yeah, I expect the backgrounds to look good for this one, its what the developer is known for.

 

[RagingNomad]

Interesting there there was same location in leaked gameplay from HSL with mannequins. It reminds me good days of Gimble's Prosthetics

 

[Shaja]

Right, that warehouse is an asset directly taken from HSL build.

I saw the leak gameplay on a russian website but I dont remember which one. That exact place you would meet the Malkavian lady and many copies/reflections of her. Making creepy movements. Maybe they were trying to do a similar vibe with the haunted mansion?
https://cdn.dlcompare.com/others_jp...ra-en-vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines-2.jpg




Then the Brujah guy appeared and push you down

https://i0.wp.com/bloody-disgusting.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/brujah.jpg?ssl=1

 

[Wesp5]

Right, that warehouse is an asset directly taken from HSL build.

I just rewatched the leaked video and the HSL warehouse looked differently. Also no mannequins there !

 

[RagingNomad]

Right, that warehouse is an asset directly taken from HSL build.

I just rewatched the leaked video and the HSL warehouse looked differently. Also no mannequins there !

Wow, Mandela Effect moment

 

[Infinitron]

Dev Diary #5

Copy-paste or it didn't happen.

Dev Diary#5: A Dive into Next-Gen Game Development

My name is Andrea Sancio, and I am the Associate Technical Director working on Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 at The Chinese Room. Together with Nick Slaven, our Studio Technical Director, it has been my honour to lead our talented team on the technical side of the game.

I’m going to share with you now a behind-the-scenes look at what our team has been doing on the game, and when you play it, we hope that you will all love it as much as we do.

In the ever-evolving world of video game development, staying at the cutting edge is a continuous pursuit. With the release of Unreal Engine 5, the landscape has shifted dramatically, presenting game developers with an array of groundbreaking technologies and tools. I wanted to delve into our experiences and challenges with some of the experimental technologies that have come to define UE5: Nanite, Virtual Shadow Maps and Lumen. These technologies play a pivotal role in creating a realistic and dark world that aligns perfectly with the neo-noir art direction of our game.

An important milestone in our development was the upgrade from Unreal 4 to Unreal 5. It was a big risk because normally you lock in the version of your development engine early. The changes touched every part of the game, and all our scenes, lighting and assets had to be converted. All the dev teams communicated with us brilliantly to make sure the new tools were exactly what we needed to make the game look amazing and run smoothly.

Lumen is a new real-time global illumination tech. It brings a level of realism to game lighting with raytracing to simulate the path of light and how it interacts with surfaces and materials. It can simulate indirect (bounce) lighting and reflections. However, integrating Lumen into our games was no small feat. Ensuring consistent and smooth performance was the key to achieving the atmospheric lighting required for our world. Working with dynamic lighting and shadow has always been a challenge. In performance terms it was expensive, placing lights is an art and overlapping lights exponentially increase complexity and the costs of rendering the scene because a lot of calculation must be done for each pixel hit by each light. Normally, the solution is to “pre-bake” lights. All the shadows were saved to the level before release, and you couldn’t change them. This provided great quality results for a cheap cost, but the lights and shadows were... well... faked. You would then have to include other tricks like light probes to show that on objects moving inside that space.

Lumen lets us change the colour, position, and intensity of lots of lights that can change dynamically. So to figure out the best way to include these new lights, we spent a lot of time working with our artists. It works by storing all the surfaces hit by light in a memory cache. This cache is at a lower resolution than the output. This means it’s way faster to calculate the effects of lighting. Then, Lumen uses Temporal Upsampling which makes the lower resolution larger without losing quality and detail. None of this can work without Nanite, Cached Virtual Shadows and Temporal Super Resolution so we adapted all those technologies too!

Virtual Shadow Maps introduced a fundamental change in how we handle shadows in Unreal Engine 5. By decoupling the shadow resolution from screen resolution, this technology delivers razor-sharp shadows with minimal performance overhead. Implementing Virtual Shadow Maps required a rethinking of our shadow casting and rendering techniques, but the result was a marked improvement in the visual quality. This was especially crucial in creating the dark and mysterious shadows that are synonymous with the neo-noir genre.

If you want fast frame rates, Programmers have always had to contend with draw calls. Draw calls are instructions sent from the Central Processing Unit (CPU) to the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). To understand it in simple terms, think of a draw call as a request to draw or render a particular set of graphics. Each draw call carries information about how to paint a part of the scene - this includes textures, shading information, and geometry (like vertices). However, too many draw calls can slow down a game because each call requires the CPU and GPU to communicate and process information, which is valuable time spent when one frame is a fraction of a second. Nanite marks a seismic shift in how we handle geometry in games. Rather than relying on traditional Level of Detail (LOD) systems, Nanite virtualises geometry, allowing for detailed assets and performance. With Nanite all the meshes that use the same material get placed in what is called a "bucket” and are processed on the same draw call, greatly reducing their number. It reduces the complexity of asset creation but also opens the door to photorealistic environments that were previously unattainable. Now we can have some ornate architecture and densely detailed environments in our scenes.

Debugging and optimising our code and the world environment became increasingly complex, and we were acutely aware of the constant need to stay up to date with frequent engine upgrades. These upgrades were essential for acquiring crucial fixes and performance improvements. This is a process that many studios might prefer to avoid, as such transitions rarely occur without their own costs. With limited documentation and a scarcity of experienced individuals to consult, our journey involved extensive research, talking with Epic, trials and errors.

It feels cheesy to say but making all this work for our team made everyone’s bond stronger because we all had to communicate constantly. The results were worth it because our art team used it to realise the neo-noir direction they were looking for. And because games are made with tools and technology developed during previous games, The Chinese Room’s future titles will benefit from this hard work too. Everyone did a great job to best use the new workflows. Personally, after many years on projects that used similar approaches, this was a fresh and exciting evolution!

Your experience of playing the game should be seamless. In a way, the less you think about the tech as you’re playing, the better we did our jobs. It’s been a pride of our careers to take on a project that is already so complex on many different levels, and to give it a chance to be ground-breaking in the realm of visual fidelity.

What’s Next​

Following the holiday break, we’ll be back in January with more dev diaries and an extended gameplay reveal of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2.

 

[Shaja]

Right, that warehouse is an asset directly taken from HSL build.

I just rewatched the leaked video and the HSL warehouse looked differently. Also no mannequins there !

Then my brain remembers the Malkavian girl models as mannequis lol

Dear Wesp, please guide us how can we see the leaks nowadays?

 

[Wesp5]

Then my brain remembers the Malkavian girl models as mannequis lol

Yeah, they looked a bit like that.

Dear Wesp, please guide us how can we see the leaks nowadays?

The link was in the Planet Vampire Discord, but I don't have it right now.

 

[RagingNomad]

Right, that warehouse is an asset directly taken from HSL build.

I just rewatched the leaked video and the HSL warehouse looked differently. Also no mannequins there !

Then my brain remembers the Malkavian girl models as mannequis lol

Dear Wesp, please guide us how can we see the leaks nowadays?

Here you can

 

[Shaja]

Right, that warehouse is an asset directly taken from HSL build.

I just rewatched the leaked video and the HSL warehouse looked differently. Also no mannequins there !

Then my brain remembers the Malkavian girl models as mannequis lol

Dear Wesp, please guide us how can we see the leaks nowadays?

Here you can

Thank you! Yes, it takes at least a few assets.

 

[Swartaz]

How many times is this game going to be cancelled and have that cancellation reneged? No way they don't cancel it again.

 

[Storyfag]

How many times is this game going to be cancelled and have that cancellation reneged? No way they don't cancel it again.

13 at the very least.

 

[The President]

How many times is this game going to be cancelled and have that cancellation reneged? No way they don't cancel it again.

Well you’re definitely going to get a game this time. The only question is what the quality of it will be.

 

[Tyranicon]

A reminder that this is the 10th most wishlisted game on steam

 

[Echo Mirage]

Ok. For those of us out of the loop, can someone explain what happened? Hardsuit got kicked to the curb and The Chinese room picked up development. But what does that mean? Are they all but making a new game with the same name, or are they piecing together the assets they have been given such as the same engine and story?

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Ok. For those of us out of the loop, can someone explain what happened? Hardsuit got kicked to the curb and The Chinese room picked up development. But what does that mean? Are they all but making a new game with the same name, or are they piecing together the assets they have been given such as the same engine and story?

HS left a huge mess that cost a lot of money, so Paradox hired CR to get the game ready for release. However, judging by the time it takes and the materials prepared, I believe that some of the scraps are useless and simply had to be designed anew.

Imagine that one company is building a building that is at risk of collapse, so another company is hired. There must be reasons for the risk of collapse, so they look for a reason, and when they find, they destroy defective or unnecessary elements. This requires preparing new project and making corrections to it. In addition, there are other creative personalities.

Ultimately, the building that will be built only slightly resembles the one planned at the beginning.

 

[Shaja]

Ok. For those of us out of the loop, can someone explain what happened? Hardsuit got kicked to the curb and The Chinese room picked up development. But what does that mean? Are they all but making a new game with the same name, or are they piecing together the assets they have been given such as the same engine and story?

- Game looked really bad and there was still much to do to finish the level, after all this time.
- Paradox realizes HSL is quite incompetent.
- In a executives meeting, they were about to conclude to cancel the proyect, then an idea came in and they decided to give the proyect to TCR
- TCR receives all the assets from HSL, they switch from UE4 to UE5.
- They decide to change the story from being a thinblood to be an awaken elder.

Am I missing anything?

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Ok. For those of us out of the loop, can someone explain what happened? Hardsuit got kicked to the curb and The Chinese room picked up development. But what does that mean? Are they all but making a new game with the same name, or are they piecing together the assets they have been given such as the same engine and story?

- Game looked really bad and there was still much to do to finish the level, after all this time.
- Paradox realizes HSL is quite incompetent.
- In a executives meeting, they were about to conclude to cancel the proyect, then an idea came in and they decided to give the proyect to TCR
- TCR receives all the assets from HSL, they switch from UE4 to UE5.
- They decide to change the story from being a thinblood to be an awaken elder.

Am I missing anything?

Perhaps HS never developed any plot line, they just had a number of ideas for quests that a weak vampire could potentially play. That's why the idea of elder vampire sounds more like a connecting element than creating a new axis.

 

[Wesp5]

Ok. For those of us out of the loop, can someone explain what happened? Hardsuit got kicked to the curb and The Chinese room picked up development. But what does that mean? Are they all but making a new game with the same name, or are they piecing together the assets they have been given such as the same engine and story?

- Game looked really bad and there was still much to do to finish the level, after all this time.
- Paradox realizes HSL is quite incompetent.
- In a executives meeting, they were about to conclude to cancel the proyect, then an idea came in and they decided to give the proyect to TCR
- TCR receives all the assets from HSL, they switch from UE4 to UE5.
- They decide to change the story from being a thinblood to be an awaken elder.

Am I missing anything?

Perhaps HS never developed any plot line, they just had a number of ideas for quests that a weak vampire could potentially play.

If I remember correctly Brian Mitsoda basically said that the writing was finished when they fired him, so this shouldn't be the case. I can imagine though that the gameplay just wasn't working with some of their stupid ideas like concentrating on melee over firearms and giving the player three traversal disciplines at the same time. From what we have seen so far, TCR at least uses some of the levels and models, it would be a shame if all that work would go to waste and Seattle should look like Seattle anyway...

 

[ChildInTime]

So, I guess no Lasombra after all?

 

[La vie sexuelle]

Ok. For those of us out of the loop, can someone explain what happened? Hardsuit got kicked to the curb and The Chinese room picked up development. But what does that mean? Are they all but making a new game with the same name, or are they piecing together the assets they have been given such as the same engine and story?

- Game looked really bad and there was still much to do to finish the level, after all this time.
- Paradox realizes HSL is quite incompetent.
- In a executives meeting, they were about to conclude to cancel the proyect, then an idea came in and they decided to give the proyect to TCR
- TCR receives all the assets from HSL, they switch from UE4 to UE5.
- They decide to change the story from being a thinblood to be an awaken elder.

Am I missing anything?

Perhaps HS never developed any plot line, they just had a number of ideas for quests that a weak vampire could potentially play.

If I remember correctly Brian Mitsoda basically said that the writing was finished when they fired him, so this shouldn't be the case. I can imagine though that the gameplay just wasn't working with some of their stupid ideas like concentrating on melee over firearms and giving the player three traversal disciplines at the same time. From what we have seen so far, TCR at least uses some of the levels and models, it would be a shame if all that work would go to waste and Seattle should look like Seattle anyway...

He probably said it exaggeratedly, because he was fired half a year before the project was picked up by Paradox, four years before the expected premiere from CR. After all, the writing in games is constantly adjusted with other changes. Maybe by "writing is done" he meant "I wrote a very long production document that I consider to be the plot of a game that doesn't exist."

So, I guess no Lasombra after all?

Don't be naive. If the brujah clan will be implemented at least average, it will be great, let alone something like Losmobra.

 

[The President]

No Wesp is correct, for your example he’d have to be writing at George RR Martin speed for them to not have the plot and just about everything done after almost 5 years.

 

[Echo Mirage]

Speaking of the Lasombra . I still hope and I pray that someone can either port them out of the trainwreck that was the Antitribu mod, or just make them a standalone clan.

 

[Semiurge]

If the brujah clan will be implemented at least average

Brujah are boring.