Since its stunning debut in May 2020, Unreal Engine 5 (hereinafter referred to as UE5) has been attracting the attention of the entertainment industry such as games, movies and television, and with the official launch of the engine a few days ago, many developers have also begun to rub their fists and eager to try, one of the applications UE5, called "Project RYU" single-player open world RPG has attracted wide attention from Korean players.
Although the game is in the early stages of development, it uses UE5 to realistically capture familiar "faces" all over Seoul, depicting Korean landmarks in a beautiful way: a lot of high-resolution textures can be felt from the official trailer, and the game's lighting system looks quite advanced.
Project RYU game trailer
In the "Project RYU" game, the player will play as a young girl in Gwanghwamun, Gyeongbokgung Palace, Cheonggyecheon and other places to explore and perform specific missions as the main storyline, through the trailer, Gamelook believes that the game will have both third-person and first-person perspectives.
Recently, foreign media This is game announced their interviews with the development team RYU Production on UE5, game content and production concepts.
Here's the full content of gameLook compilation:
At the beginning of the project, it was not an easy way to forge ahead
Behind the game is an obscure Korean independent development team of just six people, RYU Production. Initially, these young people were friends who met online and made videos together, each with their own area of expertise, and after about 5 years of acquaintance, they became closer and closer, and they knew each other what everyone was doing, or what should be done.
At that time, they had used Unreal Engine to reinterpret Nexon's "Adventure Island", and although the uploaded video received millions of views on YouTube and more than 100,000 subscribers, an independent team certainly could not rely on the IP of other companies to eat all the time, so RYU Production decided to simply make a game of its own.
As an indie game development team, "loneliness" is also a common occurrence, and the disintegration of enthusiasm and will is often a reef that they have to face. Talking about the team's staying power, RYU Production believes that they have cleaned up their baggage for each other in the year after Adventure Island and the year they started to develop a new project, Project RYU.
At the same time, they also said that as artists and creators, it is very common for six members to have ideas colliding, which means that once the opinions are different, there must be corresponding reasons, but everyone respects each other, and after some weighing, the team will strive to reach a consensus in the same direction, and after the adjustment process of the idea run-in, not only has the technology progress, but also the feelings will be deeper.
It's not easy for any independent team to survive on friendship, and the early development cost of the game is more like a dissolving agent for team bonding, and they also believe that at this stage, the development cost is the "part that people have to worry about", and in the face of the problem of obtaining funds, they share the experience of learning Unreal Engine by attending Unreal Engine lectures to earn lectures and pay for development costs.
In fact, RYU Production has received an olive branch from many investors, but they are very distressed about it, and emphasize the word "prudent", which does not mean that they are unwilling to accept investment and help from others, in other words, because Project RYU has not yet reached a certain level, and UE5 is just getting started, team members need to learn more deeply, which makes them doubt whether the team is "qualified to accept other people's money".
Therefore, in the current stage of development, RYU Production will focus on the production and optimization of gameplay, narrative and other aspects, and as for the future, the team will consider accepting more forms of funding.
Challenge Unreal Engine and promote Korean culture
Judging from the game effect of the trailer, RYU Production, who made the game for the first time, was very skilled in using Unreal Engine, and the team representative said that he was originally outsourced as a company, working on the design of 3D animation ads, and had applied Unreal Engine at that time.
Although the team is somewhat familiar with the application methods, in any case, it still has a lot to pay attention to, and UE5 has not been on the market for a long time, which means that there are still many things that members need to learn, and resource production is not easy. Nonetheless, Project RYU's world of Unreal Engine resonated with audiences, so they will continue to use and challenge Unreal Engine in their future work, learning, researching, and striving to produce interesting content, which is also a major advantage of the independent team, which will grow themselves in the future, borrow the power of Unreal Engine, and create interesting worlds.
At the game category level, Project RYU, while in the open world category, had no intention of making it a completely open world because "it was impossible for 6 people to create a 100% seamless open world." At present, the game is being developed in the direction of stable listing, such as Gyeongbokgung Palace, Cheonggyecheon, etc.
RYU Production conducted a lot of research into Korea during the game production process, and even went on field trips, such as more than 6 visits around Cheonggyecheon And Gwanghwamun. "I wanted to feel the sense of space when I first came down to Gwanghwamun Station, and I wanted to feel the majestic emotions with the people gathered there to the fullest extent possible, and then I would incorporate these experiences into the game." Said the team representative.
Although claimed to be based on Seoul, the Busan Gwangan Bridge, which appears in the trailer, also indicates that the content of the work is not limited to Seoul. It is obviously unrealistic to make an open-world game that can accommodate all the scenery of Korea, but in order to convey the beauty of Korea through the game, to show everyone the places of interest, the appearance of the hutongs, etc., they proposed and developed in the direction of integrating the various faces of Korea and creating a new virtual world.
The map is important, but the activity that takes place on the map is equally important, RYU Production said that the content of the game's trailer is to show that the project is not a simple graphical presentation, but a playable game, there is still a huge content gap to be improved, such as npc settings, character and animation problems also need to consume more time and energy of the team, as to whether the future can solve the resource problem through cooperation, they remain open to it. Team representatives believe that the amount of physical resources is not necessarily related to how interesting the game is, "even if you don't put NPCs in, as long as the game is fun." ”
It is reported that the story line of the player playing the girl for adventure will not be very complicated, and given that the gameplay experience of the game is the focus, the development team plans to smooth the game with sub-tasks. In addition, the way to travel the world, puzzle or play mini-games is also in their consideration.
Listen to the user, the game production is in the same way
RYU Production will publish the development update to YouTube, which will allow subscribers or netizens to better understand what they are doing, some people think that too much "communication" in the early stage of the project may hinder concentration, but they do not feel so, on the contrary, team members will get more support from the comments of netizens, because they are not experienced development team, this will also provide more opinions and ideas for the development of the game.
"While everyone may think differently, the most important part of forming a consensus should be maintaining maximum communication." The team representative said, "As players of other games, we have a lot of ideas and opinions about other games, so we really hope that the fun we want to convey will touch people's hearts." "Chiak Mountain Peach," which appears briefly in the trailer, was designed to break down the gap between developers and users.
In addition, so far, all the video background music uploaded by RYU Production to YouTube has been written by the team members, but since it is not easy to produce the full music of the game alone, they decided to cooperate with Studio EIM in the future. Talking about the launch schedule of "Project RYU", they said that it is still in the early stages of creation, so there is no definite time for the time being, but given that the team very much wants to launch the game to the players to experience, and does not want to extend the development time by 4 or 5 years, the procrastinating listing makes people "haunted".
It is no secret to say that this is a team with many shortcomings, and the game still has a lot to improve, but they always remain humble and always have a serious and responsible attitude towards their supporters and their own works, which is valuable, can not be good enough, but can not work hard enough, obviously, they are moving steadily in a good direction, as to whether they can deliver an excellent answer sheet in the future, we still need to wait and see.
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