In short: Capcom video games will run on a brand new engine quickly. The writer has knowledgeable builders that it plans to refresh its proprietary Attain for the Moon Engine. The six-year-old platform has a number of shortcomings the corporate plans to handle whereas including newer applied sciences to deal with the evolutions in recreation growth that we have now seen since 2017.
Capcom R&D revealed to builders that it has begun work on a “next-generation” RE Engine. The corporate indicated that as an alternative of constructing a brand new engine from scratch, it’ll improve the present RE Engine in eight phases whereas additionally addressing identified points alongside the best way. The mission is codenamed REX, which is brief for RE neXt Engine.
For a body of reference, Capcom started growing the Attain for the Moon (RE) Engine in 2014, one yr after the PS4 and Xbox One launched. It was prepared by 2017, with Resident Evil 7 being the primary recreation on the brand new recreation structure. Capcom repurposed it for different titles, together with Monster Hunter Rise, Satan Could Cry 5, Road Fighter 6, and the Resident Evil 4 remake.
Nevertheless, we’re now three years into a brand new technology of {hardware}, and the RE Engine is due for an overhaul. The growing old recreation engine struggles with rendering shifting objects at a distance. Should you performed the Resident Evil 4 remake and had hassle aiming and capturing distant enemies, it wasn’t you. It was RE Engine. It additionally has hassle dealing with the bigger asset recordsdata of at the moment’s 4K video games.
Capcom plans to handle these failings and add newer applied sciences to REX, together with raytracing, superior shaders, and extra. Builders designed RE Engine along side RE7. Due to this fact, it handles enclosed settings in RE7 fairly effectively. Sadly, when utilized to extra open video games like Monster Hunter and RE4, it bumped into points with rendering distant objects. To repair this weak spot, Capcom says that REX can have a excessive degree of customization to suit higher with any title.
It additionally advised builders it will have “higher documentation, samples, and tutorials” plus multilingual assist in order that even “new graduates with industrial recreation engine expertise” can shortly adapt to and be taught the engine. Nevertheless, builders mustn’t count on all the things to occur abruptly.
REX Engine will embrace all earlier options of RE Engine whereas including assist for brand spanking new applied sciences and dealing with the rising measurement of property extra effectively.
The video is generally supposed for builders however this was an attention-grabbing little tidbit on the finish. pic.twitter.com/2Fb88i2lMA
– Okami Video games (@Okami13_) October 26, 2023
Capcom mentioned it will “increase the RE Engine to the next-generation degree” in eight phases, which it listed however didn’t element.
- REDox
- REUI
- RELog
- REFlows
- REAssetStream
- REProfiler
- RELauncer
- RERuntime
Whereas among the bullet factors listed within the presentation are definable in a basic sense – REDox probably pertains to documentation, which is why it’s the first part – Capcom did not elaborate greater than that. It did promise builders info on every stage at future shows.
It might be fairly some time earlier than we see a completely full REX Engine – or no matter Capcom finally ends up calling it – due to its staggered growth. Nevertheless, that may very well be a very good factor. If constructed from scratch, it may very well be a number of years earlier than we see any video games utilizing it. The phased growth ought to enable upcoming titles to at the very least profit from among the new applied sciences and bug fixes as they’re added.
