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I never expected that Hotta Studio, who did "Tower of Fantasy", would hold back such a big one.

Their new UE5 product "Different Ring" was first revealed today, which is simple and straightforward: two-dimensional GTA.

In the past two years, there have been a lot of people who want to grab the two-dimensional GTA. The result? The most humble of all is Hotta Studio, which delivers the most finished product.

Everyone else is still demonstrating the concept, and these people directly threw out more than 10 minutes of actual machine demonstration. I don't know if you've seen it:

Let's not talk about what is cool, story, and battle, it's all pretty much the same, so I'll draw a few key points:

Let's start with the technical muscles: "Different Ring" does not have scene loading.

Ten minutes or so of video demonstration, in and out of the indoor and outdoor, switching between the city and the dungeon, the demonstration does not have any black screen loading link.

Forget it if it's not loaded, these people also show off a spatial change, there is natural switching, there is space stretching, and there is a position change......

Moreover, the quality of the scene is not bad. The light and shadow demonstration is very clear, there is ray tracing, there is a neon reflection on the surface of the urban water.

- Most of the demos come from two of UE5's core technologies: "Nanite Virtual Micropolygon Geometry" and "Lumen Dynamic Global Illumination"

Spatial variation

Location changes

Spatial extrusion

Spatial extrusion

Elevator without loading landscape

Then there's the GTA-standard megalopolis.

There are probably two areas in the city of "Different Ring": one is the city center, with high-rise buildings; One is a small town adjacent to a coastal lighthouse.

As a result, the city streets cover a wide range of types: Japan alleys, United States bays, the Grand Cross of China......

Crucially, the completion of urban construction is not low, there are high-density building complexes, there is a solid transportation network, and even tunnels and trams have been built.

metropolis

How to drive

Streetscape

Enter the noodle shop and place an order

Finally, there is the interaction of urban life.

Both GTA standards are available here, with a car and a house: the car can hit the railing and street lights, and it can be modified; The house can be bought by an intermediary, and the elevator is direct;

There is a lot of sense of life. A bunch of people living here in the city will be scared because the player drives too closely;

Architecture is also not an ornament. For example, noodle restaurants, convenience stores, residences and other places can be directly entered, and there are corresponding interactions.

Then there's the way to explore. In addition to traffic lines, some of the characters have shown the effect of walking directly on the surface of the wall, even on the ceiling......

Pavement light & shadow & scene destruction

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Storefront interactions

Vehicle modifications

Buying a house

Viewing property

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Climb the wall and jump off the building

02

After reading it, I was quite surprised.

Not for anything else: "Alien Ring" is the first product to come up with a two-dimensional GTA high-completion demonstration machine.

Speaking of which, Hotta Studio was also known for being fast.

In 2018, the "Tower of Fantasy" project was established and began to explore the gameplay of the open world. It has been in development for 2 years, and the first test started in October 2020.

Seeing that the first test was not ideal, Hotta only spent 3 months doing a round of art & technology iterations, and the second test brought the project data into the first echelon.

In 2021, "Tower of Fantasy" will be quickly launched with the solution of big world + MMO and gain a firm foothold.

——These people followed closely in the second year of the launch of "Genshin Impact" and ate the first wave of popularity in the two-dimensional world.

The Hotta Studio team members are quite experienced. According to the interview with the mobile game, when developing Tower of Fantasy, 25% of the team members served as the chief planner, main beauty, main program and other positions, and many team members have more than 3 years of UE4 development experience.

And if you pay attention to the follow-up updates of "Tower of Fantasy", you can see that after they completed the early big world, they have successively launched map content that has tested technical iterations such as cyber, undersea, and national style, and the progress span is no smaller than the major version of "Genshin Impact".

In the past, miHoYo held back a big move far beyond his past for 3 years; Now, three years after the launch of Tower of Fantasy, Hotta Studio has a bit of that meaning.

Tower of Fantasy's updated map last year

Tower of Fantasy's updated map last year

Now, with a wave of surprises, Hotta Studio may have become the leading team in the direction of two-dimensional GTA.

Before, a relevant person in charge of a large factory told me that now the second yuan GTA is the next direction to break the level, and several large factories with a bit of family background have quietly set up projects to grab this direction.

- "Genshin Impact" makes the problem very clear: if you are brave enough to come up with a one-of-a-kind product, it is to reach a dimension that others can't reach, to earn money that others can't imagine, and to monopolize the right to speak in the market by the way.

The first to be exposed was NetEase's "Codename: Infinity", and the first exposure was a concept film, showing scene destruction and rope movement. There is not much information, and it means that I want to seize the first wave of two-dimensional GTA.

Better known is miHoYo's PJSH. However, doing GTA after the big world is the goal of Cai Haoyu written into Handbook. In 2017, Cai also cut "Genshin Impact" after cutting a project. So, it may only be a matter of time before Tsai resurrects PJSH.

Now it is clear that Perfect World Games is also making efforts.

Codename: Infinity

However, the project has not been officially launched, and the outcome has not yet been decided.

After all, the two-dimensional GTA is not something so easy to do.

One practitioner who has worked on similar projects told me that megacities are a difficult challenge to overcome in their own right.

Unlike the horizontal design of the wilderness-like world, the megalopolis is a longitudinal exploration with a rather complex Z-axis.

That is, the city may not be large, but it needs to be supported by a fairly high content density, as well as a longitudinal exploration route.

- This one tests both technical ability and gameplay design. Both are lacking in the country.

Different from GTA, domestic projects are basically driven by F2P long-term updates, so it means that the team has to polish a superior production pipeline and be able to launch a super-large new metropolis every year.

- This is a problem that no game manufacturer in the world has ever encountered.

Therefore, the first exposure of "Different Ring", the more important information is recruitment.

At present, "Different Ring" has released 20 R&D positions in Suzhou and 16 distribution positions in Beijing.

I don't know if this round of competition will make more projects that were originally quietly promoted unbearable.

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