Introduction of the Interactive Cinematics in 'Cyberpunk 2077'

Due to the completely different nature of Cyberpunk 2077 compared to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and the development work on REDengine 4, we had the opportunity to revise our solutions to creating and handling story content. I will present a tool which allows us to create a scene using a new pipeline, i.e. loop Writer -> Quest Designer -> Cinematic Designer. I will discuss components such as fundamental graph nodes, dialogue lines and options, fundamental events, preview, preview scenarios, resource libraries, scene staging, and interoperation with quests. The new pipeline supports iterative building of scenes as well as the free introduction of changes to existing implementations. It can be difficult to create a scene the first time around that evokes the desired emotions without the need for additional changes or tweaks. To counteract this issue, the presentation will cover two solutions: the first is “signal distribution mechanisms” (simply put, the mechanism of signal propagation in the graph) and “event processing and executions”. This means that scene events are blocks placed on the timeline inside dedicated graph blocks; before they are executed, they must be first processed and only then properly executed. The presentation will include pictures, diagrams, gifs, and videos to support the audience’s understanding of the topics covered. The presentation contains the results of the Cinematic Feel project co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund within Sectoral Programme GAMEINN, Operational Programme Smart Growth 2014-2020, provided by The National Centre for Research and Development.