Sumo India Studios’ Ganesh Chaudhari on Unreal Engine 5 for gaming

In conversation with Adgully, Ganesh Chaudhari, Technical Manager at Sumo India Studios, talks about what Unreal Engine 5 means for the gaming industry, the uniqueness of Unreal Engine 5, the key highlights of working on Unreal Engine, etc. “For Sumo Digital, UE5 strengthens the ability to raise the bar further in terms of visual fidelity, player immersion and hardware performance that AAA games need. And given Sumo Digital’s comprehensive experience with UE4, we are excited to do even better with UE5,” he says.

Excerpts from the interview:

What does Unreal Engine 5 mean for the gaming industry? 

Epic’s Unreal Engine 5(UE5) is enabling quicker and better game development. All-round improvements over UE4 and new features for artists, designers and programmers makes UE5 a strong engine tech contender for building modern games across platforms. Even small-sized teams can now pursue AAA-quality goals in their games by leveraging UE5.

For Sumo Digital, UE5 strengthens the ability to raise the bar further in terms of visual fidelity, player immersion and hardware performance that AAA games need. And given Sumo Digital’s comprehensive experience with UE4, we are excited to do even better with UE5!

What challenges did you face at Sumo India while using UE5 or any previous UE versions?

We at Sumo India have been following Unreal Engine’s evolution closely and using UE5 has been straightforward because of the following reasons:

• Firstly, Sumo India’s pervasive and disciplines wide UE4 experience while developing games like Crackdown 3, Snake pass, Sackboy: A big adventure and Hood had the team in a position of strength to pick up UE5.
• Secondly, it’s the quality of hands-on reference and training. Sumo group’s internal, online learning platform hosts information about best practices, project experiences, and expert tips to act as a development-tested reference for anyone wanting to pick up new tools like UE5. The same platform is also used for expert training sessions in collaboration with Epic all-round the year. Along with this, we also collaborated with Epic India’s evangelists for an introduction to new features of UE5. Epic’s sample UE5 projects are also a great place to get started. 
• Finally, from a programming perspective, the ability to build UE5 from source code is a big plus. It allows for making custom changes and learning close to the bone implementation of any given UE5 feature as necessary for any given project.

Sumo has worked extensively with Unreal Engine on various games. What makes Unreal Engine 5 so exciting and how is it different from its predecessor?

The lighting improvements through Lumen and Nanite displayed by Epic in the latest Fortnite season are obviously among the most visually striking UE5 features. With UE5, artists can go way further than before with exact rendering of the game’s art style. And this is just the beginning, true power of UE5’s visual capabilities will be on display in the coming years.

For programmers, UE5 features like Common UI are likely to make cross platform development easier. Improved open world creation and management, a battle-tested multiplayer framework and a more comprehensive Gameplay Framework look set to improve the overall game development experience in UE5.

Sumo Digital has developed many titles like Sackboy: A Big Adventure and Hood: Outlaws & Legends on Unreal Engine. What has been your experience developing games on the engine? What have been some of the key highlights of working on Unreal Engine?

When finalizing the game engine for a game we want to make, its ability to match the game’s vision for art style, gameplay, player experience and hardware performance are the top-most considerations. And often, we must stick to the same priorities across consoles, PC, mobile and even an entirely new platform that might come up during the game’s development.

To be able to do this successfully with a team of artists, designers and programmers spread across continents is a tall ask. Unreal Engine scores highly in addressing all these necessities. It is customizable right to the source code level, supports all popular platforms and Epic works on fostering a strong sense of community among its users resulting in quick turnarounds on issues or assistance requests.

Our good run with Unreal Engine has also resulted in the reuse of custom tools and plugins across projects, which adds efficiency to the overall game development process.

How do you feel Unreal Engine 5 is different from previous versions? Unreal Engine 5 is Epic’s real-time 3D creation tool. What does that mean and how does it help?

Along with Lumen and Nanite, UE5’s rasterized and ray traced rendering abilities have scaled a new peak. The improved dynamic shadows, true 3D reflection support, and the ability to create realistic materials allows for imagining real-time 3D like never before.

At a systems level, UE5 is more modular as compared to its predecessor. On the gameplay programming front, Gameplay Ability System (GAS), Enhanced Input and Meta Sounds are some of the features that look promising towards improving game development.

Along with games’ centric capabilities, UE5 also has world-building tools for stitching together photorealistic and immersive experiences. Features like real-time compositing are useful to other media like broadcast TV, film production, visualization and live events, too. UE5, therefore, is allowing all forms of visual entertainment to push their craft higher.

How do you perceive the future of Sumo Digital in India and the video game development culture in the country?

The last decade has been a witness to the exponential growth India has embraced in the video game sector. While gaming on mobile devices continues to hog the limelight, the country has also seen growth in the PC and console gaming space as well. In a bid to leverage the growing talent pool of the country, Sumo Group arrived in India with its first studio in Pune in 2007. Since then, Sumo Digital (part of the Sumo Group) has built a premium console and PC game development business in the country, growing to 16 studios globally including its latest one in Bangalore.

Going forward, as the video game development culture in India evolves from its budding stage, Sumo Digital will continue to deliver on its promise of disrupting the industry on the back of its unique and innovative solutions to create memorable games for gaming fans to cherish. In its growth push, Sumo Digital will double down on leveraging India's talent pool to expand in key areas such as programming, art, design, quality control and production - something that will help bolster the brand's pioneering market position.