Greetings techy platformers!
I'm not quite sure if we subconsciously foreshadowed the following five years when we came up with the name Hell Pie for our latest project. Because any developer will agree that the word "hell" is probably the most apt description of the time in which a game is made. Actually, according to the planning, a development should always take two years less, and offer at least 50% more content, which fell into the gutter somewhere in all the mess. Washed away by all the blood, sweat and tears of disillusioned developers.
Or in short: developing games is awesome, but you need a thick skin. Hell Pie is our third game, so we knew (more or less) what we were getting into. But what would the developer's life be boring if there weren't new challenges waiting somewhere to be heroically worked on?!? And so one fine day a year ago Tim (the PC tech & gaming enthusiast from Headup) came around the corner with an idea: "The look and style of Hell Pie would look even more awesome with Ray Tracing than it already does! What do you guys think of the that?"
To be honest: Not much at this moment. And perhaps that is why we agreed. Later I thought a bit about whether it makes sense for Hell Pie to include Ray Tracing in a cartoony game at all. Doesn't that only look good in games that are as realistic as possible? I adressed that question with Tim, and he related me to Pumpkin Jack so that I should take a look on the Ray Tracing implementation of it. And what can I say, Pumpkin Jack clearly benefits from Ray Tracing, and so we (meaning mainly me) got started together with Nvidia.
Since the beginning of 2021, I started actively working on adding Ray Tracing to Hell Pie. And as always in the life of a developer, the theory sounds quite simple at first. The implementation then went more like this: "So, let's get started. Well, seems to be easy going... But, nope. Not at all. F*ck... Maybe? Hm... No. Noooooo!!! F*ck. F*ck. F*CK F*CK F*CK!!! WHY?!? ... Well, at least it looks good. But where are my FPS? Dammit! Let's add DLSS... It works! Yes! I LOVE IT!!! That was worth it."
Ray Tracing does not turn Hell Pie inside out. We use Ray Tracing partially so as not to break the style of the game, but to highlight some aspects. Ray Traced Reflections reflect in real time the environments, character, etc. in surfaces such as windows, water, mirrors, etc. And Ray Traced Ambient Occlusion causes a more realistic overall look in the levels when it comes to ... ambient occlusion. But (moving) pictures say more than a thousand words:
Personally, I like such gimmicks very much. RT Reflections, RT Ambient Occlusion, DLSS, etc. And that's why I put it in. Internally at Sluggerfly, however, not all are fans, because additional techniques like Ray Tracing also bring technical hurdles: suddenly some effects in the game don't work anymore, a workaround must be found, etc. It's been some back and forth, but we've added some cool gimmicks to Hell Pie. I'm proud of it in any case!
And hey, exactly two weeks from tomorrow Hell Pie will be released! Then you can see for yourself - with the appropriate hardware, of course - that a brightly colored, stylized 3D platformer like Hell Pie works wonderfully with ray tracing. It doesn't always have to be realism. Life is already realistic enough.
See you soon, dear friends!
Christian & The Sluggerfly Team
https://store.steampowered.com/app/889910/Hell_Pie/