When setting out to create Alien: Rogue Incursion, the first-ever VR game set in the storied Alien universe, developer Survios knew it couldn’t compromise on quality.
The game— single-player action-horror title—puts players in the virtual boots of Zula Hendricks for the first time as she fights against highly intelligent Xenomorphs using iconic weapons and gear such as the Pulse Rifle, Motion Tracker, and more.
To achieve its goals of delivering an immersive atmosphere and intense action, Survios selected Unreal Engine for the project. Fortunately, Survios is no stranger to developing with UE as the studio has shipped nearly ten titles in previous versions of the engine.
So how has Survios leveraged specific Unreal Engine 5 features like Lumen, Niagara, Chaos Physics, Volumetric Light Fog, the Gameplay Abilities System and more to make Alien: Rogue Incursion as immersive and entertaining as possible? Hear from Survios Co-Founder and CTO Alexander Silkin below to find out.
Other UE5 features used on the project
Lumen
Alexander Silkin: We're excited about Lumen: It results in a really beautiful image. Unfortunately, modern VR platforms are not quite performant enough to run Lumen's dynamic global illumination and reflections. However, it does empower us to iterate much more efficiently in the editor, as Lumen allows us to quickly preview our results in real time.When it comes to the final image on the device, we rely on GPU light bakes—the next iteration of light bakes. The previous iteration was Swarm which used the CPU. Now, the GPU light bakes are running way faster.
Our new on-premises build farm has NVIDIA RTX 4090s, so each one of our maps can bake in approximately 30 minutes instead of many hours; four to eight hours, depending on the quality.
What this allows us to do is iterate really quickly. With Lumen, an artist quickly moves a light or object to see what the desired outcome is. Then we bake that, which provides movie-level quality of lighting on the device.
Insights Profiler
Alexander Silkin: We also really love the Insights Profiler, which has consistently received updates since the launch of Unreal Engine 5. As VR performance presents a challenge, the Insights Profiler has been a great boon to be able to quickly determine what the bottlenecks are: where, for example, there are bubbles where we're waiting for work. And that lets us perform optimizations in a much more scientific manner.Gameplay Abilities System
Alexander Silkin: We make heavy use of the Gameplay Ability System, not only for the enemies, but also for the player. The Gameplay Ability System has been really helpful in allowing us to decouple a lot of our logic. For the player specifically, it's been a great way to systematically decouple input from the action. It has also been great for creating a much more extensive way of calculating things like damage and effects on both the player and the enemies.Animation Blueprints
Alexander Silkin: The Animation Blueprint system has also received lots of updates. Particularly, we're now able to link lots of Animation Blueprints together using the Animation Blueprint linking animation layers. That has allowed us to create big, extensive networks of Blueprints that are reusable. And it has improved the maintainability of these Blueprints by decoupling the Blueprints away from one giant blob.AI Sense Perception System
Alexander Silkin: In Alien: Rogue Incursion, the Xenomorphs can't see you, but they can hear you. The monsters don't have eyes, but they have excellent hearing. So the entire game is built around the concept of you making noise, whether by accident or on purpose, and the enemies drawing in on you. For this, we use the AI Sense Perception system in Unreal Engine.To learn more about Alien: Rogue Incursion, launching on December 19, 2024 for PlayStation VR2 and Steam VR, and on on February 13, 2025 for Meta Quest 3, head over to alienrogueincursion.com.