How Unreal Engine 5 Powered Marvel Rivals To Create A New Multiverse Of Marvel Heroes

Founded in 1939, Marvel has built a remarkable legacy in global entertainment, evolving from iconic comics to animation and blockbuster films. As its influence continues to expand, Marvel has also made a significant mark in gaming, with Marvel Rivals bringing back excitement for superhero-themed games.

This ambitious multiplayer team-based shooter, powered by Unreal Engine 5, is the result of a collaboration between NetEase Games and Marvel Entertainment. From dynamic lighting and shadow rendering to constructing complex destructible environments, the development team took full advantage of Unreal Engine 5's latest features to shape a new superhero gaming experience.

Lead Technical Designer Ruan Weikang sat down with Epic Games for an exclusive interview, sharing some behind-the-scenes insights and discussing the challenges encountered during development. The first major challenge in Marvel Rivals was actually gameplay design. With Marvel's 85-year legacy, the team had to meet high player expectations for authentic superhero characters. Implementing environmental destruction and team-based competition elements was also crucial for creating an engaging experience.

On the technical side, the team employed the Lumen Global Illumination system to create realistic dynamic lighting, while the Chaos Physics system enabled responsive environmental destruction, adding depth to each battle. In fact, these features provided the solution to the challenges the developers couldn't resolve in Unreal Engine 4 when the project started in 2019, leading to the transition to Unreal Engine 5.

Ruan explained that NetEase Games also utilized UE5's capabilities for extensive customization to transform comic book characters into playable heroes. For instance, the team made significant improvements to the engine's Game Ability System (GAS), creating a robust framework to manage combat logic and state transitions.

The Niagara visual effects system drives the game's diverse effects, with its Data Interface architecture allowing automatic updates to effect ranges based on design changes. In high-intensity combat scenarios, overlapping ability effects can cause performance bottlenecks in both CPU and GPU. To solve this, the team built a specialized performance testing method, running simulations of 12 identical heroes activating abilities at the same time to ensure consistent performance with their large hero roster.

To address identified rendering issues, two primary optimization strategies were implemented:

• Shader complexity analysis: Utilizing the engine's shader complexity visualization to identify and optimize high-complexity material effects;
• Dynamic LOD system: Implementing automatic LOD adjustment based on screen coverage, combined with graduated effect emitters to optimize performance in low-quality settings.

Learn how the team implemented Doctor Strange's portals, worked on scene optimization, and more in the full interview here.

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