Cyberpunk 2077 has been around since 2020, and has only grown in scope, scale, and popularity—including the upcoming spy-thriller expansion, Phantom Liberty. A huge part of the game's success is its User Interface, with Night City boasting thousands of independent UI instances. CD Projekt RED engineering director Arkadiusz Antonik played a major part in bringing the city to life, and heads to this summer's GDC Showcase to talk about the successes and challenges.
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User Interface in 'Cyberpunk 2077': Challenges and Optimizations is a brand-new programming session happening at GDC Showcase, taking place entirely online this June 27-29. Arkadiusz will look back at how User Interface technology was built for this title from scratch, what challenges the development team faced during the production, and how they solved certain problems and optimized the whole system. In an interview with GDC, Arkadiusz shared how, as the game grew, so did the team's ideas of what the UI could achieve.
"At the beginning, we had a different idea. The idea was more or less simple, not that big. But when we started preparing the whole system, the whole framework for user interface, using an engine, we realized that it's pretty generic at some point and we can use it in a different way than we were thinking at the beginning. We could use the same framework but achieve different, better results. So we started sharing this with other teams—not just the user interface team or artists and designers, but also with gameplay teams," he said. "For example, one of our challenges was how to use the user interface to create the advertising system. All these billboards and advertisements that you can see across the whole Night City, this is based on the user interface framework."
Arkadiusz originally planned to present this session at GDC 2023, but unexpected circumstances arose. He told GDC that he was very excited to have the opportunity to present at GDC Showcase—not just because he can show his team's incredible work, but also because virtual events like Showcase can reach game developers all over the world in an easy and accessible way. Growing the community, and bettering the industry.
"From one perspective, the onsite event is very cool because of the networking. You can meet people in real life, talk together. However, taking my case, not everyone has the possibility to be there. Having this kind of event, an online event, is really cool. You can still be part of this group, of this GDC audience. You can be part of it. You can share your experience, but in a different way," he said.
This session is a great opportunity to learn more about the creation, growth, and sustainability of one of today's biggest video games. It's all part of GDC Showcase, an online event happening June 27-29 dedicated to bringing 3 days of great content and networking to the global game dev community.
Join Arkadiusz at GDC Showcase for a deep dive into the UI of Cyberpunk 2077—and bring your questions!
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The all-virtual GDC Showcase is happening this June 27-29! For more information, be sure to visit our website and follow the #GDCShowcase hashtag on social media.
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