Ascendant Studios’ Unreal Future

Lessons in Developing a New Game from Scratch in Unreal Engine 5

October 05, 2023

Ascendant Studios’ Unreal Future

Lessons in Developing a New Game from Scratch in Unreal Engine 5

Greetings Magnus,

Unreal Fest 2023 has us pumped for the future of Unreal Engine and Ascendant Studios! It was an honor to announce our plans to upgrade Immortals of Aveum™ to UE 5.2 during the Unreal Fest opening session. We also got to meet many other industry experts and share our learnings in Unreal Engine development during our panel. Keep on reading to get the first-hand details…

Immortals of Aveum is Upgrading to Unreal Engine 5.2!

Our Associate Art Director, Julia Lichtblau, took to the stage during the Unreal Fest opening session with exciting news - Immortals of Aveum will be upgrading to Unreal Engine 5.2! UE has been a pivotal part of our game’s development, allowing our modestly sized team to collaborate more effectively and efficiently, especially in the face of a pandemic.

Moving from UE4 to UE5 let our team take on design challenges we previously thought impossible - like combat on 400 foot walking mech traversing through the ocean - and we made a bigger, better game than we’d otherwise have been able to. Julia tells how the studio got in on the ground floor of UE5:

“UE5 would be entering Early Access and in theory its new features could solve most of the technical impossibilities that were standing in our way of making this level a reality.

Within two months of UE5’s Early Access in 2021, our team was working in the untested and in-progress version of the engine. A year later, we moved our full game from UE4 to UE5 as it entered Preview.”

- Julia Lichtblau, Associate Art Director at Ascendant Studios

Now as we look to upgrade to 5.2, we’re optimistic about how improvements to tools like Lumen and Nanite will help us bring even more visual and performance improvements to the game. Take a sneak peek at what we’ll be exploring with the engine upgrade in this blog post.

Developing a Big Budget Game in Unreal Engine 5 from Scratch

There were many “firsts” for our studio as we charted our path to create Immortals of Aveum. From growing our team from scratch while navigating the pandemic, to imagining a new fantasy universe and designing a convention-breaking sub-genre, all while learning and building our first-person magic shooter in a brand new engine. To say we learned a lot during that process is an understatement.

We’ve had an incredible opportunity to be one of the first AAA developers to successfully release a fully featured game powered by Unreal Engine 5.1. So in our Unreal Fest panel, we wanted to share what we’ve learned - the triumphs, the challenges, even the mistakes - to help other devs navigate UE5 during their own game development journey. Discover how our team approached Unreal Engine development, converting from UE4 to UE5, and the lessons learned as our modestly-sized team built Immortals of Aveum. Watch the full panel on our YouTube channel.

Get in-depth knowledge about magic, combat, gear, and more in our Developer Deep Dive series! Whether you’re looking for the basics on Red, Blue, and Green magic types, or you’re planning gear and spells build, the Deep Dive videos have all the info you’ll need to defend Aveum as an elite battlemage.

Head on over to the Immortals of Aveum community hub for the latest game news, guides and tips, fan creations, and more!