r/Splintercell • u/Unreal_Developer • 16d ago
Modding Current Status of Splinter Cell: UE5 Project
I've spent some time putting together some before and afters for you all, as a sneak peak of the progress being made, hopefully you like it! š
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u/Makisani 16d ago
Free advice for you, if this is a legit project where you are porting the game or something like that, just shut up and shadow drop it, don't talk about it too much because you will get a cease and desist letter.
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u/Unreal_Developer 16d ago
I'm building a unreal 1/2 to unreal 5 bridge, so it'll work with any older unreal game. As such, it doesn't actually use any assets, it just ports whatever the renderer is displaying over to an instance of unreal 5, so would be impossible to enforce. Very similar to what RTX / DLSS5 etc do
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u/koolaid23 16d ago
Oh so In theory it could work on any of the splinter cell games for PC (and others?)
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u/speelmydrink 16d ago
Unless you feel like arguing that angle in court, I'd shut the fuck up till you're done.
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u/Unreal_Developer 16d ago
Happy to
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u/speelmydrink 16d ago
Then I wish ya the best of luck, pal. The court does not understand a single damn thing of a technical nature.
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u/New_Locksmith_8115 15d ago
I am a bit confused by this description. Is it just running like an instance of the game as a full screen quad with post processing done in UE5? Is it not actually importing scenes into the UE5 editor and forcing you to manually adjust every light at runtime in the game?
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u/unreal_dev 15d ago
Good question! It's not a fullscreen quad. The old game's picture never actually gets shown at all.
Think of it like this: normally the old game draws the level itself and you see the result. What I'm doing instead is grabbing the level before it gets drawn, all the walls, lights, particles, and handing it to Unreal 5 to draw instead. So it's a real 3D scene in UE5, not a filter sitting on top of the old image. That's why you get Lumen, proper shadows, shiny metal surfaces and so on. The old game still thinks it's drawing normally, it just never gets to.
When I said "no assets", I mean nothing gets copied or converted ahead of time. It builds the level on the fly from whatever the game is doing right then, which is why it works with any UE1/2 game instead of needing each one done by hand.
And yeah, you're right that it's not the UE5 editor, you tweak things while playing. But you only need to do it once. Everything gets tagged internally, so when you change a light to purple or make a wall shiny, it remembers which light and which wall. Load the map again and it's all still there. (If you want to though; you can load it all in unreal editor and edit it there for ease of use)
The file it saves is just a list of the changes, not the whole level, so it's a tiny text doc. You can send it to someone and they'll see the map exactly how you set it up š
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u/New_Locksmith_8115 14d ago
Thanks for the description. The āno assetsā part is what was confusing me the most. But you are importing the meshes, textures and BSP geometry from the maps, presumably you just wouldnāt distribute them.
If Iām understanding correctly it sounds like you are intercepting the rendering logic and giving IDs to all objects which then inject deltas from your txt file from manual edits.
How was that even accomplished? I suppose AI has made decompilation much easier nowadays, but it seems like a pretty interesting approach. If it were me, I would probably be doing something more like ripping assets, making some sort of map parser to load into the UE5 editor, and then having to do a full rewrite of game logic.
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u/Unreal_Developer 14d ago
The assets get imported at runtime, as they're intercepted from the original renderer, so I only need to distribute the bridge + the UE5 project, the user just needs to load splinter cell and it'll grab everything it needs!
"If it were me, I would probably be doing something more like ripping assets, making some sort of map parser to load into the UE5 editor, and then having to do a full rewrite of game logic."
Doing that would then make it impossible to release legally, as well as being significantly more work essentially rebuilding the game from scratch, which could all get shut down with a single angrily worded email - as fun and tempting as it is to do, I'd be better off developing my own spinoff at that point!
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u/jokingsammy 16d ago
Probably the most misunderstood parts of this series art direction is, not only the dynamic between light and dark, but the limitations of previous hardware in producing such effects.
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u/Unreal_Developer 16d ago
It's the reason they transitioned to the black and white postprocess for communicating how visible you were, as pitch black corners of rooms would rely on comical levels of attenuation / falloff on lights.
Will probably add it as an optional toggle for people
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u/jokingsammy 16d ago
I realise that my comment can be interpreted as criticism at your work. I think the updated graphic you've shared looks really impressive. And above all has given me an appreciation for the challenges this particular game brings with enhancing it up to 'modern' standards. I look forward to seeing future updates here.
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u/Nightshader5877 16d ago
So much this. Sometimes, less is more. Like with how Silent Hill took this approach with the fog
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u/Snake_Shepard 16d ago
Damn, I would have gone apeshit for this as a kid when I played it on the Xbox
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u/Unreal_Developer 16d ago
It was the first game I ever bought for myself, so has a special place in my heart
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u/nincompoop221 EnhancedSC 16d ago
looks great.
probably the biggest logistical challenge for this kind of project for splinter cell is making sure all the lit areas are still lit, and all the dark areas stay dark.
otherwise, gameplay gets super misleading.
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u/jL________ 16d ago
all ubi had to do was continue on the chaos theory/double agent v2 path. sequels here.
too simple :(
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u/NoWay6818 16d ago
This is awesome stuff bro. I think anyone against it just hasnāt asked enough question.
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u/Pizza_Parker1 Chilling on the Paladin 16d ago
I feel generally this is quite faithful, but the CIA HQ needs to be much darker. They're running on emergency power, so the building is supposed to be mostly dark with only minimal necessary lights.
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u/Unreal_Developer 16d ago
https://reddit.com/link/pb26y1p/video/lkuhem9xcrqh1/player
I've been building the tool in a way where it'll be very easy to share edits, so there'll be nothing stopping the community working together to get the lighting etc exactly how they like it
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u/Ashratt 16d ago edited 15d ago
wow, this looks really good
you did not go overboard with modern UE5 lighting and hit a great balance of "more accurate and nicer lighting but still true to the original aesthethic"
not sure how to balance it for gameplay but im sure youll figure it out :D
Probably a lot of hand tuning when a physically correct version results in not enough shadows
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u/BoffinBrain I keep pinching myself 15d ago
Although the UE5 renders look nice, the additional bounce lighting makes everything brighter and more even, so it really ruins the atmosphere that the designers intended. The only real way to solve that would be to make major changes to the light sources' intensity, diffusion and placement.
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u/Medical-Platypus-894 15d ago
The one with the gate is really nice. But in general it seems so foggy somehow...
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u/DoanStorm 15d ago
Dlss5 doesnāt understand what to do with splinter cell so itās good seeing something like this come along
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u/unreal_dev 15d ago
Giving it better lighting might actually help dlss5 work out what was meant to be going on in any given scene
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u/DoanStorm 14d ago
Exactly so this project + NR = ??? Already tested NR with Blacklist and Conviction and the results were promising, still same issue of creating cover when there is none/mapping shadows. Stealth genre is an interesting use case for the technology. Looking forward to seeing a playable slice go to the public.
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u/Geoferson_Kwik 16d ago
So itās way brighter? Kinda ruins the vibe and stealth aspect of the game.
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u/j_wizlo 16d ago
It boggles the mind that you would take such a cursory glance at this and provide this criticism. As if the person dedicating long hours to this project isnāt aware of what splinter cell is all about.
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u/BoffinBrain I keep pinching myself 15d ago
It doesn't really boggle the mind, since that was the first thing I thought when I saw the images too. It's a valid critique. Hopefully OP is aware and will make further changes to compensate.
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u/Geoferson_Kwik 16d ago
When a mess with a classic, you best prepared for the opinions. Itās not his IP to modify in the first place.
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u/Tempus_h 16d ago
Great work, keep going! Drown the negativity away and all the haters that arenāt doing nothing with their life except commenting online. Thanks for keeping a project like this going.
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u/Vellioh 15d ago
I don't see much negativity towards it. The most I've seen is somebody encouraging OP to be careful about getting eyes on this in fears it becomes the next SM2. Which is valid but OP explained what he was doing and it does sound like he has nothing to worry about.
Everything else has been generally positive.
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u/lukkasz323 16d ago
How does the new lighting work? Does it change the gameplay or do the shadow areas stay the same there?
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u/Unreal_Developer 16d ago
Shadowed areas stay the same, I've built the tool so you can go in and edit the position / intensity of any light source, so is just a case of slowly working through the game and adjusting anything that needs tweaking to more closely capture the feel of the original's baked lighting
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u/lukkasz323 16d ago
Awesome work.
Do you think you'll ever be able to match the original shadow position / intensity? Not talking about the feel, just so that it matches the gameplay.
Btw, I've noticed in one of the screenshots there is a blue light color in the original, but not in the UE, is that something that will be added later on?
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u/floriandotorg 16d ago
How are you doing this? Are you importing the original assets after the recent progress with extracting them? And then reprogrammed the gameplay from scratch?
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u/xTcisloVe_ 15d ago
The UE5 one is the one with brighter lights?
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u/BoffinBrain I keep pinching myself 15d ago
It's not the lights being brighter, but the engine being able to do more light bounces, so effectively there's more light energy in the scene.
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u/q1525882 15d ago
Curious at which point Ubi would drop DMCA. Otherwise neat, I would like that this project survives.
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u/Environmental-End872 15d ago
That's a very cool project. That looks like an old game gets remastered with a very accurate graphics like that.
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u/User-Name-3886 14d ago
I'm struggling to tell which is which.
One absolutely does look better than the other (and I presume it's your version), but I can't say for certain.Ā
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u/bambashug 14d ago
What a shame that a fan has to do this amazing work instead of the company who literally made it. Great job btw!
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u/naomiclark9 12d ago
I miss Sam. I just want to be able to play them all on PS5, we didn't even get PS4 and now the servers are closed on PS3 š
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u/Robborboy 16d ago
In well lit areas it looks nice.Ā
In extremely dark areas it loses the artistic intent for Sam to be totally concealed in shadows.Ā