Developer Hypergryph recently held a media conference to share technical details about their upcoming free-to-play action RPG, Arknights: Endfield. The studio revealed that achieving the game’s high graphical fidelity required making extensive modifications to the Unity engine, pushing it far beyond its standard configuration. The game is being developed for simultaneous release across all regions for Android, iOS, PlayStation 5, and PC.

Highly Detailed 3D Models and Performance Demands

A key technical achievement is the creation of highly detailed 3D character models:

• PC and Console Models: These versions feature character models containing approximately 80,000 to 100,000 polygons.
• Mobile Models: The mobile version uses models with 40,000 to 50,000 polygons.

Hypergryph notes that these polygon counts are roughly 1.5 times higher than the average for similar 3D games. This high detail, combined with the fact that the game displays up to four characters simultaneously during action RPG gameplay, significantly increases the rendering load. Furthermore, Endfield includes factory management gameplay, similar to Satisfactory, requiring dynamic rendering of various moving structures and objects alongside the characters.

Custom Rendering Pipeline and Shading

To meet these intense demands, Hypergryph rebuilt almost every system provided by the raw Unity engine. The graphics rendering system underwent a complete overhaul, including the implementation of the more efficient Entity Component System (ECS) architecture and a full revamp of the graphics API. The team also developed custom shading technology to handle complex graphics across different platforms, achieving technical feats like dynamic shadow rendering for distant objects, which is typically difficult in 3D games. For the factory construction system, they employed ECS-based data processing and rendering techniques to ensure lighting and shading remain dynamic across the entire game environment.

Official website: https://endfield.gryphline.com/en-us