Communication with NPCs via voice, next-generation graphics and a project by the author of Dishonored – the main things from the GDC 2024 exhibition

Artificial intelligence played a major role at the conference. In particular, NVIDIA brought a demo version of the Covert Protocol game to the exhibition. It serves as a demonstration of Inworld’s new AI technology. With its help, developers can create realistic characters that will behave differently depending on the characters, circumstances and actions of the player. Furthermore, their dialogues are not pre-written. The built-in AI is responsible for their response.

Covert Protocol was created on the modern Unreal Engine 5 and in combination with Inworld AI the game feels like a project from the future.

Thanks to technologies such as NeMo, characters in games can have full-fledged dialogues with the player: answering questions, asking questions and commenting on your words. At present, the difference between artificial intelligence and a living person is noticeable, but over time it will disappear as the technology is actively developing.

In addition, NeMo will be actively deployed in other areas. For example, it can help engineers develop new video cards.

Another interesting artificial intelligence technology that will be used in games. This allows NPCs to answer your questions adequately. As with Inworld AI, their lines will depend on the given character and the circumstances surrounding them. You can interact with characters using your voice. A prototype of this technology was shown to a small circle of specialists at GDC 2024.

This technology relieves the burden on the processor and transfers some of its functions to the video card. In short, the graphics module will no longer be idle waiting for the CPU to process data: it will do some work itself and access the processor less often. As a result, the productivity of iron will noticeably increase. Work Graphs will be included in the latest DirectX 12 update.

The main purpose of DirectSR is to ensure efficient interaction between modern processors and scaling technologies used in video cards, mainly AMD FSR, NVIDIA DLSS and Intel XeSS. This tool is necessary for developers and programmers. Regular players have access to improved visuals and performance.

Epic showed off new features in Unreal Engine 5.4. Motion Matching makes animation smoother and more realistic, and Heterogeneous Volumes lets you display large data in high quality and create shadows automatically. Particular attention is paid to translucent objects such as fog. But the main feature of the new version of the engine is the Nanite technology, which can significantly improve performance while maintaining the same level of image quality.