The Technical Challenges of Doctor Strange’s Portals in Marvel Rivals

The addition of portals in Marvel Rivals has shown to be a complicated feat, especially when invoking the iconic powers of Doctor Strange, a character known for his ability to manipulate space and time.

Ruan Weikang, the Technical Lead Designer at NetEase, has detailed the struggles that the development team faced:

“Creating portals that enable real-time spatial connections and bi-directional combat interactions not only presented complex gameplay implementation challenges, but also introduced unprecedented performance demands when combined with advanced graphics features.”

Originally, the portals were implemented using Unreal Engine 5’s scene capture system, which comprises a virtual camera that captures a scene in real-time. However, this method quickly became constrained due to significant performance limitations during intense combat.

Instead of this initial approach, the team adopted a modified viewport split-screen implementation to integrate portal rendering directly into the main view pipeline, significantly reducing the strain on the graphics rendering process.

The technical advancements made it possible to ensure that actions involving portals appeared seamless, maintaining gameplay fluidity and enhancing user experience.

In conclusion, the successful integration of such an iconic ability has not only showcased the potential of Unreal Engine 5 but has also set a high standard for future projects in superhero games.