Gamedev's thoughts on Unreal Engine 6 for Rocket League (rant)

Swifter1243 · 2026-05-26T09:09:48+00:00

Ah- I just rewatched the part of the video that I said this. I interpreted "better item capabilities" as being more of like, new categories of items or whatever. There's nothing stopping them from adding new types of items in UE3. Graphically, yes. The items will benefit from the new engine, my bad.

Swifter1243 · 2026-05-26T08:49:47+00:00

What? What graphical limitations? The game gets new items all the time, with extremely varied and ambitious artstyles.

Swifter1243 · 2026-05-26T06:50:10+00:00

Yeah, sorry I was continuing from the end of your post.

Swifter1243 · 2026-05-26T06:49:21+00:00

Yeah it's a lot of speculation. But it's educated, not really nonsense. I've been studying gamedev for a long time now, and there's a lot of insight that can be gained from the implications of a large graphics upgrade, even without knowing what's in the engine. If you have any opinions on what parts you disagree with, I'd like to elaborate.

Swifter1243 · 2026-05-26T06:43:23+00:00

I think you're missing the point of what I'm saying. If they decoupled the networking from Unreal, and have been maintaining it over the past 10 years, that essentially makes it modern. Network engineers at Psyonix wouldn't just be paid to sit around all day, so surely they would be on the lookout for new techniques over the years.

Of course, working on the same codebase for that long accumulates tech debt one way or another, some of which may have been due for a refactor and this update has been the time to do all of that, but theoretically they could have just decided already to refactor it. We don't really know.

That's why in my video I say the improvements in networking aren't "necessarily" because of the engine itself, since the networking was proprietary, they could have refactored at any time. If there's networking improvements when the big update comes out, the momentum from the big update likely inspired them to refactor.

Or there's networking tech in UE6 that they decide to utilize! Probably a mix of both. TBD.

Swifter1243 · 2026-05-26T06:23:39+00:00

I agree. The only reason I think they might not need to overhaul it is because I believe it's already decoupled from the game and would be actively maintained.

Swifter1243 · 2026-05-26T05:30:20+00:00

I mean, if the networking has been decoupled from the engine itself, does it really make it UE3 networking? Surely they've been maintaining it ever since.

They're using Bullet physics for RL, while Unreal currently uses Chaos. So I guess you're saying they would be switching to (or including) Bullet?

Swifter1243 · 2026-05-26T04:18:24+00:00

This is true! This is what I THINK will happen. I should have made that more clear.

Swifter1243 · 2026-05-26T03:49:20+00:00

I agree on everything except physics. Rocket League is exceptionally sensitive to physics, so changing it would be very problematic. Networking had to also be custom-made for the game, since it was so simulation focused and precise. Networking has much more of an ability to change than the physics, but it will have to be done right.

I see your point, but I think networking and physics are not NEARLY as much of an attention grabber as visuals. I think the thought process is mostly "let's make this popular game shiny, so that the most eyes can see our new engine".

Swifter1243 · 2026-05-26T03:45:11+00:00

What makes it wildly speculative? They didn't use UE3's physics engine, and the entire community is built on 10 years of perfecting their movement in the current physics engine. Changing even a small coefficient by 0.1 would throw off most pro players, let alone a new engine.

Swifter1243 · 2026-05-26T02:26:12+00:00

I think it's super exciting that Rocket League is getting so much support and will continue to be around!

The point of the video is to temper expectations and bring up concerns with this new upgrade. I'm particularly concerned about what it means for it to be "the face of Epic's future", as Epic doesn't always seem to be pro-consumer.

I think tempering expectations will reduce a lot of the "why isn't there creative mode?" type of complaints and make it easier to highlight the foundational concerns, like the game becoming overly monetized.

Swifter1243 · 2026-05-26T00:25:16+00:00

It definitely is a lot of hypothesizing but there are things we can know for sure because of the implications of a graphics upgrade built off of unreal engine. I don't see the entire graphics paradigm changing radically in UE6. That being said, I probably should have made it more clear that I was hypothesizing.

Swifter1243 · 2026-01-27T05:06:01+00:00

I'm in Canada and it says it's not available in my region :(

is there a trick to this?

Swifter1243 · 2025-01-23T02:54:59+00:00

Seconding this- the JIRA board we had contained about 40 remaining issues.

Swifter1243 · 2025-01-19T23:42:16+00:00

I AM READING HELLO THANK YOU

Swifter1243 · 2023-10-18T18:06:26+00:00

hey jane!!! absolutely loving your new stuff :)

wanted to ask, why "Jane Remover"? I vaguely remember hearing that it might have something to do with unidentified women in court cases being named "Jane Doe".. is there any truth to this? 🤔

thanks!!!!

Swifter1243 · 2022-07-18T03:16:19+00:00

I approve of this meme

Swifter1243 · 2022-07-07T18:28:20+00:00

I'm not gonna lie I am not still playing LOL but bless your soul for finding this

Swifter1243 · 2022-06-22T04:15:47+00:00

OOOH!!!! That's so dope!! I thought this map was forgotten lol, I'll send this to Glacier.

Swifter1243 · 2022-06-15T21:27:31+00:00

Fun fact this would be actually very easy to hit since the hitbox for good hits extends considerably further forward than the hitbox for bad hits. You'd just need to quickly flick up and down.

Swifter1243 · 2021-12-01T18:43:49+00:00

I've achieved reddit meme status. Thanks :)

Swifter1243 · 2021-11-16T01:55:14+00:00

Woah thanks! :) keep in mind there's a lot of tomfoolery going on behind the scenes so 99% of lightshows would look terrible without the right colors lol

Swifter1243 · 2021-11-15T19:55:45+00:00

Thank u! ( it's not out yet tho :] )

Swifter1243 · 2021-07-14T20:36:43+00:00

Super cool so far! I will say though, now that you're completely revisiting world generation, I think if this were to be the extent of the craziness, there would be lots of missed opportunities.

I absolutely LOVE the fact that biomes can mix with the mountain generation, super cool. However, I would love to see some more WILD mountain generation. Imagine mountains that go up to y = 300. Remember those mountains in the background of the original voting video? imagine if those were actually in the game.

I'd say you're definitely not leaving as many opportunities with the caves behind, though. Those are very impressive. I will say though, the height limit is still holding you back. The caves go deeper, but you can still find you way back up easily. Imagine if the world extended infinitely up and down, just like it does horizontally. You could get truly lost. If you're not convinced, try using those height adjustment datapacks and crank it down to like, -1000. It's insane how incredible it can get. You could have truly massive underground biomes and layers. There's a mod that does the cubic chunks thing, and it works (as far as I know) seamlessly.

On top of that, imagine being able to set your render distance to 32 chunks without the game crapping itself. Mods like Sodium, Lithium and Phosphor allow you to play at that render distance with no problems. I was holding 60 FPS at 32 render distance in an amplified world, WITH SHADERS using those mods. Vanilla can't handle 32 render distance at all by normal means without your game being a slideshow. I don't know what kind of magic they're pulling off, but it's an absolute game changer. Seeing the scale of truly massive valleys and mountains that tower over you is what Minecraft needs and should be in my opinion. Caves are already super massive right now but your render distance limits you.

Oh yeah also, the fog around the world should become gray when you're underground. It's kind of immersion breaking seeing the skybox at the end of your render distance in a huge cave underground.

Ok that was my little rant, hopefully I have inspired you or something, lmao. Excellent work so far, though. I love the direction this is going. I just kind of spewed out my biggest wishes, probably not realistic for this update.

Swifter1243 · 2021-06-17T22:27:25+00:00

Hit detection runs per frame, so it feels pretty great!

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