The technical magic within the assist of Physician Bizarre’s portals in Wonder Competitors

Featuring an extensive lineup of playable heroes and villains from throughout the Marvel multiverse, many equipped with unique mechanics, Marvel Rivals presented developer-publisher NetEase Games with a variety of technical obstacles to overcome, particularly when fine-tuning the hero shooter for consoles.

Tieyi Zhang, a senior graphics engineer at NetEase Games, delivered a presentation at GDC this year to clarify the intricacies behind one specific mechanic: Doctor Strange’s portals. If you haven’t seen these portals in action in Marvel Rivals, Doctor Strange can create a portal from his current location to anywhere on the map within a specified distance. This portal will generally indicate where players will end up after emerging from it. They function and appear quite similar to those depicted in the recent Doctor Strange films.

While teleporting a player from one part of 3D space to another already presents technical challenges for the software rendering the environment, the presentation mainly focused on a broader issue: how NetEase successfully rendered multiple perspectives of the same environment simultaneously with minimal frame loss.

Zhang guided the audience through the various steps of the rendering techniques utilized to achieve the effect, discussed the inspirations behind the feature, and demonstrated the differences in frame rate between different iterations of the approach during his presentation.

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He commenced the presentation by showcasing how the mechanic operated using a tool integrated into Unreal Engine called Scene Capture 2D, which behaves like a virtual camera without any optimization adjustments. He introduced the tool, stating, “For those familiar with [Unreal Engine 5], the go-to solution for portals is the Scene Capture 2D feature. As a built-in tool, it is well-documented and supported by numerous tutorials,” before praising the tool’s “Consistent visual quality in capturing content.”

Despite the tool’s apparent reliability, the frame rate significantly dropped when Doctor Strange passed through the portal in the videos displayed in Zhang’s slideshow. The example presented onstage showed a doubled rendering time requirement, causing the game’s frame rate to drop to about half. However, this can vary widely depending on the lighting complexity in the scene. Nonetheless, given Marvel Rivals’ competitive nature, a drop in frames during a match could prove detrimental, especially in an environment where less than one-fifth of active PC gamers engage with new titles.

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It Takes Two was a guiding light

Following this, the engineer highlighted a notable source of inspiration for his resolution to this frame rate challenge: 2021’s critically acclaimed co-op sensation It Takes Two. Hazelight’s use of Unreal Engine to render two simultaneous views without consuming excessive resources from the computer or console running it prompted Zheng to adopt a similar rendering technique for the portals. Zheng humorously remarked about It Takes Two’s seemingly flawless frame rate, quipping, “Does this game showcase some kind of magic? I have no idea!”

Employing delay-free split-screen rendering techniques pioneered by Hazelight and EA’s prominent title, Zheng devised an optimized, frame-efficient solution that leveraged technology typically reserved for local split-screen co-op, effectively integrating one more player into the game to render the view from the opposite side. This method enabled NetEase to utilize the available GPU on the device more efficiently, greatly reducing dropped frames. Moreover, NetEase pushed the boundaries further by skipping approximately every 5-10 frames per second within the portal, preserving the computer’s