Why was Unreal Engine a good fit for DRAGON QUEST TREASURES?TOSE Co., Ltd:

Because we were targeting the Nintendo Switch platform, performance was top of mind while we developed the game. Unreal Engine’s rich feature set allowed us to make the appropriate adjustments and finish the game without a hitch.

It was also extremely helpful to have access to Unreal Engine’s source code, allowing us to find bugs and pinpoint bottlenecks on our own.

Adjusting the game’s balance was easy, as well, because Unreal Engine could handle even our more difficult demands. Given that gameplay involves hunting for treasure in vast fields, Unreal Engine had all the features we needed to create open-world maps without difficulty.

Were there any Unreal Engine tools or features that helped in the development of DRAGON QUEST TREASURES?

TOSE: As developers, we felt that Unreal Engine provided an environment that allowed us to focus on creative work. Unreal Engine’s Post Process Effects include rich functionality for fine-tuning graphics; the ability to apply changes in real-time while playing the game really helped to improve its quality. With respect to materials, artists could use Blueprints to take an active role in experimenting with shaders, which had traditionally been created by programmers.

Sequencer was easy to use, as well, and allowed us to iterate quickly. We had all the features we needed to create event demos; this was extremely helpful in raising the bar on quality. Regarding 3D graphics, Unreal Engine’s standard feature set includes culling and level-of-detail (LOD) visualization, which we felt made it easier to check and adjust rendering workloads.

We are also indebted to the Unreal Developer Network (UDN). Though it isn’t a tool or feature, when we had a question the Epic Games staff responded quickly, allowing us to easily check on features we had never used before and resolve problems as soon as we encountered them.

In terms of data management, Unreal Engine can integrate with version control tools like Subversion and Perforce (P4) to consolidate complicated workflows all in one place. Collections, while having a very specific use case, were also quite useful. They made it easy to immediately open frequently used levels and other assets to access data. Collections also allowed us to clearly see relationships between data; this prevented us from carelessly deleting things that were still in use.

Source: Unreal Engine Blog