RE Engine

Lore & Background

Capcom originally intended to follow up MT Framework with the engine Panta Rhei, with development starting in 2011; it was abandoned due to development hell of the unreleased PlayStation 4 game Deep Down. RE Engine was created in 2014, during the beginning of the development of Resident Evil 7. The engine was originally designed with the game's linear nature in mind and was created to make game development more efficient. Since its introduction, RE Engine has been used as the primary game engine across all Capcom titles. In October 2023, Capcom unveiled 'Codename REX' (RE neXt ENGINE), their next-generation game engine.

In Their Own Story

The level designer pulls up the Raccoon City police station in the engine editor, dims the ambient light to a cold blue, and toggles the rain particles on. A single shaft of sodium-orange light cuts through the broken skylight, catching the wet concrete, the overturned desk, the dried blood on the linoleum. She nudges the volumetric fog density up two percent. The corridor breathes. On her monitor, the scene is no longer a collection of meshes and normal maps—it is a place you can almost hear the water dripping from the ceiling tiles. She saves the build, leans back, and whispers, "Close enough." The engine hums quietly in the background, rendering shadows that fall exactly where they should.

Reader's Guide

RE Engine features various improvements over MT Framework, including new anti-aliasing and volumetric lighting features. The engine also allows developers to use photogrammetry to create higher quality assets. It includes improved VR support, tools to make animation faster such as modular rigging, motion matching, procedural animation and motion retargeting, and various new physics simulation options. The RE Engine uses C# for game logic and scripting, which runs on a proprietary process virtual machine (PVM) developed by Capcom known as REVM.

Did You Know?

• RE Engine was created in 2014, during the beginning of the development of Resident Evil 7.
• Capcom personally requested that Nintendo increase the Switch's on-board RAM from 2GB to 4GB to support RE Engine games like Monster Hunter Rise.
• The engine's scripting runs on a proprietary virtual machine called REVM.