APB Reloaded devs are still working on getting the game running with Unreal 3.5

A year ago, I certainly didn’t think we’d be talking so much about APB Reloaded, but here we are. In 2018, new owners Little Orbit began discussions on how to revamp the game, a plan that was set to crack down on cheating and bring the game to Unreal 3.5 and then 4. Little Orbit’s Matt Scott pushed out a status update on those efforts just ahead of the weekend. Apparently, while the team has managed to get PC and console on the same codebase, Scott says it’s still behind schedule.

“We’ll do our best to catch up, but we had some technical challenges in January getting the new build up and running for testing,” he writes. “We had just gotten the game to run internally at the end of the year, but I seriously underestimated how much effort it would take to build an environment that SPCT [San Paro City Testers] could hit externally.” Disconnections and loading issues were among the problems faced by testers.

I'm going to try and give regular updates on our progress, so everyone can track where we are, but for now here is my best general update:

• Most of the code is based on the console version. That's great for engine optimizations, but generally bad for many aspects of gameplay right now. The menus, districts, weapon balance, and other areas are all based on what you can see right now on XB1 and PS4. My team will be pulling across all the PC specific pieces and updates as fast as possible, but there's a fairly big gap at the moment.
• There are lots of frustrating bugs (like not responding to ALT-TAB) that make the game not much fun to play. We need to slam a bunch of quality of life changes in as soon as possible, or I worry that SPCT folks are going to get very frustrated.
• Visually the game looks very different. Materials were updated. Textures improved. Reflections improved. Lighting changed. There are aspects of the game that I'm still hoping to adjust, and I'm sure each player will determine how much they like or dislike the new look, but I was surprised how much I liked it.
• Framerates seem to be more stable, but generally slower than Live. This is due to a number of unoptimized things. I'm confident that we'll actually get the game running better than Live once we apply some fixes.
• We are going to need to do some work on the districts themselves. Missing kiosks need to be replaced. Some elements need to be removed, and collisions will need to be thoroughly gone over.