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/ Games Porting /
The Eternal Cylinder
Next-Gen Port Completed in 7.5 Months, With First-Try Certification
4.5/5
rating
on Xbox
79/100
score
on Metacritic
89%
rating
on Steam
/ Testimonials /
Players love its technical polish on next-gen
PlayStation Universe
8/10
A superb upgrade [...] sizable bounty of improvements above and beyond what we saw in the last gen version of the game
The Xbox Hub
4.5/5
I absolutely adore The Eternal Cylinder, even more so now it has been optimised for Xbox Series X|S
Reddit
Refreshing
Such a refreshing experience with a lot of polish and charm
Vandal
8/10
Original, feels great and offers a setting like no other
/ Project overview /
Pingle & Good Shepherd Entertainment
About the game
The Eternal Cylinder is a survival–adventure set across alien worlds where players flee the rolling Cylinder. Developed by ACE Team and published by Good Shepherd Entertainment, it launched on PC and 8th gen consoles in September 2021.
Client
Good Shepherd Entertainment
Solution
Porting
Engine
Unreal Engine 4
Platforms
Release
PC, PS4, Xbox One
September 2021
PS5, Xbox Series X/S
October 2022
Partnership timeline
Month-Month, 2023
About Pingle & Good Shepherd partnership
Pingle got onboard to bring The Eternal Cylinder to 9th-gen consoles as part of the game’s Anniversary Update in 2022. Our job? Enable next-gen ray tracing, haptics, adaptive triggers, and PS5 Activities — and get everything past certification without a hitch.
/ The Challenge /
A port inside the port
The Eternal Cylinder originally shipped on UE 4.24. Bringing it to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S required a migration to Unreal 4.27, the only way to enable ray tracing and work with next-gen SDKs.
As our PM Bogdan put it, this project was “a port inside the port.” Our team had to manually transfer multiple core game functions into 4.27, rebuilding its backbone in the new engine. On paper, it may have looked like a standard next-gen upgrade. But in practice, it took months of deep technical work and became one of Pingle’s favorite technical challenges.
Here’s how we pulled it through.
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/ Phase 1 /
UE 4.24 → UE 4.27 upgrade to support next-gen consoles
The original game relied on SkookumScript, a third-party plugin for UE abandoned years earlier and unsupported in UE 4.27. Since upgrading was mandatory, we had to rebuild those systems manually, so we:
1
Pulled SkookumScript sources from open access and re-implemented core functionality for 4.27
2
Manually ported gameplay functions and external libs that the project depended on
3
Kept performance parity while establishing a stable 4.27 baseline across PS5 and Series X/S
In 1.5 months, we upgraded the game’s engine from UE 4.24 to UE 4.27.
The need to migrate revealed another problem: the game’s signature Apex Destructible system (the cinematic collapsing of objects under the Cylinder) was deprecated in the new engine. We preserved it by integrating legacy tech into the new engine – our “zombie” solution to keep cinematic destruction intact.
/ Phase 2 /
Next-gen feel: DualSense, PS5 Activities, and ray tracing
Good Shepherd wanted players to feel the upgrade through DualSense and see it on screen with ray tracing. Without tanking performance, of course. That meant getting creative with both hardware features and graphics settings.
We implemented:
1
Immersive DualSense support
- Contextual haptics: mud, footsteps, nearby giants, taking damage
- Adaptive triggers in specific scenarios, e.g., water-sucking adds resistance, water-spitting eases it
2
Native PS5 integration
- Added PS5 Activities that let players go straight into main and side quests
3
Two graphics modes
- Performance mode: locked at 60 FPS for smooth play
- Quality mode: stable 30 FPS with ray tracing enabled
Applied selective ray tracing (grass, select creatures, characters) for max visual impact per millisecond and make alien landscapes feel more alive without sacrificing performance
4
Stability fixes along the way
- Memory, streaming, and LOD optimizations for both consoles
- Squashed the notorious “flying eggs” bug (component hierarchy mismatch after engine jump) by re-saving assets and correcting hierarchy; took ~1 month to fully stabilize
/ Phase 3 /
First-try certification on both platforms
Finally, we had to clear both Sony and Microsoft requirements and get certified. This meant:
1
Isolating crash conditions tied to the new engine build
2
Updating SDKs and syncing all fixes into the 4.27 branch
3
Resolving edge-case polish issues (even tiny ones like inconsistent fonts in the credits) and re-testing them
4
Stabilizing the build pipeline after several failed packaging and upload attempts, so the cert submission would succeed
Result: the Eternal Cylinder passed certification for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on the first try!
/ The results /
Next-gen release with tactile upgrades and ray tracing, shipped in 7.5 months
Before
After
UE 4.24 build reliant on SkookumScript
UE 4.27 build with Skookum-dependent systems re-implemented
Destructible physics (Apex) incompatible with new engine
Legacy Apex Destructible integrated into 4.27 to preserve signature destruction
Generic rumble, no Activities
DualSense haptics + adaptive triggers and PS5 Activities that feel native
Full-scene ray tracing too heavy, FPS drops
Two modes: 60 FPS Performance + 30 FPS Quality with ray tracing
TRC delays likely across two platforms
Certification passed first try on PS5 & Xbox Series X/S
/ The team /
Cast
- 14 specialists
- UE developers
/ Cases /
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