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The Epic in Unreal Engine 3
CNN's Game On column has a look at Gears of War developer Epic Games. The piece goes into the company's success as a tools merchant as well as a game developer. They discuss the excitement that Unreal Engine 3 has generated, both for AAA and less ambitious titles. From the article: "Several titles, including the forthcoming 'HoopWorld' and 'RoboHordes,' will use the engine for less than AAA games. And don't be surprised if educational titles or children's games use the engine as the Xbox 360 reaches the end of its life cycle. While Epic will continue enhancing and improving Unreal Engine 3 for the next four or five years, work has already begun on Unreal Engine 4, which the company sees as a powering force for the fourth PlayStation and third Xbox machines."
What I want to know, is when can I expect Jazz Jackrabbit to use the Unreal 3 engine?
It's really disappointing to see the industry try and reach for the stars (already talking about the end of the 360 lifecycle when titles are still coming out for the original Xbox) with vague promises of better engines.
How much better? What is there left to make totally realistic?
From text adventures where you interacted with set definite objects, to games like Wolf3D, to Doom (and the beginning of the whole multiplayer craze) to the first Unreal (which made the whole looking up and down really important) to the second and third Unreal engines. Is there anyone who can really say that there is really that much more to be done in terms of physics and movement?
One would figure that once you iron out the engine and it works well, you then improve the artwork, and after that, you should really improve gameplay and build on the replay value. Too many games these days could damn well be one game with different maps and skins.
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I was just floored to see a sprite in an Xbox360-only game (Full Auto). Don't think I've seen them in the unreal series though.
"From text adventures where you interacted with set definite objects, to games like Wolf3D, to Doom (and the beginning of the whole multiplayer craze) to the first Unreal (which made the whole looking up and down really important) to the second and third Unreal engines. Is there anyone who can really say that there is really that much more to be done in terms of physics and movement?"
Well aside from the AI issue. There's still a great amount of room for improvement...assuming you look beyound the games domain.
...and open-source their obsolete engines?
(on a slightly related topic, can anyone point me to a usable FPS map editor on Linux? The offering of Doom I/II ones are pretty ancient and I can't get Gtk-Radiant to work with Nexuiz. Don't say sauer or I'll shoot you.)
Tim Sweeney is one of my personal heros. He's just got loads of talent and drive, from what I can tell. He's up there with Will Wright, John Carmack, and Steve Wozniak.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Alright now. We'll be having none of that hugging in this forum.
Now it's not an entirely fair comparison - Doom 3 is a more complex engine to develop for. Models require more than just geometry and one texture map/shader. But that complexity seems to be denting the number of maps/models/mods being produced for Doom 3/Quake 4/etc. UT2k4 ships with a shed-load of tools for modding and maps can be created reasonably quickly from the stock models. UT2k4 also managed to provide a decent download system so that you can just log into a server and download all the parts required without having to go hunting through the many websites looking for the appropriate map/script/sound.
Unreal Engine 3 is going to require the same sort of resources as Doom 3/Quake 4 when it comes to creating completely new content. Maybe UE3 will benefit from modellers/modders having cut their teeth on the Doom3-style tech but it will be interesting to see just what creation tools come with UT2k7 and what the modding community creates.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I can just see it now. Super 3D Noah's Ark re-released using the latest Unreal engine to provide the most realistic flinging of feed at ornery live stock. Time to put the kids to bed. And by kids I mean baby goats.
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
Doom isnt popular because they focused their efforts to make it the best Single Player game. Even Quake4 which was a modified verison of the DOOM III engine, still didnt run very nice on many machines. I believe Enemy Territory:Quake Wars (a future game to use D3 engine with no single player) may still fail. Don't get me wrong iD has made great stuff, but as far as PC games go nowdays Multiplayer games are still the top choices for game engines. Its easier to modify a MP game for SP than vise versa. And the Quake 3 engine is proof of that because it had no real single player just bots.
I'm not certain why you believe that the engine has anything to do with how good MP vs SP is? As long as the networking component is robust (of which iD has had years to get right), then the rest is great game assets (art, sound, etc). All the rest is the same across the two.
In other news, DNF was ported to Unreal engine 3 and development was finished in a little less than a month....BWAH HA HA HA
Unless they make some massive enhancements to the underlying script language, which apparently they are loathe to do for some reason.. (it's not like they need backwards compatibility, you can't just go and plug in a new engine release to your data and have it work) this whole thing is completely out of hand.
.. very difficult.
Running With Scissors has dumped Unreal, and I get this feeling that many other devs will probably follow suit, as soon as any contracts are up. I've been playing with an Engine v2 (build 2226) game and the code for it, and here's my summary:
The language sucks. LP-Mud uses a similar but FAR more powerful language, that had Epic implemented that, and added their stuff to deal with states and animations and the graphical end of things, would've been absolutely AMAZING. Unfortunatly, the capability of their game programming language is hampered by the fact that several text-game programming languages are a ton better than it is. And that's pretty damn sad.
The base classes provided: The code library that comes with the Engine, has been built as a hack on top of the original Unreal I code library, and just keeps getting hacked up since then.
Unreal isn't a horrible choice for building a game, but if you're going to make a total conversion for a game that starts with the Unreal engine, or start a new game using the Unreal engine, my suggestion:
Delete everything in the entire codebase that isn't native. Delete some of the things that are native, because if you want to improve on the junk, you'll need to not use some of it.
If UE3 and 4 show large improvements to the language, it'll be awesome.. but, as it is, it's shortcomings are
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Is it somehow related to AAA batteries?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Epic says that the majority of the people who buy UT2k4 never played it online, instead sticking to "single-player".
Oh, and let's see... Quake 3 engine is no proof at all. How is its single player "not real"?
Well, of course, only normal deathmatch with bots, a couple cinematics... But, I don't see what this has to do with the engine.
And GTA has been modded for multiplayer, and it was a third-party mod, nothing at all to do with Rockstar.
So, do you have any idea what you're talking about, or are these just uneducated guesses?
Anyway, Doom isn't popular because it's probably harder to develop for than Unreal, harder to manage/distribute mods and the whole game than Half-Life, and both Unreal and Half-Life are good enough games for people to buy them by themselves, whereas Doom 3 wasn't that great, and Quake 4 was really only a little better. I only loved them because I'm a pixel whore.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!