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."

Comments

Looking too far ahead?

[karolgajewski]

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.

Re:Looking too far ahead?

[Senobyzal]

We've got a ways to go, IMO. Physics engines have gotten a lot better, but as machines get more powerful, I hope to see more fully-destructable, persistent environments, more accurate facial and movement simulations, longer draw distances, and other improvements. When I had friends come over and see the latest NBA2k game on my 360, folks were blown away; some said that it looked "almost like TNT". But after a few minutes, you could see the flaws in the character animations, limits to the crowd drawing, etc.

We will hit photo-realistic in the not-too-distant future, but we're not quite there yet. I'm glad to see that folks like Epic keep pushing the envelope.

Re:Looking too far ahead?

[slavemowgli]

What is there left to make totally realistic?

I don't know, but I remember feeling the same way when DOOM first came out in 1993 - how more realistic could a video game get? But time has told that a *lot* of things could still be improved, and time will tell the same thing 10 or 12 years down the road from now again, too.

Keep in mind that in hindsight, everything's obvious - the fact that it's much easier for you to look back at the progress already made than it is to envision the progress that still lies in the future does not mean that there won't be any significant progress in the future anymore.

Re:Looking too far ahead?

[KDR_11k]

For example, most every game should eventually have the changable terrain that we saw in Red Faction.

I think that issue is rooted in game design rather than technical limitations, just like there is no technical limit that forces RPG stories on the PS2 to be completely linear. The less variables there are to take into account the better you can predict what the user will do. Changeable terrain means you have to think of what could happen to your level design. In a game where wooden doors aren't indestructible you won't see wooden doors require much more than shooting, in a game where thin walls can be destroyed you won't see thin walls around areas that require keys to get into. In current games you see a lot of complaints about realism because the player wants to do something he's not supposed to do. If you're suddently supposed to do it and the game takes it into account it's no longer as interesting because it doesn't give you an unexpected advantage. See that bonus item behind unbreakable glass? Do you think it'd be put into the same place if you could just shoot the glass? If the designer doesn't want you to do something then he'll design the game to not allow that (without some serious trickery), no matter what your abilities.

Re:Tim Sweeney

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the thing: it doesn't matter if the code of the engine appeals to your personal aesthetic. I am also currently working with this engine and it doesn't matter what I think of the code either.

What matters is if using the engine results in a better end product than creating your own or using a competitor's engine. To guess at the answer from our vantage point we can only consider how many and what quality of games have sucessfully shipped using the engine previously. Secondary consideration is how many studios have bought the license to develop games.

I suspect, without doing much research, that more top tier games have shipped using Unreal engine and UE3 is licensed to more developers than any other. A year and a half ago, I might have considered RenderWare and id software engines to possibly challange that statement. However Epic has put a lot of effort into next-gen graphics and tools, then attracting licenses through excellent demos and press coverage.

After the awe of a well coreographed demo wears off developers realise that there is a lot of work left to be done before shipping a game.

Modding Unreal

[tjwhaynes]

I've been gaming around since Doom first blew the doors off the FPS genre. As the games have become more graphically impressive, the amount of work required to produce a mod for a specific engine has increased. One area where Epic seems to have done better than id software is in producing mod-friendly tools. Witness the huge number of mods for Unreal Tournament 2k4 versus, say, Doom 3.

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