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

Use the engine on their other franchises

[smbarbour]

What I want to know, is when can I expect Jazz Jackrabbit to use the Unreal 3 engine?

Re:Use the engine on their other franchises

[RingDev]

And what about the old Commander Keen series. 'Aliens ate my Babysitter' and what not. I wouldn't mind riding a pogo stick through some UR3 environments ;)

-Rick

Re:Use the engine on their other franchises

[_xeno_]

You're never going to see Commander Keen in an UR3 environment, though.

The people who made that game have since moved on to other games that a few people may have heard about, games such as Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake.

(Plus I think Doom II featured a hidden dead Commander Keen anyway.)

Although they did license a GBA version of Commander Keen that was apparently terrible. Too bad, because Commander Keen 4 was one of my favorite games on the PC at the time.

I've been thinking about side-scrolling 3D games - Crash Bandicoot essentially did it in some places (mostly bonus levels), and it was a lot of fun. I'd really like to see some more basic side-scrolling games like done like that. The controls would be just like classic SMB3, but the graphics would be in 3D. I think games like that still have a market, somewhere. I hope so, at least.

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:Looking too far ahead?

[steveo777]

I'd like to see the actual bullets you shoot have an arc. I know that some bullets are designed to have smaller arcs, or some initially rise when they spin (as I'm told...), but they do drop to the ground. I've played a couple FPS single player games where you had to compensate for distance (Deus Ex), but no multiplayers.

This sort of thing would make it a bit harder for the people playing Halo2 who seem to be able to snipe people while dodging tanks and jeeps. I know they'd eventually be able to compensate, but it would take the player just another second to figure it out. Perhaps windcurrents would make a difference eventually (probably negligable in most situations, but it would be interesting).

Re:Looking too far ahead?

[The-Bus]

What is there left to make totally realistic?

A whole lot of stuff. What excited me about early (1998) news on the Prey engine was materials reacting the way real materials do: wood catches fire and is easy to break, metal bends, bricks shatter, etc. If this can be taken care of on the engine level, this frees up designers from needing to script events where if this x-y-z space is damaged, this brush animates like this, falling in such a manner. It can also make games more, not realistic but believable.

Take Burnout for example. If I crash my sportscar into a van at 200mph, the van will pop off the ground and go flying like I swatted a ball. That in itself I don't have a problem with. But when a few seconds later I miscalculate a turn and hit a wooden newspaper stand and I explode on impact with the newspaper stand being undamaged, that I have a problem with. Putting things like these into the engine extends believability because your game world just gets a lot more cohesive.

This is just one. A whole lot more needs to be done in audio, visuals, AI, and a number of other areas. As long as we improve these while still focused on gameplay, and we should be ok.

Re:Looking too far ahead?

[BenjyD]

I believe the bullets in multiplayer Battlefield 2 have some 'arc'. You have to lead the target depending on the range, and I think sniper bullets drop with distance (although I'm not a sniper-weenie).

Re:Looking too far ahead?

[amorangi]

I'd like to see the actual bullets you shoot have an arc.

I believe America's Army has this

Re:Looking too far ahead?

[Ahnteis]

Lots of games have the ability to do this. It's usually not done because many people don't find it as fun, and because of problems with lag.

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

Bible Thumping

[dreemernj]

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.

UnrealEngine

[XO]

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.

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 .. very difficult.