The early success of the Unreal Engine 3 - incredible

[legacy-Descentia]

Originally posted by placebo
Remember when Doom 3 was the huge thing, and everybody couldn't wait for it to come out, and then it came out, and people were kinda dissapointed, but they all said "This is only a tech demo by id; the real big thing will be all the awesome games based on it!"

So far, the only Doom 3 based games that aren't Doom 3 are, um, Doom 3 for Xbox and Doom 3 - Resurrection of Evil. The only planned ones I know of are Quake IV, from, um, id software.

So successful.

Meanwhile, we see Unreal Engine 3 licenses being snapped up left and right from everyone from Bioware to Timegate to Midway, and it's getting quicker by the month.

And the Unreal Engine 3 isn't even finished yet! Is it true that a fifteen-minute walkthrough of a corridor with cubes in it and a few screenshots can be more successful than a horror game that took years to develop with a huge budget, and got a 90% or higher in many magazines?

Evidently it is.

PWNAGE!!!! :up:



Cool thread, btw. :up:

Wish I could give some cool input. (But I know nuuuuuuuuthing. :noob:)

[legacy-TseTse]

Originally posted by suibhne
That "unannounced game" is widely assumed to be Arx Fatalis 2, another RPG.

This thread is also missing any mention of the successful Gamebryo engine, whose recent and upcoming games include titles like Empire Earth II, Pirates!, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Freedom Force vs. The Third Reich.

well, cuz there are a lot of engines that just arent great for FPS.

nevrax's open source engine is also a great example.


and gosh, too bad EA wont be licensing the BF2 engine

[legacy-Devon]

but Doom3 came out at a time when not many people could run it, and it wasn't that impressive to start with.

However- the sound engine kix the Unreal 1+2 engines in da balls. I dont know about Unreal 3, but I'm pessimisstic. I wont accept anything less than full 24 bit/192 khz recordings, and zero support for 16 bit files.

I wish that the UE3 took up the best aspects of other engines, like Cryteks foliage rendering.

Also, I like Source engine, but it only looked good in Half Life 2, quite complimenting for the best game of all time.:up: Buuuut in the Vampire game, it looked ahem....****ty.

[Renegade]

It is kind of true what was said about Doom3 arriving 2-3 years before UE3 - many companies will snap up the UE3 because by the time they have truly started work on their new games, UE3 will be much better and be the current 'flavour of the month'. The only reason D3 (IMO) hasnt been taken by many more is because it is a current engine and may well end up looking dated alongside the UE3, which lets not forget, will have had an extra 2-3 years development.

[placebo]

Originally posted by Devon
I wish that the UE3 took up the best aspects of other engines, like Cryteks foliage rendering.

There's a feature (3rd party?) for UE3 that's going to do that. Can't remember what it's called.

[legacy-Xipher]

Originally posted by placebo
There's a feature (3rd party?) for UE3 that's going to do that. Can't remember what it's called.

SpeedTree?

[The_Deacon]

Originally posted by Xipher
SpeedTree?

Yes

[placebo]

Originally posted by Xipher
SpeedTree?

Yeah, that's it. :noob:

[Plumb_Drumb]

So, what ever happened to the Lithtech engine?

I wonder if it's still being developed.

[legacy-TseTse]

Originally posted by Devon

I wish that the UE3 took up the best aspects of other engines, like Cryteks foliage rendering.

Also, I like Source engine, but it only looked good in Half Life 2, quite complimenting for the best game of all time.:up: Buuuut in the Vampire game, it looked ahem....****ty.

first of all, i think folks give source and hl2 way too much credit. for 5 years and that much money, i expect decent artwork. beyond Dog and alyx's ***, it was just a boring game imo. it was also surprisingly stale and low poly in many places (forced down linear story lines stretched out by too many puzzles, making a 5 hour game into a 20 hour game cuz they ran out of ideas)


as for the best aspects of other engines, i dont think the speedtree cuts it for online stuff. we'll see.

i DO think unreal is behind on outdoors stuff. that goes for rendering and dev tools.

i think they need to back away from the traditional bsp-oriented optimization and such, and bring the engine up to par in terms of terrain terraforming and management (the best terrain creation tools... ever... were in tribes2/torque).

the basic heightfield gen stuff you see in tribes2/torque or worldmachine should be included.

you should be able to paint terrain textures by slope, for example, to get ultra-realistic feel.

there needs to be better FOG systems, where it effectively fades out to the fog color NOT to the sky box. likewise, you need to have more outdoor fog options including the ability to produce fog layers (i.e. have a "top" or "bottom" effect from outside)

if UE3 polishes off the tools with strong, strong outdoor-oriented dev options i think it will maintain dominance.

[The_Deacon]

Originally posted by TseTse
you should be able to paint terrain textures by slope, for example, to get ultra-realistic feel.

I seem to remember either an interview or a tech demo commentary that mentioned something along those lines had been implemented. I have no source to back this up, my brain just went 'click' when I read what you said though.

[legacy-suibhne]

Originally posted by Plumb_Drumb
So, what ever happened to the Lithtech engine?

I wonder if it's still being developed.

Lithtech is now called Gamebryo. It's used widely, including 1st-person and 3rd-person games. I don't know about any future FPS's planned for the engine - the only upcoming 1st-person title I'm aware of is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and that's basically an RPG - but it's still a heavily-licensed engine.

[Boksha]

Originally posted by TseTse
i think they need to back away from the traditional bsp-oriented optimization and such, and bring the engine up to par in terms of terrain terraforming and management (the best terrain creation tools... ever... were in tribes2/torque).

Why would you need to back away from traditional BSP oriented optimisation for that? The optimisation tools currently available are perfect for indoor optimisation. Outdoor optimisation can just be brought along with that.

[legacy-TseTse]

Originally posted by Boksha
Why would you need to back away from traditional BSP oriented optimisation for that? The optimisation tools currently available are perfect for indoor optimisation. Outdoor optimisation can just be brought along with that.

let me rephrase that.

they dont need to back away from them, they need to realize that game development has moved on to need different things.

check csports.net and gamespy. outdoors, large scale environments are the norm now... not tightly zoned bsp areas.

and it's an entirely different set of tools and optimization challenges (i.e. TERRAIN SHOULD OCCLUDE BY DEFAULT).

epic needs to really, really focus on that. it's the engine's biggest weakness.

im primarily do outdoors mapping, and it's always been EXTREMELY frustrating with unreal...

Originally posted by The_Deacon
I seem to remember either an interview or a tech demo commentary that mentioned something along those lines had been implemented. I have no source to back this up, my brain just went 'click' when I read what you said though.

wow, id love to read about that.

[legacy-{RA}SKYFURNACE]

Originally posted by andreaskem
Just FYI:
Soldier of Fortune III will use the Doom 3 engine.

I thought I should mention it.

has there been an official annoucment on SOF3?.....

They last thing i read from Raven was that they would evaluate the series AFTER QuakeIV.... and that NO official announcement has been made.

By the time SOFIII gets here... if they do it at all.... it will be 2008.

And i will actually be suprised if Twilight War actually gets released... and can acutally stay in business considering the comp thats out there for poeple willing to pony up a monthly fee.