Half-Life 2 / UT2003 engines comparison.

[legacy-AkumuX]

My problem is that I don't think UT as a MP only title, brings anything new to the table that we didn't get in the old days when you released a SP game that had MP game styles. What this means, is that moder's are forced to chose between investing their knowledge in either Unreal 2, or UT to learn to mod in. Granted when you know one you can pick up the other pretty easy, but you also have to consider who will be able to experience your work as if you invest in one, now there is a whole separate group of people who can't play the other, unless they buy into that title.

I know you could argue that people who like SP games don't like MP or visa versa, but from my experience with my own group of gamer friends, we all range from people who at least play the SP missions some, to some of us who really love the SP (well good SP) games.

I loved Half Life, and it was great to be able to play great mod's like Counter-strike and Team Fortress. Then because those mods were around (or perhaps simply because HL was a good game) I could enjoy going back and playing through the SP game a few more times over the years. I just don't think a game that gives us what current MP only games give us, can offer as much value to me in that way.

Sorry for hijacking this thread, but I guess these are important issues that you have to consider when you compare two engins like these games. By far I think the UT and possibly the future release of the HL2 engine are and will be the best ones out there. I just wish that Epic would have thought bigger as to the life of their Unreal engine (and don't talk to me about U2 as I have said my peace above).

[Sir_Brizz]

There is nothing "technically" done in HL2 that can't be done in the current build of the Unreal Engine. Unfortunately, UT2003 is FAR from the "current build" of the engine...in fact this build was already old when UT2003 was released. So in other words, there is really no comparison.

As for the other features...it is too bad about the savegame feature...but ALOT of other SP games will only let you save at the beginning of a level, so I don't see this as a HUGE constraint to SP mods. As for the AI, you probably could rewrite the entire AI from the ground up in your own mod if you wanted to...by referencing the Unreal 2 Source Code you probably could figure out a great deal about how SP AI works in the Unreal Engine.

I've thought about starting an SP mod that would be finished during UT2k4s timeframe (when these two problems should be fixed) but I don't know how many people will care. I personally like SweetDreams and the direction is heading, but I don't know how well the community has accepted it so far.

[elmuerte]

The only reason UT99 had better SP support is that a lot of code/content had been used from Unreal 1, remember that UT would have been a MP add-on pack for Unreal 1, but Epic decided to release it as a seperate game.

[legacy-Doc_EDo]

How hard is it to put Savegame in the next patch of UT2003??? Epic's lazyness is pure RUDE! :down:

[legacy-Kaoh]

A year is a lot in compu land, so comparing a to be released engine with a engine thats around for a year is just bad.
Besides, I also didnt see anything 'new' in the HL2 demo movies. Better bigger faster, but it would be shamefull it it wasnt.
i think that ut2003 engine holds all you need to make any type of game you want (well not any but any 3d related ).
I am sure its very tiring to not be able to use 99% of existing game code to make your own game and blame it on the engine, but the ENGINE supports all it needs, sure the savegame bug is nasty, but can be bypassed to make your own.
The core ENGINE features are very good and complete no matter what, its mod makers lazyness if they want to make a game that isnt close to ut2003 and feel that the game lacks it.

[legacy-JaFO(JBE)]

// Doc_EDo
How many times do people need to tell you that any time spent on a feature that's not needed for the game itself is better spent on features that are useful/necessary ?

Besides : we don't even know how much will be fixed in the 'compatibility-patch' that is going to be released. Perhaps it already is, but Epic wants to minimize the number of patches they release for UT'03.

[legacy-Doc_EDo]

//JaFO(JBE)
How many times do people need to tell you that WE NEED SAVEGAME!!!!!

I think one of the smartest things Epic did code wise was keeping the gameplay source pretty much open. So people can see how things were done in the real game.. then expand on it. Also if you see something in another mod you can see how they did it and learn from it. So the UT coding community keeps building and makes it easier for newb's to start coding. Its like a big open source community.
if hl2 is anything like HL1 it will for the most part be C++ compiled DLL's. So any luck of learning from other mods is not really possible. I did read in an interview that in HL2 they were taking the load of coding in sounds off the coders back and making it easy enough for the sound guy to add himself with little to no programming knowledge. They really need to do more of that.

[Sir_Brizz]

I forgot to mention...

HL2 is based on HL1, even though it looks so different. That would lead that the codebase is going to be largely c++ like you said.