Unreal Engine 3.0 demo wows GDC

[Ostsol]

this blows Doom3 out of the freaking water.

Well, to be fair, Doom 3 is based on a 4 year old feature-set.

If the gameplay is as shoddy as in the two first unreals it could have 100% realistic graphics and I'd still give it F- in final grade.

Heheh. . . To be honest, when I first heard of Unreal Tournament (the first one), I wasn't interested in it as a game at all. I had found out about UnrealScript and that's what made me excited. In the same way, I'm excited about what other developers and modders might do with this engine.

 

[London Geezer]

If the gameplay is as shoddy as in the two first unreals it could have 100% realistic graphics and I'd still give it F- in final grade.

That's why people were wowed at the engine. Unreal Engine 3. No word on games based on it. I expect LOTS of games be based on it. Games that are not necessarily Unreal games.

 

[Sunrise]

If the gameplay is as shoddy as in the two first unreals it could have 100% realistic graphics and I'd still give it F- in final grade.

First of all, Unreal 1 was one of the best games ever produced. Everything in there added up perfectly (esp. the music by alex brandon) and the experience was nothing short of unbelievable for it´s time. I really don´t get how someone who played such a fantastic game can seriously give it an F-. It made my jaw drop more than a zillion times back then, that´s where EPIC should´ve continued.

Unreal 2 in the contrary was incredibly bad - they didn´t continue with the original storyline and graphics > gameplay.

The new engine videos are damn impressive, hope they can build an even better game around it (if they plan to do so).

 

[_xxx_]

First of all, Unreal 1 was one of the best games ever produced...

Period! I still play it sometimes. And I'm still waiting for a game which will *wow* me that much. Back then, Q2 was "the" gfx-game prior to that. Unreal made it look like a cheap cartoon in both gfx and story/immersion/music/AI/level design, actually everything. Leaps and bounds ahead of anything else at the time.

 

[Sunrise]

Period! I still play it sometimes. And I'm still waiting for a game which will *wow* me that much. Back then, Q2 was "the" gfx-game prior to that. Unreal made it look like a cheap cartoon in both gfx and story/immersion/music/AI/level design, actually everything. Leaps and bounds ahead of anything else at the time.

I still get a feeling of pure satisfaction, when i step out the door of the crashed spaceship in the first stage. Birds in the sky, great music, a waterfall miles away, breathtaking visuals, there´s just nothing that comes close. What´s even better is the story they created, it succeds building up constant tension, even in later parts of the game, it really was incredibly sophisticated for it´s time.

 

[oddfellow]

Unreal 1 was, and still is fantastic.

Unreal 2 was mediocre at best, terrible the rest of the time.

I hope that if there is an Unreal 3 based on this engine, it's as good as the first. If it's only 80% as good, it'll still be great.

 

[JBark]

I still get a feeling of pure satisfaction, when i step out the door of the crashed spaceship in the first stage. Birds in the sky, great music, a waterfall miles away, breathtaking visuals, there´s just nothing that comes close. What´s even better is the story they created, it succeds building up constant tension, even in later parts of the game, it really was incredibly sophisticated for it´s time.

Leaving the spaceship in Unreal 1 is by far the #1 experience I've ever had playing games. It was just so amazing compared to any game that had been release previously. I'm guessing I spent an hour just running around looking at everything.

The way UE3 is turning out, I'm guessing I'll be doing a little jaw dropping again.

 

[Khronus]

Unreal 1 had the best looking water in a game bar none until Farcry. Farcry wins it for sheer realism, but Unreal's still looks wicked.

 

[Dr. Ffreeze]

BAH,

Not only am I playing Wheel of Time, Warzone 2100, and Morrowind it looks like you guys talked me into playing Unreal 1 all over again! Man what a sweet looking game. I was just amazed at the locals that I was running though. =)

 

[Alejux]

That 4th video is totally droolable. That town looks simply amazing and huge and the sea looked dreamy! I can't wait to see it running live.

 

[Sxotty]

Did you notice in video three when knocking the things around they went thru the walls. They need to work on their physics a bit it seems. Near the begining about 1/8th of the way those things hanging from the ceiling.

 

[alexsok]

Did you notice in video three when knocking the things around they went thru the walls. They need to work on their physics a bit it seems. Near the begining about 1/8th of the way those things hanging from the ceiling.

Yeah, and they quickly moved out of that hall so as not to draw attention to it, i found it uproaring!

About the videos, the first 3 were utterly useless, same shit from the GDC last year (not that it's not impressive, just not THAT impressive nowdays), while the last one was JAW-DROPPING! MAN, now that's what outdoor vistas are all about! Forget all the sprawling environments from outdated engines, this one is vastly superior, the textures are gorgeous and once they lofted the camera to a bird's-eye view, my jaw literally dropped to the floor!! There was like a whole section of cathedrals there each one rendered intricately in amazing detail and despite the washed-out video and the fact that they LODED some of the stuff there (read that on ign), it really seemed as if the difference is minimal!

I really hope some of it gets transferred to that secret project they're working on!

 

[Sxotty]

I know the dude like jumped quickly away from the horrible mistake.

On the forth video, truth be told, if a game looks that good I don't care if the plot is stupid and makes no sense, I just want to explore something that nice looking. Not that I would not prefer an awesome game that looked swell too, but I am just saying that surpased my expectations to a large degree... Of course there was no AI, no physics we saw either, so maybe it isn't ready for primetime... My wife plays myst, think of that in this engine you could make a cool puzzle game with the new physics engines getting better and better. I am rambling cya.

 

[Blazkowicz]

the 4th UnrealEngine3 video, the one of the city, reminds me of Final Fantasy 12's prerendered CG cities. ....not that UE3 demo looks just like CG, but, it is apparent that realtime graphics are getting alot better. this blows Doom3 out of the freaking water. the 3rd video is very impressive also.

Actually I think the 4th video looks muxh like the "Doom 3 can do it too" project (WIP) http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=8991 , with of course a larger environnement and HDR bloom here and there.

 

[Farid]

We need live feed videos of the fourth footage, actually we need live feed footages of all the videos.
Blurry and shaky handheld camera videos hide, too much often, the little details.

I think about the videos of HL², the shaky videos looked stunning, while the live feed bink videos looked, well, more "reasonable" and "possible".

Nonetheless, I must stress the fact that the fourth video of this U3 demo is nuts.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Notice how we've gone from 8bit color to 16 bit, then 32bit and now "64bit", but.. these UE3 demos are as greenish as quake 1 is brownish
even the water is mostly brown in quake 1 and.. it's green in UE3

 

[London Geezer]

Notice how we've gone from 8bit color to 16 bit, then 32bit and now "64bit", but.. these UE3 demos are as greenish as quake 1 is brownish
even the water is mostly brown in quake 1 and.. it's green in UE3

Water should have no colour at all, its colour depends on whatever crap is inside or underneath so it's really up to the situation/environment.
If it needs to be greenish, than it has to be greenish.

Or would you have a preferred colour? :?

 

[suryad]

Aww too bad I cant view those vdos on the Linux box at work. I cant wait to go home and check it out!! Sounds like some very nice work being done by the programmers. Kudos! I want a Splinter Cell game built on that engine!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!

 

[MarkRein]

What system it does run on I wonder...

As for the graphic card, perhaps R520?

The demo Tim gave during his public speech was running on a standard GeForce 6800 Ultra. The demos we gave behind closed doors, which included more than what was shown in public, were run on dual 512Mb GeForce 6800 Ultras using SLI. We chose to run at 1280x1024 because (a) that's the native resolution of the projector we rented and the tools demos always look way (because the fonts are crisper) when run at the projector's native resolution and (b) because SLI is friggin fast we could get excellent frame rates at high resolutions even through we've done very little optmization work.

Even with this early UNOPTIMIZED version of the engine we do these same demos on a Shuttle PC we carry around when we visit prospective licensees and they run just fine on a single 6800GT with an Athlon 64 3400 at 1024x768. A 6600GT could run these just as well at 800x600. A 6600 GT card will be pretty cheap by the time we ship a game with this tech.

 

[MarkRein]

Notice how we've gone from 8bit color to 16 bit, then 32bit and now "64bit", but.. these UE3 demos are as greenish as quake 1 is brownish
even the water is mostly brown in quake 1 and.. it's green in UE3

Oh come on man! These are horribly crappy shaky-cam shots of a demo played on a crappy projector, in an over-lit room with the camera's white balance obviously set incorrectly. People who saw the demo in our suite got to see it on both a properly-adjusted projector and on 12 CRT monitors assembled throughout the room. There was nothing wrong with the color of our demos, in fact we got lots of compliments on how great they looked.