A very nice read here

[_xxx_]

Thanks Blues.

Cliffy B. talks about some nice UE3 features

EDIT: Sure, Mark Rein. Typo

 

[Inane_Dork]

I think you mean Mark Rein.

 

[russo121]

A few things very interesting:

- "Kismet visual scripting system"; - Very interesting for developers

- "...because we have the ability to do unbelievably insane graphics on these next-gen consoles"; - Is this fantastic or just very good?

- "...I got a video card yesterday from NVIDIA which has probably twice as much memory as the next-generation video consoles are going to have"; - So, next gen consoles will have only 256MB just for video....

- "...A big area of focus in next-generation titles is going to be shaders"; - Ati usually runs faster shaders..Will Xbox 2 run faster than PS3?

- "...thanks to the power of graphics card like the NVIDIA 6800 and things like that"; - graphic card-> Nvidia; things like that -> Ati, Matrox, XGI.... Nvidia biased IMO;

- "...There's no question that the graphics are going to be a huge upgrade"; - I'm waiting....

- "...but also important is the ability to have more live things going on on the machine at one time. That's definitely going to be crucial as well" - multicore baby.... for Xbox2 and PS3!

Anyone knows what is the big project he's talking about?

 

[ninelven]

erased

 

[Ostsol]

Kickass. 8) Basically, outside of the basic definition of the gameplay, the need for programmers in content creation is extremely minimal. That's exactly how games should be made. With that sort of engine, artists and designers have much more freedom to do whatever they want without being tied to the programmers throughout almost every aspect of development.

 

[Ostsol]

...sounds like an adventure or rpg game.

Unless the sole point of a game is bodycount, I think that any shooter with a plot crosses into the adventure game genre. Games like Half-Life (both), Doom 3, and the System Shock and Thief series already crossed over into this direction. If there's significant character interaction and dynamic relationships, it becomes closer to the RPG genre. Deus Ex did this, to a certain extent. It's simply a natural progression as interactivity and the integration of plot increases. That the engine more easily allows such things it truly great.

 

[russo121]

LOL "...The bottom line is that engine tools dramatically affect your creative process, and our engine has been designed with far more in mind than just pretty shadows."

Which game is he talking about?

 

[see colon]

LOL "...The bottom line is that engine tools dramatically affect your creative process, and our engine has been designed with far more in mind than just pretty shadows."

Which game is he talking about?

i think he feels threatend by blade of darkness.

 

[russo121]

LOL "...The bottom line is that engine tools dramatically affect your creative process, and our engine has been designed with far more in mind than just pretty shadows."

Which game is he talking about?

i think he feels threatend by blade of darkness.

Good point!

 

[Moloch]

LOL "...The bottom line is that engine tools dramatically affect your creative process, and our engine has been designed with far more in mind than just pretty shadows."

Which game is he talking about?

i think he feels threatend by blade of darkness.

You sure?
That game doesn't look very good.
You sure he ain't talkin about doom 3: The Ultimate Flashlight Simulator?

 

[Ailuros]

"...thanks to the power of graphics card like the NVIDIA 6800 and things like that"; - graphic card-> Nvidia; things like that -> Ati, Matrox, XGI.... Nvidia biased IMO;

I'd figure that UE3 runs pretty well on ATI's recent hardware; on the other hand trying to render UE3 on a Volari or Parhelia sounds more like a nightmare. I at least wouldn't have that kind of patience

From Sweeney's Interview here at B3D it looks like a true DX9.0 game to me, where the average shader will consist of in between 50-200 instructions; SM3.0 mostly for performance increases.

Since the engine contains float blending HDR it wouldn't surprise me if they use NV40 as a developing platform. By the time the first game will ship, I expect GPUs to be capable of HDR/MSAA combinations and faster HDR performance anyway.

 

[_xxx_]

What I like best is the part where he says the content creators will be able to do 95% of the stuff without involving programmers, whereas it was the other way around before. If that's true, we can look forward to much shorter development cycles.

Also, he said there are about 50 UE1/2 based games out there...I thought there were not more than 20 or so


Also, I didn't know that StarWars: RC was based on UE2.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Bear in mind that Mark Rein is a business/marketing person, and with previous Unreal games/engines, Mark has been known to make a lot of early promises that then don't show up in the finished product. Pinch of salt.

 

[_xxx_]

Examples?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Examples?

How about:

UT2003 would be interoperable with UT2004.

DDOM is the best gametype ever and no one would miss Assault when Assault was left out of UT2003. DDOM was then orphaned in UT2003 and UT2004

Assault was brought back by great demand in UT2004 as it was so great, and hasn't been supported since release.

Unreal 2 and it's multiplayer & weapons.

How easy mapping and level building would be with Unreal ED. UED is unsupported.

Voicecomms in UT2004 (still don't work properly)

How the great the UT2003 ragdoll physics would be (not used in game except for death animations. Only used occasionally by third parties).

The anti-cheat implementation in UT2003/2004 (UTSecure).

Rein is a marketing man, and like most marketing men falls into the trap of selling "really cool stuff" in advance that then doesn't make it into reality.

 

[_xxx_]

Examples?

How about:

UT2003 would be interoperable with UT2004.

DDOM is the best gametype ever and no one would miss Assault when Assault was left out of UT2003. DDOM was then orphaned in UT2003 and UT2004

Assault was brought back by great demand in UT2004 as it was so great, and hasn't been supported since release.

Unreal 2 and it's multiplayer & weapons.

How easy mapping and level building would be with Unreal ED. UED is unsupported.

Voicecomms in UT2004 (still don't work properly)

How the great the UT2003 ragdoll physics would be (not used in game except for death animations. Only used occasionally by third parties).

The anti-cheat implementation in UT2003/2004 (UTSecure).

Rein is a marketing man, and like most marketing men falls into the trap of selling "really cool stuff" in advance that then doesn't make it into reality.

These were all "nice-to-have" features or fans' requests, but this content creation stuff is one of the essential features of UE3 and it works already, as demonstrated. So this is real.

And frankly, Unreal2 was utter crap and it was sure as hell not worth investing a single second of dev time to add anything to it. That and Legend going down the drain certainly killed the idea completely.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

These were all "nice-to-have" features or fans' requests, but this content creation stuff is one of the essential features of UE3 and it works already, as demonstrated. So this is real.

And frankly, Unreal2 was utter crap and it was sure as hell not worth investing a single second of dev time to add anything to it. That and Legend going down the drain certainly killed the idea completely.

Don't you remember how Mark Rein plugged all this and more in the months leading up to release? How stuff (like the drag & drop level editor) were all "demonstrated"? How new gametypes were showcased and then unsupported? These wern't "nice to have" they were promised as part of this great new game and content modification system.

All I'm saying is that you have to be aware that Mark Rein is not a programmer, he is a marketing guy, and what he says reflects that. What he's selling us today won't be the same thing in a couple of years when the product arrives. He's not just talking about the tech, he is selling the game, and the tech (in particular) to licensees. It's a commercial for an unfinished product.

 

[AlNom]

I'd like to actually see his own work with the "95% no-programmer-involved stuff".

 

[_xxx_]

Of course he is a programmer. He just switched to marketing at some point.

These tools for making shaders do exist and work well, I've seen a demo of that in one of the presentation vids. There's really no reason to lie about such stuff.

 

[anaqer]

Seamless worlds is basically... Well, it's kind a misnomer, but that's what people use the technology for. Essentially what it is is background management of loading and unloading of game assets.

Groovy... this is one of my pet peeves, and pretty much what I'm looking forward to most out of the whole UE3 bunch. (Lots of hi-octane PR talk in the article though, so we'll see how it turns out.)