Breaking: Silicon Knights Files Lawsuit Against Epic

[Graham]

Hmm.

Curious. Because according to the most accurate website in 5 out of every 8 universes (wikipedia) Bioshock isn't a full UE3 title either, only using 'Unreal Core System, file system framework and UnrealEd Toolsets' from UE3. Otherwise it's a heavily modified version of the engine they used in tribes:vengeance (which was already a heavily modified unreal 2). Although screenshots in the last few months have certainly taken on a UE3 bloomy look to them.

Meanwhile the likes of gamebryo come along and gobble everyone else up, being ~1/10th the price for full titles an bugger all (~few $k) for smaller titles. E.g. oblivion etc

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It seems strange to me that a deal of this magnitude could go through without some form of gurantee in place as a safeguard for the developers (SK among them).

Well there are. They're the contracts. And when a company doesn't follow their contracts, you bring in the lawyers. That's a good a guarantee as you're going to get - a promise from the service provide that, if it's not upheld, can be contested in court and they're forced to a resolution.

 

[Color me Dan]

Well there are. They're the contracts. And when a company doesn't follow their contracts, you bring in the lawyers. That's a good a guarantee as you're going to get - a promise from the service provide that, if it's not upheld, can be contested in court and they're forced to a resolution.

In the US it seems alot of conflicts however trivial are settled in court, As previously covered Epic could run the risk of bankrupcy and i'd think it would be more beneficial on both parties if they had a better "guarantee" then litigation. I'm not fore or against their actions, history will solve that one for me, but as a company i don't see how Epic would use it (out of neglience or otherwise) to works as a preferable guarantee.

Sooooo, i mean, how does other companies do it?

 

[scooby_dooby]

The funny thing is, UE3 was supposed to help developers by speeding development.

But, when you look at every game using UE, it will have taken 2 full years after launch to get out the door. Exluding GOW, of course.

- Lost Odyssey
- BIA: HH (delayed from fall 06)
- Too Human (delayed)
- Mass Effect (delayed from winter 06)
- Stranglehold (delayed from summer 07)

Meanwhile, Sony developers, developing proprietary engines, are releasing AAA titles within 12 months of launch. Granted, Sony dev's have had kits for a long time before that, but's it's interesting nonetheless.

It almost seems as if the reliance on UE3 has been one of MS's biggest blunders. Not only has it caused delays across the board (allegedly), the performance can't be as good as a custom engine, so the visuals will suffer in comparison to Sony's top titles.

Yes, Mass Effect looks great, imagine how good it would look if Bioware built their own 360 specific engine??

Now, this is all assuming Sony releases their big titles on time, and we'll have to see how they all stack up in the end, but I really don't see this advantage that UE was supposed to provide.

 

[_phil_]

Yes, Mass Effect looks great, imagine how good it would look if Bioware built their own 360 specific engine??

Probably the same but 60 fps...

 

[ERP]

In the US it seems alot of conflicts however trivial are settled in court, As previously covered Epic could run the risk of bankrupcy and i'd think it would be more beneficial on both parties if they had a better "guarantee" then litigation. I'm not fore or against their actions, history will solve that one for me, but as a company i don't see how Epic would use it (out of neglience or otherwise) to works as a preferable guarantee.

Sooooo, i mean, how does other companies do it?

How would you suggest disagreements over the contract are settled?
At the end of the day if there is a disagreement over whether a party is in breach or how a particular contract section was intended the only option I can see to resolve it is in court.

I don't believe going to court over contract disputes is any more common in the US than say the UK (personal liability is a different matter), in the end you need some mechanism to enforce the contract and usually companies will go to great lengths to resolve issues before they get the lawyers involved, it's an expensive way to resolve a dispute.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

In the US it seems alot of conflicts however trivial are settled in court, As previously covered Epic could run the risk of bankrupcy and i'd think it would be more beneficial on both parties if they had a better "guarantee" then litigation. I'm not fore or against their actions, history will solve that one for me, but as a company i don't see how Epic would use it (out of neglience or otherwise) to works as a preferable guarantee.

Sooooo, i mean, how does other companies do it?

The same way. the guarentee is in the contract. The licensor says 'we promise to provide this service' and then they're obligated to provide it. If they don't, the licensee can point back to the contract and say 'but this bit here says you have to provide this service'. They can then either resolve the dispute themselves without going to court, or go to court if there's no other solution which the parties are happy with. There's no other solution. Any other similar situation involves a 3rd party governing body, such as the Financial Ombudsman, which upholds contracts and tells companies what to do. Either way, there's contractual arbitration needed.

Without a contract, you have no guarentees. The licensor can sell you a system, take your money, and if you don't have their promises in writing, have no way to enforce them. Well, no legal way. You could hire heavies, threaten the company, kidnap family members, and so forth...

 

[scooby_dooby]

Probably the same but 60 fps...

Why?? It's a fairly slow paced game, and I don't think Bioware has ever aimed for 60fps in any of their console games.

 

[mister slim]

The funny thing is, UE3 was supposed to help developers by speeding development.

But, when you look at every game using UE, it will have taken 2 full years after launch to get out the door. Exluding GOW, of course.

Didn't GOW take four years to develop? That's hardly speedy.

 

[thegrommit]

edit-not too lazy after all, and it was infact posted here, no surprise, top of page 2 RS:Vegas is UE2.5 but if im not mistaken they had purchased licensing rights to UE3 quite some time ago. Odd.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?page=2&t=36824

Sidebar: galduta's screenshots in that thread appear to be from the multiplayer mode where the graphical quality is deliberately downgraded compared to the single-player campaign.

 

[tabs]

The funny thing is, UE3 was supposed to help developers by speeding development.

But, when you look at every game using UE, it will have taken 2 full years after launch to get out the door. Exluding GOW, of course.

2 full years is pretty normal for a game isn't it? The advantage with UE3 is not that it will make developing games faster than before, but that it's speed advantage negates the increased timescale that 'next-gen' graphics has brought to the table. i.e. game development should take roughly the same amount of time as it did before.

 

[Fox5]

Read the Gamasutra article (or my happy little summary). SK is claiming that the E3 2006 demo was not running on UE3.0, but instead an in-house engine that they hacked together. Now, the question is, is that a renderer or is that the whole engine? If it's the latter, and it's because Epic simply didn't deliver any code prior to November 2006, then Epic doesn't have a leg to stand on. If it's the former, then things will get very confusing very quickly. I imagine a lot of work went like this:

- Engine is supplied to licensees
- In the course of making UT3/GoW, Epic game devs (not necessarily engine devs) find and fix bugs in the engine
- Epic claims that since it was game devs and not engine devs, the fixes are game-specific and are not covered under the license

Another possiblity is that the solutions for Gears of War are not necessarily solutions that can be applied universally or are easy to work with. UE3 may not have been finished on time, Epic hacked something together that didn't fit their intentions for UE3, and thus did not include the Gears code in UE3.

 

[scooby_dooby]

2 full years is pretty normal for a game isn't it? The advantage with UE3 is not that it will make developing games faster than before, but that it's speed advantage negates the increased timescale that 'next-gen' graphics has brought to the table. i.e. game development should take roughly the same amount of time as it did before.

The development for all these games(Too Human, Mass Effect, Brothers in Arms) is much longer that 2 years if they were originally planned for Winter 06, and they were.

 

[Graham]

I was under the impression blue dragon used UE3? is this incorrect?

 

[iceberg187]

I was under the impression blue dragon used UE3? is this incorrect?

No, the other Mistwalker game, Lost Odyssey

 

[Platon]

To me it feels that most devs are interested in the tools that come with UE3. A bit what seems has happened with Bioshock, the game as such is built on UE2.x and a heavily modified one at that and that the tools of UE3 have been incorporated to their engine.

Any word on what makes them so special, have they evolved a lot to what was found in UE2 editor, what are they compared to the known UnrealEd tools?...

 

[ebola]

Here's a thought.

The UE tools have an enourmous amount of scope for artist/designer controlled data driven logic - this is the engines selling point, the amount that can be created 'without any programming'.. (as the previous post mentions.. )

But it's difficult enough to optimize regular C/C++ for the current console CPU's (deeply pipelined & in order), let alone 'code' that has been created by some GUI running in virtual machines...

What should be pretty trivial control/logic code can show up suprisingly high compared to inner loops..

Maybe these teams delayed by UE3 are blaming the engine for this issue.. Or they were expecting the engine to hide them from it;
Developpers writing their own engines maintain more in-house low-level experience that prepares them for dealing with this better.

Also this is where the idea "UE3 might be too GoW specific" could be reality - a lot of the effort behind UE3 may have been optimizing the GoW game content?


It's one thing to have an engine infront of you, another to have all the knowledge behind it...

On another note 2 years seems very reasonable for a modern game.

 

[Color me Dan]

The same way. the guarentee is in the contract. The licensor says 'we promise to provide this service' and then they're obligated to provide it. If they don't, the licensee can point back to the contract and say 'but this bit here says you have to provide this service'. They can then either resolve the dispute themselves without going to court, or go to court if there's no other solution which the parties are happy with. There's no other solution. Any other similar situation involves a 3rd party governing body, such as the Financial Ombudsman, which upholds contracts and tells companies what to do. Either way, there's contractual arbitration needed.

Without a contract, you have no guarentees. The licensor can sell you a system, take your money, and if you don't have their promises in writing, have no way to enforce them. Well, no legal way. You could hire heavies, threaten the company, kidnap family members, and so forth...

Hm, well thanks for clearing that. What would the effect of Epic going bankrupt be to it's licensees? If Epic would go into Chapter 11 they would still hold the rights to the engine. I'm just speculating for the fun of it, no need to take it serious hehe

 

[tabs]

To me it feels that most devs are interested in the tools that come with UE3. A bit what seems has happened with Bioshock, the game as such is built on UE2.x and a heavily modified one at that and that the tools of UE3 have been incorporated to their engine.

Any word on what makes them so special, have they evolved a lot to what was found in UE2 editor, what are they compared to the known UnrealEd tools?...

You should grab a copy of Roboblitz and have a play with the UE3 editor. It's quite remarkable what you can do with it, and how easily (once you know how). This is a very early version of the editor too, I'd expect the one shipping with UT3 to be quite a bit better.

The visual scripting, the particle effects system, and the way it handles materials are all very impressive.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Hm, well thanks for clearing that. What would the effect of Epic going bankrupt be to it's licensees? If Epic would go into Chapter 11 they would still hold the rights to the engine. I'm just speculating for the fun of it, no need to take it serious hehe

Well, no support from Epic I suppose! Though a company like Epic would get bought out and carry on as usual I'd expect.