(Unreal 3) Ummm... Holy Shhhhhhhh....

It looks like more of the same shallow eyecandy at a higher resolution to me. Maybe I am cynical. I like the original Unreal better than any of the sequels. It had an interesting single player plot, good multiplayer play and tons of unique designs. Even the menu interface was different than anything out at the time. UT and etc are little more than Quake clones.

I think you're confused about what's going on here, klink. Unreal 3's not a game, it's the next incarnation of the engine, which will undoubtedly be licensed to power countless games (as did its predecessors).

It is also pretty impressive. You ought to go back and read all those word things that go along with the screenshots.

What are 'and etc'?

A problem that we have with new graphics cards is that they can do this, and they can do that, but because of backwards compatibility and the general slowness of the casual gamer to upgrade, the newest software hardly ever makes use of all of the new features that the new graphics cards are capable of (from the ground up).

It's good to see that Epic are preparing to take a step forward and set a minimum requirement of dx9. Remember that those screenshots are of a realtime game engine; and as gerauchertes said, it'll be licensed to make countless other games which you have no way of judging.

In short, those graphics blow anything else out of the water, and I'm looking forward to seeing them in action.

HEY ALL, Right here is a pretty good quality video of the engine in motion. You should check it out if you havn't already.

http://www.fileplanet.com/files/140000/140731.shtml


-Tony!!!;)

It looks pretty good, but not really all that much better than Doom3 would look if it weren't held down by videocards with only 64 megs of ram instead of 1Gb, and GeForce2 compatibilty.

Frankly, for the kind of system requirements they've been talking about (3Ghz being low end, 1Gb videocard, a couple of gigs of ram), the Unreal3 engine looks pretty shabby.
Sure the models are detailed (although seeing the chains painted on this one http://www.unrealtechnology.com/screens/p_beast.jpg doesn't really make it look advanced), and the textures are higher res, but it's still very much indoor with only 1-3 monsters onscreen at the same time.
And that physics engine, I'm getting sick and tired of those stupid physics feature demos. It's more of a challenge to do something cool with such a feature gameplay-wise than to implement it, I guess.

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» http://www.worldwar3.cjb.net « Updated May 17th 2004
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It looks pretty good, but not really all that much better than Doom3 would look if it weren't held down by videocards with only 64 megs of ram instead of 1Gb, and GeForce2 compatibilty.

lol as if. ok john carmack i know it is you in disguise! nobody would be silly enough to say that for real.

lol as if. ok john carmack i know it is you in disguise! nobody would be silly enough to say that for real.

Ok, it's a bit exaggerated. Still this looks like Doom3 on steroids. And it is a fact that Doom3 is designed to the featureset of the GeForce2.

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» http://www.worldwar3.cjb.net « Updated May 17th 2004
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"And it is a fact that Doom3 is designed to the featureset of the GeForce2."

and will more than likely run like shit on a gf2...

I wouldn't compare any of this to doom3. There's no comparison. More like adventure game art in realtime. Fucking amazing shit!

I'd still like to see character physics for something other than death. For example, shotguns that, depending on where they hit a monster and from what range, may gib it, take off an arm, knock it down, or just cause damage/blood. The ragdoll system would work fine, you'd just have to have set force pushing it back towards vertical and standing. If that gets exceeded by too much for too long, the character falls over, otherwise they just lean a bit.

but it's still very much indoor with only 1-3 monsters onscreen at the same time

http://www.unrealtechnology.com/screens/TerrainShot.jpg

The monsters on screen at a time is down to the games that use it and how many polys they wanna share between onscreen models. It's not really something you can quantify as a limitation. Besides, all of the character models shown are low poly with normal maps for the detail.

I'd still like to see character physics for something other than death. For example, shotguns that, depending on where they hit a monster and from what range, may gib it, take off an arm, knock it down, or just cause damage/blood. The ragdoll system would work fine, you'd just have to have set force pushing it back towards vertical and standing. If that gets exceeded by too much for too long, the character falls over, otherwise they just lean a bit.

check out this interview with Tim Sweeney and his explanation of the procedural animation stuff

http://www.beyondunreal.com/content/articles/95_1.php

This is easily the finest (PC) engine anyone has publicly demonstrated. Please bear that in mind before you start complaining.

Regarding physics, I think it's reasonable to assume that something more advanced than Havok will be available by the time UE3-driven games appear. I agree that it will be great when physical laws are more generally applied.

What should be interesting to see is the Torque Shader Engine which comes out this summer, can do everything (literally, EVERYTHING) that Unreal 3 Engine can do and will cost $295.00 to license instead of Uber Millions$$$.

The only difference is between them from comparing the white papers is Epic has the millions to hire an army of artists to make a (rather stunning) demo compared to GarageGames, whichs is made up of 99% ex Dynamix employees, from what I read aren't exactly rolling in cash.

This should prove kinda interesting to watch to see if it interferes with any licensing sales or anything of Doom3/Unreal3/Whatever. It turned a lot of heads at GDC a few weeks ago and there is a "off the back of the truck" video floating around the net in some places which shows some all that great Shader 3.0 goodness (yes, 3.0).

I'm starting to sound like one of those independent Game evangelists, so I should shut up now, cause I'm definately not, I was just impressed.

Then again, the Unreal 3 engine carries the Unreal branding and that is worth quite a bit engine technicalities aside.

"Besides, all of the character models shown are low poly with normal maps for the detail.
"

Actually I am not too impressed with that screenshot of the outdoors. Stalker blows that out of the water, but that's just an art asset thing. The characters are simply amazing though.

What should be interesting to see is the Torque Shader Engine which comes out this summer, can do everything (literally, EVERYTHING) that Unreal 3 Engine can do and will cost $295.00 to license instead of Uber Millions$$$.

Er, I doubt it'll be able to do everything. First off, TSE is just a graphics (shader) engine. It doesn't have all the other goodies that go into actually writing a game, and even though you can buy a lot of that stuff from GG (like network code), it's still not integrated. That integration is worth a lot of money, and that's what id and Epic give you with a full engine. Secondly, the Unreal3 engine runs like crap on current systems. TSE had better run well on current systems or it's already dead -- nobody is going to remember it 3 years from now when the systems are actually capable.

That said, yes, TSE is impressive. I don't understand why they don't have more tech demos though, given that they previewed it at GDC nearly 2 months ago. There's certainly not much buzz about it either.

Oh, and to be fair, the $295 price is only for "independant" developers. Commercial development has to pay the absurd price of $995! (Yes, that was sarcasm)

(like network code),

It's built on TGE, which is what TNL is based on (TNL is just an optimized version of the TGE network code).

TNL is free for indies.

It does lack a lot of other features, like physics. Though I guess you COULD use Novodex, since Novodex integrates easily enough as it was developed to keep Torque in mind (from what I hear).