Unreal Engine 3 Impressions

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Unreal Engine 3.0 demo wows GDC is a GameSpot story about Epic's demonstration of their next generation technology. Part of the demonstration was similar to last year's Electronic Entertainment Expo showing, but Epic also showed a few new sequences which sound very impressive. IGN also has impressions saying If we were this pretty, we'd get all the chicks. 1UP has a few videos although the quality is only so-so. According to Epic's Mark Rein, their PC game using the new engine will ship early next year.

The second demo showed off one of the newly-announced features of Unreal Engine 3--seamless level loading. Basically, the engine is capable of loading several levels simultaneously, so the game will analyze where a player is going and load the next level ahead of time. By the time you reach the new level, it will already be in memory. This means that, after the initial load to start a game, players will not experience any level loading at all. To demonstrate this, Epic showed a futuristic dune buggy driving through the streets of what looks like a gritty European city. (If anything, it looked very much like a far more detailed version of Half-Life 2's City 17.) The buggy careened through the empty streets and then cut across a park, and it did so seamlessly. This means that in addition to no level loads, the game will be capable of creating huge, Grand Theft Auto-like worlds to explore. To finish the buggy demo, the camera pulled back to reveal a glimpse of a stunning and crowded cityscape along with the glistening waters of a huge bay.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    March 10, 2005 5:49 AM

    Hopefully we'll see a few pc games with this tech besides UC 2006.

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      March 10, 2005 5:51 AM

      The article mentions there is already an RPG in the works

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        March 10, 2005 5:52 AM

        online RPG that is

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        March 10, 2005 9:39 AM

        Vangard Saga of Heros is using this...
        Unreal Tech Seemless level transitions and the works

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          March 10, 2005 9:51 AM

          Lineage 2 too. It's the first Ux game they've built with it, Mark Rein mentioned on a recent Q&A that Tim Sweeney went to Korea to work with the game developers on getting it done.

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      March 10, 2005 5:53 AM

      if you mean unreal tournament 2006, epic's next game will not be that afaik. of course another UT will be inevitable.

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        March 10, 2005 5:56 AM

        I thought that UT title was going to be retired and Unreal Championship would take the series on both platforms next go around?

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          March 10, 2005 6:00 AM

          cant say i have heard about that

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          March 10, 2005 6:13 AM

          No way, they're very different games. UC2 is great on its own right - a melee/weapon deathmatch game, ala Jedi Knight.

          UT2k4 is much more than that thanks to Assault and Onslaught and etc.

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            March 10, 2005 1:12 PM

            Well I dont see the problem in merging the two here.

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        March 10, 2005 6:01 AM

        I read that Epic's next is named "Gears Of War", just a rumour though...

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          March 10, 2005 6:19 AM

          I'm still waiting for "Unreal Warfare" :)

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            March 10, 2005 6:31 AM

            AFAIK, it was the name for their whole development package, engine etc., not a name for a game.

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        March 10, 2005 6:48 AM

        epic's next will probably be no fps. hopefully we'll get an announcement on that pretty soon.

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      March 10, 2005 6:25 AM

      Hopefully they won't be as scarce as Doom 3 Engine games. :(

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        March 10, 2005 6:28 AM

        Besides Quake 4, is there anything using Doom 3 tech?

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          March 10, 2005 6:30 AM

          i dont think so

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            March 10, 2005 6:39 AM

            There are.. the thing is, all of them are unannounced games, except for Q4. The thing is, several different companies are hiring professionals to work with the D3 engine: Splash Damage and the-one-who-made-rune - to name the ones I can remember right now - so *something* is being made.

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              March 10, 2005 6:39 AM

              oh snap, sorry for 2 "the thing is.."

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              March 10, 2005 7:05 AM

              besides, look at quake 3 engine, it had games come out using it even recently... jedi academy, its prequel, call of duty and the exp pack, sof2, moh:aa/xpacks, and i'm prolly forgetting a whole lot. and q3 is .. 6, 7 years old?

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          March 10, 2005 7:55 AM

          RTCW2 - Don't think anything else has been announced, thought CoD2 was D3 tech but apparently it's using its own or something.

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            March 10, 2005 8:37 AM

            i don't think rtcw2 was officially announced. but it's in the making for sure. they mentioned it. i really liked the first one! so, this will definitely get my attention.

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              March 10, 2005 11:52 AM

              oh awsome! The first one is my favourite game ever (if you include ET and TC)

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          March 10, 2005 9:27 AM

          more like "is there anything not an Id Software IP to use D3 tech"

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