Unreal Engine

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The Unreal Engine is a popular game engine developed by Epic Games. First illustrated in the 1998 first-person shooter game Unreal, it has been the basis of many games since, including Unreal Tournament, Turok, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas, America's Army, Red Steel, Gears of War, BioShock, BioShock 2, Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror, Mirror's Edge and so forth. Although primarily developed for first-person shooters, it has been successfully used in a variety of genres, including stealth (Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell), MMORPG (Vanguard: Saga of Heroes) as well as RPGs with Mass Effect, The Last Remnant, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

With its core written in C++, the Unreal Engine features a high degree of portability, supporting a multitude of platforms including Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS and Mac OS X on personal computers and many video game consoles including the Dreamcast, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3 though the latest version of the Unreal Engine, UE3, doesn't work on previous generation platforms. A great deal of the gameplay code is written in UnrealScript, a proprietary scripting language, and as such, large parts of the gameplay can be modified without delving deep into the engine internals. Additionally, as with other middleware packages, the Unreal Engine also provides various tools to assist with content creation, both for designers and artists.

The latest release is the Unreal Engine 3, which is designed around Microsoft's DirectX 9 technology for 32/64-bit Windows XP/Windows Vista and Xbox 360 platforms, DirectX 10 for 32/64-bit Windows Vista, and OpenGL for 32/64-bit Linux, Mac OS X and PlayStation 3.

[edit] Versions

[edit] Unreal Engine 1

Making its debut in 1998, the first generation Unreal Engine integrated rendering, collision detection, AI, visibility, networking and file system management into one complete engine. With the level of integration used, there were lots of areas found under the curve. Some trade-offs were necessary to maintain performance levels with the hardware that was available at the time. For example, Epic decided to use cylindrical collision detection over the IK collision detection system in an effort to maintain playable framerates on systems that were common at the time of its release. Internally, Epic used this engine for Unreal and Unreal Tournament.

A comparison of Unreal Engine 1, 2 and 3's rendering capabilities using the Malcolm model from Unreal Tournament, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Unreal Tournament 3 side-by-side. It should be noted that while the last Malcolm is pre-rendered (as Malcolm is not playable in Unreal Tournament 3), characters in-game do have this level of detail.

[edit] Unreal Engine 2

The second version of the Unreal Engine made its debut with America's Army. This generation saw the core code and rendering engine completely re-written and the new UnrealEd 3 integrated. It also integrated the Karma physics SDK, which powered the ragdoll physics in Unreal Tournament 2003 and Unreal Championship. Many other engine elements were also updated, with improved assets and added support for the PlayStation 2, GameCube and the Xbox. Build UE2.5, an update, improved rendering performance and added vehicles physics, particle system editor for UnrealEd and 64-bit support in Unreal Tournament 2004. A specialized version of UE2.5 called UE2X, which was used for Unreal Championship 2, features optimizations specific to the first-generation Xbox. Sound effect EAX 3.0.

[edit] Unreal Engine 3

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The third generation Unreal Engine was designed for DirectX 9/10 PCs, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.^[2] Its renderer supports many advanced techniques including HDRR, per-pixel lighting, and dynamic shadows, and builds upon the tools available in previous versions of the engine. Unreal Engine 3 IPP (Integrated Partners Program) includes:

UE3 has also seen adoption by many non-gaming projects including construction simulation and design, driving simulation, virtual reality shopping malls and film storyboards.

Epic Games recently announced at GDC some improvements made to the Unreal Engine 3. The improvements Epic Games unveiled was an ability to add "high-quality static lighting with next-generation effects, such as: soft shadows with accurate penumbrae; diffuse and specular interreflection; and color bleeding." The new improvement was named "Unreal Lightmass".^[23]

Epic has used this version of the engine for Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War and an improved version for Gears of War 2. Midway Games has also used this generation of the engine for Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.

Due to aggressive licensing, this current iteration has garnered a great deal of support from several big licensees, including Atari, Activision, Capcom, Disney, Konami, Koei, 2K Games, Midway Games, THQ, Ubisoft, Sega, Sony, Electronic Arts, Square Enix, 3D Realms and more.

At E3 2007, Sony announced a partnership with Epic with the objective of optimizing the Unreal Engine 3 for the PlayStation 3 hardware, which would affect the games and developers currently using it. It has also been reported that an unnamed party is developing a port of UE3 to the Wii.^[24]

At GDC 2008, Epic unveiled several design improvements that include rendering more characters on screen, more realistic water physics and soft-body physics (demonstrated at the show using a 'cube of meat'), more destructible environments, improved AI, and enhanced lighting and shadow effects with more advanced shader routines. The revised Engine (dubbed Unreal Engine 3.25/5), debuted with Gears of War 2.

[edit] Silicon Knights lawsuit

See also: Silicon Knights v. Epic Games

On July 19, 2007, UE3 became the subject of a lawsuit. Denis Dyack, president of Silicon Knights alleged that UE3 did not work as Epic promised and that certain features and support were not delivered in a timely manner.

[edit] Unreal Engine 4

Mark Rein, the vice-president of Epic Games, revealed on August 18, 2005 that Unreal Engine 4 had been in development over the past two years.^[25] The engine targets the next generation of PC hardware and consoles after the seventh generation. The only person to work on the Unreal Engine 4 core system design so far is Tim Sweeney, technical director and founder of Epic games.^[26] However, at the 2006 GDC, Tim Sweeney stated that development will not begin in earnest on the next version until some time in 2008. Sweeney has also predicted that the number of developers would be ramped up to three or four engineers by the end of 2008, and would be aimed predominantly at the next generation consoles rather than PCs.^[27] Tim gave a speech at POPL06 sharing some of his thoughts on programming.^[28] However, it was later confirmed by Mark Rein, the vice president of Epic Games that Unreal Engine 4 was coming to PC. Mark Rein also clarified what Tim Sweeney meant. "When Tim Sweeney was talking about Unreal Engine 4 ... he mentioned something along the lines of it being exclusively for the next generation of consoles… what he meant was, it won't run on this generation of consoles." Due to the engine's focus on next generation consoles, Michael Capps, President of Epic Games, indicated that the engine should be ready between 2012 and 2018 ^[29].

[edit] List of video games using Unreal engines

[edit] See also

• Game engine
• Unreal, the original game
• UnrealScript, the scripting language used in Unreal Engine
• UnrealEd, the Unreal level editor

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The official Unreal Developer Network documenting the Unreal Engine
• Unreal Technology
• Unreal Engine 1 Features
• Unreal Engine 2
• Unreal Engine 2.5
• Unreal Engine 2X
• Unreal Engine 3.0