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Unreal Engine

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"Unreal technology" redirects here. For science or technology which is beyond reality, see science fiction.
Unreal Engine
Developer(s)Epic Games
Stable release
Build 58xx / December 2009
Written inC++, UnrealScript
Operating systemCross-platform
Available inEnglish
TypeGame engine
LicenseProprietary,
UDK free for noncommercial use[1][2]
Websitehttp://www.unrealtechnology.com/

The Unreal Engine is a 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, Deus Ex, 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, Star Wars Republic Commando, Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror, Borderlands, Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Section 8, Stranded, 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 RPG with Mass Effect, The Last Remnant, Killing Floor, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

With its core written in C++ the Unreal Engine features a high degree of portability and it is a tool used by many game developers today supporting a multitude of platforms including Microsoft Windows, Linux, iOS, 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, does not work on previous generation platforms. A great deal of the gameplay code can be 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/Windows 7 and Xbox 360 platforms, DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 for 32/64-bit Windows Vista/Windows 7, and OpenGL for 32/64-bit Linux, Mac OS X and PlayStation 3.

Versions

Unreal Engine 1.3

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. 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" [clarification needed] 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.[3]

File:Unreal Engine Comparison.jpg
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.

Unreal Engine 1 used the Glide API, specifically developed for 3dfx GPUs,[4] and was updated for OpenGL and Direct3D. Probably the biggest reason for its popularity was that the engine architecture and the inclusion of a scripting language made it easy to mod.[5][6] One other improvement of Unreal compared to the previous generation of engines was its networking technology, which greatly improved the scalability of the engine on multiplayer. Unreal was also the first to use a real [clarification needed] client–server model in the engine architecture. [7]

Unreal Engine 2

The third 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. EAX 3.0 is also supported for sound.

Unreal Engine 3

Template:Col-1
Main article: Unreal Engine 3

The third generation Unreal Engine (UE3) was designed for DirectX 9/10 PCs, the Xbox 360, and the PlayStation 3.[8] 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.

Epic has used this version of the engine for their in-house games Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War, and an improved version for Gears of War 2. 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.

Epic Games announced at GDC 2009 some improvements made to the Unreal Engine 3. These included[9]

In addition to the game industry, UE3 has also seen adoption by many non-gaming projects including construction simulation and design, driving simulation, virtual reality shopping malls and film storyboards.[10]

In December 2009, Epic demoed UE3 running on Apple's 3rd generation iPod Touch. They said that this will also support iPhone 3GS, and also an unknown mobile platform which has been revealed to be the webOS at CES 2010.[11] It has been revealed so far to be something on Nvidia's Tegra platform, and also Palm's webOS running PowerVR's SGX chip.

Unreal Development Kit (UDK)

While the Unreal Engine 3 has been quite open for modders to tinker around with, the ability to publish and sell games made using UE3 was restricted to licensees of the engine. However, on November 2009, Epic released a free version of their engine, called the Unreal Developer Kit (UDK), that is available to the general public. According to the current EULA, game makers can sell their games by paying Epic the cost of $99 USD at the outset, and 25% of all revenue above $5000 USD.[12] and in the release December 2010 UDK, now come with support of creating iOS games.

Unreal Engine 4

Mark Rein, the vice-president of Epic Games, revealed on August 18, 2005, that Unreal Engine 4 had been in development since 2003.[13] 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 up to that point was Tim Sweeney, technical director and founder of Epic Games.[14] However, at the 2006 Game Developers Conference, Tim Sweeney stated that development would not begin in earnest on the next version until some time in 2008.

Sweeney gave a speech at POPL06 (the Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages) that described aspects of how the Unreal Engine 3 worked at the time and "what we would like to write" in future. He predicted the next generation of games consoles would arrive in 2009, at which time game designers would work with CPUs that had 20 or more cores, 80 or more hardware threads, and more than a teraflop of computing power.[15]

In March 2008, Sweeney predicted that the number of developers working on Unreal Engine 4 would be ramped up to three or four engineers by the end of that year, and appeared to suggest that it would be aimed predominantly at the next generation of consoles rather than PCs: "[Unreal Engine] 4 will exclusively target the next console generation, Microsoft's successor for the Xbox 360, Sony's successor for the Playstation 3 - and if Nintendo ships a machine with similar hardware specs, then that also."[16] However, Rein later confirmed Unreal Engine 4 was coming to PC first, and clarified: "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 its focus on the next console generation, Michael Capps, President of Epic Games, indicated that Unreal Engine 4 should be ready around 2012.[17]

List of games using Unreal Engines

Main article: List of Unreal Engine games

See also

References

  1. ^ "Unreal Engine Licensing FAQ". Epic Games. Retrieved 2009-11-08.
  2. ^ "UDK Licensing". Epic Games. Retrieved 2009-11-08.
  3. ^ "History of Unreal - Part 1". beyondunreal.com. 2005-05-31. Retrieved 2009-07-05.
  4. ^ Paul Lily (2009-07-21). "Doom to Dunia: A Visual History of 3D Game Engines". Maximum PC. Retrieved 2009-07-05.
  5. ^ "History of Unreal - Part 1". beyondunreal.com. 2005-05-31. Retrieved 2009-07-05. Probably the biggest draw to Unreal was the ability to mod it. Tim Sweeney (Founder of Epic) wrote a simple scripting engine into the game called UnrealScript.
  6. ^ "Introduction to Unreal Technology". InformIT. 2009-07-21. Retrieved 2009-08-08.
  7. ^ "Network". Epic Games. 1999-07-21. Retrieved 2009-08-08.
  8. ^ Unreal Technology
  9. ^ Epic Games to show off new Unreal Engine 3 features at GDC
  10. ^ "Success stories"
  11. ^ Epic Demonstrates Unreal Engine 3 for the iPod Touch/iPhone 3GS
  12. ^ Licensing - Epic UDK
  13. ^ Houlihan, John. "Rein: We've been working on Unreal Engine 4 for two years". ComputerAndVideoGames.com. Future Publishing Limited. Retrieved 2005-08-19.
  14. ^ Houlihan, John (2005-09-20). "Interview: Mark Rein". ComputerAndVideoGames.com. Future Publishing Limited. Retrieved 2005-09-30.
  15. ^ Sweeney, Tim. "The Next Mainstream Programming Language: A Game Developer's Perspective" (Powerpoint). Princeton University.
  16. ^ Valich, Theo (2008-03-12). "Tim Sweeney, Part 3: Unreal Engine 4.0 aims at next-gen console war". TG Daily. Tigervision Media. Retrieved 2008-03-13.
  17. ^ "Epic Games: Unreal Engine 4 ready in 2012".
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