Some of What Unreal Engine 4 Offers to Developers

This looks amazing!

Can't... stop... yawning.

fap!

@RVonE said:

Man, I wonder if it'll be as ubiquitous as it UE3 is.

It seems like they're working hard to make sure their tools are easy to use, so I can see why Unreal is a favorite among devs.

Almost like a real-time ray-tracer

Thank you Brad for posting these.

I know very little about programming, but the fact that it can compile while you're still in engine and messing around with it seemed really impressive to me. I don't know if other engines can do that- but I've not seen that before so I thought that was interesting.

The seemingly ease of use of the interface is equally impressive.

A large focus in this seems to be lighting and how it interacts naturally with the environment (as far as the graphics engine), and particles. Things like this make me feel like maybe the only thing I could be impressed by now (as far as tech advancing, graphics, etc.) is if games start actually looking like Pixar quality films.

Don't get me wrong, I don't feel the need to be impressed, but it feels like we're getting to the point now where the tech is almost there so technical wise there is less noticeable difference (to the uneducated eye such as me). Animation, fluidity of movement (movement not seeming stilted or robotic) and whatnot is the majority of what I see as still needing improvement these days in games.

That's just my thoughts. Interesting video.

@cyraxible: nVidia is WAY more ubiquitous in gaming studios than ATI is. They have better relationships with a lot of studios.

I love lens flare. Just like a real human eye!!! ... wait

so its like 3 only slightly better, yay

Its nice to see they are catching up with Unity with a lot of their editor features. Being able to play in the editor, edit the scene while you play, fully customizable interface, exposing public variables in the editor, changing and compile scripts while the game is running, blueprinting objects (known as prefabs in Unity) is the type of stuff I've really enjoyed about Unity. Iteration speed is the number one thing I currently value the most as a developer, being platform agnostic is second so I am curious to see more progress with their Flash build deployment.

Thing is that while Flash's GPU accelerated 3D graphics stuff is cool, all the CPU stuff is slow because action-script is slow and un-threadable. So you end up with a severe bottleneck for you game logic, physics and whatnot. Add to that the fact that Adobe is now charging developers royalties for using their 3D and new Memory stuff, because they think they are a Game Engine all of a sudden (they are a scriptable vector-based animation timeline player with a 3D draw surface), and you end up in a situation where you get a slower version of Unreal and two different companies charging you royalties which seems like a bum deal to me. But you know, go Fortnite I guess.

@Lingxor: In the source code you will find in the UnrealScript classes that manage streaming and loading:

//TODO: Make sure this method is synchronized with its second version so that objects can load their textures //before the scene is rendered

and then everyone just forgot what the second version was called, so it couldn't be found, and it couldn't be synchronized. everyone is still on the lookout for that second method. they say that it might have traveled into a different class, or even that it escaped onto the internets, so that it could find its way into browser games and load their textures for them. so next time your playing a cool browser game, and miraculously the textures render just before everything else does, its probably the lost method, trying doubly hard to prove itself still useful. one day, we can only hope that it finds its way back into the UDK so it can be synchronized with its first version, and the two be united in texture loading harmony. we can only hope.

@casperhertzog said:

ok i get that it is dynamic, but is it in real time?

Yo its so in real time

I want a sexy nerd

Anyone know of a good Unreal Engine tutorial?

@dropkickpikachu: i've never really been able to articulate the distinctness of unreal myself. but maybe the graphic commonalities are also a result of other things besides just the sdk itself. for example, all the educational materials have some preference or bias to certain things in unreal, just for pedagogic reasons, but the programmers and artists unknowingly inherit a little bit of those preferences or biases which manage to manifest when they have to make decisions. but im just speculating. i bet epic games would want this sort of thing though. what precisely would you say are the apparent commonalities between unreal games (visually)? probably the more obvious this answer is to the consumer, the better for epic games reputation.

@bio595 said:

@casperhertzog said:

ok i get that it is dynamic, but is it in real time?

Yo its so in real time

But is it fully so?

Finaly shadows with no JAGGIES! woot 2014 here we come.

@Lingxor said:

They seem to have left out the part where the textures look super shitty for a few seconds when the world first loads.

We haven't seen this running on next generation consoles yet, so we might still have that, and maybe a side order of delicious popin's.

Here is a toast, to more vaseline covered textures in 2014.

@Cybexx: Oh god, thank you so much for a really legitimate comment, some of these others were making me feel bad.

Damn. That's going to be a popular engine.

This is impressive.

Videogames.

Shortly after the video was done, the nuclear powered computer that was running the demo went into meltdown and hundreds of people were victims of exposure... a fair price to pay for finally having a next gen to look forward to.

@Hugh_Jazz said:

@bio595 said:

@casperhertzog said:

ok i get that it is dynamic, but is it in real time?

Yo its so in real time

But is it fully so?

Yep

That was fascinating . And then editor did look absolutely amazing (I say as a non-dev).

I'd be interested with what Valve's wizards, for example, will think about these tools as they themselves are focussing on rebuilding their own tools at the moment in a big way. Will they be behind the curve compared to these guys or ahead of them? Or just better in some ways and not in others.

It is comforting to know tools will get easier to use and hopefully that will offset the extra time required to make things look prettier - as the burgeoning team sizes and dev time that requires is unsustainable.

Also, how soon will indie teams be able to get their hands on this like they can with the current UDK. Will they get access concurrently I wonder?

So this is how vidjeogamez are made.

@CaptainInvictus: I had meant this to be obvious - in hindsight, it was maybe... douchey - i've removed the post

@oasisbeyond said:

Finaly shadows with no JAGGIES! woot 2014 here we come.

Shadows without jaggies, lighting without excessive bloom... it is a beautiful time to be alive.

Also, THE RETURN OF LENS FLARE. SERIOUS ENGINE EAT YOUR HEART OUT.

I'm looking forward to the kismet debugging tools. That and being able to edit classes/compile in editor is pretty sweet. Oh and no more building lighting! : ) Wastes so much time.

That's pretty balla. I hope developers will make use of it to create great games in the future as it'll hopefully means that it's easier to visualize great ideas.

LENS FLARE FUCK YEA

MORE LIKE LENS FLAIR AMIRITE

As a non-programmer, the most exciting thing is the 'more powerful debugging' tools. Complexity is good and bigger, better, more bad-ass graphics and particle effects are neat, but if it comes at the cost of exponentially longer debugging and playtesting and QA, then no thank you. I am of the opinion that we need to stop focusing on better grafix and more on the technical proficiency and efficiency of our current systems to make making games go more smoothly. The debugging tools look to address that.

If someone says to me; " Make a game using that" I would be so confused. This is pretty cool and I hope it speeds development time as well as making things more dynamic.

I haven't messed around with an Unreal Engine since 2, but this looks pretty crazy.

If this doesn't put you on the edge of your seat. Then I don't know what will.

man, all i could think of is how awesome it would be if Dave and Vinny did a QuickLook for the Unreal Engine.

hot damnnnnn, gave me a boner

@ike7779 said:

Are you hearing this, next-gen consoles? If you don't have the fortitude to fully utilize UE4 there is going to be an angrily worded letter on somebody's desk courtesy of me.

Due to the popularity of the UE, I am assuming that console manufacturers are going to build their next gen consoles around the UE4.

I like this a lot, a lot more do I like that they appear to have a very, very proficient competing engine in the graphics engine that was designed by The Witcher 2 developers, the RED engine.

My hope is that having competition will increase the pace with which these engines are refined, so that developers have less issue when using the tools for them, making development quite significantly cheaper and dev time a bit shorter.

Lighting is good but what I want is destructible environments with real physics applied to the rest of the structure.

Where the FUCK are the chainsaws?!!

also I hope next generation Source engine can be up to snuff with all of the things going on with this, RED, CryEngine 3, and the latest iD tech.

@ProfMachineGun said:

@CaptainInvictus: I had meant this to be obvious - in hindsight, it was maybe... douchey - i've removed the post

Nah dog, don't edit your post because that guy was too oblivious to catch your obvious joke, especially because it wasn't bad either

Disrregard my previous post, THIS is Deadmunds' Quest

http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-medieval-moves-deadmunds-quest/17-5275/

Amrite?

@RagingLion: Before I got more into web development, I used to mess around with the Source engine. The biggest two issues I had, and this was before I became more seasoned as a programmer, was how hacky the material system was, and the extremely long compile times. It was really a pain in the butt getting new materials and assets to look good and proper in-game. Their lighting was the best in the industry back then though due to how pre-baked it was. It may have been static for the most part, but god damn did it look good.

@Cybexx: Adobe is changing their tune rather quickly. OpenGL and HTML5 will replace Flash completely and they know it, that's why they are working on Edge.

That is freaking insaaaannnneeee... My jaw hit the desk when he popped it into editor view, lol!

That's some epic shit, Epic. Kudos to you! =D

Compiling while executing? What kind of black magic is this!

Common, Giant Bomb! How about a spoiler warning?! Now I know what the future of video games looks like...

Being an ex-modder in unreal engine they're _SPOT ON_ on reducing the biggest time wasters when devving. Not that I'm ever going to go back to developing mods or games again it's still pretty exciting knowing how much time goes spended on trivial tasks. Good stuff!

fascinating stuff