So what the heck does "In Engine" mean these days?

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Zojirushi

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Seriously, is this a post Killzone 2 "Well no one's playing this because we don't have a game yet but the final thing will look like this, kinda sorta" thing?

A new fancy name for prerendered shit? Could you justify Finaly Fantasy CGI stuff as "In Engine" because, well it's in the game right?

Or is there some actual meaning behind this term?

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UncleDisco

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Normally it means that the game you're seeing, is being rendered using the game's engine. And it's not just a movie of something that was rendered outside the game engine.

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deactivated-613c903ddf820

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@Gnubberen: That's what it used to mean anyway but I have my doubts when I look at 'in engine' cutscenes from games such as the Order. That trailer just screamed CG to me.

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stubbleman

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#4  Edited By stubbleman

You pretty much called. It's a technical term that's thrown around to make what they're showing you look better than it actually is. You already guessed how 'in engine' can be super vague and give them a lot of outs if they don't actually have a game behind what they're showing, and it's really just a glorified cg trailer. I'm sure there are exceptions, but that's most generally the case. It's kinda like how demonstrations will sometimes say 'running on actual _ hardware.' That one's probably my favorite because it can pretty much mean 'we're playing a video file on the preliminary hardware they gave us.' Then there's 'pre-alpha footage.' That one's kinda the opposite. It's where the game is pretty much finished, but you pretend like it's like a super early build of the game and who knows how much better the final product is going to look.' Anyway. They're all pretty much just buzz words to prop up these companies' products, and that hasn't really changed over the years.

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Zojirushi

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#5  Edited By Zojirushi

@Gnubberen: The question still is how much of a difference between In Engine Material and final product one should expect.

I mean they could use their engine on some ridiculous PC on "ultra" setting whereas the final game they put out on a console would then correspond to "very low" settings. That's still one hell of a difference.

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MattyFTM

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#6 MattyFTM  Moderator

It means it was rendered using the game engine. It does not mean it was in-game footage, or that the game is actually going to look anything like that. I mean, look at Valve's Source Filmmaker. It's a tool that lets you make video's using the Source engine. All of the TF2 "meet the..." video's were supposedly made using that (or a much earlier version of it, anyway). They're all in-engine. But do they look like the game? Not at all.

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Insectecutor

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Normally it means that the game you're seeing, is being rendered using the game's engine. And it's not just a movie of something that was rendered outside the game engine.

"In engine" does not necessarily mean "real time," though.

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UncleDisco

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#8  Edited By UncleDisco

@zojirushi: Totally. It could really mean night and day. There's normally no way of telling until the actual game is out. It kinda sucks.


@insectecutor: I know. That's why I left it out. It is quite a "shady" term.

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development

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" In-engine" means the same thing it always has. The difference is publishers are now far less likely to feel any remorse when they lie to your face. It's been made clear to them that most people will fall for it, and faking gameplay or in-engine cutscenes is not something that can be proven false by anyone except the developers themselves.

When it come down to it, trusting the people trying to sell you the product to accurately portray said product is a ridiculous notion, and at most you should only expect what they're showing to be mildly representative of the final product... but that's mostly a judgment call, with each studio obviously having their own reputation. Always rely on the critics and journalists' hands-on impressions, instead.

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damodar

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#10  Edited By damodar

Yeah, it's hard to know. Is it real time? Is it pre-rendered with the game's art assets, but with lighting and image quality that the engine isn't capable of in real time? Is it just a straight up lie, like Killzone 2? :P

Somebody should make a rendering engine to plug in to 3DSMax or Maya called 'Engine'. "The following trailer is all rendered in Engine™"

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Zojirushi

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@development: Yeah that's basically what I thought.

The frustrating thing for me is that around E3 and especially with new consoles around the corner the incentive for publishers/developers to just fake shit seems incredibly high which makes it that much harder to anticipate early on what one can expect from a new generation.

I guess the amount of people preordering hardware after press conferences speaks for itself though.

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Darji

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#12  Edited By Darji

@blue_cube said:

@Gnubberen: That's what it used to mean anyway but I have my doubts when I look at 'in engine' cutscenes from games such as the Order. That trailer just screamed CG to me.

Fot that matter they already confirmed its gmaplay engine and that is how i will look since they are using the same character models for example.

Killzone 2 was a target render which means they hope to archive that kind of quality.

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RustySanderke

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#13  Edited By RustySanderke

It means it's rendered using a version of same engine as the game on a render farm spitting out a frame every couple of seconds. They're not lying, just deceiving.

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ThunderSlash

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I've been sitting here for a couple minutes wondering who this Gnubberen fellow that you all are responding to is. Turns out that it was just FlemmingM, except that replying to his/her posts seem to generate a different @username. Bug?

As for the topic, I wouldn't worry too much about all this "Rendered In-Engine" business. The publishers can't hide the truth once the game comes out.

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@thunderslash: Yeah I tried to change my username to Gnubberen after the new site launced, and it kinda put my name in a limbo of sorts between the new and the old one. Should probably talk with support about it, just been to lazy to do so. :P

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TorMasturba

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#16  Edited By TorMasturba

@stubbleman said:

You pretty much called it. It's a technical term that's thrown around to make what they're showing you look better than it actually is. You already guessed how 'in engine' can be super vague and give them a lot of outs if they don't actually have a game behind what they're showing, and it's really just a glorified cg trailer. I'm sure there are exceptions, but that's most generally the case. It's kinda like how demonstrations will sometimes say 'running on actual _ hardware.' That one's probably my favorite because it can pretty much mean 'we're playing a video file on the preliminary hardware they gave us.' Then there's 'pre-alpha footage.' That one's kinda the opposite. It's where the game is pretty much finished, but you pretend like it's like a super early build of the game and who knows how much better the final product is going to look.' Anyway. They're all pretty much just buzz words to prop up these companies' products, and that hasn't really changed over the years.

I like the hardware one too because I've always thought it could also mean it's a CG video that somebody is playing from a DVD player. I mean DVD players are hardware right? Ha ha.

As for my response to the original post, I feel like a lot of times these days they will grab a vertical slice of a game and then beef up the graphics for the stage demo to the point it looks georgous and MUST be running on a PC but this is to just get people talking about how it good it looks up to the point they've purchased it and started playing.

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musubi

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@Gnubberen: That's what it used to mean anyway but I have my doubts when I look at 'in engine' cutscenes from games such as the Order. That trailer just screamed CG to me.

Its not its been confirmed that was actual in-game stuff.

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Tennmuerti

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#18  Edited By Tennmuerti

Gameplay or bust.

Anything else can be bullshit.

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deactivated-613c903ddf820

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@blue_cube said:

@Gnubberen: That's what it used to mean anyway but I have my doubts when I look at 'in engine' cutscenes from games such as the Order. That trailer just screamed CG to me.

Its not its been confirmed that was actual in-game stuff.

Actually it has been confirmed it's all ingame footage by Seth Killian the lead game designer of the Santa Monica studios.

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Lord_Xp

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I think it means that the game is put into a car engine while the car is running then everything is broken because you can't put games in car engines and there is a dog driving

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GS_Dan

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I take it to mean that it is built through the same software, but doesn't necessarily have to be able to run in real time. Take Uncharted's cutscenes, for example.

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JZ

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Not pre-rendered

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BBAlpert

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#23  Edited By BBAlpert

@lord_xp said:

I think it means that the game is put into a car engine while the car is running then everything is broken because you can't put games in car engines and there is a dog driving

I like the way you think, friend.

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ch3burashka

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What it always meant. This is a stupid thread.

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musubi

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@blue_cube: Which still means its being rendered with the same engine used to build the game....

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deactivated-613c903ddf820

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veektarius

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@bbalpert said:

@lord_xp said:

I think it means that the game is put into a car engine while the car is running then everything is broken because you can't put games in car engines and there is a dog driving

I like the way you think, friend.

Year of the dog

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tourgen

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#28  Edited By tourgen

running in real time on some sort of software, which may or may not have any relation to the actual shipped software engine for the game. with all AI and other significant CPU cycle-eaters cut out, almost everything pre-calculated or hardcoded.

And almost certainly not running on production hardware.

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deathstriker666

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#29  Edited By deathstriker666

It means PR is doing its job