[Monolith]

First announced as the next generation technology for the Unreal Engine 3, is now a full length game project developed by Epic Games. This game has the atmosphere of Blade Runner while also offering an unhealthy dose of badass action sequences and beautiful artistic direction for characters.

The tech behind this is jaw dropping. from realtime hair strands including beards, to the gorgeous reflections that mimic real-life.

Please clean up the drool after watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgS67BwPfFY&hd=1

HD 1080p (MUST WATCH) http://download.udk.com/Samaritan_Realtime_Demo_Sm.mp4

PDF with info about the tech. http://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/GDC2011/Epic.pdf

[Fien]

Wow! I want this kind of graphics for a great game like Gemini Rue.
Yes, I know. Don't tell me. And I do NOT want the action bits.
But the truth is that Gemini's retro graphics are just that... retro.

[kuze]

I wonder if that's what the game will actually look like, I remember reading somewhere they had an insane PC setup at GDC to be able to actually run the demo.

Also, could you please point us to where you read about it being developed as a full-length project?

[Stuart]

It looks stunning, hopefully some good RPGs get this engine as I find action games wasteful (you barely get time to look around in between all the run-n-gunning and even when you do you can't interact much).

I doubt we'll see a traditional adventure game using this engine until 2020 when it is budgetware for adventure devs.

[rambler]

Unreal Engine?? If it's as horrible as the last one, I think I will pass.

[Shuyin]

What do you think is horrible about UE?

[rambler]

It's responsible for some of the glitchiest games of the past decade. Also it is "shiny".

[Shuyin]

By shiny you mean that plastic look? That's due to the lighting solution used in UE. Games that use different lighting (Mirror's Edge, Battlefield 3, and IIRC Mass Effect don't have that look).

About glitches, that's not the engine's fault. It's more like the dev team's fault for not removing bugs.

[Gabe]

Well this a tech demo means dont expect to play a game like this within next ten years at least.

[rambler]

Originally Posted by Shuyin

By shiny you mean that plastic look? That's due to the lighting solution used in UE. Games that use different lighting (Mirror's Edge, Battlefield 3, and IIRC Mass Effect don't have that look).

Yes, those 3 games have exactly that look.

Originally Posted by Shuyin

About glitches, that's not the engine's fault. It's more like the dev team's fault for not removing bugs.

Glitches that were consistent over many of the games (if not all of them), I would put that down to the engine.

[marvio]

Originally Posted by rambler

Yes, those 3 games have exactly that look.


Glitches that were consistent over many of the games (if not all of them), I would put that down to the engine.

To be fair, most recent games, aside from adventures, but even some of those too, suffer from that problem; It's just a cheap way to make somehting look "sleek"

Having said that, that is one impressive looking clip, truly impressive!

A souped up machine should be able to run it, no problem, most of that are not polygons, they are effects, polygons is what will kill you every time.

[Shuyin]

Originally Posted by rambler

Yes, those 3 games have exactly that look.

Mirror's Edge uses Beast Lighting from Autodesk, which is implemented over the Unreal Engine. I played the game and i can attest that i doesn't have the plastic look of Gears Of War for example.
Battlefield 3 uses the same lighting technique. I simply can't understand how it looks shiny/plastic to you. Have you even seen BF 3 trailer? I'm assuming you're making a confusion here.

Originally Posted by rambler

Glitches that were consistent over many of the games (if not all of them), I would put that down to the engine.

Funny, i've played many UE 3(.5) games and i didn't find any major glitches except being unable to enable AA on most UE games (which can't be considered a glitch). In order to be an engine glitch it needs to be present in all games using it. Would you explain what exactly is this glitch you've seen in UE games? Again, i think you're making a confusion; you probably are refering to game bugs.

[marvio]

Shuyin,

I personaly thought "Mirror's Edge" had thjat shiny element to it... Been a while, I could be wrong.

[Ascovel]

Originally Posted by Monolith

First announced as the next generation technology for the Unreal Engine 3, is now a full length game project developed by Epic Games.

What is your source of information? When I read about it 2 days ago 'Samaritan' was still only a tech demo for the new engine. There isn't even any hardware in development that could run this engine yet.

Originally Posted by Fien

But the truth is that Gemini's retro graphics are just that... retro.

The truth is it would be probably too expensive to make a game like Gemini with these kind of graphics, even for a major studio.

[mrLOL]

Originally Posted by Stuart

I doubt we'll see a traditional adventure game using this engine until 2020 when it is budgetware for adventure devs.

UDK is free! (you pay a small royalties procentage of profits to epic)

unfortunately tho the manpower to create that sort of graphics is.. not so free

[Shuyin]

Originally Posted by mrLOL

UDK is free! (you pay a small royalties procentage of profits to epic)

unfortunately tho the manpower to create that sort of graphics is.. not so free

Small? They'll take 25% of your profits. I'd love to work with UE, but the license was 700K$ last time i checked and the free version makes you give them 25% of your profits to them.

[Monolith]

Originally Posted by Shuyin

Small? They'll take 25% of your profits. I'd love to work with UE, but the license was 700K$ last time i checked and the free version makes you give them 25% of your profits to them.

Ummm, wow you don't know much do you. They won't take your profits until you reach 50k$ in sales. If you are going to make that amount, you should be worried about 25% of the profits.

Surprised no one is complaining about the plastic look of LA Noire....must be the fanboy or hatred of this engine.

EDIT: lol wow I thought I posted this thread in general. -_-

[mrLOL]

Originally Posted by Monolith

Ummm, wow you don't know much do you. They won't take your profits until you reach 50k$ in sales. If you are going to make that amount, you should be worried about 25% of the profits.

Surprised no one is complaining about the plastic look of LA Noire....must be the fanboy or hatred of this engine.

EDIT: lol wow I thought I posted this thread in general. -_-

Exactly, 25% of profits after 50k$ (and that's the profits AFTER your digital distribution companys fee) is ridiculously generous.

That look of every item covered in Vaseline is actually just poor asset-creation, a UE3 game I was working on had the exact same problem so I took one of our props and showed that if you make a proper specular-map (where cracks & crevices are pitch-black) then you don't get that look,
but then I realized they just don't care, they just want to get the prop done asap so they can go back to watching funny clips on youtube so they continued with the fast way of making specular-maps simply by greyscaling the diff-map.

[Shuyin]

Originally Posted by Monolith

Ummm, wow you don't know much do you. They won't take your profits until you reach 50k$ in sales. If you are going to make that amount, you should be worried about 25% of the profits.

Surprised no one is complaining about the plastic look of LA Noire....must be the fanboy or hatred of this engine.

EDIT: lol wow I thought I posted this thread in general. -_-

Of course i knew that. The 50k limit was set recently. My point was: if you're a new studio that makes a product and wants to make money, you'll have to share a quarter of your profits (i'm assuming you aim for more than 50k) with Epic.

Think of Fractional. Had they made Amnesia with UE, think how much of the 200k copies they sold would've gone into Epic's pocket. They would've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars

[mrLOL]

Originally Posted by Shuyin

Of course i knew that. The 50k limit was set recently. My point was: if you're a new studio that makes a product and wants to make money, you'll have to share a quarter of your profits (i'm assuming you aim for more than 50k) with Epic.

Think of Fractional. Had they made Amnesia with UE, think how much of the 200k copies they sold would've gone into Epic's pocket. They would've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars

yeah I kinda figured you knew that so Monomyths "wow you don't know much do you?" sounds a bit insulting

I guess the question you raises depends what's more costly: developing your own engine vs "that 25%".

I guess there's no definite answer but IMO I wouldn't be suprised if Amnesia doesn't curse at God for not inventing UDK when they got started as it would have made their life's so much easier and buy now they could have gotten a large number of titles out when removing the time it took to make their engine.