Epic: “Unreal is the Engine of Success.” Anything Less (for the price) Would Be Unciv

[TekkenLord]

http://www.ripten.com/2012/03/16/epi...e-uncivilized/

At a recent press demo attended by RipTen during GDC, Epic VP Mark Rein not only showed off the slew of industry awards UE3 has received over the years, but also touted the many games that have achieved success with their engine and technology. He went so far as to say,

“Unreal is the engine of success… people who choose to use other technology for the price don’t know what they’re doing.”

That may sound like a bold statement, but Epic sure can back it up. Here are a list of successful games powered by Unreal 3:

• Army of Two / 40th Day
• Batman: Arkham Asylum / Arkham City
• Borderlands
• DCUO
• Dungeon Defenders
• Gears of War 1, 2 & 3
• Infinity Blade 1 & 2
• Mass Effect 1, 2 & 3
• Medal of Honor (2010)
• Monday Night Combat
• Mortal Kombat (2011)
• Section 8: Prejudice
• Transformers: War for Cybertron

Not to mention critical darlings such as:

• Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
• Lost Odyssey
• Mirror’s Edge
• Shadows of the Damned
• Singularity

Better yet, upcoming Unreal 3 powered games include:

• Aliens: Colonial Marines
• Bioshock Infinite
• Borderlands 2
• Devil May Cry 5
• Dust 514
• Infinity Blade Dungeons
• Mortal Kombat Vita
• TERA
• Transformers: Fall of Cybertron
• Tribes: Ascend

Let’s also not forget that some of the mega-hits powered by Unreal Engine 2 include Bioshock 1 & 2 as well as Tom Clancy’s: Everything.
Notice any of the games on those lists? Yeah, I bet you do. The engine has also been licensed by the following movie studios for CG animations:

• Warner Bros.
• Frantic Films
• Buena Vista
• HDFilms
• Sony Pictures Entertainment
• Columbia Pictures
• TriStar Pictures
• Square Enix

[Varsh]

Love using UDK, it honestly is IMHO the best game engine and one of the most user friendly game engines I have ever used - no I'm not just saying it. I knew at UE3 would become huge before the PS3 generation hit and it's simpler become massive in all forms of entertainment.

[DreDayDetox]

A little bit cocky, are we EPIC?

[Nitey]

Well some of the best best games this gen were made using this engine, so maybe he's onto something

[rbrtchng]

He's onto the fact that basically every financially successful game follow the same formula with different paint jobs.

[Funeralfog]

there's definitely some great games on that list but the best engine it is not

[Xelios]

Meh. I won't be happy with them or their products till they can manage a REAL UT successor.

[Yuuichi]

They left The Last Remenant, and Magna Carta 2 off that list...oh wait lol

I like Havok myself, but everyone is going to have competition when the new FOX engine hits.

[unicron7]

Pretty generic looking games for the most part. For every awesome unreal engine game there are four duds. It takes talent to make good use of an engine, even the super duper easy unreal engine.

[Blacksite]

Pretty generic looking games for the most part. For every awesome unreal engine game there are four duds. It takes talent to make good use of an engine, even the super duper easy unreal engine.

Obviously. It's an external engine. The more work you put into customizing it, the better your game will end up performing. It would be nice if every game could look as good as the Uncharted series, although that would require Naughty Dog to share their engine, which I imagine wouldn't please Sony.

[Locomotive]

Most if not all of the games that use the Unreal engine lock up constantly on my PC.....so I beg to differ.

[rbrtchng]

The best engine is the one that is made from the ground up. You won't include a lot of overhead that most engines have to accommodate a wide range of games. And you get to control the memory management, which is HUGE, something as trivial as aligning the memory by choosing how big your integer variables are can improve the memory management by doubling the performance, sometimes even more.

[Varsh]

The Unreal Engine is made from the ground up, but what it does do is include tools to help all developers to make a game with it, this is called Middleware. UDK is easily the best Middleware solution out there closely followed by Torque Game Engine. Name me one Middleware solution that can compete with UDK/UE3 or TGE foot to foot, and no Unity can't but that is a great Middleware solution in itself.

[Vulgotha]

I agree it is probably the most dev friendly at the moment- but I still vastly prefer CryEngine 3.

I think that is probably the most sophisticated engine out there presently.

[TekkenLord]

so how much does it cost to get this engine?

[bigCman123]

I don't agree with that statement, but yeah the Unreal Engine is awesome. Some of the best games around are made on that engine. Thank you Epic Games, just stop being so damned cocky and release some of your games on the PS3 so I can play them!

[Varsh]

so how much does it cost to get this engine?

Nothing - literally. http://udk.com

The UDK is FREE for educational use. Feel free to use it in your school’s curriculum. Educational institutions can use the UDK for free even though they're charging tuition. No additional license is required for faculty or students. Your students are encouraged to use UDK inside or outside of school to learn game development.

The UDK is also FREE for non-commercial use. Feel free to use the UDK to make any application (game or otherwise) for free distribution. No additional license (beyond the EULA) is required. Just go for it.

Basically it's free for good, if you are going to sell a product that you made with UDK though you'll need to pay a one off fee of $99 and no royalties up to $50k, so for the first $49,999.99 you pay Epic nothing but the one off $99 fee! After $50k you pay Epic royalties but if you start earning around $500k/y then it's better to purchase the full licence suite which will in turn give you the full source code to the engine as well.

[rbrtchng]

The Unreal Engine is made from the ground up, but what it does do is include tools to help all developers to make a game with it, this is called Middleware. UDK is easily the best Middleware solution out there closely followed by Torque Game Engine. Name me one Middleware solution that can compete with UDK/UE3 or TGE foot to foot, and no Unity can't but that is a great Middleware solution in itself.

I meant ground up specifically for your particular game.

For example, Blizzard writes their own engines specifically for each game.

[Cyn]

Pure arrogance from Epic. Par for the course though

Talking from a purely graphical point of view as I'm not a developer and don't give a shit what it's like to work with, I can't stand how UE games look. You'll get the occasional nice looking game like Bioshock but those are heavily modified versions. Seems to me the closer you are to an unmodified UE, the worse the game looks.

Epic's own flagship game for the engine, Gears, is ugly as sin.

[itachi73378]

Yup, UE3 is the most awesome engine for the cost of absolutely nothing. The royalties start when you make like $50,000 I think.

[Blacksite]

Pure arrogance from Epic. Par for the course though

Talking from a purely graphical point of view as I'm not a developer and don't give a shit what it's like to work with, I can't stand how UE games look. You'll get the occasional nice looking game like Bioshock but those are heavily modified versions. Seems to me the closer you are to an unmodified UE, the worse the game looks.

Epic's own flagship game for the engine, Gears, is ugly as sin.

You can say this for just about any video game out there.

I think your criticism has more to do with the art direction developers choose to go with their games than the technology powering it. Gears of War 2 and Mirror's Edge came out roughly a week apart from each other but people seem to like the latter more because of its art direction. Same thing with BioShock Infinite.

But hey, at one point, Gears of War was the best looking game in the industry and people were going crazy over Unreal Engine 3. :/

I agree it is probably the most dev friendly at the moment- but I still vastly prefer CryEngine 3.

I think that is probably the most sophisticated engine out there presently.

Yeah, Crysis 2 (especially with DirectX 11) looks fantastic.

[Cyn]

You can say this for just about any video game out there.

I think your criticism has more to do with the art direction developers choose to go with their games than the technology powering it. Gears of War 2 and Mirror's Edge came out roughly a week apart from each other but people seem to like the latter more because of its art direction. Same thing with BioShock Infinite.

But hey, at one point, Gears of War was the best looking game in the industry and people were going crazy over Unreal Engine 3. :/

No. I'm not talking about the art direction. I'm talking about the engine.

Gears of War was never the best looking game in the industry. Who was going crazy over UE3? What jibberish is this?

[itachi73378]

No. I'm not talking about the art direction. I'm talking about the engine.

Gears of War was never the best looking game in the industry. Who was going crazy over UE3? What jibberish is this?

Uhh I'm not sure I agree. Back in 2006 my friends wont shut up about gears and when I saw it I was blown away. And for the record Gear 3 is STILL one of THE best looking xbox games around. And EPIC has stated that the Samaritan demo was made from the Free vanilla version of the engine that is available to every one so the argument of modified engines is invalid.