A Brief Intro to Unreal Engine

January 19th, 2009

1st, 2nd and 3rd generation Unreal rendering capabilities
1st, 2nd and 3rd generation Unreal rendering capabilities

What is it?

The Unreal Engine is a popular game engine developed by Epic Games. It first appeared in the 1998 first-person shooter game Unreal, it has been the basis of many games since, including: …

· Unreal Tournament

· Turok, Mass Effect

· Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield

· Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas

· America’s Army

· Red Steel

· Gears of War

· BioShock

· Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror

· Mirror’s Edge

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 and Lineage II) as well as RPGs (Mass Effect and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone).

This game engine comes FREE for use by independent artists alongside purchase of the “Unreal” games and Xbox’s “Gears of War”. However, professionally publishing and profiting off an Unreal based game would require the purchase of a license.

With its core written in the C++ programming language, the Unreal Engine is easily manageable and convenient. It supports a multitude of platforms including Microsoft Windows, Linux, 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, doesn’t work on previous generation platforms.

Choose which version you use carefully!

  • If you’re developing a title for current-generation PC, Xbox, or PlayStation 2, then Unreal Engine 2 is for you. It is very stable, and several code bases are available including the code powering UT2004; the code powering Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict; and a PlayStation 2-optimized version.
  • If you’re starting on a forward-looking title aimed at next-gen consoles such as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, as well as DirectX 10-based PCs, then Unreal Engine 3 isfor you. Its core subsystems have been architected from the ground up, designed to take maximum advantage of shader programs, per-pixel lighting and shadowing, multithreading, and next-generation content creation tools.

Check out http://www.unrealtechnology.com/ for more information on its upgraded and state of the art capabilities in 1.Rendering 2.Animaton 3.Cross Platform Audio 4.Physics 5.Kismet (Gameplay scripting) 6.Manitee (Cinematics) 7.Cascade (Particle Effects) 8.Unreal Editor 9.Unreal Script.

Categories: Unreal Engine |

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