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Unreal Engine 3 licensed to contractor for US Army training sims
Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 is now in the hands of Intelligent Decisions, a company that creates virtual training simulations for the US Army Research, Development and Engineering Command. Intelligent Decisions wants to use UE3 to polish the movements of autonomous avatars in its Dismounted Soldier Training System, and add haptic feedback from incoming fire, full skeletal controls and environmental variation, VP of Simulation and Training Clarence Pape says. Intelligent Decisions secured the license from Applied Research Associates, Virtual Heroes and Epic via the Unreal Government Network, a program that handles government contracts for the Unreal engine. Insert your own "gears of war" joke here.
Dungeon Defenders: the first Unreal Engine 3 game to get an honest-to-goodness Linux port
Who gives the official all-clear after the End of the World? We have no idea, but soon as the happy signal comes we're going to reconfigure our Linux-powered bunker for a spot of gaming. It's an eerily fortuitous time for that, in fact, what with the Steam for Linux beta now open to all and the Unity and Unreal engines also having been adapted for the open source OS. In terms of actual playable titles, Dungeon Defenders in the latest Humble Bundle is being put forward as the first native, commercial Linux game to use Unreal Engine 3, and if it proves successful then it'll hopefully inspire others to come out with more ports in lucky 2013.
Unreal Engine 3 now on Windows 8 and Windows RT
If you still have the capacity to be surprised by learning that Unreal Engine 3 now runs on a new thing, prepare to be surprised. Unreal Engine 3 now runs on both Windows 8 and Windows RT, Epic has announced. It's not exactly shocking that Epic's workhorse engine is on Windows 8, though the news is certainly good for anyone looking at the upcoming line of Windows RT tablets.Epic showcased the engine running on just such a tablet, the Asus Vivo Tab RT, which you can see in the video above. The demo in question is "Epic Citadel," which was first used to showcase UE3 on the iPhone back in 2010. Epic VP Mark Rein noted that this is the full Unreal Engine 3, using the "full DirectX 9 pipeline, with shaders and materials," and not a "modified mobile version"
Square working on original, Unreal-powered action RPG
It's still going to be a little while before "real" news shakes out, but some details were recently revealed in Famitsu (via Andriasang) about one of Square Enix's upcoming Unreal Engine games. The project will be an original (meaning not Final Fantasy nor Dragon Quest) action RPG under the direction of Ryutaro Ichimura (Dragon Quest 8 and 9). Ichimura told Famitsu that the game's staff traveled for two years and conducted user surveys to research art and gameplay direction. With the basic concept complete, the team is now looking to grow beyond the staff of 35 and begin production. (Pictured: Square's UE3-powered The Last Remnant)
Unreal Engine 3 comes to Mac OS X, courtesy of September UDK release
A scant four years after announcing Gears of War and Unreal Tournament 3 were coming to Mac OS X, Epic has finally renewed its enthusiasm for the Mac with the announcement of native Unreal Engine 3 support, courtesy of the free-to-use Unreal Development Kit. "Every UDK game's potential user base has increased dramatically yet again," the announcement reads, promising a previews of the engine's Mac OS support in the September 2011 UDK release. Considering Epic's high-profile support of Apple's Mac OS X-derived mobile operating system iOS, not to mention consistent Mac support from developers like Valve and Blizzard, Epic's entry in the space is hardly unexpected. But Mac support from Unreal Engine should extend far beyond Epic's own games; as one of the most popular development environments in existence, today's announcement (coupled with viable markets like Steam and the Mac OS App Store) should help UE-based developers reach an entirely new audience.
Epic's Unreal Engine makes grass look epic for real, come see
Epic Games is showing off its gardening skills with a new in-game landscape screenshot, and the plants in it look so real it's like, unreal, guys. Because the name of the engine is also ... forget it. Epic's Unreal Engine 3 produced the picture, which was tweeted by PR manager Dana Cowley. Cowley said the screen is real-time in-game footage, but it looks more like a highly-detailed Bob Ross paint-along. The blades of grass are just so happy. If Unreal 3 can make foliage look this fabulous when it's in motion too, we think players will all be just as pleased as Mr. Ross' little trees.
Mark Rein: If 3DS could 'deliver' Unreal Engine 3, we'd be on it
Mark Rein is getting a little tired of "the 3DS question" but, alas, my journalistic instincts demanded I ask him once again. With the launch of Nintendo's handheld right around the corner, it seemed like a prudent inquiry. "Why do people keep asking about the platforms we don't love?" he asked me in an interview room at the back of Epic's booth on the GDC show floor. "Nothing's changed," he added, "There's only so much time in the day; our engine requires a certain level of hardware capabilities to make our pipeline, our tools work -- and we work on the ones that do. The second Nintendo releases a piece of hardware that can run our engine well, we'll be on it like water on fish." For Rein, it's not a beef with Nintendo -- he's actually fond of The House Mario Built and has multiple handhelds and Wiis in his home. "There's nothing against Nintendo. I hate that people somehow think that's the case," he said. "If we felt it could run [Unreal Engine] and deliver the kind of experience people license our technology to build, we'd be on [the 3DS]." Well then, guess we won't ask Santa for that 3D version of Infinity Blade we've been dreaming of.
GDC: This is what Unreal Engine 3 on iPhone looks like
Unreal Engine 3 on the iPhone ... it looked better in person! While we've yet to see Unreal Engine 3 ported to Nintendo's Wii or Sony's PSP, Epic did undertake the considerable task of squeezing its seemingly ubiquitous middleware platform onto Apple's similarly ubiquitous iPhone. According to Epic's Josh Adams – Epic Games' senior console programmer – that could be due to fundamental hardware limitations in the other platforms. You see, the iPhone 3GS has a PowerVR SGX graphics processor which supports programmable shaders. According to Adams, "Programmable shaders are something UE3 is pretty much dependent on." Though you're probably most familiar with Unreal Engine on Windows, Xbox 360, and PS3, Adams says the engine also runs on Nvidia's Tegra 2 platform, on Linux, and on Mac, though (Adams notes) "we haven't shipped any games on those platforms yet." Adams says the iPhone port was "a fun 'Can we get UE3 onto the iPhone?' kind of project." Though Adams' presentation was exceptionally technical – this is the Game Developers Conference, after all! – it's fascinating to hear about the technical underpinnings and workflows that result in this type of outcome.
Epic's Mark Rein 'very excited' about the iPad's possibilities
Sure, it might resemble a large iPod Touch to some of us, but to the folks who get paid the big bucks to make games -- such as Epic Games VP Mark Rein -- the iPad looks like opportunity. Speaking to Gamasutra at this week's big unveiling event, Rein said "I really like the device and I think it's going to be great for gaming." And considering his company's Unreal Engine 3 is popping textures in and out of view on the iPhone already, it's no surprise that he said it's a "pretty safe assumption" to bet that the engine will make its way to the iPad. Like the iPhone game developers we spoke with yesterday (and our own wishes for what we'd like to see on the device), Rein hopes that devs will "take advantage of the differentiated form factor of the device." And hey, with all that extra screen space, we have to imagine that at least a quarter of Marcus Fenix's enormous husk is now able to fit into view! It's called innovation, folks, ya dig?
On eve of Too Human launch, Epic dispute resurfaces
It's been quite awhile since we've heard anything about the Silicon Knights and Epic Games lawsuit -- we last reported on it in January 2008 and were all prepared to make jokes about the lawsuit being on the cusp of vaporware like Duke Nukem Forever is and Too Human was. Thankfully, our curiosity has been rewarded; on the eve of the latter game's launch, Silicon Knights President Denis Dyack managed to put the legal proceedings back into the limelight.In an interview with Develop, Dyack said that the trial is proceeding and that he was confident in his claims. "We're hopeful that justice will be done. We all feel really strongly that [Epic Games has] defrauded us, and a major portion of the industry," he said.To recap: In late July 2007, Silicon Knights filed a lawsuit against Epic Games over what it felt was inadequate support for its Unreal Engine 3, thus harming development of Too Human. Epic responded and filed a countersuit. In November, Epic's motion for dismissal was denied. In January 2008, multiple subpoenas were issued to other UE3 licensees. As for Too Human's involvement, we'll be keeping a mental tally of how many reviews mention the lawsuit.
Hey, look, another Korean developer licenses Unreal Engine 3
Epic Games is apparently doing a good job selling and supporting its Unreal Engine 3 in the Korean market. Yet another developer has licensed the engine for an MMO project. This time it's T-Entertainment, which is working on a "space opera" MMO called L2. Wow, that sounds like the name of another Korean MMO!Welcome to the club, T-Entertainment! Meet AcroGames and Bluehole; they're also Korean developers using Unreal Engine 3. Oh, and of course you know about Webzen's Huxley, which is built on Unreal Engine 3. Yes, also Korean. Let's not forget the illustrious NCsoft, which already used the previous version of Unreal for Lineage II, and plans to use version 3 for not one but two new projects.There was an interview with Epic Games' Mark Rein at Gamasutra several months back. He said that Epic is working hard to propagate Unreal Engine 3 in Korea, but described serious challenges -- particularly with customer support. It looks like Epic is finding ways to deal with those challenges after all.[Via Worlds in Motion]
Bluehole joins vast ranks of Unreal-using devs
A new Korean development studio called Bluehole announced this week that it has licensed Epic's Unreal Engine 3 for its "flagship" MMO project, which is codenamed Project S1. The studio just started up last year, and is composed of "key members from some of the leading development and management teams in Korea." Specific, that!Project S1 is being developed for the PC, and according to a statement by Epic's Jay Wilbur, its team has "plans to reinvent MMO design and battle system mechanics." Sounds promising, but it's awfully soon to tell. We're looking forward to hearing more about this project in the months to come.Bluehole joins fellow Koreans NCsoft and Webzen, along with seemingly countless other studios like Cheyenne Mountain and 38 Studios in using the prolific and popular Unreal engine.
Bourne Conspiracy devs lament PS3's Unreal Engine problems
High Moon, the developers behind the upcoming book-gone-movie-gone-game title, The Bourne Conspiracy, is on the ever-growing list of teams struggling with the Unreal Engine and PS3. Their VP, Paul O'Connor, spoke to Gamasutra about PS3 and how the Unreal Engine was working out for them on the platform. He admitted: "We needed a lot of support on Unreal to make it run on the PlayStation 3. We got caught in the same crunch as everybody else when [Epic] finalized Gears Of War, so that definitely slowed down the PS3 support at the time."It's not all bad news, as he goes on to praise what the team has managed to do with the PS3 and says the game is about ready to go through the pipeline. High Moon had to use a lot of their own toolset, though, saying while the Unreal Engine 3 is a great toolset, for the PS3, they needed to bring out their own stuff as well. This problem has been plaguing many Unreal developers, and is at the root of a lawsuit brought on by Too Human developer, Silicon Knights.
GDC08: Mova's Steve Perlman talks Contour facial capture
Remember that video of the Contour facial capture technology we posted the other day? We sent out the Mahalo Daily crew – and their host, the lovely Veronica Belmont – to speak with Steve Perlman, founder and president of Mova, the creators of Contour. Catch up on Contour at Mahalo, and check out their GDC presentation after the break.
2K invests heavily in Unreal Engine 3
Despite the issues some developers may be having, Epic keeps finding customers more than happy to stuff the engine maker's mattresses with hundreds of thousands (millions?) of dollars for an Unreal Engine 3 license. Epic's cash deluge continues today with 2K Games' announcement that it's entering into a licensing deal to use UE3 for various unannounced games.2K Games' president stated the company has been happy with UE3 because it "enables games to perform exceptionally well on both console and the PC" and that, with Epic's support, they plan to continue producing "world-class" titles. While there's no word on what these unannounced games may be, 2K is currently on a development bender with Mafia II, Prizefighter, some sort of BioShock follow-up, the mysterious project at 2K Marin, and a few others in production
PS3 responsible for Turok delay
How are you enjoying playing Turok? (Don't answer that truthfully, peoples' feelings could be hurt!) Were you aware that you were supposed to be playing it around November of last year? That's when it was originally scheduled to be released, at least. Unfortunately Propaganda Games had some trouble getting the quality of the PS3 version up to scratch, so the game was delayed to earlier this month. Similar delays occurred with other UE3 powered games last year, though none were pushed back as far as 2008.We're expecting Sony to receive a nice "Thankyou!" hamper from Turok's developers any time now. All joking aside though, with the amount of games that were released during the last quarter of 2007, especially shooters, Turok would've been swallowed up and ignored. No doubt the game is receiving far better sales now than it could have in November, considering it has the entire month of February to itself with regards to the first person shooter market. Epic have gone on record to say that the engine is now fully optimised for the PS3 (and has been since UTIII was released, so this should be the last delay of this type that we see. Hopefully.[Via Joystiq]
American McGee announces next 'twisted tale' project after Grimm
We're not sure what it is about American McGee that makes him so fascinated about putting dark spins on Western tales. The former id Software developer and Electronic Arts' consultant found his niche in 2000 with Alice, though since that release he's done little to make us believe that his name slapped on the front of a game's box carries any more weight than the UPC code on the back. His latest project is a morose 24-episode take on the Brothers Grimm in development at McGee's Shanghai studio Spicy Horse, a project that according to a blog post by McGee is halfway completed. Excited, the developer has let the proverbial cat out of the equally proverbial bag by confirming work on another project. While details are light, McGee writes that the game will be built on Epic's UE3 engine, and is a "big publisher, multi-platform, twisted tale project." This of course makes us think that McGee will once again be paying a visit to the children's section of the local library in search of inspiration. Might we suggest Winnie the Pooh, as nothing is quite as frighting as a vicious bear that's rumbly in his tumbly. [via Gamasutra]
UE3 devs subpoenaed in SK / Epic suit
Shacknews reports that subpoenas have been served to several Unreal Engine 3 liscensess in a lawsuit against Epic games, filed by Silicon Knights last year. The subpoenas have been served in order to acquire the liscensees' engine contracts as evidence in the upcoming trial. Specific liscensees are not named, though known liscensees include Square Enix, Ubisoft, 2K Boston/Australia, EA, and the US Army.Mark Rein, Epic VP, stated, "I'm leaving the litigation to the lawyers but, if this is the case, I'd like to apologize to any of our licensees who Silicon Knights have inconvenienced." And inconvenienced they may be. If submitted as unsealed evidence, the contents of the contracts could become public record, allowing anyone access to the trade secrets therein. Epic's lawyers can move to seal the documents if this turns out to be the case.The lawsuit was filed last July, with Silicon Knights claiming that Epic did not deliver final code for the Unreal Engine 3 on time, thus hampering the development of Too Human. The company further asserted that Epic purposefully sabotaged UE3 liscensees while promoting its own products such as Gears of War. Epic later filed a counterclaim and a motion to have the case dismissed. The motion was denied in November last year and both suits will come to trial.[Via Joystiq]
Silicon Knights makes motion to dismiss Epic counterclaim
Can't we all just get along? The lawsuit between Silicon Knights and Epic heats up again as the Too Human developer has filed a motion to dismiss Epic's counter-suit. In the paperwork obtained by Next-Gen, Silicon Knights' attorneys take apart piece by piece Epic's counterclaim that Silicon Knights stole Epic's technology from the Unreal Engine 3 to create (well, technically we should say develop 'cause it isn't done) Too Human.SK's lawyers say that Epic's interpretation of an "operable" engine under the license they signed is that Epic could deliver nothing in return for SK's payments, which is what they alleged happened. They also say that Epic's claim that it's in their best interest to support UE3 licensees is a fallacy because "the profits Epic assured for itself by having Gears of War as the marquee title for the Xbox 360 dwarf any gain Epic would receive from Silicon Knights purchasing a subsequent licenses for the Engine." No word yet when a judge will rule on the motion to dismiss. It's all looking too bad for SK really. The success of BioShock and Ken Levine's own words on the matter of the UE3 show that working with a cutting-edge engine is tough, but that's the path you walk with (at the time starting development) an unproven engine. Epic may have screwed SK, but as more games come out using the UE3, it just seems to highlight SK's ineptitude to manipulate the technology like everyone else seems to have had to do.
BioShock's helping hand to Unreal Engine 3's image
If any company is going to benefit from the success of BioShock, beyond 2K Boston and Take-Two, it's Epic with their embattled Unreal Engine 3. BioShock has brought very public redemption and good press to the UE3 due to 2K Boston's phenomenal use of the tech. This hasn't gone unnoticed by Epic's Mark Rein who says, "We like to think we set a high bar with our own games, but more importantly we give our licensees the opportunity to take what we've done and do something even better with it ... There are a lot more great titles coming from our licensees as well and we're very proud of what is being accomplished and the helping role we get to play in their success."2K Boston's Ken Levine didn't wimp out on talking about their issues with the UE3 during our interview with him. Levine said, "Of course, it's an engine, engine's are always a bear. Developing games is really hard, I think the mistake that a company like Epic might make is to say, 'Oh yeah, it's simple, we give you the engine and you go do it fellas, it'll be a breeze.' Development is hard, it gives you a leg up, but if you don't have a great technology team you're going to run into trouble. Even if you have a great technology team you can run into trouble." Although the exact contractual issues regarding Silicon Knights' license with Epic are something for the court to decide, SK's inability to get Too Human working with the UE3 looks pretty awkward in the court of public opinion in the wake of BioShock.
