Competition for UnrealEngine3 and Reality Engine

[riles]

Is VALVe working on a nex gen engine such as UnrealEngine3 or Reality Engine for 2006+? Do you think they should even worry about that?

I dont know because the more advanced these games get regarding graphics and realism, the tougher its going to be to mod for them. Then again, they will be some awesome games... I hope VALVe will be working on something like that in the future anyway. Hopefully, though, they are focusing on improving Source right now.

Thoughts?

 

[JFry]

Source is valve's next-generation engine... they plan to upgrade it to be competitive in the future.

 

[Cyphersphere]

What ever happened to the Jupiter Engine... I liked how they used it for the NOLF games...

AI wasn't so good, but the world was beautiful... (not nearly as good as Source)

 

[DarkSonic]

From what I've seen of the Unreal3 engine, and with Source at its current state, Unreal3 whoops Source up and down Graphics lane.

 

[nw909]

From what I've seen of the Unreal3 engine, and with Source at its current state, Unreal3 whoops Source up and down Graphics lane.

Yeah but source is playable.

 

[nagual678]

Source being a competition for the Unreal3 engine ? are you kidding ?

 

[Cyphersphere]

Here's a link for the Unreal3 engine, I'm downloading it now so I don't have any comments yet.

http://www.edgefiles.com/files/14116.html

 

[destrukt]

well, it's amazing.

source has nothing on it.

 

[Ansur]

Y'all don't get it, do ya?
At this moment, source can't compete with the Unreal3 engine, but who will say what state source will be in, give 3 years?

Its highly editable and upgradable, shouldn't worry too much.

 

[Sir_Shunt]

Y'all don't get it, do ya?
At this moment, source can't compete with the Unreal3 engine, but who will say what state source will be in, give 3 years?

Its highly editable and upgradable, shouldn't worry too much.

Besides, UE3 may look good, but is it playable? I mean I can get 40-50 FPS on my geforce 2, 1024X768 with everything set to max. I wanna see the UE3 do that...

 

[Cyphersphere]

With a better engine comes more detail.
With more detail come more calculations.
With more calculations comes the need for better video rendering.
With Better Video rendering comes better games.
With better games comes..... better stuff to do.... Right....

 

[nagual678]

source has a incontestable pro, it's that it is highly editable and moddable. no one can complain about lack of flexibility, and it's probably going to keep a place of choice in the gaming community because of CS and basically being half life (think of the reputation for modding). source has the advantage of universality, anyone with nearly any machine can come and enjoy HL2 or CS:S (and the many mods to come)

but source competing graphically with U3 ? not in this world. think of the massive rewriting you would need just for the shadows. and i'm not mentioning anything else. there is no way source can compete without a massive overhaul that would require an almost complete rewriting of the code IMHO. and we're not going to see this in HL3.

 

[Sharrd]

If you look at games using engines that had been around for a year or so before the game was released, you'll notice it makes a big difference. Why would it be better to start from scratch than with the Source engine?

 

[guchi]

the source engine cost wayyy too much to make to just use it for 2 years, they will upgrade it to suit the markets graphical needs...

 

[jacen]

Besides, UE3 may look good, but is it playable? I mean I can get 40-50 FPS on my geforce 2, 1024X768 with everything set to max. I wanna see the UE3 do that...

not tell me that the image quality on your gf2 is anywhere near the image quality of hl2 @ dx9 or ue3

man you are stupid ...
without any effects, its no big deal that you get 40-50 fps

 

[Yellonet]

Sure, UE3 might be able to produce "better" graphics than Source, but at what cost?
I think that if they upgraded Source it could look just as good.

You really shouldn't try to compare two engines that obivously have totally different hardware demands.

 

[Nostradamus]

currently they get about 5 fps with x800 so U3 engine is very much a next gen engine, while Source is well "current gen"

 

[rumblefish]

currently they get about 5 fps with x800 so U3 engine is very much a next gen engine, while Source is well "current gen"

u mean 50 fps rite?

plus, the unreal engine is the same engine as unreal 1 used, just modified heavily.
the original hl was made on a modded quake 2 engine, so using the profits from hl, valve made a moddable engine to keep up with the next gen and next next gen engines, like the unreal engine has done

rf

 

[Mr.Wotsit]

I didn't realise that Source is designed to be improved in the future rather than starting another whole new engine...

If that's true, then it's a very good idea!

 

[REM2000]

I don't think the capabilities matter to much to modders else they would have all changed to the UT2004 engine and not still used the HL engine for all the mods. The Unreal3 engine does look good, however the unreal 2 engine didn't really get used for much (UT2003, 2004, Unreal2, Theif3 and Deus Ex) I know the HL engine wasn't used for much but it had a lot more mods written for it. Really the most used engine for games has to be the Quake3 engine.

 

[The Dark Elf]

UE3 looks amazing, but with current hardware, there is no way on earth it could run maps like HL2 has. There's a lot of limitations in UE3 right now, remember way back with the original Unreal game? could only have a couple of NPC's in an area if you were lucky, its just the same thing again this time round, only with much more powerful hardware.

Making a super fancy 3D engine, thats easy... making it work on the hardware at the time and still look amazing? Thats hard.

 

[koopa]

I didn't realise that Source is designed to be improved in the future rather than starting another whole new engine...

It is, but then so was Unreal engine - it's really very well designed. And they ended up rewriting large chunks of the renderer/etc for UE3. Admittedly their current engine was pretty much DX7 spec with DX8 bits, rather than HL2 which is more up to date. In Source's case, it probably doesn't make much sense to worry about per-pixel stuff/etc until machines could do that *and* make it look as pretty as HL2 (if you see what I mean).

 

[Mountain Man]

Of course the Unreal 3 engine looks better than the current implementation of Source. Difference is, Source can run in real-time on consumer level hardware while Unreal 3 can't.

 

[XBORGZORZ]

not tell me that the image quality on your gf2 is anywhere near the image quality of hl2 @ dx9 or ue3

man you are stupid ...
without any effects, its no big deal that you get 40-50 fps

NO, you are stupid.
Do you need me to tell you why?
There is no announced game that is curently in developement using the UE3, the first will hit the market around 2006-7.
At the engines current state you wont be getting 40 FPS with an X800XT. You want to compare source with an engine? Compare it with D3 NOT UE3.
And for your info, the man said that source is playable on lower end systems. Can you say it is the same with UE3? No. Why? Because all you have seen is a tech demo. Try this discussion again in 2 years. Then you might have something to say.

 

[NachoMan]

I think it's a bit of a shame that games developers are being forced into making rediculously complicated graphics renderers; it seems to be leaving them less and less time to create actual games. I reckon that about 50% of the time given to a game is purely to get the graphics working, then the other 50% is spread across physics, sound, content creation, and somewhere in there is actual gameplay.

The bitter war going on between ATi and Nvidia is consuming a lot of games and turning them into fancy graphics engines

 

[koopa]

I think it's a bit of a shame that games developers are being forced into making rediculously complicated graphics renderers; it seems to be leaving them less and less time to create actual games. I reckon that about 50% of the time given to a game is purely to get the graphics working, then the other 50% is spread across physics, sound, content creation, and somewhere in there is actual gameplay.

I don't think it's quite as bad as you are saying (the renderer doesn't take that long), but I take your point. Of course, they're making these graphical games because we won't buy ugly ones. I tried to play H1:S the other day and I thought 'uggh, this is so horrible looking'

 

[Varsity]

there is no way source can compete without a massive overhaul that would require an almost complete rewriting of the code

No more than UE3 needed.

 

[Dead-Inside]

u mean 50 fps rite?

plus, the unreal engine is the same engine as unreal 1 used, just modified heavily.
the original hl was made on a modded quake 2 engine, so using the profits from hl, valve made a moddable engine to keep up with the next gen and next next gen engines, like the unreal engine has done

rf

Actually no, it's a completely new engine. You know nothing of what you're talking about, apart from Half-Life being built on the Q2 engine.

And he did mean 5 fps.

 

[NachoMan]

I don't think it's quite as bad as you are saying (the renderer doesn't take that long), but I take your point. Of course, they're making these graphical games because we won't buy ugly ones. I tried to play H1:S the other day and I thought 'uggh, this is so horrible looking'

The problem is that in 2 years time, the current hl2 graphics will be looking seriously dated in comparison to the newer generation of games. Old games only look ugly because we're used to the newer ones (doom 3 and hl2 have probably ruined a lot of my old games now :\ ) I just wish things would ease off a bit, and allow developers to catch up on the graphics front and concentrate in other areas such as AI.

But Ati and Nvidia have to sell hardware so I suppose that will never happen...

 

[reap]

NO, you are stupid.
Do you need me to tell you why?
There is no announced game that is curently in developement using the UE3, the first will hit the market around 2006-7.
At the engines current state you wont be getting 40 FPS with an X800XT. You want to compare source with an engine? Compare it with D3 NOT UE3.
And for your info, the man said that source is playable on lower end systems. Can you say it is the same with UE3? No. Why? Because all you have seen is a tech demo. Try this discussion again in 2 years. Then you might have something to say.

I agree with you.

 

[ScRaTcH-A-HoLiC]

I think by the time the unreal engine is released the source engine will be right up to par with it..

As of now yah the unreal engine puts out some awsome renders.

 

[BetaMaster]

So far, on the most high-end computer availble, the Unreal3 engine has been able to run at a steady 3 FPS. Source wins, right now.

 

[XBORGZORZ]

Only time will tell, but right now I prefer the crytech engine over the competition.

 

[koopa]

So far, on the most high-end computer availble, the Unreal3 engine has been able to run at a steady 3 FPS. Source wins, right now.

I think you're a bit out of date - the new Geforce cards at least run it at nearer 30 (I might be wrong).

 

[BetaMaster]

Seriously? I was just at a news site recently where they were discussing it in the forums. I didn't check the date of the post, so I guess it might be old.

 

[koopa]

Well there's lots of references to people seeing UE3 running in real-time on a 6800. If I can find something more concrete I'll post it, I'm sure I saw figures somewhere.

 

[The Silhouette]

all of your morons taking blind stabs at what speed the Unreal 3 engine was running at are WRONG. It was running at 10 to 15 FPS on a very high end computer with a 6800u.

also the Unreal 3 engine looks nice, but not as good as half you idiots think. You'd relize this if you took time to examine the screenshots and see the flat textures, and low poly areas.

All the Source engine would have to do is incorporate Displacement Maps and Paralax mapping for more geometry, and real time shadowing to be onpar with the U3 engine.

your also pretty stupid if your comparing an Engine of today to an Engine that wont be used till earliest at the end of 05.

 

[seed007]

Why the hell are you people fighting about this? Unreal Engine 3 isn't even being used till 2006...so it SUPPOSED to be better than source...you know the funny thing technology does? Like...get better with time?

 

[ScRaTcH-A-HoLiC]

all of your morons taking blind stabs at what speed the Unreal 3 engine was running at are WRONG. It was running at 10 to 15 FPS on a very high end computer with a 6800u.

do you have a link to prove that??

 

[Brian Damage]

And about rewriting the shadows bit of the Source renderer code... didn't the dev team for Bloodlines do that?