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  • Cexar
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    Cexar polycounter lvl 6
    Hell yes. That is all.
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    I hate to say it, but it's really not very impressive - which also doesn't help given the ridiculous comments in the article e.g;
    "In previous engines, one floating ember was enough to slow performance considerably; a shower of them was impossible. With Unreal Engine 4, there can be millions of such particles, as long as the hardware is potent enough to sustain them."
  • doc rob
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    doc rob polycounter lvl 19
    Prudence people, 3 low res screenshots do not define an engine. Wait until you see more to pronounce judgement upon UE4 (I haven't seen it, I'm just saying, don't go internet crazy).

    Jordan, can you talk at all about features now or is that still taboo?
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    I've seen it but cannot talk about it; it's still taboo. IIRC, there's some closed door screenings of the demo at E3 but I don't know about it being shown publically.
  • doc rob
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    doc rob polycounter lvl 19
    The article says it will be shown in June.
  • Hang10
    Damn, I'm only just learning UE3 :S
  • JordanW
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    JordanW polycounter lvl 19
    :) I can't talk about anything other than what's mentioned in the article. I will say what's been shown so far barely scratches the surface of what's capable with the new tools.

    This is one of the coolest things mentioned at the end of the article:
    "
    Willard reveals that both the cinematic scene and the following tech demo haven’t been running off a game file but in real time from within UE4′s game editor. It’s like finding out that the actors on TV are actually tiny people living inside your set. It also helps him show that changes can be made to the game’s design and code, recompiled and executed nearly instantly—a technical feat that has been simply unheard-of in game development. And just like that, the silence in the room becomes reverent. The videogame industry has changed.
    "
  • Andreas
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    Andreas polycounter lvl 11
    Yeah that fist screenshot looks like an early 360 game, but I'm sure it's just an unfortunate screenshot. I certainly hope there's plenty more on offer here than just lots of tesselation... that seems to be the only thing being shown in those screenshots. That and more particles. Expecting to be blown away come June!

    Also... geez, not impressed with Wired's writer. Writes like an uninformed teenager. Surely they should have several specialists working for the magazine, like phone guys, game tech guys, gadget guys... I understand they would have to dumb it down for the audience, but I don't think this is what this is. He doesn't seem to be familiar with game development at all.
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    JordanW wrote: »
    This is one of the coolest things mentioned at the end of the article:
    "It also helps him show that changes can be made to the game’s design and code, recompiled and executed nearly instantly—a technical feat that has been simply unheard-of in game development. And just like that, the silence in the room becomes reverent. The videogame industry has changed."

    Hot-swapping out DLLs at run time isn't a new thing - there are games on the market that already do this. EVE Online does this (along with real-time script editing and parsing) in the MMO space with zero downtime.
  • [HP]
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    [HP] polycounter lvl 13
    Good to see more info being released slowly! Looking forward to know more!

    I see DoF sorting bug is still there:
    f_unreal43_ss.jpg
  • bounchfx
    waiting for a video, looks cool but without more specs and a real demonstration I can't form a real opinion of it yet. Can't wait till E3. Good work man.
  • Gestalt
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    Gestalt polycounter lvl 11
    Fully dynamic lighting and kismet 2?!
    If the lighting is what they claim and the power of the new tools and work efficiency what they describe, then my interest has doubly piqued! wicked excited now!
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    Dynamic lighting is definitely where UE3 needed the most improvement (because quite frankly UE3's dynamic lighting is pretty poorly implemented). I expect it's been given a pretty heavy overhaul.
  • r_fletch_r
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    r_fletch_r polycounter lvl 9
    Do i see mesh based volcano smoke? that looks pretty damn cool
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    It's handled abusing dynamic tesselation - they did the same thing with the cigarette smoke in the Samaritan demo.
  • glottis8
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    glottis8 polycounter lvl 9
    I am excited for this, but i'll reserve a more elaborate opinion until i see stats and tech talks and some videos showing this.
  • IchII3D
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    IchII3D polycounter lvl 12
    *opens up particle editor... types 1,000,000... I'm next gen!"

    The next gen for me should be about functionality and new possibilities that the 'software/engine' can provide. Not just cranking up numbers because you have more power...

    I'm more interested in voxel/fluid simulation, hair rendering etc...
  • Teessider
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    Teessider polycounter lvl 11
    Hang10 wrote: »
    Damn, I'm only just learning UE3 :S

    Same here lol...UE4 is gonna be awesome though. I can't wait :poly121:
  • Ace-Angel
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    Ace-Angel polycounter lvl 12
    I honestly do hope in terms of 'graphical' stuff, like shaders, lighting, and active maps like Lightmaps and Normals, they have been upgraded and given a decent overhaul, and not kept with broken buildup or added layers of fluff just to cover the issue.

    I also hope with Kismet 2, actual issues or feedback is given to the user and that it's much easier to read in terms of what is clickable and not, or what paramters can be exposed.

    Can't say much for the article, I mean it's going through the motions; "Cliff B. is grand, we love consoles, we have awesome engine, NASA and Military guys use it, we think this and that should happen, yadda yadda yadda".
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    IchII3D wrote: »
    *opens up particle editor... types 1,000,000... I'm next gen!"

    The shift will be from moving particle simulations off the CPU onto the GPU where it belongs (finally!). I'd expect this to be a significant feature of the 'next gen'.
  • Lee3dee
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    Lee3dee polycounter lvl 18
    f_unreal44_ss.jpg

    the amount of particles being drawn! wow! or it could be a new tech for materials.
  • IchII3D
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    IchII3D polycounter lvl 12
    ambershee wrote: »
    The shift will be from moving particle simulations off the CPU onto the GPU where it belongs (finally!). I'd expect this to be a significant feature of the 'next gen'.

    I could be wrong but doesn't Halo 3 or Halo Reach have GPU particles? I believe is very much possible on 360 but a lot harder if not impossible on PS3, hence why you don't see it used in multiplatform games today.
  • marks
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    marks greentooth
    Gotta say, not overly wow'd by what I saw. Will wait until the video is made public before passing judgement though. As for the "live edit" stuff, of course nobody has done that before, right ... ?
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    IchII3D wrote: »
    I could be wrong but doesn't Halo 3 or Halo Reach have GPU particles?

    I couldn't say, but I wouldn't have thought so - or at least not in the sense that we should be seeing. Good examples of GPU driven particle systems are stuff like the APEX particles that Nvidia have been showing off for a while now.
  • Chimp
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    Chimp interpolator
    JordanW wrote: »
    :) I can't talk about anything other than what's mentioned in the article. I will say what's been shown so far barely scratches the surface of what's capable with the new tools.

    This is one of the coolest things mentioned at the end of the article:
    "
    Willard reveals that both the cinematic scene and the following tech demo haven’t been running off a game file but in real time from within UE4′s game editor. It’s like finding out that the actors on TV are actually tiny people living inside your set. It also helps him show that changes can be made to the game’s design and code, recompiled and executed nearly instantly—a technical feat that has been simply unheard-of in game development. And just like that, the silence in the room becomes reverent. The videogame industry has changed.
    "


    Not to put UE4 down at all because I am looking forward to it with a fair amount of excitement but making changes on the fly has been in Unity for ages unless I am misunderstanding what you are saying
  • Xendance
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    Xendance polycounter lvl 7
    Chimp wrote: »
    Not to put UE4 down at all because I am looking forward to it with a fair amount of excitement but making changes on the fly has been in Unity for ages unless I am misunderstanding what you are saying

    Making changes to the actual executable code and/or game script?
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 18
    Simpsons did it first.
    :P

    ok, I'm sure everyone is aware that certain features of Unreal 4 have been done at one time or another in other engines - so just combine all those engines into one and we've got Unreal 4. Unreal wasn't the first to do normal maps either.

    I hope Unreal 4 gets the UDK treatment and is not just a licensee only setup. I also hope we get synced tangents - if Epic does it than hopefully everyone else will to and I can finally start messing with normal maps.
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    UE4 will be pretty unstable for a while (at least until Epic ship a game). I wouldn't want to see a UDK using it until then.

    Gears of War's editor was barely useable when that hit PC. UT3's editor was largely stable, but there were still some crash bugs in certain modules that were all too easy to trigger.
  • Xendance
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    Xendance polycounter lvl 7
    ambershee wrote: »
    UE4 will be pretty unstable for a while (at least until Epic ship a game). I wouldn't want to see a UDK using it until then.

    Gears of War's editor was barely useable when that hit PC. UT3's editor was largely stable, but there were still some crash bugs in certain modules that were all too easy to trigger.

    I wouldn't say that. Considering they're becoming bigger and bigger seller of engine licenses, they're probably honing their software engineering process so that customers wouldn't have to use unstable software. At least I hope so :D
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 18
    Xendance: you're wrong, it's going to suck.

    Just kidding, I wanted to break ambershee's chain of refuting every positive post about Unreal 4.
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    I'm not refuting anything, just saying how it is from first hand experience. It is unlikely UE4 will be particularly stable for some time, given that Epic have to build the tools to cater for development for hardware that is still somewhat of an unknown.
  • BlvdNights
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    BlvdNights polycounter lvl 8
    Waiting to see some video footage before I jizz all over my pants. Right now I just squirted a little knowing it's going to be shown soon.
    ambershee wrote: »
    UE4 will be pretty unstable for a while (at least until Epic ship a game). I wouldn't want to see a UDK using it until then.

    Gears of War's editor was barely useable when that hit PC. UT3's editor was largely stable, but there were still some crash bugs in certain modules that were all too easy to trigger.

    I remember about 5 or 6 years ago getting the Gears editor and just how rough that was.


    This seems approporiate for all the particles in this article

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHgziac87-Y"]TMBG - Particle Man (TSS) - YouTube[/ame]
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    Indeed - now imagine how bad it was before Gears shipped. I started working with UE3 around 2006, and I'm still in the habit of hitting CTRL+S every five minutes.

    That said, I'm relly looking forwards to seeing some new tools. A matinee replacement and new particle authoring tools would be awesome.
  • Flynny
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    Flynny polycounter lvl 9
    Bah, looks amazing!

    Hope theres some nice animation tech/features ironed out ;)

    Now I have to go back to a throwback engine that even UE2 would probably laugh at, sigh.
  • BlvdNights
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    BlvdNights polycounter lvl 8
    Found this interesting....
    Furthermore, Unreal Engle 4 has features that are designed to shorten production pipelines and lower production costs, such as allowing developers to see many of the changes they've made to a game (e.g. lighting elements) immediately, without having to wait for those edits to take effect.

    http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/170524/Epics_Unreal_Engine_4_looks_to_drag_this_industry_into_the_next_generation.php
  • Ace-Angel
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    Ace-Angel polycounter lvl 12
    ^
    Again, this is all good stuff, and I really hope all this is true and not PR hot air, but to be a debbie downer, all this stuff can only be VOUCHED for if they're tested by mutiple studios within a time span of few years, across mutiple dev teams.

    Not everyone is going to have triple A, senior tech and concept artists who have been using UE based engines for the past 10 years, and are planning to make their 'first' game as a discount rate to test the market.
  • skankerzero
    Yes, because what this industry needs is MORE POLYGONS!!!

    Let's further drive up the budgets of our games and have more studios shut down due to weak sales.


    But hey, you know, graphics.
  • yodude87
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    yodude87 polycounter lvl 5
    well, what to say... damnit, it looks fantabulous.

    now that i was getting "good" with unreal 3... :\

    what do you guys think, any chances of udk based on unreal 4?
  • Jesse Moody
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    Jesse Moody polycounter lvl 17
    Yes, because what this industry needs is MORE POLYGONS!!!

    Let's further drive up the budgets of our games and have more studios shut down due to weak sales.


    But hey, you know, graphics.

    Well a big reason for budgets being driven up on a lot of titles isn't just the "we need moar polygons" but I know from personal experience a lot of "decision" makers can't do just that. Make a decision. Take this scenario. 2 artists, 2 designers and possibly a lighting artist working on a huge level for 2-3 months. Getting it to alpha like quality and then the creative director changes the story just a bit because that is what he does and boom that level is gone and all that work was for nothing.

    Higher ups and guys in management and making decisions need to learn to make decisions and stick to them. The larger ones. Now in games things change. Things change a lot but not having a clear vision from the start and having this oh we'll wing it as we go is just stupid and irresponsible.

    Does making a game like Gears/Uncharted/Halo/COD cost a lot more then Angry Birds? Fuck yeah it does. But as someone that has moved 7 times since the spring of 2007 I can honestly say I would still rather work on any of those big titles then a casual game any day of the week. Even with the risks.
  • Joopson
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    Joopson quad damage
    Those screens look pretty flat to me... I can't really see any shadows in most of the shots. I'm super excited, but deferred lighting, like CE3, is what I'm hoping for.
    f_unreal4_8_ss.jpg

    Like here, I see a shadow, hidden behind one of the planet things, but none on the ground. Because of this it just looks dated to me in most of these shots, to be honest- except for the Mountains. Those look pretty darn good.
  • Thegodzero
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    Thegodzero polycounter lvl 18
    Joopson wrote: »
    Because of this it just looks dated to me in most of these shots, to be honest- except for the Mountains. Those look pretty darn good.

    http://www.world-machine.com/
  • adam
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    adam polycounter lvl 19
    This is one of those things I think we're going to have to see in motion and experience first-hand as developers to really appreciate whats happening here with UE4. Talking specifically about this article alone, though...

    What I read > What I saw.

    I love you guys at Epic, you always do top notch stuff, but the information presented in the article far outweighs the images shown for sheer impressiveness. A number of those shots - like the one Joopson posted above - feel unfinished and not even on par with what we've seen in current games.

    This is all a comment based on viewing the screenshots alone. As I stated, technology sounds fantastic and I'm really hoping to see visuals that represent them better but right now these screenshots don't scream 'next-generation'.

    The aspect of this article that got me the most excited is the claim on shortening iteration times. That, to me, separates a tool set from being 'good' to 'great. I use UDK right now because the time spent compiling and testing is very minimal. If that time is shortened more so, and across multiple disciplines, then fantastic. Hopefully, though, that isn't offset in a negative way by the time spent needed to make the fantastic art/visuals in the first place.
  • iniside
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    iniside polycounter lvl 6
    What can I say. Level interation times finally catching to CryEngine 2/3.
    I need more real life info to be really impressed.
  • Jesse Moody
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    Jesse Moody polycounter lvl 17
    Thegodzero wrote: »

    Those are nice but are they being rendered in real time in an engine with that kind of visual fidelity and sexiness?
  • Autocon
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    Autocon polycounter lvl 15
    I have to agree with Adam on this one. Love the guys at Epic and the work they do but unless I am missing something here games TODAY far surpass the look of the those screen shots.

    The way the article was written over inflated what was shown. They made it seem as if Epic, and Epic alone is pioneering the next gen front and that Sony and Microsoft dont have teams and studios themselves working on bringing about next gen. It honestly read more as a glowing advertisement from an overzealous fan trying to sell you on Unreal4 than an honest assessment of what was actually show.



    I hope the demo they show off at E3 is close to what this author is hyping it up too be, because if it is simply the demo of the screen shots shown I don't think it will have any kind of impact next to games being shown that look far superior. Particles look sweet though.
  • Thegodzero
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    Thegodzero polycounter lvl 18
    Jesse, just merely pointing out that the one thing that he liked is something that can be generated in 5 min and tossed into UE3 or CE2/3 and get the same results proof being Choco's thread. Now if that is a realtime dynamic version of world machine in viewport now were talking.

    All i see is what i would call shots from the "Don't use for marketing" bin.
  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    This screams tech demo, focusing on one thing at a time making it look cool, and showing off features, but not focusing on the whole look, I figured they'd do another samaritan demo. Can't wait to see what artists will do with it though.
  • Rabbid_Cheeze
    Fully dynamic lighting, improved Kismet, and boatloads of particles. That's about sums up everything I got from that article.

    I'd like to see how accurate of water simulation can be achieved now.
  • Jesse Moody
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    Jesse Moody polycounter lvl 17
    Thegodzero wrote: »
    Jesse, just merely pointing out that the one thing that he liked is something that can be generated in 5 min and tossed into UE3 or CE2/3 and get the same results proof being Choco's thread. Now if that is a realtime dynamic version of world machine in viewport now were talking.

    All i see is what i would call shots from the "Don't use for marketing" bin.

    Got ya and yeah I'll reserve judgement as well to see it in motion and in my hands.

    I have no doubts it will be much more impressive seeing it in motion and interacting with it.

    This I am sure is just a sneak of things to come.

    Autocon, yeah I am sure you guys at Naughty Dog are pushing for Sony and the next console stuff as well. I am pretty sure all of us Devs know that, but yeah the article does leave much to be desired.

    So with that said... Anthony when can I come over to Naughty Dog and have a look around?
  • walreu
    I was really confused for what i saw.
    I really thought that image with that planet holding device thing was somekind of comparison shot from older engine.
    Maybe they're just trolling us and holding the best footage for E3..
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