The History of Technology - Unreal Engine

GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT TECHNOLOGY

 

Starting its march in 1998, Unreal Engine differed from its competitors in a number of innovations, and some of them were ahead of their time. On the first version of the engine from Epic Games, only three games were released, and the most famous of which is the eponymous Unreal. Every gamer has come across the Unreal Engine and the list of games that use the Epic Games product includes more than a hundred, including Deus Ex, Dishonored, Lineage II, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Postal 2, the Brothers in Arms series, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, as well as the well-known game series Unreal and Unreal Tournament. Being adapted primarily for first-person shooters, the engine was also used to create games of other genres.  

UNREAL TECHNOLOGY

Written in C++, the engine allows you to create games for most operating systems and platforms: Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS and Mac OS X, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 3, Wii, Dreamcast and Nintendo GameCube consoles. In December 2010, Mark Rein demonstrated Unreal Engine 3 on the iPod Touch and iPhone 3GS. In March 2010, the engine was demonstrated on the Palm Pre communicator based on the webOS mobile platform.

 

To simplify porting, the engine uses a modular system of dependent components: supports various rendering systems, including Direct3D, OpenGL, audio playback, text-to-speech, speech recognition for Xbox360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, modules for working with networking and support for various input devices

For online play, Windows Live, Xbox Live, and GameSpy technologies are supported, including up to 64 players at the same time. Despite the fact that the development tools do not officially include support for a large number of clients on a single server, the engine has been used to create MMORPG games. One of the most famous representatives of the MMORPG genre, Lineage II uses the Unreal Engine.

 

In 1999, an improved version of the Unreal engine was released, designed for modern computers and Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 consoles at that time. Significant additions were made - support for facial animation, maximum texture resolution increased to 1024x1024, an expandable "particle" system, S3TC technology. The second version of the UnrealEd editor has also been integrated.

This version of the engine is used in the multiplayer shooter Unreal Tournament, and in the adventure game Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

A few years later, a group of independent developers UTPG approached Epic Games for access to the source codes of the Unreal Tournament executable files to further support the game. Epic Games accepted the offer and for some time the development team released unofficial patches for the game.

 

 

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FOR UNREAL ENGINE 1

 

The second version of Unreal Engine was released in 2002 and brought with it a lot of new things. In the new version, the core and rendering engine were almost completely rewritten, and a new version of the UnrealEd 3 editor was integrated. In addition, one of the most important changes was the integration of a third-party physical Karma subsystem. This brought physics to a new level and allowed Epic Games to refine the rest of the engine - optimize or change for better compatibility with the PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox.

It is also worth mentioning the borrowed sound engine EAX 3.0 from Creative Labs.

The engine has undergone significant changes and the following technologies have appeared in it:

Ragdoll physics - despite the fact that the "skeletal" structure of objects was implemented in the first version of the engine, the possibility of using "ragdoll" physics appeared only with the transition to a new physical subsystem. This technology used the "skeletal" structure of the models to create realistic model falls. In games without this technology, a death animation is attached to the model, which looks rather primitive.

Liquid surfaces were added to the engine, which consisted of a large number of polygons and could change - for example, upon contact with the player, to create the illusion of immersion in water.

As well as a kind of detailing, a foliage system has been added - objects generated on the fly that decorate the landscape.

VoIP support - the ability to talk through a microphone with other players during the game.

Speech recognition - translation of voice into text and processing as a command, which was implemented in the ability to give commands to bots by voice. This technology used the Microsoft Speech API and was therefore only supported on 32-bit Windows.

More complex body physics, thanks to the Karma technology, processed the interaction with the body not as with one solid object, but as an action on the skeleton with body parts attached to it. So each character's joint got limiters, and these limiters were of 2 types: articulated and linear. Linear could rotate only around one axis, and articulated on all 3. The action itself on some objects was determined not by collision boxes, but by complex models that were attached to the skeleton. Of course, this technology was not used everywhere, but only where it was necessary: ​​for example, to calculate the interaction with a grenade, only the sphere of collisions was used to save resources.

Vehicles - this technology was not fully implemented and was improved in subsequent versions of the engine. However, there is a level implementation for Unreal Tournament 2003, which contains a modified module that performs all the functions of the vehicle. 

The use of Warp surfaces due to the transition to 32-bit graphics and the use of Karma technology has become difficult.

UNREAL ENGINE 2.5

In this version, the graphics engine was once again improved and optimized - support for Direct3D 9, OpenGL 2 and Pixomatic (a rendering system that serves computers with a weak video card, but a powerful central processor) appeared. Added support for 64-bit Windows NT and GNU/Linux operating systems. The highest possible texture resolution was raised to 4096x4096 pixels, full Unicode support was added, which made it possible to create fully localized games in Asian languages.

Later versions introduced SpeedTree and added the ability to play DivX and Bink videos. In addition, the engine itself has been significantly optimized, allowing for better performance with the same system requirements. This version of the engine was used in such computer games as Unreal Tournament 2004, Pariah, Killing Floor and many others.

 

UNREAL ENGINE 2 RUNTIME

 

Unreal Engine 2 Runtime is a special version of Unreal Engine 2.0 with a limited license. Later, the engine was replaced by UDK, a cheaper version of the Unreal Engine 3 engine. The user could download the distribution kit of the Windows version of the engine from the official website. The kit included the UnrealEd map editor, the ucc utility, as well as a test level and a small set of models and textures demonstrating the capabilities of the Unreal technology. The engine is free for non-commercial projects and for educational use.

UNREAL ENGINE 2X

 

A special version of the engine for the Xbox console, based on version 2.0. In addition to code optimization, new visual effects were introduced: depth of field - this is the ability of the lens to display sharp objects located at different distances from it; dynamic gamma correction, bloom and various blur variations. The texture format has been changed to more realistic shadows in high resolution, added Memory Tracking, support for voice chat, Xbox Live service, and split screen functionality. Was only used in Unreal Championship 2.

 

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FOR UNREAL ENGINE 2

UNREAL ENGINE 3

The first version of Unreal Engine 3 was released in 2006. This cross-platform engine was developed with the next generation PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 consoles and personal computers in mind, using modern DirectX 9, OpenGL 2 and OpenGL 3 rendering systems. Support for DirectX 10 version was quickly added with the release of Windows Vista and shader version 4.0. Due to the widespread use of multiprocessor systems, the engine uses two parallel main threads - the main thread, which is mainly responsible for the game process and the rendering thread. In addition to the two main threads, secondary threads can be called, which perform one-time tasks. There is support for multi-threaded dynamic data loading, such as loading a "location" directly when moving through it in order to save resources.

The updated graphics engine supports most modern technologies, including HDR, per-pixel lighting, dynamic shadows, shaders version 4.0, geometry shaders. The graphics pipeline itself was transferred under the control of shaders. The physical subsystem Karma was abandoned in favor of another called PhysX from AGEIA. Later, AGEIA released a set of additional libraries for the game, allowing you to use all the features of your physical system.

The FaceFX mechanism is responsible for the animation of the faces of the characters. The EAX system has been updated to the fifth version. Added support for SpeedTree for generating trees. The emphasis was on additive geometry, but support for subtractive geometry was not abandoned. The disadvantage of subtractive geometry in the first place is a much longer lighting calculation. A new UnrealEd editor has been introduced, rewritten using wxWidgets.

 

 

UNREAL ENGINE 3.5

 

In this version, there was another evolution of the graphic component. So, among other things, the Ambient occlusion post-processing filter was added, which improves shadows and lighting. The number of processed characters in the frame has been increased. The dynamic water surface technology has been redesigned to a new level, soft body physics and destructible environments have also been significantly improved.

In March 2010, an announcement of new features of the engine was published, which were presented at the Game Developers Conference 2010. One of the main innovations is the new Unreal Lightmass lighting system, which uses lossless global illumination features that were implemented in older lighting systems. Improved work with multiprocessor systems - distribution of tasks between multiprocessor systems using Unreal Swarm, as well as faster compilation of C ++ code and processing of Unreal Script due to Unreal Build Tool.

Added its own means of distributing user-generated content - Unreal Content Browser, appeared Unreal Master Control Program - a new master server for updating clients and maintaining global statistics, which is already used in Gears of War 2. In connection with the innovations, Epic Games China planned to demonstrate the use of the engine for massively multiplayer online games.

In 2011, Epic Games showed a video about the latest updates made to the Samaritan engine. The press and players began to call it "Unreal Engine 3.9". In the next update, the third-generation engine received support for DirectX 11, as well as a huge amount of related technologies. Was only used in Unreal Championship 2.

 

UNREAL DEVELOPMENT KIT

 

Although Unreal Engine 3 was open to modding, the ability to sell games based on Unreal Engine 3 was restricted to those who had a license for the game engine. However, in November 2009, Epic Games released a free version of the Unreal Engine 3-based SDK, called the Unreal Development Kit, which became available to every user. Under the current user agreement, game developers can sell their games with a one-time payment of $99 to Epic Games. If a commercial product based on UDK earns a total of $50,000 in profit, then the developer will be forced to pay 25% royalties to Epic Games. In December 2010, a version of the UDK was released to support the creation of games for the iOS platform. 

 

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FOR UNREAL ENGINE 3

 

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