Game Engines

An engine is pretty much what brings the game to life. Using physics, collisions, animations etc on externally made assets.  Being good at 3ds max is all well and good, but is essentially nothing if you can’t put everything into one, neat, playable package.

The engine also gives a game its identity through style and visualisation. You can also usually tell from effects, lighting and shadows what engine it was developed under. 

For instance, the most recent Need for Speed game, The Run, was developed with the Frostbite engine, which was also used for  Bad Company 2 etc. Even though they’re two completely different games, you can still see similarities visually between the two titles.  

For our final major project, it seems we have two engines to choose from in which to develop and showcase our FMP. These would be the Unreal and Cry engine. Of course there are many others out there but these are the two which are available to us.

Engine showcase from GDC 2011 - Cryengine/UDK

The two engines seem suited to better things, urban vs rural.. ofcourse cryengine is great at creating vast, natural lanscapes with a great sense of realism. Shown best in Crysis… beautiful. But I think the engine doesn’t serve justice when brought to an urban setting. Don’t get me wrong, Crysis 2 is by no means an ugly game, but jungles and forests is where this engine is more at home.

Fact of the day - Crytek originally showed Far Cry just as a technology demo to showcase the cryengine, but after the potential Nvidia saw it was later made into a fully-fledged game title

From what exposure to Unreal we’ve had during the group project, I have already made many an assumption about UDK.

it crashes, aaaaallll the time… when you load up the package – don’t touch it, it will crash ! when you try and save, don’t touch it, it will crash ! When you build the lighting, don’t touch it, it will crash !

Basically when its thinking, just don’t touch it !

Whats all this about having to build the lighting anyway. I know it allows the game to run faster as shadows cast from assets are permanent so the game doesn’t have to calculate them on the fly…

Buuuuuut

Its takes fucking ages !

If you move a few assets about, the lighting has to be completely rebuilt. And if this is on the production stage it could take upwards of 20 minutes.

Kind of disrupts the workflow a little aye

What I did find funny, was if you shoot a dynamic object away from its original position, the shadow stays imprinted into the environment.

Kinda like this bit in the Simpsons episode, Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy, where Homer has sat in front of the TV for so long his shadow has been radiated into the walls. 

A major pro to the Unreal engine is that it has a very in depth material editor. I was amazed at how much can be achieved by plugging endless amount of nodes into each other, giving complete control over desired effects.This is also very useful and efficient method of saving package space via re-using materials. 

There are some little issues I had with UDK, which were easily solved, but were such a ball ache to find out how. Example, I was trying to import textures onto an asset which had an alpha map, I knew how to import an alpha texture in, but even though the texture appeared fine in the material editor (with the parts I wanted see through and opaque correct) the asset placed in engine was all translucent, and shit.

I googled for hours ( because that’s how I solve the majority of my problems ) but after many web pages of nothing relevant I reluctantly gave up. It wasn’t until labs next day I consulted the group and Ben had been having the exact same problem

Solution – defer compression, a single tick box

I wasn’t angry, just relieved.

Apparently this is how most problems in UDK are solved, minor insignificant tick boxes.

Oh ! another way we found to fix problems is to simply save the package. If that doesn’t work then, well, give up. It’s probably not worth it

I am a little bit tempted to use the cry engine for my FMP, just cause everything is done in real time. What you see in the editor is pretty much what you’ll see in game ! This is a major plus for the workflow as you don’t have to keep building the lighting to see changes you’ve made.

Plus cryengine just seems to make things look beautiful.

But I guess ill just have to try both and see which is better suited to my idea ! which I still need to decide on… hmmm…