My dislike for UE3 and question regarding it in HoS and Immersion

[Ender]

reading this, I figured I'd try the demo to see how it is...



and now I'm out $30 and up one copy of Mass Effect 2.

Not to mention a LOT more hyped up for HoS. Based on how pretty UE3 game look on my machine while still running smooth as silk, I'm very impressed.

I know I tried the demo too and almost bought it. I think when i have more time I will pick it up or when then have a combo deal to get the first one too.

I would guess the performance would be a good test for people wondering if their pc will hold up for HOS or if it is time to upgrade.

I felt the same way about trying the Batman game, a good example of what the engine can do and even physics. I just hope the physics isnt limited by nvidia.

 

[Xendance]

RO:HoS should use Source imo.

Rofl, wtf are you trolling about.

 

[dogbadger]

phaps one thing to remember is a few of the UE3 shooter games on PC haven't exactly been committed efforts.

the vegas games i think looked a bit lazy and rushed, but are still reasonably solid.
What i've seen of BiA HH thusfar is so so.

MoH airborne was better presented, with a factory level near the end that really made me think of what could be done in HoS, enviroment-wise. The game was run of the mill but of course that's a developer desicion.

As pointed out - when devs have gone the extra mile in UE3 the results have been good.

And lets not forget the TWi team is the one that converted a fast-paced arcade space deathmatch game into a period ww2 realism shooter - something that phaps wouldn't have been expected to have worked if done by professionals let alone amateur mod-makers.

If TWi are putting the effort into HoS, and there's no reason to expect they aren't, then there is no point taking the rushed efforts of big name games installments from the major developers as an indication as to what they can achieve with the engine.

 

[LJFHutch]

MOH Airborne was the best game on UE3 in my opinion.

 

[Nezzer]

The ragdolls in MoH Airborne were terrible. A grenade would launch a body 50m away and if the body gets stuck in something, it becomes Mr. Fantastic with all that stretching.

 

[Reise]

the most apparent engine with the most "limitations" is Unreal -- at least at face value

I think that you and anyone else who shares the same belief should look again.

I'm not sure where people get these wild ideas that UE3 is so limited in its capabilities. Take some time to check out the range of games it's been used on and compare it with the other prevalent game engines.

It's almost like people know of UE3 only because of Gears of War and assume that's all it can do.

 

[ItsJono]

UE3 was really impressive in mass effect 2

Actually, Mass Effect 2 is one of the very games that i've played on PC where I can still feel the limitations of Unreal Engine 3. Though the art is done so that everything seems to match, and that I do really get into the game and story, it's just that the engine doesn't allow for a lot of character model interactivity. It's hard to put it into words what I feel and see that makes me feel that it has the limitations that bother me. No matter how well done the animations are done, the game feels so rigid and shallow. Maybe wanting to feel like i'm in a living, breathing world is a tall order for Unreal Engine but everything is pretty much corridors or small to large boxy places filled with static setpieces that don't move, regardless of bulletfire or large explosions and use the same textures all over the place (to help with texture streaming/loading I presume) with obvious scripts running for characters in the world (whose models are reused so sickeningly often) and events. Maybe that's mostly AI but since Heroes is going to be huge on the MP, I don't expect to run into that part as much. I will say that with a good conceptual artists and texture artists, it sure helps the immersion part but I still can't help but feel like seeing or feel like i'm learning a confined set or list of functions that are allowable in a game world that uses Unreal.

...I felt the same way about trying the Batman game, a good example of what the engine can do and even physics. I just hope the physics isnt limited by nvidia.

Batman is a clear example of what i'm talking about, there are like a few different things you can do that are cool, but you're basically in a boxy world, with hypermasucline or hyperfeminine models that look rigid, most of the puzzles is just crouching in a huge ventilation shaft and ridiculous stuff like that. The only good thing about Batman was that it used the Voice Actors from the cartoon series I watched growing up and was pretty much fanservice. The game[play] and interactivity aspect feels so limited. I hate to keep repeating myself but it is a recurring theme I keep encountering in UE3 games.

For a single player experience the best game I could think of is Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. You are still in a world that's confined and boxy with reused an rehashed elements from levels prior but the amount of animations for everything, the voices and triggers for them just really make the game feel alive you know? Ideally that's what i'd like but for a multiplayer experience, it probably can't be done but things like the several animations for one action (i.e. reloading has several diff animations that cycle through or are randomized) that suck you into the game play by breaking the repetition of actions you need to do constantly. Things like that is what i'm asking for. Perhaps that's not something that UE3 is limited on per se, but the lack of them combined with the things I mentioned prior always give me a clunky feeling with UE3.

For Multiplayer, something that I've always appreciated was how in Battlefield: 1942, the characters would blink and grimace or make different faces if they got hit with friendly fire and stuff like that. I like how in the mod "Desert Combat" (which eventually became Battlefield 2) there were different soldiers and not just the same single model or two or three bland/generic models.

I really hope that isn't the case with Heroes

P.S. Please have some kinda setting where you can have bullets and bodies and empty magazines, bullet drums, clips and grenade pins on the ground and not disappear immediately (or at all). Stuff like that always makes me happy

 

[Xendance]

Actually, Mass Effect 2 is one of the very games that i've played on PC where I can still feel the limitations of Unreal Engine 3. Though the art is done so that everything seems to match, and that I do really get into the game and story, it's just that the engine doesn't allow for a lot of character model interactivity. It's hard to put it into words what I feel and see that makes me feel that it has the limitations that bother me. No matter how well done the animations are done, the game feels so rigid and shallow.

Mass Effect? Shallow? How can you fit those two in a single sentence

Maybe wanting to feel like i'm in a living, breathing world is a tall order for Unreal Engine but everything is pretty much corridors or small to large boxy places filled with static setpieces that don't move, regardless of bulletfire or large explosions and use the same textures all over the place (to help with texture streaming/loading I presume)

These days UE 3 can have flying boxes on a level, they become dynamic when touched and then turn back into statics when they stop moving.
Also, use of the same texture speeds up the level design process, it's not really there to help texture streaming.

with obvious scripts running for characters in the world (whose models are reused so sickeningly often) and events.

Nothing to do with the engine. It's a matter of workload, money and time available to do the game.

Maybe that's mostly AI but since Heroes is going to be huge on the MP, I don't expect to run into that part as much. I will say that with a good conceptual artists and texture artists, it sure helps the immersion part but I still can't help but feel like seeing or feel like i'm learning a confined set or list of functions that are allowable in a game world that uses Unreal.

Batman is a clear example of what i'm talking about, there are like a few different things you can do that are cool, but you're basically in a boxy world, with hypermasucline or hyperfeminine models that look rigid, most of the puzzles is just crouching in a huge ventilation shaft and ridiculous stuff like that.

Again, that has nothing to do with the engine. Those are just design decisions.

The only good thing about Batman was that it used the Voice Actors from the cartoon series I watched growing up and was pretty much fanservice. The game[play] and interactivity aspect feels so limited. I hate to keep repeating myself but it is a recurring theme I keep encountering in UE3 games.

For a single player experience the best game I could think of is Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. You are still in a world that's confined and boxy with reused an rehashed elements from levels prior but the amount of animations for everything, the voices and triggers for them just really make the game feel alive you know?

Once again, that has nothing to do with the engine. The artists and level designers made Uncharted 2 look awesome, not the engine.

Ideally that's what i'd like but for a multiplayer experience, it probably can't be done but things like the several animations for one action (i.e. reloading has several diff animations that cycle through or are randomized) that suck you into the game play by breaking the repetition of actions you need to do constantly. Things like that is what i'm asking for. Perhaps that's not something that UE3 is limited on per se, but the lack of them combined with the things I mentioned prior always give me a clunky feeling with UE3.

Different random animations for one single function are easily done.

For Multiplayer, something that I've always appreciated was how in Battlefield: 1942, the characters would blink and grimace or make different faces if they got hit with friendly fire and stuff like that. I like how in the mod "Desert Combat" (which eventually became Battlefield 2) there were different soldiers and not just the same single model or two or three bland/generic models.

I have never, ever noticed any blinking or different soldiers in BF games. Didn't play Desert Combat though.

I really hope that isn't the case with Heroes

P.S. Please have some kinda setting where you can have bullets and bodies and empty magazines, bullet drums, clips and grenade pins on the ground and not disappear immediately (or at all). Stuff like that always makes me happy

 

[Oldih]

No matter how well done the animations are done, the game feels so rigid and shallow

If you're referring to the famous Bioware character syndrome(tm) in cutscenes or such, it's mostly due the way they just make them. It's the same in Dragon Age, which is also game made by Bioware. Of course for the hypermasculine\feminine part it's true that the engine seems to sway towards stuff like that, but I would say it's also a matter of design choice. Let's look at Batman comics: they're pumped up with steroids already if you look how some of the characters are proportioned, almost every Batman movie features more or less of well proportioned cast and such. UT3 isn't really trying to be that serious, Gears of War is sort of camp with the whole masculinity thing and in case of Mass Effect... well it might be a good question, but if you want to play around with the character customisation you can make quite realistic person who doesn't look like a fridge with hair or pair of melons around.

but you're basically in a boxy world

Now could you please count me the amount of games which does not have boxy, scripted but rather natural open world feeling just after 5-10mins of messing around rather than observing or experimenting every slightest movement? Only (shooter-like) games I can mention out of nowhere are Operation Flashpoint, ArmA, Far Cry and STALKER. I can't comment about Crysis as I never bothered with it and regarding the more common hype about Source engine, well most of the maps - even if they're SP only - are the size of a shoebox and most of the immersion is just achieved by putting extensive effort in the mapping process itself, something which can be done even with HL1 engine if you really spend enough time with it. "Proper" outdoor enviroment with Source on the other hand looks extremely ugly no matter what you do, unless you want to have extremely thick fog around.

 

[ItsJono]

All games suffer from the boxy world effect, it's just how game engines work, however, games that utilize UE3 do a poorer job of hiding it for whatever reason. You may contend that fact for as long as possible, but the fact of the matter is that to me that games that utilize UE3 do a poorer job of hiding it.

STALKER has a great engine (XRAY) but they've since switched to CryEngine 3 to get their game to the larger, console market.

Mass Effects gameplay is shallow, not the story. It's essentially Gears of War with a different art style and significantly better story. So if Batman Arkham Asylum feels shallow, Mass Effect feels shallow, and recently, APB feels shallow gameplay and mechanics wise, can you really keep saying that it's not the engine but the developers? I feel like a majority of my issues is due the lack of a commonground physics platform for UE3. With non-GPU accelerated Physics via nVidia PhysX technology, the physics displayed in UE3 games is very lackluster. I'm not sure if the game developers purposely decided not to add physics per in game item and units so that there are less calculations done and less power necessary to make the game playable at higher FPS or what.

I'm not saying at all that source would be a better platform for this game, nor am I trying to say that UE3 was a bad engine choice for this, it's just I as a singular person and spectator and purveyor of games just notice a common theme with UE3 games that all other UE3 games share.

A great underrated game that really does the immersion thing well (but is pretty generic otherwise) is Metro 2033.

-

Anyway, for more specific questions particularly directed to Xendance, if you could please answer them:

Is there going to be a dynamic weather system? Usually dynamic weather is reserved for SP games but say for a game like Bad Company 2 where there is a limited selection of maps (but a plethora of game modes), something like dynamic weather would make the levels more interesting and fresh, giving some unique playthroughs I would be lead to believe.

How will foliage be handled? I understand that you guys worked hard to get UE3 with little or no strings attached via contest (and won rightly so) but things like trees and grass. Will their density be handled with the tools on hand or will third party technologies such as SpeedTree be licensed? Will they (trees and grass) "move" as if to give the impression there is air and wind in the game or will these things be static to give a better performance boost? I ask this because I think if something like that would be done, it would compliment something like the bullet drop and ballistics you guys are working on. Again, just a question. In no means am I critisizing or questioning your guys' design choices.

I understand that you guys have your own ideas and I fully trust your design choices and implementations but something I did love with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was that during the chaos of fighting, you would hear characters scream ambient things while playing like "I f***'ing got that bugger" or something to that effect which made you feel like you were in a war. Will something similar be done for RO? Or does something like that not fit in with the direction or type of combat that will be in RO: HoS?

 

[SheepDip]

All of the things you think are wrong with the games mentioned there are because of choices made by the developers during design and development. Not the fault of the engine.

I'd argue that the reason you see so many supposedly "low quality", "shallow" games (Batman Arkham Asylum!? Wtf?) using the Unreal 3 engine is because it is so easy to use and popular in comparison with its competitors.

The Unreal engine 3 can do destructable static meshes, soft-body physics, stupidly high quality lighting and so on - just do some research, to list all the features I'll be here all day.

 

[ItsJono]

I do wanna say I absolutely love the use of collision detection for the guns when pressed against a wall! That's something i'd like to see more of in games!

 

[Ermac]

The source engine is garbage and this is coming from somebody who is a big HL fan. It's in its essence, the source engine traces its roots back to Quake engine. If UE3 was limited then why are so many developers using it? Maybe a bit off topic, but why hasn't their been any blue ray PC games yet?

 

[Xendance]

Anyway, for more specific questions particularly directed to Xendance, if you could please answer them:

Is there going to be a dynamic weather system? Usually dynamic weather is reserved for SP games but say for a game like Bad Company 2 where there is a limited selection of maps (but a plethora of game modes), something like dynamic weather would make the levels more interesting and fresh, giving some unique playthroughs I would be lead to believe.

I don't know, I'm not a TWI developer
But, things like storms and rain was already possible with UE 2.5, and realtime lighting with days and nights is also possible. Though then you'd lose all the awesomeness of lightmass.

So yes, it's possible.

How will foliage be handled? I understand that you guys worked hard to get UE3 with little or no strings attached via contest (and won rightly so) but things like trees and grass. Will their density be handled with the tools on hand or will third party technologies such as SpeedTree be licensed? Will they (trees and grass) "move" as if to give the impression there is air and wind in the game or will these things be static to give a better performance boost? I ask this because I think if something like that would be done, it would compliment something like the bullet drop and ballistics you guys are working on. Again, just a question. In no means am I critisizing or questioning your guys' design choices.

Wind has been in UE 3 for god knows how long. So yes, swaying plants in the wind definitely is possible.

I understand that you guys have your own ideas and I fully trust your design choices and implementations but something I did love with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was that during the chaos of fighting, you would hear characters scream ambient things while playing like "I f***'ing got that bugger" or something to that effect which made you feel like you were in a war. Will something similar be done for RO? Or does something like that not fit in with the direction or type of combat that will be in RO: HoS?

I don't know, I'm not working for TWI (and even if I was, I wouldn't be allowed to tell you ). Random shouts would be awesome, I agree.
But using lack of random shouts (for example) as an argument for disliking UE 3 is rather absurd.

 

[Slyk]

The UE3 terrain engine/tools/freaking grid is crap. Nearly total garbage in my opinion. Extremely limited in options and nothing compared to age old Quake version which the original CoD and CoDUO was built on. As labor intensive as it was to build big maps with that engine, you could do a ton or artistic styling with it. UE3 might do a ton of other things well but their terrain engine is utter crap. It has been vastly improved since UT2004 and what we had for RO. I hope they continue to improve it because it is still buggy and incomplete in the monthly builds to date. Otherwise, I have been pissed off with it daily since I first touched it to mod for RO and it still irritates the f**k out of me daily.

 

[Lucan946]

Where does everyone get the idea the UE3 sucks and is incapable of anything?


And Source being less limited than UE3? Seriously?

Yer, I don't really know why people have such disdain for UE3 either. Source engine certainly pales in comparison to it.

The ragdolls in MoH Airborne were terrible. A grenade would launch a body 50m away and if the body gets stuck in something, it becomes Mr. Fantastic with all that stretching.

Now all we need is a guy made out of rocks.

 

[skittlesareyum47]

Source... NO.

 

[Pvt.Skoko]

If I get sourced while playing RO2 I am going to rage quit and sell my copy of the game to some noob counterstrike player.


Sourced= running behind a wall and still getting hit because of gay hitboxes in cstrike

 

[Reise]

All of the things you think are wrong with the games mentioned there are because of choices made by the developers during design and development. Not the fault of the engine.

You really can't overstate this.

People mistake art direction with engine limitations way too often.

 

[Flogger23m]

You really can't overstate this.

People mistake art direction with engine limitations way too often.

This is very true... ME1/2 has small, static environments that are not interactive because that is how the game was designed. ME 1/2 was not intended to have large open maps. While the story and character development is huge and in depth, the maps and shooting portion of the game was meant to be linear.

Shall I point out the UT3 maps which have Tornadoes that rip the map apart in real time? How is that not dynamic?

Too bad I can not get the installer to run, even though I have a GTX 260 with Physx.