Unreal Engine 3 and Alpha Protocol

[funcroc]

http://www.developmag.com/print-edition

 

Develop #91 Feb. 2009

p59. Epic Diaries

How Unreal Engine 3 helps power Obsidian

Edited February 5, 2009 by funcroc

[Humodour]

See, now this is the type of stuff I want to hear.

 

Sounds good.

[Morgoth]

The UE3 license comes with Speedtree and Havoc included, I think. Does Obsidian use any other middleware, and would it be possible to ship the PC game with the Unreal Editor?

[mkreku]

One thing I don't really like about Unreal Engine 3 is the seemingly small maps all the games made with it ships with. I don't know if it's because it's unusually memory hungry.. or if it is because both consoles are limited to 512 MB and 256+256 MB respectively.. but it's all the same: small maps. Let's hope Alpha Protocol features bigger maps.

[Pop]

The concept art and environmental screenies we've seen certainly put AP above, say, DX:IW.

 

And UE3 can handle large spaces. Just look at the sidequest planets in ME. Sure, they were fairly sparse, but they required a good amount of time to explore, even more time if you got out of the MAKO.

 

It looks like we've got some explorable Z-axis depth in AP, which seems to be uncommon in UE3 games. That should open up the environments to a good degree.

[Cl_Flushentityhero]

I realize that whenever another game is mentioned on these forums, there's somebody who has a deep personal problem with it, but Gears 2 includes some pretty large spaces. That said, I don't expect AP to have the same technical facility with the engine because they lack an army of gnomes dedicated to visual minutia.

 

Overall, I think AP is covering a lot of territory already, and putting modern ARPGs into large open outdoor areas might be a job for a different franchise.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

I bet 50 bucks the texture popping will be present. As much as in Mass Effect.

 

I hope not though, recent UE3 titles don't have that much texture popping (see Dead Space, Mirror's Edge and even Gears 2), but that doesn't mean this game won't.

[Meshugger]

I bet 50 bucks the texture popping will be present. As much as in Mass Effect.

 

I hope not though, recent UE3 titles don't have that much texture popping (see Dead Space, Mirror's Edge and even Gears 2), but that doesn't mean this game won't.

 

No such thing on the PC version.

[Moatilliatta]

There was texture popping on the PC in Mass Effect, just much less.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Console ME almost certainly had a bug with texture loading, you could literally sit for seconds and wait for some objects to load, even the DVD can't be that slow. It seems like a similar problem to Oblivion, where if your HD cache gets messed up, you can wait for almost a minute every time you activate something. Also the Uncharted Worlds being big means nothing, since they were just repeating the same rock texture everywhere. Hopefully most of the early problems in UE3 have been fixed, and AP can do reasonably large areas with enough content. Every time they hype AP though I can't help feeling the final result can't live up to what they're promising. And when are they going to explain once and for all how the conversations will work?

[Bos_hybrid]

In some ways I now wish they had of chosen a different engine. A few reasons why:

 

- Every game seems to use it nowdays and a lot of games are starting to bleed together.

 

- I don't believe its a great engine for RPGs.

 

- The invevitable comparisons it will recieve to ME and Gears. If its not graphically equal to Gears people will complain. The ME comparisons will cause head shaking and do nothing to shake the Bio little brother view a lot of people have of Obsidian, even though its a new, fresh and interesting IP.

 

But there are several good reasons why it was a good choice:

 

+ One of the best looking and stable engines around.

 

+ Works well on older PCs.

 

+ Very well known to gamers and used a a selling point.

 

+ Quite moddable.

 

With everything said, I think Obsidian made a good choice, it just makes me wish there were more good quality engines around.

[Hell Kitty]

- The invevitable comparisons it will recieve to ME and Gears. If its not graphically equal to Gears people will complain. The ME comparisons will cause head shaking and do nothing to shake the Bio little brother view a lot of people have of Obsidian, even though its a new, fresh and interesting IP.

 

Comparisons with ME or GoW aren't just down to using the same engine.

[Llyranor]

If anything, being able to install the 360 version of AP since the NXE should make loading and texture pop-ups less significant to a degree.

[Musopticon?]

- The invevitable comparisons it will recieve to ME and Gears. If its not graphically equal to Gears people will complain. The ME comparisons will cause head shaking and do nothing to shake the Bio little brother view a lot of people have of Obsidian, even though its a new, fresh and interesting IP.

 

Comparisons with ME or GoW aren't just down to using the same engine.

Not to mention, GoW has a graphic team about the size of the whole AP dev squadron, naturally anything will pale in terms of amount of effects and sheer quality.

 

Then again at least in AP the characters won't look like giant dwarves and the palette has other colors than brown green and black red. I'm sure it'll rise to the occasion. For instance, Jade Empire did it well enough with older tech.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

If anything, being able to install the 360 version of AP since the NXE should make loading and texture pop-ups less significant to a degree.

I'd prefer if I didn't have to do that. My Hard Drive is only 12 gigs, and I already have Bioshock installed because the game is completely broken if I play it from the disc.

[Cl_Flushentityhero]

If anything, being able to install the 360 version of AP since the NXE should make loading and texture pop-ups less significant to a degree.

I'd prefer if I didn't have to do that. My Hard Drive is only 12 gigs, and I already have Bioshock installed because the game is completely broken if I play it from the disc.

 

IME (and I've played Bioshock), I've yet to play a game that you *have* to install on the 360.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Its a used copy, and I had some very annoying glitches with it, like sudden and temporary "freezes" every few seconds. So this isn't something about the actual Bioshock, just my copy.

[remi92]

Its a used copy, and I had some very annoying glitches with it, like sudden and temporary "freezes" every few seconds. So this isn't something about the actual Bioshock, just my copy.

yeh i know what you mean i have the same thing with GTAIV