For Unreal Engine licensing details click here

September 17 2002
More Unreal Engine Documentation Made Public

We are in the process of publicly releasing a significant portion of our Unreal Engine documentation and tutorials in anticipation of the upcoming release of Unreal Tournament 2003. UT2003 will arrive in stores with an awesome slate of tools either in the box or available soon for download on the Unreal Developer Network site. These tools include: the Unreal Editor, the UT2003 skin painter, the UnrealScript IDE (integrated development environment, the UnrealScript Debugger, Maya PLE plug-in, plug-ins for the full versions of Maya and 3DStudio Max, Karma Authoring Tool (KAT) and more to come in the future!

Of special note the retail release of Unreal Tournament 2003 will include Alias|Wavefront's Maya Personal Learning Edition along with a special plug-in developed by Secret Level Inc. which provides seamless integration between Maya and the Unreal Editor. Read the full press release here 

For the latest Unreal Engine documentation please visit the Unreal Developer Network. Be sure to check out the UT2003 demo but note that texture detail has been significantly reduced in the demo to make it a smaller download for a real look at the kind of textures the engine can easily handle we recommending buying the full version of the game from your local software retailer when it becomes available.

Buying a copy of Unreal Tournament 2003 and using the tools in conjunction with the documentation and tutorials on UDN is a great way to starting learning about the capabilities of the Unreal Engine.

April 2002 - Post GDC Update
Spoken Dialog Made Easy With New Unreal Engine Tools from LIPSinc

At GDC this year, the folks from LipsInc. demonstrated their facial animation tool fully integrated into the Unreal Editor. They are now licensing this technology to developers who use the Unreal Engine. The software handles virtually any language - English, Japanese, German, French, Korean, etc. The file size (apart from the .wav file) is just a couple of kilobytes.

Using the toolset couldn't be easier. LIPSinc installs a new tab within the Unreal Editor's animation browser. Under that tab you can import .WAV files of voice data and the LIPSinc system analyzes the speech and produces very realistic facial animation data that includes not only the mouth, jaw and lip movements but also eye blinks, eyebrow raises, and head nods. You can then preview it, right there in the animation browser, combined with whatever other character animation you want to play. For example you can have a character talking while doing a ladder-climbing animation and it looks very realistic.

LIPSinc's tool can be a huge time saver for Unreal Engine licensees who have spoken dialogue in their games - especially if they're localizing for multiple countries. Legend Entertainment has been using LIPSinc's facial animation tools for quite a while in the development of Unreal2.

February 2002

Unreal Engine build 829 was recently released to licensees. This was a major update that included a lot of performance and feature improvements. Here are just some of the cool enhancements that came in this version:

Unreal Engine Debugger

The Unreal Engine now comes with a completely integrated visual debugger for the UnrealScript game scripting language. This extremely comprehensive tool will help improve productivity for all Unreal Engine licensees who develop UnrealScript code and down the road for Mod-makers as well. Click on the picture below to see a full-size screen shot of the new debugger in action.

Some of the key features of the UnrealScript Debugger include:

• Assign multiple breakpoints and watches
• Break on variable change and null pointer access
• Live editing of object properties
• Easy access to all objects
• Support for step into, step over and step out of function calls
• Expandable variable property lists
• Complete syntax-highlighted source and log  viewers
• Full session memory

The debugger adds very little overhead when code is compiled in debug mode, and no overhead in release mode. Special thanks to the fine folks at Demiurge Studios for their past and continuing work on the debugger project.

Improved Animation Art Path

The latest version of the Unreal Engine features a more efficient animation art path. Now, game developers can import skeletal character data exported from Max or Maya directly into the editor and then meshes and their animations can be previewed, scaled, adjusted, assigned the proper materials, game-code notification callbacks, and much more. All this resource preparation is now done interactively from within the editor and can be saved directly into the Unreal Engine's native format, ready to use in the game. Click on the picture below for full-screen screen shots of our new animation tool.

Karma Physics Engine

For several months we have been working closely with MathEngine plc, based in Oxford, UK. Starting with version 829 MathEngine's Karma physics is now integrated into the Unreal Engine. A separate license, purchased directly from MathEngine, is required to use the technology in a game but the integration work is already done for developers using our engine.

Karma is a rigid-body physics engine that has been integrated into the Unreal Engine and available to Unreal Engine licensees starting from version 829. It allows you to simulate solid objects such as crates, tires or bones, as well as different joints, motors or springs between objects. Using these simple 'building blocks', complicated systems can be easily built that will behave according to the laws of physics. This can be anything from the classic stack of crates, to swinging lights or doors that can be shot off their hinges, up to 18-wheeler trucks, or characters falling down stairs like a rag-doll when they die. 

Click here to read the Unreal Engine Karma press announcement. 

Materials

An exciting new advanced texturing capability we call Materials lets developers create multi-layered surface materials. Some of theits key features include:

• Combine multiple textures based on alpha channel of an RGBA or DXT (DirectX compressed texture) image.

• Lit or unlit specular channel with discreet alpha-based specular maps.

• Opacity channel based on alpha channel of RGBA or DXT textures.

• Panning, scaling, rotation (fixed or constant) and oscillating modifiers, all of which are stackable for complicated effects.

• Artist-friendly hierarchy view of shaders.

• Self-illumination maps. 

• Works on any surface in the engine (except terrain which is planned for a future release)

• Any and all of these effects can be stacked and combined with one another to create effects limited only by the imagination. 

Using this system licensee can now combine multiple textures, alpha blend them together, set a panning opacity map, and then apply a specular map. The resulting material can then be applied to nearly any surface in the Unreal Engine at will, with no changes needed.

The image above shows the user interface for setting up materials. Click on the image above to see a larger version. The image below show examples of some of the simpler things you can do with materials - we'll show you some of their more impressive uses in a future update. 

Matinee Improvements

Matinee, the Unreal Engine camera system that can be used for things like level fly bys, in-game scripted sequences or cinematic-style cut scenes, has gone through many improvements since we first announced it last fall.  In version 829 level designers have exact control over where the camera will be and how it will move.  They can also easily set up visual effects such as fades, zooms and orientation changes.

Scenes are laid out logically as a series of actions.  These actions move the camera from location to location.

Inside of each action is a series of sub actions. This where you can specify the effects that you want to take place.  Fades, zooms and many other effects are possible.  Simply add them to the list, set up the timing and display properties and you’re done.

Editing of matinee scenes is done entirely in the Unreal Editor. You can open up your camera path in a preview window and see exactly how the camera will move when you’re in the game.

You can drag the time scrubber and the camera will move through the scene accordingly. If you want to see the scene as a whole, just click the “play” button to watch the scene play out in real time. Most effects that take place in the game are simulated in this window so you will likely see your fades and other effects exactly as you would in the game.

Other Improvements

Network, AI and animation also received updates including: Improved multiplayer networking code, with significantly lower bandwidth use and better client-side simulation of other players. AI navigation code has been improved to make it easier to set up for level designers and to provide better handling of different situations. Support wasadded for smoothly animating characters based on their current physics status using multiple animation channels to seamlessly handle movement transitions and blending appropriately between direction-specific animations.

For Xbox we have implemented optional features like enabling HRTF (head related transfer functions for more realistic sound spatialization), Quincux FSAA (full scene anti-aliasing) without a noticeable loss of performance. We have also added support for HDTV. Startup and loading times on Xbox have been optimized and are quite fast. The low level network code is now in on Xbox allowing an Xbox to join a game on a Windows or Linux-based server for debugging purposes. 

With version 829 we have returned to supporting and maintaining the Linux version of our dedicated server. The code currently requires gcc 2.95.3 and we are working with Intel on getting the engine to compile with their C++ compiler which should drastically reduce compile time on Linux. 

Unreal Engine Development and Support Partners

Developers who license the Unreal Engine may find themselves interacting not just with Epic Games Inc. but also with some of the finest middleware and support organizations in the industry. For example: Secret Level provides console development and support, Demiurge Studios developed and maintains the UnrealScript Debugger, MathEngine plc provides and supports the Karma physics system, and Perilith maintains and supervisors the Unreal Developer Network. We consider these companies, and the people they employ in these efforts, to be members of the Unreal Engine family. We're proud to work with them and we would like to thank them for their continued support.  Keep watching for more additions to the Unreal Engine family. 

  Past Unreal Engine Updates

August 2001

An Inside Peek at Digital Extremes' Work on Unreal Championship

Digital Extremes is a leading Canadian game developer based in London, Ontario. We've partnered with on multiple occasions. Together Digital Extremes and Epic co-developed two consecutive Game of the Year winners that have combined to sell approximately 3 million units. These were very much collaborative efforts by the two companies. Now, Digital Extremes has stepped up and is taking the leading role on Unreal Championship while Epic works on its next, unannounced project, and provides the core engine technology for both projects.

What might not be obvious is that DE is also adding some of their own technology touches to the engine. Lead by DE lead programmer Steve Sinclair, they've added some exciting features to their game, the most noticeable being the dynamic particle system. This is one of the two DE technologies that absolutely wowed the press at E3. When you fire a missile into a cloud of smoke (as in the example shown here - click on image for a larger version), or a character runs though it, the smoke realistically dissipates. They also used this to simulate dusty areas illuminated by light beaming through windows and again the dust moves around the air realistically as it gets disturbed by moving objects. Explosions, ground fog, mist, fire effects and awesome smoke trails off projectiles were all created with DE's fantastic particle system.

We were so impressed with DE's particle system we implemented similar features in our own particle system which shipped to licensees, along with official Xbox support, in the latest Unreal Engine build (739). DE is a world-class developer and we're proud to partner with them. With Unreal Championship they're providing the perfect demonstration of how savvy developers can add their own leading-edge technologies to the Unreal Engine.

Spielberg Selects Camera Angles for Movie Using Unreal Technology

ILM also added the ability to pick camera lenses to the “Unreal Tournament” engine “We had all the lenses that we were used to. And we were able to record the moves so Stephen actually sat there on the set before we were shooting and fiddled around with his Powerbook on his lap.”... "He had already done his walkthrough and now he was walking onto his real bluescreen set,” said Muren adding that Spielberg “very quickly picked up on how to move the camera around based on all the ‘Unreal Tournament’ keyboard strokes… it’s obvious he played the game a lot. He just got right into it.”

Click here to read the  online version of the article.

July 2001

Build 739 with full Xbox support has been in licensees' hands for about two weeks now and we've launched the new Unreal Developer Network. 

Major Highlights of Build 739

Stunning new visual effects: We’ve got some new visual effects including specular highlighting that gives metallic objects their sheen and a completely new state-of-the-art particle system with dynamic influences and collision that lends itself to some really cool effects. For example you could shoot a projectile through smoke and have the smoke smoothly and realistically dissipate. You can use it to create all kinds of cool weather effects, explosions, fire, smoke, blood, ground fog and volumetric lighting. Click on the image below to see a larger version.

Volumes: We’ve now got the concept of volumes which give us the ability to have true moving water and arbitrarily shaped triggers. Volumes also provide the capability for localized physics such as gravity, slow-motion effects, and particle system forces such as wind.

Improved Terrain Tools: The terrain tools have evolved to be even more user friendly. The easy-to-use terrain tools have been expanded and now contain enhanced functionality such as real-time in-editor lighting updating during terrain painting, the ability to remove sections of the terrain to produce entrances to underground caverns & mines and to optimize performance for unseen parts of the terrain. The new tools compliment the existing tools that already provided for height-map painting, texture painting, noise, flattening and smoothing. Level designers can now 'paint' with a flattening brush. The effect is shown in the Unreal Editor before-and-after screen shots show below. The shot on the left show the terrain before the flattening paintbrush was used to brush away the rolling hill and create a flat path. The yellow circle in the screen shot on the right shows flattening brush is being applied. Click on the screen shot below to see a larger version..    

Matinee, a New Cinematic Creation Tool: Matinee is still in its early stages but we believe it will be the ultimate tool for making in-game cinematics and scripted sequences. Presently you can: have a camera that sits still but pivots to track a moving object, have a camera that moves along a track and tracks another moving object at the same time, you can cut and or fade between multiple cameras and you can trigger any event to happen along a camera path such as explosions, other actors moving, sounds playing or delays. Matinee is completely integrated into UnrealEd such that you can scrub back and forth along its timeline to preview the camera movement. 

Shown here is a collection of screen shots. The top portion shows the Unreal Editor with the Matinee timeline and a bezier path shown on a rendered window showing the flight path of futuristic ship through a desert  mesa level. 

The lower 4 shots are screen shots from the game engine playing back the cinematic. While the ship was flying along it's path we cut from camera to camera capturing multiple angle. The shots show (1) the camera fixed above the ship watching it hover down through some wispy clouds, (2) the camera flying in front of the ship watch back toward the ship, (3) the camera flying behind the ship and (4) the camera fixed on the canyon floor watching the ship fly by. In the fourth shot the camera is set to watch the ship which automatically provides a dramatic camera pan effect as the ship flies over the camera.

New Mesh Browsers: The new Static mesh browser allows you take advantage of the fact that pieces of level geometry are treated like textures or sounds – they’re stored in their own separate packages and can be instanced multiple in a level but only actually loaded in memory once. This means you could have a complex object like a statue that has very detailed geometry and a high-resolution texture and put it in your level multiple times without taking only a single memory hit for the object itself and then very small pointers to that object each time you place a new instance of it. The Static Mesh Browser and it’s sister, the Prefab Browser (which handles groups of objects) allow you to organize your meshes into groups and easily cut and paste them in and out of levels. This also provides a team productivity and consistency improvement because game designers can choose objects to be shared and level designers can easily place them in their levels.

Xbox Support - Unreal Championship leads the way at E3

Build 739 provided licensees with rock solid Xbox support. Top Canadian game developer Digital Extremes demonstrated the Unreal Engine based game Unreal Championship on the Microsoft Xbox platform on the show floor at this year's E3. 

Here’s a small glimpse at what the press had to say about Unreal Championship. Click on any picture below to see a larger version. 

When I launched a rocket through a plume of smoke, it dissipated - an event that caused other show goers in the room to exclaim an awestruck "Oh my." Each weapon or character movement interacts with smoke and lighting sources with realistic clarity - so much so that one rocket can even adjust another rocket's smoke trail. -- Gamespot UK

Hailed by observers at E3 as one of the most impressive first wave of titles for Xbox… by combining the capabilities of Xbox with the Unreal engine, environments will feature such jaw-dropping effects as volumetric light, wind affected smoke, particle effects allowing sparks to bounce off individual branches on a tree, and fog that realistically reacts and parts when projectiles pass through it, as witnessed by stunned audiences during Digital Extremes' technology demo... Coupling the unmistakable Unreal dynamic and playability with the astonishing graphic and technical capabilities of Xbox, Unreal Championship is set to be the definitive action game for Microsoft’s new super-console. -- Xbox365.com

[Unreal Championship] was hailed by many E3 goers as one of the most impressive first wave of titles for Xbox… Unreal Championship has been built from the ground up by Digital Extremes, part of the team responsible for Unreal and Unreal Tournament. --Fastest Game News Online

Shadows and volumetric lighting are the rule in UC. We watched in amazement as a fan was turning above us, and the shadow of the fan could be seen on and off the weapon. A steam stack billowing upwards actually moved and dissipated as we fired shots into it. Sun rays actually showed off particles in the air, and their movement when we walked through it… After picking our jaws off the floor, the demo guys then began showing us the weapons… Other exciting new features include brand new highly individualized characters with high polygon counts and high-resolution textures. -- Next Level Gaming

UC takes advantage of the new Unreal Engine, which has awesome terrain support, as well as drastic improvements to indoor environments, player models, weapon models, and the like. This makes Unreal Championship a much different game than Unreal Tournament… Overall, this new game looks great. It is a testament to the power of the new Unreal Engine. -- Planet Unreal

The new Unreal technology is quite a site to behold… a game that impresses as much as the original game did when it was released so long ago… Expect the game to be one of the flagship online titles when Microsoft officially rolls out their online plans. -- IGN

For more information about the game please visit the Official Unreal Championship website

Announcing the Unreal Developer Network!

Just last month we introduced our licensee to the Unreal Developer Network. UDN is a repository of knowledge, documentation and tutorials for the post-600 builds of the Unreal Engine (also known as the "Unreal Warfare" codebase). 

UDN provides sections for public news, licensee news, content creation and programming information. UDN also provide licensees with the ability to search the complete archives of our content and programming mailing lists which have thousands of entries on thousands of topics dating back as far as September 1997! The full slate of UDN content is only available to registered Unreal Engine licensees but because some stories on UDN will be relevant to mod makers and users of previous versions of the Unreal Engine we've made some non-confidential sections available to the general public. Click here to visit UDN.

March 2001

Making Faces

The Unreal Engine includes exporters for Discreet's 3D Studio Max and Alias|Wavefront's Maya. These allow you to export fully textured objects and fully textured and animated characters. We've created a character model, and more importantly, a skeleton, that we're going to provide licensees to help get them get quickly up to speed with facial animation techniques in Maya. The Maya model contains 85 bones and is completely set up for detailed facial animation. The following image, a composite of several Unreal Engine screen shots, shows some sample poses. Click on the graphic below to see a larger version:

The Maya skeleton in this model has been setup so that animators can move sliders which control bones that in-turn influence vertices in the character's face. For example if you want to open or close the left eye you simply move the slider beside "Eye Open Left" and if you want to raise or lower the left eye-brow simply move the slider beside "Brow Vert Left"  - you can adjust these numerically. Click on the image below to see the full Maya screen shot showing this in action.

Having this kind of control makes it really easy to put characters faces in the poses you want to be in and then animate them. Once you've made the animations you can export them using our ActorX exporter shown here on the left. If you click on the image you can see the full Maya screen shot showing ActorX.

Having a sample pre-built character means that Unreal Engine licensees who use Maya for animation can be experimenting with facial animation the first day they they start using the engine. Licensees can use our character as a stand-in and attach the skeleton to their own character meshes when they're ready. 

If you're going to be at the upcoming Game Developers Conference and you want to see a demonstration of how easy it is to do Maya-based skeletal animation then you'll want to stop by our Exposuite at GDC or come to one of the presentations we'll be doing at the Alias|Wavefront booth at 12:30pm on Thursday March 22nd or 12:30pm on Friday March 23rd. See below for more information about visiting our Exposuite at GDC. 

Award and Accolades

Two Unreal Engine based games deserve special mention this month. First of all we want to congratulate the fine folks at Ion Storm for Deus Ex winning PC Gamer's year 2000 Game of the Year award! This is not the first Game of the Year award for Deus Ex but certainly a very significant one that everyone at Epic is extremely proud of and it marks the third consecutive time an Unreal Engine based game has won one of the major Game of the Year awards! Prior winners were Unreal (1998) and Unreal Tournament (1999) so we're on a hot streak!

Also deserving of special mention is the recently released Clive Barker's Undying from Electronic Arts which is currently sitting in the top 10 sales charts. Reviews for this game have been nothing short of spectacular. IGN.com, who gave it their Editor's Choice award, summed up their 9/10 review by saying "I can't think of a game that's made me feel so much suspense and freaked me out as much. If you're looking for a deep, chilling shooter with a lot of weapon and spell variety, you should be very happy with, as well as horrified by, Clive Barker's Undying."  On the engine side we're especially proud that Gamespot, in their 9.1/10 review of Undying, said "the scenery in Undying looks so good that you'll enjoy simply being in it and taking it in." Our own review of the game: absolutely fantastic!  Way to go Electronics Arts L.A. - you've made us proud!

Come visit us at the Game Developers Conference
March 22-24, 2001, San Jose Convention Center

At this year's Game Developers Conference Epic will be showing the latest features of the Unreal Engine running on all three major platforms including support for over 100 times more polygon detail in level geometry, improved terrain and terrain editing tools, an all-new particle system, improved Maya integration, an integrated cinematic creation system, new shader effects, improvements to skeletal animation and much, much more.  

We're located in booth ES134 in the Exposuite section at the far end of the show floor adjacent to Apple, Microsoft and Sega's Exposuites. Please note the Exposuites are open earlier than the regular show floor so our hours will be 9am to 7pm on Thursday and Friday and 9am to 4pm on Saturday. Feel free to come early, the coffee will be hot and the donuts will be plentiful. 

Anyone interested in attending one of our Unreal Engine presentations or scheduling a business meeting should email Anne Dube to confirm a time. We plan to run presentations every hour and people are welcome to drop by and sign up for one during the show but seating will be very limited so it is best to email ahead of time to ensure your place. Presentations will run roughly 1/2 hour with 15 minutes following for questions and answers.

Unreal Engine licensees attending GDC are encouraged to drop by. Many members of our programming and content team will beon hand to answer your questions and walk you through the latest features. In addition we'll have a private area with a PC where you we can review your project if you desire but please book ahead by emailing Anne Dube if you plan to do that so we can be sure the people you need to speak with are available.

To view a map of the show floor click here. We're located in ES134 on the far left of this map.Viewing the map requires Adobe Acrobat Reader which you can download by clicking here. 

That's it for this update, look for another post after the new version has been released to licensees. As usual if you have any questions about Unreal Engine licensing please do not hesitate to email me.

January 2001

Build 633 of the Unreal Engine is now in the hands of our licensees and it contained several important new engine features as well as list of improvements too numerous to count. I've compiled a list of my Top-10 new Unreal Engine features to get you started so here goes...

Top 10 Unreal Engine Enhancements

Late last year we introduced new terrain and skeletal technology that was the basis of the Daily Radar story and accompanying MPEG video you can find here. That technology, combined with a significant number of additional major enhancements, is now in the hands of our Unreal Engine licensees. I've summarized what I feel are the top-10 features we've added to the technology since that Daily Radar story:

1. Hardware brushes - this is the technology that lets us create scenes of 150-200 times more polygons than what users saw in Unreal Tournament at excellent levels of performance using hardware T&L. To see our earliest use of hardware brushes, check out the following URL's. The first shot is a composite of the wireframe and normal engine lighted view to illustrate some of the detail. We'll get a lot better at this and have more impressive things to show soon but in the mean time check out these two shots:

2. Improved Large Scale Terrain Support - we've made lots ofimprovements to terrain including new tools in the editor that let you select areas of the terrain and then raise and lower them with your mouse.

3. We can now import textured geometry from 3D Studio Maxsaved in the ASE format.

4. Distance fog support provides a greater sense of depth indoors and outdoors, and can be used to improveperformance in huge outdoor areas.

 5. The engine now supports texture sizes of 2048x2048. I believe this coincides to the largest texture size an Nvidia card can currently handle. 

6. Texture performance on Windows/Xbox has improved significantly and is now more efficient because we now let DX8 manage texture memory.

7. Graphical richness is improved now that developers and end users can set brightness, contrast and gamma within the runtime. We're still experimenting to find the perfect default settings but we're really happy with the improved contrast this provides.

8. We've improved our tools for AI pathing and made many additional AI improvements including: ladder support, true crouching, improved AI sight & hearing, increased AI performance, improved navigation - our award-winning creature AI simply work better and is now even easier to extend. This should result in a big productivity boost forlicensees.

9. Multiple editor enhancements including: new texture alignment tools, 2D shaper enhancements, and a polygon mode that allows brushes to be created by defining a shape and then performing an extrusion on it. Late in the fall we released Unreal Ed 2.0 with one of the patches to Unreal Tournament. Unreal Ed 2.0 was a completely re-written editor designed to be more stable, more robust and most importantly more modular so both ourselves and licensees could easily extend its functionality. We've proved this to be true by making huge amounts of improvements to this tool including some really fantastic things like the ability to use your mouse to raise and lower the height of selected terrain areas. Earlier this week the fine folks at 3D Realms announced that they were going to base the editor for their Unreal Engine-based Duke Nukem Forever on UnrealEd2 which was a great vote of confidence in the editor, especially considering that they probably had already made a lot of enhancements to the older version. We salute 3D Realms for believing in providing their customers and Mod developers with the best tools. 

10. The game/actor class hierarchy has been restructured which makes it much easier to extend. 

These are the just the top 10. Click here to view a list of changes specific to this build.

Unreal Engine Wins Award

A beautiful trophy arrived at our office signifying that the Unreal Engine has won Game Developer Magazine's Frontline Award for Game Engine of the Year! Here's an excerpt from the letter that accompanied the trophy:

"Our annual Front Line Awards honor the tool companies who create innovative technology and advance the process of professional game development. The Unreal Engine has contributed not only to the development and creation of games, but to the software development community as a whole. The winners were picked by a team of judges made up of developers, artists, programmers and audio specialists who scrutinized hundreds of hardware and software products recommended by game developers themselves. The winning tools where chosen because they make game development easier and more profitable. The award is very much a nomination by your peers"

So there you have it. "Easier and more profitable". Speaking of profits our publisher sent along news that according to NPD numbers domestically (USA only) Unreal Tournament sold through over 52,000 copies in the month of November and 82,000 copies in the month of December! Not bad for game that released in November 1999! Unreal itself which was released in May of 1998 sold over 30,000 copies for November in the USA alone. So here are two games one year old and two and half years old showing how well our engine technology stands the test of time. It's no wonder we've recently signed 5 significant new Unreal Engine licenses. 

Come Visit Us

Please contact me if you're interested in licensing the engine and would like to visit our offices in Raleigh, North Carolina where we can not only show you the latest engine technology but the entire process that goes behind making million-plus selling games with our technology.

Tutorials

Alan Willard and Cliff Bleszinski were kind enough to write up two small tutorials to show off some of the new features I've described here. Alan's tutorial covers the basic steps to creating a map in UnrealEd that utilizes the terrain system and Cliff shows us how to edit terrain vertices and manipulate terrain using soft selection. These are great introductions to how easy and productive developers can be using our engine. Click here to view the tutorials.

Upcoming Seminar

On Wednesday February 21st and Thursday February 22nd we're going to run a 2-day technical seminar in Raleigh, NC for Unreal Engine licensees on how to use the major new features of the Unreal Engine. Space will be limited so please confirm as early as you can by emailing Anne Dube to let her know you want to attend. She'll send you back a short questionnaire that you need to fill out. We'll not only cover the newest engine features but also discuss all sorts of technical and content-related Unreal Engine topics. We will set aside time during the event for licensees to sit down privately with members of our development team and go over code and content-related questions specific to their titles. Once we've confirmed your attendance we'll send you directions to our office and information on local hotels. 

Mark Rein,
Vice-President, Epic Games Inc.
email: mrein@epicgames.com