Sniper's Paradise - Unreal History
Epic Games Inc was founded in Rockville, Maryland in 1991. Then known as Epic MegaGames, Inc., the company was the brainchild of Programmer Tim Sweeney, who was soon joined by James Schmalz (programmer), Mark Rein (marketing / 'biz') and Cliff Bleszinski (designer). Early research for what would become Unreal began in mid-1994 and continued on until the complete development team was formed. By this time, James had left Epic to create Digital Extremes, based north of the border in Canada. However collaboration between Epic and DE continued and was instrumental in forming the Unreal brand.
Digital Extremes (Headquartered in London, Ontario, Canada) was founded in 1993.
Unreal was finally released on April 30, 1998 after a then unheard of four to five years of development.
Unreal's original release was marred by a variety of technical problems. Poor network code made the online component barely functional and 3D support for certain video cards was quite shoddy.
On the single-player side, some complained that the quality of levels suffered as the game progressed, possibly due to the game's long development cycle.
Later patches fixed many of the original game's flaws and a thriving mod community did the rest.
Unreal's unique editor and powerful UnrealScript language spawned a vibrant, creative amateur game development community that is still active and growing today.
Spectacular 3D Environments, Revolutionary Artificial Intelligence, Intuitive Level Editor and Vast Internet Play Usher in New Generation of Gaming. May 22, 1998 - It is called "Unreal"
Designed for the Windows 95/Windows 98/Windows NT platforms, Unreal transports one or more players to a beautiful yet deadly planet which, as a result of a mysterious ore, has become the "Bermuda Triangle" of space, entwining alien races from across the galaxy in a battle for survival. Unreal's visuals set a new standard for realism - water is transparent, flames randomly flicker, moving clouds cast shadows -- while dynamic lighting and music changes complement the on-screen
action.
GT Interactive's Unreal offers an exciting array of features, including:
Spectacular dynamic, PowerVR, 3Dfx, OpenGL and Direct3D 3D accelerator chip sets - resulting in unbelievably fast game play with high-resolution graphics; Portal technology - literally bringing a new dimension to game play by allowing levels
to defy 3D Euclidean space; Enhanced enemy artificial intelligence.
Internet play with true client server environments -- offering multi-player matches on the Internet and LAN that are easy to set up and play; Many highly-detailed polygonal enemies -- each with more than 300 frames of animation; Bilinear texture smoothing -- making environments appear more realistic, resulting in a far more intense game play experience; Vast true 3-D environments -- including spacecrafts, ancient ruins, mines and castles, each with their own unique challenges and secrets; Deadly arsenal of high-power weapons.
Unreal ships with a fully functional beta version of Epic's Unreal Level Editor - an advanced 3D authoring tool which provides a sophisticated, yet easy-to-learn, method of creating 3D environments and objects by which players may create their own Unreal worlds. A feature-enhanced, fully supported and documented version of the Unreal Level Editor with additional 3D content and a tutorial is currently under development and will be released separately later this year. (Note: This version of the level editor never was released)
Probably the biggest draw to Unreal was the ability to mod it. Tim Sweeney (Founder of Epic) wrote a simple scripting engine into the game called UnrealScript. The modders went to work. Within months of the release of Unreal, several interesting mods had been announced and released. Suddenly, RealCTF brought the classic Capture the Flag gametype to Unreal. With speed, several other mods made their way on to the scene. A "top down" mod, Unloaded, changed the whole POV of the game. Real weapons mods like Serpentine and Infiltration were released and it seemed the train would never slow down.
Unfortunately, at Unreal's release, the network code was virtually unplayable online. Thus, the complaining started, and seemingly overnight the Epic MegaBoards transformed into the Epic FlameBoards. Months later, the beta 218 patch was released, which increased the server browser listing by 228% (some sources say). Later patches would add Hardcore mode (faster and stronger weapons), the Fusion Bonus Pack, mutators, and totally changed the online experience of the game. The ability to "mutate" existing gametypes was silently added to the engine in preparation for the release of Unreal Tournament. Within the last few years, mutators have made their way onto Unreal servers to make the game more difficult, or to add monsters and weapons to the game. This has allowed the Unreal community to stay pretty strong to this day.
Chronology
1996 Unreal is signed to GT Interactive as publisher, and full development begins.
1997 Jay Wilbur joins the team as "Imperial Advisor", working with Mark on the 'Biz' side of things and bringing his experience as a founder member of id software (Doom, Quake).
1997 Steven Polge joins the programming team with a specialty in AI. Steven came to Epic's attention through the creation of the famous "Reaper bot" for Quake.
1998 Unreal is published. It goes on to define the leading edge of 3D technology, introducing to the first person shooter (FPS) genre such new features as fully dynamic lighting, volumetric and atmospheric lighting, what-you-see-is-what-you-get development tools, a next-generation scripting language, and extraordinary customizability.
The gaming community was blown away by Unreal's look. Huge outdoor environments, stunning scenery and clever enemy AI set the standard for others to follow.Unreal also introduced the Skaarj to the world - a race of powerful alien warriors who would appear in future Unreal games and who are now in some ways the "poster-boys" for the Unreal brand (their wrist blades provided inspiration for the original Unreal logo).
1999 Unreal Tournament is published. UT was created specifically to quench the thirst of gamers hooked on the new phenomenon of "Deathmatch". At first, many are skeptical over the lack of a standard story line or linear single player experience - but UT soars in popularity both for LAN play and on the Internet.
The gaming community praised Unreal Tournament for its unnerving artificial intelligence (demonstrated by quot;bots" in single player mode), network code and challenging and fun game play modes - deathmatch, capture the flag, assault and domination. Awards were plentiful and Unreal Tournament became the most popular online first person shooter.
2002 Unreal Tournament 2003 hits the shelves. This time, most of the work was undertaken by DE, while Epic concentrated on advancing the Unreal Engine for future products. Again, the Unreal series sets the benchmark for graphics and the new Tournament adds innovative game play features such as combo moves and double-jump.
2003 The story will continue with the launch of Unreal Tournament 2004
2005 Unreal 2007 is under development
Thanks to Unreal Tournament.com for this information
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