Unreal Engine 3 Features @ GDC 2009

[hal]

G4 has posted a video that showcases Epic Games' new Unreal Engine 3 features as seen at the GDC 2009, this week. The video is also available in HD.

[Ignotium]

The new content browser owns all the other upgrades, seriously. What a sleek design and flow, and applying materials in insultantly easy now

Too bad wont happen for us though

[raziel31]

Originally Posted by Ignotium

The new content browser owns all the other upgrades, seriously.

Too bad wont happen for us though

Yep...

I am really curious about the new lighting tips

[r1esG0]

Originally Posted by Ignotium

The new content browser owns all the other upgrades, seriously. What a sleek design and flow, and applying materials in insultantly easy now

Too bad wont happen for us though

the solution as always is to have more patience....

[UBerserker]

New lighting effects are nice (they would be nice in HOLP-type of maps), but the best thing is the upgraded content browser.
Oh, GOW2 stuff in the editor :c

[Kantham]

Like I said in another thread, the lightning based on emissive materials is just plain awesome. Every lightning upgrades to the 3.0 engine are just looking like good plans. I never was a big fan of the Unreal Engine's lightning in most of the occasions. Though it worked out good for unrealistic environments compared to something closer to reality.

That's just way too many good upgrades, just gears of War 2 would have been fun to mess around with, now with these newer additions were getting closer to total envy.

BTW: For the browser and simplified drag-and-drop feature on mesh, do not forget most of the meshes have multiple material index. I wonder how they'll work this out.

[dub]

Originally Posted by Kantham

BTW: For the browser and simplified drag-and-drop feature on mesh, do not forget most of the meshes have multiple material index. I wonder how they'll work this out.

Didn't it just cover the entire model in the one selected material basically ignoring the index?
It's hard to tell...

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

The editor upgrades are crap, I absolutelly hate drag and drop things, current UT3 engine and the editor is almost perfect in a sense, now I will have to look at some crappy UI and drag and drop if I will ever work with it, I hope it can be turned off at least.

[Kantham]

Originally Posted by dub

Didn't it just cover the entire model in the one selected material basically ignoring the index?
It's hard to tell...

The mesh probably has only one index for sure. I can tell this because the mesh is probably made out of one normal material, which is completed in a single material. About 95% of the retail meshes like this would only use 1 material index.

Originally Posted by Leo(T.C.K.)

The editor upgrades are crap, I absolutelly hate drag and drop things, current UT3 engine and the editor is almost perfect in a sense, now I will have to look at some crappy UI and drag and drop if I will ever work with it, I hope it can be turned off at least.

Uh, and why are you completely bashing the whole upgrades just because you don't like the new browser look and drag n' drops? But most importantly, what the hell have you eaten for breakfast?

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Originally Posted by Kantham

The mesh probably has only one index for sure. I can tell this because the mesh is probably made out of one normal material, which is completed in a single material. About 95% of the retail meshes like this would only use 1 material index.



Uh, and why are you completely bashing the whole upgrades just because you don't like the new browser look and drag n' drops? But most importantly, what the hell have you eaten for breakfast?

It is crap to work with that, whoever invented drag and drop should be shot and yes I even mean that UT2004 horrible bot selection screen, in UT2003 you could freely move in and out the bots out of roster even in "singleplayer" tournament, or just by doubleclicking them, but the drag and drop, pffffffffffffffffff that's the worst **** ever...I hate that.

The only positive feature I see is the lighting features, the content browser is ****ty and the other stuff btw reminds me of doom95 and what crap that was...

The user interface is STEAMifized even, I don't like that either.

[GGA_Nate]

Was anyone reminded of Thief during the showcase of the new lighting features? Man, I want a new Thief game bad.

[nawrot]

Drag and drop while working is dangerous. You always drop something by mistake then discover it days after. Imagine scenario: you just created some complex material, applied it to mesh and put in central spot of map for that omph effect, then few min later you dropped some brick texture by mistake on that mesh thus erasing cool material. After rebuild editor purged it. Look for autosave and pray its there.

Also I have strange impression that UT always gets most bare version of engine possible. I remember watching tech demo movies after they released ut2004. Some of those things we just got for ut3 with titan pack upgrade, but many are not present. I only wish they turned UT3 into real tech demo and pumped better effects with each major patch.

I bought this game mainly for editor, and I desperately need new bone from epic, even as small as few more meshes and speed trees. I really hoped that titanpack will have one new enviroment set.

[JaFO]

Originally Posted by nawrot

Drag and drop while working is dangerous. You always drop something by mistake then discover it days after. Imagine scenario: you just created some complex material, applied it to mesh and put in central spot of map for that omph effect, then few min later you dropped some brick texture by mistake on that mesh thus erasing cool material. After rebuild editor purged it. Look for autosave and pray its there.

I guess you never heard of archiving-systems (like GNU RCS and Subversion ?)
Those will take care of any 'mistakes' like that.

And I'm not sure if the current UnrealEd is missing the feature that showed exactly what textures were used in a given level. That should make fixing mistakes like that real easy.

Besides ... planning > doing, it's something most people need to learn the hard way.
Do you really want to search through thousands of textures and manually enter their names ? (and pray to <insert favourite deity> that you didn't use nearly duplicate names in your list)

Also I have strange impression that UT always gets most bare version of engine possible. I remember watching tech demo movies after they released ut2004. Some of those things we just got for ut3 with titan pack upgrade, but many are not present. I only wish they turned UT3 into real tech demo and pumped better effects with each major patch.

It's quite obvious you don't realise the implications of patching software on that level. Even Microsoft rarely if ever adds any new technology to a released OS. So why would an engine-developer like Epic do the same to a released game ?

Besides ... if we get this kind of stuff 'for free' then they would kill their entire engine licensing business (why pay a few hundred thousand euro for a license if you can get the same stuff in a 60$ game ?).

[GreatEmerald]

Wow, nice. Can't wait to try that out
What does the MCP actually do?

[zynthetic]

Originally Posted by GreatEmerald

What does the MCP actually do?

Whatever it wants

[evilmrfrank]

ME WANTS!!!!!

[Mozi]

Looks cool...

yeah not sure about drag and drop but won't argue or bash it until a public version of UE has it.

I too am kind of partial to the way it is now, but hey if Epic put in their tool and used it for their games it may be worthwhile.

The changes to the actor browser are awesome!

[Kazimira]

The last map shown is useing a UT3 map and I think I got a look at the new lighting being used though one light in one corner and a blurry immage of the cast light from it might not mean a thing.

[TheSpoonDog]

Wow that impresses me...

I guess with the drag n drop of material onto mesh, they could do it (may already be like) so if the poly/tri you dropped onto has id=1 it would use that slot. Thing is, most games use one material per mesh anyway for performance reasons.

The MCP does look great how it can show you those kind of stats on your level - but I really wonder how much of a b1tch it is to set up - I mean, I imagine you'd have to outline the gameplay areas by hand - and I wonder how it's handled when there are multiple levels of play on top of each other? Picking which gameplay you want to record the stats for?

... and yea the lighting looks just awesome. Pity we won't have a UT to use it in for years Just have to get some contract work I suppose!

[Chandler]

Really excited to see this. Did anyone find it funny at all that they effectively looped the MCP part and the music picked up, and all it is, are two separate heat maps (three. maybe) and it's got fast cut away, and "awesome action shots", etc? I just had to chuckle while watching it.

Mos def cool though.