Chronicles Of Spellborn Dev Debunks U-Engine "Only Good For FPS" Myth

[Dark Pulse]

The Blogosphere is a wonderful place sometimes. You'll often see people putting down their thoughts for all to see, but occasionally you'll get a gem from a game developer that gives a bit of raw insight into the games business. Such is the case with Lani, who apparently is working on the UE2.5-powered MMORPG, The Chronicles of Spellborn. Inside, he debunks the perception that Unreal Engine is only good for FPS games:

That's 8 successfully launched MMO's made with the Unreal Engine and at least two of the three forthcoming launches will see the light of day I'm sure (the latter two). I don't know much about Mortal Online and Huxley is well, Huxley. Stargate Worlds is the game that probably won't see the light of day. All because Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment chose the Unreal Engine according to mister 'X'.
But remember, for each MMO project that sees launch there's nine others that don't. That's 72 MMO's not using the Unreal Engine and failed. Statistically speaking you have a better chance at launching using the Unreal Engine than if you built your own from scratch. And there's a reason for that; Not using middleware, also known as trying to re-invent all the wheels on your cart, is a much higher risk than making use of a licensed engine, or two.

[ambershee]

Let's not forget the vehicular games, and other tidbits out there too.

I was in the local university the other day, and the lecturer was talking to his level design class about engines and middleware -they'd been using UT3 for their projects. He said that UE3 was totally unsuitable for racing games or anything high speed, which is why it's only used for FPSs.

Fatal Inertia came out in early 2007, debunking that fact years ago.

Ok, it wasn't a brilliant game, but it did come out of a relatively new studio, and did function as intended...

[|*BILLY$CLINT*|]

SGW is going to see the light of day Mr. X does not know what he is talking about.

[[SAS]Solid Snake]

Ha ha, we were all proving this ages ago. Most people who claim that Unreal Engine isn't useful for anything other than FPS's generally don't understand the technology behind Unreal Engine to begin with.

[Nathillien]

Yeah - this thing about Stargate Worlds not seeing the light of day is a bit unbelievable. May be Mr. X. wanted to say that it's hard to make an MMO with Unreal 3 engine. Or that it does take longer than expected...???

[Bersy]

There are a crapload of mods out there that do all that.. Racing games, snowboarding games, etc.. I have played maps in UT even where the only point of the map is to race around at high velocity with boost pads, loops etc. If that's not high speed, I'm not sure what is?

[Sir_Brizz]

I think he's saying that, given the current ecology (?) on the MMO scene, even tons of games that make it to the closed beta point will never see the light of day for budsget, balance, gameplay issues.