Epic Rumour Mill Churns

[elmuerte]

Well.. not every game can be Brütal Legend

 

[[SAS]Solid Snake]

I've been working on a number modding projects recently, and am completely amazed at how easy and powerful it is. So far, I've got working prototypes for single player-style campaigns, multiplayer focused gametypes, and a few very non-UT3 style games. I'm a freaking PRODUCER and I haven't been able to find anything I can't get working using unrealscript or kismet after a little digging. Claiming UT3 isn't mod friendly is acutely ridiculous.

Link to a mod you created, on ue3 or any other platform, before you make claims like that. Otherwise, it sounds like you're making things up . (edit: I'm not talking about Brizz )

Don't get me wrong Jeff. I enjoy using Unreal Engine. And personally I find it a technical marvel, but what I meant to say is, is that both the game and the engine are complex pieces of technology now.

Because both the game and the engine are complex in their nature, it is more difficult for begineers to be able to pick up the game and start making things straight away. Let's take, what is supposed to be the easiest thing to make for any Unreal Tournament game, and that I feel is map creation.

With map creation in UT you just had BSP. There wasn't a lot of complexities here. Other than the occasional strike from the UED Goblin, you made maps from simplistic brushes in a subtractive manner. Slap on some textures, put in some player starts, path nodes and some weapons and you've got yourself a map.

With map creation in UT2003/UT2004 you had both BSP and Static Meshes. Now, I won't go into the difficulty of making static meshes, but rather the extra complexity that static meshes introduce and that is blocking issues. Unless you did blocking well, static meshes were annoying for blocking either the player or weapon fire. With some maps it was extremely difficult to move around and getting stuck on a polygon was annoying. With some maps, shooting into 'space' yielded in a collision with a static mesh that had an over extending collision box. UT2004 also introduced trick moves as well, so good level designers had to also keep those in mind, otherwise the trick moves would be useless. Level designers also had to learn the multi texture system, currently known as Shaders and Blenders then.

Map creation in UT3 is with BSP and static meshes. I understand that both methods of BSP generation can be used, additive and subtractive, but from my understanding it is often easier to just use additive BSP, mainly due to the lack of sky boxes (I understand why, so I won't complain about that) and faster lighting calculation times. This seemed to confuse some people, and I feel that it would just be better to provide a single method rather have two methods. Unfortunately due to the cooking process, it's difficult to learn from the maps provided because you can't just copy/paste and save anymore it seems. Every time I tried to do it, Unreal Editor would send me an error message. Now, I understand the cooking process and why it exists ... but many of those reasons don't really exist on the PC platform. On the console platforms yes, but not so much for the PC platform. Secondly, the cooking system is very specific it seems. Maps will not cook for various reasons, and occasionally will crash the editor if packages contain errors and so forth.

Having said all that, that really just scrapes the surface of how complex the engine has become. So many things have to be considered when building a map. And it is this part of the curve that makes it difficult for newbies to come in and use Unreal Tournament 3. While the old blood continue with the changes and move on, some of the old blood will eventually leave (from the list of programmers, we have Jb [from Chaos], Mychaeel [from Jailbreak], Pfhoenix [from Jetpack, Proleium] and so forth)... with no new blood to come into the scene, the mod scene starts to die a little.

Unreal Engine is a fantastic tool. But learning said tool without any real access to the UDN or tutorials on the net seem to stop many people from using it. It is sad that many people simply don't want to experiment or teach themselves how to use it ... but I suppose that if another engine has all that, then why bother?

As for the mod ability of Unreal Tournament 3, I certainly feel that it is less than UT and even UT2004. I like the work that Ron has done with UIScene and it certainly contains a lot of great ideas. How it was used and implemented in UT3 however, is another matter all together. Creating custom gametype menu interfaces, custom mutator menu interfaces and even custom menu interfaces are all so much more painful than in both UT99 and UT2004. Heck, the interface that is created is called from Kismet within UTFrontEnd. Making lots of things for Unreal Tournament 3 have become difficult because the majority of content that people would probably want to make (because they are learning), is probably content which just extends Unreal Tournament 3 itself. New music, new voice packs, new sounds, new weapons ... they are all just frustrating to make these days. Sure, with total conversions or whatever else, I suppose people can just throw away all the content and code within Unreal Tournament 3 ... but isn't that pointless? I mean, Unreal Engine 3 is setup to be extensible, but the way things are implemented in Unreal Tournament 3 is now non-extensible.

My last point will be native code. There is a ridiculous amount of native code now. I won't even bother explaining why it's a pain in the ass to see so much native code as a mod developer.

As for my experience with Unreal Engine, I was first on the scene with [SAS]Into The Lion's Den in Unreal Tournament, then I was doing my own mod framework project called Chaos Engine for UT2004, and now, I am the programmer for The Ball and UWindow2.

 

[JohnDoe641]

Absolutely.

Further you're welcome to bash it, but you should understand that the only thing accomplished is whatever enjoyment you derive from said bashing. You're certainly not helping the game in any way, shape, or form and it's not much of a stretch to see you are actually hurting it.

Nevertheless your call on how you spend your valuable time. Just have no illusions about "contributing" something to the game. You're most definitely not part of the solution.

The game is in a good state right now? Ok. :c

The servers are empty, the ladders are dead, and the only thing I hear about ut3 on irc or ts is that it's terrible. How exactly is this showing that the game is in a good state?

As for me not being part of the solution, ha, maybe the bashing isn't helping but I"m pissed off at this. Go look on the front page every Friday, take a look in the UT3 forum. Who starts the FragBU thread every week hoping for players? I've been asking, begging, pleading with people to play the game for months and FragBU used to be one of the most popular events here at BU, and dare I say, in the community. FragBU is dead except for when or one or two others yell at people to get on. Even then we just spend time finding bugs and exploits.

Guess what people are playing now, TF2 and L4D. Almost every single die hard UT player here has left the game and moved on to one of those two. Apparently they're actually fun to play and not a pain like most people feel UT3 is.

Take a look at the FragBU poll and see the results for yourself.

http://forums.beyondunreal.com/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=3643

Not counting the continent/timezone/ping option, the majority result is that UT3 sucks or people hate it enough to go to another game. Quite a few of those names are players that have played most of the UT series, players who played every night and at FragBU every weekend.

I try to pug almost every night, I ask people to play all the time, it's not working, the even less players now than there were a few weeks ago. I enjoy the core gameplay IE speed/movement/weapons damage, what I don't enjoy are the annoying bugs, lack of obvious features, and the lack of players. I had faith in Epic to make UT3 a good and long lasting game, do I now? Nope.

 

[Mozi]

SAS you make a good point.

Yes UE 3 is easy to use but not from the ground up... there is a steep learning curve but for those of us, like my self and many other modders out there have adapted to changes and persisted to make content be it maps, mutators, full blown mods, etc.

However there are a few talented folks from the UT 99 days that pretty much gave up or decided not to mod once static meshes came into play given the extra steps required to build a map.

But if one has the time and patience to learn from the get go then yes compared to some other core engines out there, Unreal Engine is by far the easiest still to jump in and create content.

 

[TheIronKnuckle]

The game is in a good state right now? Ok. :c

The servers are empty, the ladders are dead, and the only thing I hear about ut3 on irc or ts is that it's terrible. How exactly is this showing that the game is in a good state?

As for me not being part of the solution, ha, maybe the bashing isn't helping but I"m pissed off at this. Go look on the front page every Friday, take a look in the UT3 forum. Who starts the FragBU thread every week hoping for players? I've been asking, begging, pleading with people to play the game for months and FragBU used to be one of the most popular events here at BU, and dare I say, in the community. FragBU is dead except for when or one or two others yell at people to get on. Even then we just spend time finding bugs and exploits.

Guess what people are playing now, TF2 and L4D. Almost every single die hard UT player here has left the game and moved on to one of those two. Apparently they're actually fun to play and not a pain like most people feel UT3 is.

Take a look at the FragBU poll and see the results for yourself.

http://forums.beyondunreal.com/poll.php?do=showresults&pollid=3643

Not counting the continent/timezone/ping option, the majority result is that UT3 sucks or people hate it enough to go to another game. Quite a few of those names are players that have played most of the UT series, players who played every night and at FragBU every weekend.

I try to pug almost every night, I ask people to play all the time, it's not working, the even less players now than there were a few weeks ago. I enjoy the core gameplay IE speed/movement/weapons damage, what I don't enjoy are the annoying bugs, lack of obvious features, and the lack of players. I had faith in Epic to make UT3 a good and long lasting game, do I now? Nope.

You know, i really would play on there, but the timezone thing, and IRC turns me off.

 

[JohnDoe641]

You know, i really would play on there, but the timezone thing, and IRC turns me off.

You don't need to use irc to play at FragBU, it just another way for us to chat or get people playing at the same time.

But like I said in my last post, we rarely have enough players to actually get in a decent game so we mainly spend our time messing around and finding lots of bugs/exploits in the game. Ping isn't an issue when you're just having fun.

 

[elmuerte]

As time progresses, tools become more advanced, as tools become more advanced they become more difficult to use and understand. As programs become more complex there is an increased chance that certain things become less extensible. This will especially become the case when deadlines come closer.
Writing software with evolvability in mind is very difficult, if not impossible.

 

[Latent Image]

In AUS we still get good turn outs, nothing like we used to but still have a lot of fun.

Found a few people are returning because they have become bored with other online fps'. Personally I have always found UT3 fun, bugs and all.

With respect to the editor, specifically map making, I dont think its that difficult to learn, I even teach others how to use it.

 

[WarTourist]

Help us understand, then. We know you guys know what goes into a PC game. Why did UT3 PC end up feeling so compromised and shaved down? A lot of us thought developing for the lowest common denominator seemed like a very likely reason. If that's not it, can you tell us more about it?

That's a lost cause. If nothing communicated since the PC release convinced you, there's nothing I can say now that will.

As a way of addressing it though, I remember a conversation I had with a dev at GDC2008 about game communities. His position was that he loved customers but hated fans.

His reasoning was that a customer makes a rational decision when they buy a game: Is this game worth 50 bucks. If it is, they buy it, and if it's not, they don't.

Fans however don't make decisions like that. They buy the game contingent upon any number of unvoiced, and frequently irrational, conditions. They want to "belong to something", not "shoot monsters in the head". The developer is "snubbing" them if they don't get a reply to every forum post. Their forum flaming is "justified" because the title was such "a slap in the face" and other ridiculous melodrama. All these hidden, and frankly unagreed to, conditions are attached to the purchase, whether they're grounded in reality or not.

Now clearly UT is a little different because fans can contribute a lot compared to other games (mods, maps, dedicated servers, etc), but I think there's some validity to his point.

But learning said tool without any real access to the UDN or tutorials on the net seem to stop many people from using it. It is sad that many people simply don't want to experiment or teach themselves how to use it ... but I suppose that if another engine has all that, then why bother?

I personally don't see the hurdle being much higher than the last gen, and in my opinion quite a few things lot a lot easier. Claiming other engines are easier to use is too subjective for me to argue against, but the fact that

many people simply don't want to experiment or teach themselves how to use it

has nothing to do with the current generation of tech. There has always been a hurdle to actually "doing" as opposed to "talking" and the hurdle persists.

Mad respect for the Ball, BTW. I suspect some of my rosy perspective on UE3 has to do with the fact I haven't dug into the UI code yet .

I had faith in Epic to make UT3 a good and long lasting game, do I now? Nope.

K, so it sounds like you move on. Why is that so hard for some . You wanted to like everything about the game, you don't, so that's it, lesson learned. If the product didn't meet your expectations, you'll make a more informed decision next time.

Buying games from a company isn't a some blood-oath, it's like going to an expensive movie. Building that into some "relationship" with things "owed you" isn't based in reality.

but I"m pissed off at this

Well, ok. Vent. Just don't be in denial about what's being accomplished. As consumers you have a SINGLE lever for making your will manifest: The purchase of the game. If you buy the game, and then raise hell on the forums, the only thing the developers hear from you is "Good job!".

With respect to the editor, specifically map making, I dont think its that difficult to learn, I even teach others how to use it.

I regularly say "It's can't be that easy" when I try something, and 1/2 the time it is .

 

[[SAS]Solid Snake]

I personally don't see the hurdle being much higher than the last gen, and in my opinion quite a few things lot a lot easier.

It's not a problem for veterans like us, Jeff. We've been making games since forever. The problem is for those that haven't. And that's really what I'm trying to point at in terms of new blood / old blood problem.

Mad respect for the Ball, BTW. I suspect some of my rosy perspective on UE3 has to do with the fact I haven't dug into the UI code yet

Thanks , although the amount of code I have done is quite small compared to the cool stuff Hourences did. Well, it's not about UE3. With UE3 you get access to everything. But when you are a mod developer, so much is hidden away from you that you have to just figure things out. Some people can figure it out, while many others just give up.

 

[DeeperShade]

Well, ok. Vent. Just don't be in denial about what's being accomplished. As consumers you have a SINGLE lever for making your will manifest: The purchase of the game. If you buy the game, and then raise hell on the forums, the only thing the developers hear from you is "Good job!".

If that were the case, you wouldn't be posting in response to these comments, crying foul because people think you and everything you touch has the lastability of a virgin guy in bed with a hot chick.

You may not be part of Epic anymore, but don't for a second tell me that they don't know people make these comments. The dev's hear a lot more than "good job", from me they hear "when you philate your own gunbarrel it'll be a good job". Especially that Cliffyb tw*t.

 

[WarTourist]

But when you are a mod developer, so much is hidden away from you that you have to just figure things out. Some people can figure it out, while many others just give up.

Same as it ever was. I'm of the opinion UT3 didn't make this any harder for the folks who would have actually done something with the tech in the previous generations. If you've got the goods to make a mod, you're going to make one.

If that were the case, you wouldn't be posting in response to these comments, crying foul because people think you and everything you touch has the lastability of a virgin guy in bed with a hot chick.

You may not be part of Epic anymore, but don't for a second tell me that they don't know people make these comments. The dev's hear a lot more than "good job", from me they hear "when you philate your own gunbarrel it'll be a good job". Especially that Cliffyb tw*t.

I don't quite understand that first run-on-sentence. I'm posting here because I dig the community Hal and Brizz support and love UT3 if that's what you asked.

The second sentence is slightly more legible. I understood you insulted Cliff in the last sentence, but the rest I'm hazy on. Are you saying you want "epic" to commit suicide or something?

 

[IronMonkey]

Building that into some "relationship" with things "owed you" isn't based in reality.

Whilst I agree that it is absolutely the right of Epic to take the franchise in any direction that the company chooses to go (and live with the consequences of those decisions), I think the situation regarding expectations (reasonable and unreasonable) is more complicated than you suggest. For example, perhaps someone could have told the marketing department not to make any reference to previous iterations of the game in case that created a "relationship" or "expectations"?

The meta tags in www.unrealtournament3.com (sorry, don't have a flash player here) state,

Unreal Tournament 3 marks the return...

Now what is that if not an attempt to create some expectation that what has gone before is an indicator of what should be expected in UT3?

The whole point about a "franchise" is that there is a relationship with the customer that causes the customer to come back for more.

I'm not disagreeing that some expectations were unreasonable but I do think that you are somewhat re-writing history here.

 

[WarTourist]

I'm not disagreeing that some expectations were unreasonable but I do think that you are somewhat re-writing history here.

I respect your opinion but disagree with it. Clearly "the return" implied it's a franchise. You still shot monsters in the head. You still had a flak cannon. In other words, it's still UT.

Taken to an absurd extreme, one could justify that sentence fragment to mean ANYTHING. OMG, no Juggs! Epic spit in my face!

Again, I appreciate your point, but I just think interpreting it the way you have isn't reasonable.

 

[DeeperShade]

I don't quite understand that first run-on-sentence. I'm posting here because I dig the community Hal and Brizz support and love UT3 if that's what you asked.

The second sentence is slightly more legible. I understood you insulted Cliff in the last sentence, but the rest I'm hazy on. Are you saying you want "epic" to commit suicide or something?

Ho ho ho.
"I'm going to pretend I don't understand what you said so i don't actually have to respond, but at the same time, i'm going to try and subtly belittle you by implying you can't communicate". That's fantastic, Good Job (philate a gunbarrel).

 

[WarTourist]

Ho ho ho.
"I'm going to pretend I don't understand what you said so i don't actually have to respond, but at the same time, i'm going to try and subtly belittle you by implying you can't communicate". That's fantastic, Good Job (philate a gunbarrel).

Ohhhh, felate? Do you mean felate as in felacio? Ah, now it makes slightly greater than zero sense. And that last part, now I should commit suicide. I'm I getting warm?

If clear communication is your goal, I'd recommend checking out: http://dictionary.reference.com/ .

 

[DeeperShade]

**** yourself in the ass with a grenade.

Is that clear enough?

 

[WarTourist]

**** yourself in the ass with a grenade.

Is that clear enough?

I knew your perspective from the word go. Congratulations on not spelling grenade "ghrenaide".

 

[DeeperShade]

I see the only game you can take a part in adequetely is the one called 'Being a condesending c*nt'.

 

[Bort]

oshi