New Game? Or Advertisement for an engine...

[BooGiTyBoY]

The more I see of UT2007, the more I believe Epic isn't trying to make a game that sells well to the general public, but an advertisement of what it's engine can do so they can sell it to developing companies which is probably where they actually make their money. I'm already of the mindset that it has way too much eyecandy > gameplay elements and am pretty put off by the fact they are pretty much ditching anyone with a mid-range to lower end system by todays standards. As it stands now I personally probably won't even buy the game.

What do you think?

 

[Nunchuk_Skillz]

imo that's nonsense. They've already sold so many licenses for it (really a ridiculous amount when you think about it) and if that were really their plan, they could save themselves millions in development costs over the next year by not even developing 2k7.

Hell, if that were really their goal, don't you think Gears of War could serve that purpose just as well? And since it's already coming out in the Fall, they simply wouldn't even need 2k7 if all they wanted were more licenses.

Bottom line is that I'm sure they see the chance to make plenty of money on 2k7. And in the end, who cares *why* they're making it? Let's just be happy that they are and hope that it's great. If it's not, there will be plenty of other U3 engine games to play, so there will be other options, but I still <3 UT and hope it's better than ever.

 

[{RA}SKYFURNACE]

anyone who has followed the unreal/epic community knows this... its nothing new... Cliffy has said many many times that his "toys" (and his prowler car specifically) were bought with licensing the unreal engine. Sweeny and Co. have said many times what makes epic great is its engine, and that said engine is the future of Epic.

So .... your stating something thats been common knowledge for about 6 years now.

 

[BooGiTyBoY]

Guess what I mean is there's no reason whatsoever for the software to be as hardware intensive as it is yet...

Used to be the hardware was always leaps and bounds ahead of the software, now the hardware can hardly keep up. Just seems like bad business to me regarding the "common market." Even if they sell this game to buttloads of people I can garuntee half of them ditch the game after trying to play it at 640x480 for a month or so and we're gonna see a ghost town of a server list. Like you even said... the engine makes them their money.. not the game itself. I've been a fan since the first Unreal and I just don't like the direction the company is taking is all.
As it stands right now my money is going to Id/Raven for Quake4 and ET:Quake Wars. Least I know I can run the doom 3 engine at a good resolution/fps.
Just an opinion.

 

[{RA}SKYFURNACE]

well, thats one reason why epic has moved so heavly in the Console market...

Epic is probably one if not the smartest game company in the world right now.

When other companies start noticing if they havnt already what epic has done it will only make gaming better.

I would much rather have epic set the standard rather than EA, vivendi or Ubisoft.

Epic is outstanding in its community relations, community building and support of people who want to work in the industry professionally or for hobbey.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

Guess what I mean is there's no reason whatsoever for the software to be as hardware intensive as it is yet...

Used to be the hardware was always leaps and bounds ahead of the software, now the hardware can hardly keep up. Just seems like bad business to me regarding the "common market." Even if they sell this game to buttloads of people I can garuntee half of them ditch the game after trying to play it at 640x480 for a month or so and we're gonna see a ghost town of a server list. Like you even said... the engine makes them their money.. not the game itself. I've been a fan since the first Unreal and I just don't like the direction the company is taking is all.
As it stands right now my money is going to Id/Raven for Quake4 and ET:Quake Wars. Least I know I can run the doom 3 engine at a good resolution/fps.
Just an opinion.

Two things here.

First: Did you ever play Unreal 1? When it came out it was capable of graphics that were light years ahead of anything that was currently available (including S3 and 3DFX cards that were on the market). In fact, it was capable of so much that it really hadn't been outdated until 2001-2002. It was also the same with Unreal Tournament, which is why I was sad when 2k3/2k4 came out and were marginal games at best in terms of their engine version. I WANT Epic to go back to making games that push the limits of technology, because that almost guarantees it 2-3 years of life beyond when the game comes out because at that point systems will finally be running it at the highest possible details.

Second: Sweeney has already said that the 9800Pro generation of video cards is going to run the engine fine at high details in 1024x768. I don't know about you, but that's what I was running UT2k3 at on a GF4ti4200. IMO, that's right where the engine should be. In other words, I don't really see this as a problem.

Also, realize that Cliffy is not working on this UT. In addition, it seems more like Gears of Waar is Epic's poster-boy this time around, and not UT like has been in past generations. I wish they would go back to releasing a new Unreal single player game in every major version, but that probably will never happen.

 

[BooGiTyBoY]

I thought Tim Sweeney said it would run DECENTLY at 1024x768 on a 6800 ultra not a 9800pro. There's quite a difference there.

Plus when Unreal was out, yeah it was a little ahead of it's time but you could still run it at good settings with good framerates unlike ut2007 apparently will be. ALso pc verisons of games were untouchable by consoles at the time. Now they seem to be overtaking them, leaving us pc gamers left either paying $2000 for an upgraded system or taking the plunge to consoles which just plain suck in my opinion.

 

[Bot_40]

Running UT2k7 on a 9800 pro will prolly be somewhat similar to running UT2k3/4 on a GF2 I imagine. Doable, but definitely not highest settings. A 6800 ultra will do it at full details but probably not at 1200x1024 res.

 

[Renegade Retard]

Boogs, don't get the cart in front of the horse here. Don't overreact based on speculations and rumors.

If we step back and take a closer look, we really have very few confirmed solid facts. The rest has been filled in with speculations, interpretations, and estimations of the community.

What I'm saying is, don't condemn something before you know for sure what you're condemning.

 

[Olga]

I can run UT2k4 with all settings on High at 1280x1024 without any problems on my Radeon 7600 Pro and 500Mhz Intel processor, so I assume UT2k7 will run pretty good on all your computers.

 

[Sir_Brizz]

Freeman: Sounds good to me. Will Unreal Engine 3 support Pixel Shader 2.0?

Sweeney: Yeah, so we'll ship on any reasonable DirectX 9 hardware; the Geforce 6200 at the low end and the ATI Radeon 9800.

Also, don't forget that by the time UT2007 comes out, 6800 Ultras are going to cost half of what they do now, at least.

 

[Discord]

First: Did you ever play Unreal 1?

Ah- yup.

When U1 came out I had just bought the first computer I'd owned since... like... 1986 or some crap. I bought the game because a guy I worked with said it was amazing, and it was about a year after that that I was actually able to play it.

I was 6 months late for UT2k3 because I needed a system upgrade.

The "direction" UT is headed now, at least system- requirements- wise, is pretty much the same direction it's always been headed in. At least this time we've got a year's notice, I'm already tucking away cash here and there.


Re: why are they making UT2k7? Well, as stated they've got their cash- flow issues sorted just from engine licenses. I dunno how much profit they'll necessarily pull off the game... the only thing that makes sense to me is pride. They're still young guys and personally I think they still have as much of a desire to be "kings of the strip" as any of us.

 

[Nunchuk_Skillz]

Used to be the hardware was always leaps and bounds ahead of the software, now the hardware can hardly keep up.

Uhhhhh.... not that I remember. In fact, games are one of the things that's largely responsible for pushing the hardware forward at such a quick rate and almost any time a new game comes out, it pushes the envelope of what comps can handle. UT did it. 2k3 did it. Doom 3 did it. HL2 did it. It's absolutely normal for game makers to design their games for the high end of what's expected to be out when the game ships. So trying to make a decision between Q4 and 2k7 based on your hardware (when the games will probably ship a year apart, and when the U3 engine is obviously *far* beyond the D3 engine) is totally apples and oranges.

As people are saying, the highest end graphics solution that you can buy now will be 50% less (or even cheaper than that) by the time 2k7 comes out, *and* there will be newer cards that are way, way faster that cost exactly what a 6800 (or whatever) costs today.

So just be patient, get the demo, see what it's like and how it runs and then base your decision on that. I can't believe so many people are that worried about a game that's at least a year away (best case scenario).

 

[JonAzz]

I can run UT2k4 with all settings on High at 1280x1024 without any problems on my Radeon 7600 Pro and 500Mhz Intel processor, so I assume UT2k7 will run pretty good on all your computers.

I bow to you
I ran ut2003/4 on a geforce two for hte longest time before I upgraded, worked fine at lowest settings... but still very doable.


I was thinking the same way before, and still kinda am. but no matter what I will buy the game, I just want to mod it
we'll just have to wait and see.

 

[Olga]

Quake 4 is coming out sooner than UT2007 anyways, in fact it's December 2005 last I checked.

 

[Nosnos]

Ofc it's an advertisment for the engine, all of Epics games have been that ^^ I'm concerned about the eyecandy > gameplay aspect as well but I do belive that Epic have learned there lesson. The have mentioned there different approach to mapmaking compared to UT2003/UT2004 which imo is an extremly important step in the right direction. But it's all speculations and we havent really seen anything from the game, a bit from E3 but what does that tell us? Nothing... We are just gonna have to wait and see ^^

And I do belive it will support different kinds of systems and not only the high-range. I mean the game is said to run fine on hardware that is available today, hardware that many already have. That hardware will not cost much a year from now... My guess is that it will probably be like it was when UT2003 came out... To run it with details on high you need a ti4600 or a ati 9700 pro but it was still playable on the previous generation of gfx-cards like GF3 and ati8500. Atm UT2007 looks like a sure buy for me, even if it means getting new hardware gonna need it for other games as well though so it will be worth it ^^

 

[BooGiTyBoY]

I can run UT2k4 with all settings on High at 1280x1024 without any problems on my Radeon 7600 Pro and 500Mhz Intel processor, so I assume UT2k7 will run pretty good on all your computers.

Sorry but I find that VERY hard to believe. Do you even get anything over 25fps???

I have an amd 2.1ghz 333 fsb with a geforce4 ti4200 128mb with 768mb ram at 400mhz. I run it at 1024x768 w/ normal/low detail settings for decent framerates. Anything higher and it hitches, skips, and chops.

I'm not over-reacting Ren.. it's simple truth. There's no way in hell my system as it stands is gonna run that game and have it look anything close to good. I'm also basing this off the fact that other game engines today run like poo, such as doom 3 (800x600 at low details) and HL2 is somewhat playable at 640x480. As the unreal engine is much more hardware intensive it can't be any better than that. I guess I'm just not so much not impressed by what the engine does but not impressed with how it does it. I can run Painkiler at 1024x768 with all details/settings on high. In the game i can keep a steady smooth framerate with 20-30 bodies flying around with full particle, specular, ragdolls, and physics (much better ragdolls than the UT engine does too by the way)
Unless Epic has some new magical programming intheir engine i don't see it happening like that.

 

[Olga]

I'm serious, the only problems I have are in ONS but it's usually nothing more than slight slowness with some model spinning. All other gametypes including Assault everything runs smoothly.

 

[T2A`]

I guess I'm just not so much not impressed by what the engine does but not impressed with how it does it. I can run Painkiler at 1024x768 with all details/settings on high. In the game i can keep a steady smooth framerate with 20-30 bodies flying around with full particle, specular, ragdolls, and physics (much better ragdolls than the UT engine does too by the way)

He has a point. There a several things that the Q3 engine does way better than the UT2004 engine even though it's years older. Back in UT days it wasn't even close by comparison, but even now there are things the Unreal engine still can't do that the Q3 engine can. That just doesn't seem right, you know? IMO, the Unreal engine is not efficient right now, and I hope that changes in the future.

However, you are probably getting a little ahead of yourself, Boog. A 6800 Ultra to run the game decently will cost you quite a bit now, but I seriously doubt it'll be very expensive by the time the game drops. I'd suspect computer hardware costs will drop when the new consoles come out in order to keep people gaming on their PCs instead of turning to consoles for the $300 price tag.

Besides, what's the mean lifetime for a computer system anyway before it's outdated? Three years? Maybe four years? How can you expect your will-be five-year-old video card to run the game smoothly?

 

[Sir_Brizz]

He has a point. There a several things that the Q3 engine does way better than the UT2004 engine even though it's years older. Back in UT days it wasn't even close by comparison, but even now there are things the Unreal engine still can't do that the Q3 engine can. That just doesn't seem right, you know? IMO, the Unreal engine is not efficient right now, and I hope that changes in the future.

Any examples?