During Microsoft's Keynote presentation here at the 2008 Game Developers Conference, Epic Games had several things to talk about, and among them was some details on the Unreal Engine's new features.
Epic's Tim Sweeny took the stage and mentioned fancy, technical terms like ambient occlusion, new character pipelines, dynamic fluid engines, destructible environments, and soft body physics for the Xbox 360 version of the popular engine. I really had no idea what he was talking about, but all the game makers in the conference were nodding their heads. I had to settle for admiring the video footage.
One clip showed a rolling, soft ball of "meat" blobbing about. If this sounds disgusting, it should, and seeing it in motion was gross and cool at the same time. This footage was created to show off the soft body physics feature of the Unreal Engine. Marcus (from Gears of War) was able to interact with and even shoot this meatball, and it reacted in its own wobbly way.
Other additions include pretty new water physics and realistic enviroment destruction, but one of the most interesting clips showed over a hundred Locusts (also from Gears of War) in a crazy swarm. I don't know what this footage was showing off as far as technical features goes, but I sure hope that Epic isn't thinking of including anything like that into Gears of War 2.
LAUNCH GALLERY (4 IMAGES)
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site
Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
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Contest:
3:16 PM on 02.20.2008
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(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbT8YvBdYz4)
new character pipelines: Most likely they changed how characters are handled in the engine. It doesn't affect the final look but it might make life easier for devs.
dynamic fluid engines: Liquid physics.
I'm not sure what they're trying for, but I imagine it's either:
3d (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSR2z6naFtI),
or 2d simulation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DER5xp29z6w)
soft body physics: Cloth and squishy substance deformations.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbXCGpuJI7w)
They deserve it.
Both incredibly brilliant people though.
Exactly, it's just a tech demo to show what is possible. A way of saying, if we wanted too. We could fill the screen with hundreds of enemies and look how stable it still runs.
I still say EPIC dropped hints today. First the Chainsaw Duel feature and this, hinting to more players during multiplayer and coop play.
This is on a 360 in Gears of course... Looks really impressive
http://www.gamersyde.com/stream_6268_en.html