Obvious: Unreal Engine 4.0 in development

During yesterday's tour of Epic Games' beautiful Cary, North Carolina offices, producer Jeff Morris showed us a few things. Epic's gorgeous mo-cap room; Epic's outdoor basketball court; Epic's break room; Epic's bathrooms. Morris also gave us a tour of the very sparse office of one Tim Sweeney, Epic's brilliant computer programmer.

As pointed out by Voodoo Extreme, a giant sketch pad on Sweeney's desk contained scribbles of numbers and letters, none of which made sense to my puny human brain. Morris confirmed that this was likely the beginning of Sweeney's work on Unreal Engine 4, and that this is the kind of stuff he does all of the time. He then joked that if a wormhole were to open up anywhere in Epic's offices, this would be the place.

Here's the thing about programmers and game engines: When one engine is done, they start work on another! Welcome to the wonderful world of game design, folks. Interesting, yes. But Earth shattering news it's not.

Look for my short tour of Epic's offices later (which is also not Earth shattering news, but interesting!), as well as my hands-on with Unreal Tournament 3's multiplayer modes.