Game Engine Studies Ep.1 - Unreal Engine (1998)

Alegruz
2017-08-13
조회수 1402

Being one of the first game engines of the industry, Unreal Engine is still one of the most renowned engines in the modern world. The engine himself made his debut on April 30th, 1998 through the game Unreal. The development of the engine itself was started in June, 1994 by the Epic Games. Epic Games is a game development company in Cary, North Carolina and is famous for its Unreal series, Gears of War series. The founder of the enterprise is no other than Tim Sweeney and Mark Rein.


Back at those times, most of the game engines were used to make FPS games and so was Unreal Engine. Unreal Engine featured rendering, collision detection, AI, visibility, scripting and file system management. It especially supported every 3d graphic API like Glide of 3DFX, Metal of S3 Graphics, SGL of PowerVR. It also had an innovative software renderer which can support texture filtering, lightings with colours, corona effect, volumetric fog, volumetric lighting on graphic cards without 3d acceleration. Rendering technology supported 32-bit 512x512 texture, sequential animation texture, detail texture in a dynamic range scale, emboss bump mapping, multi texturing, vertex animation with multi channels, dynamic lighting with complete 32-bit colour that can animate naturally, vertex lighting, and also supported shades effects such as simple oval shades, decal shades using Z Buffer, live shades using stencil buffer. Special effects include volumetric fog, light bloom, particle effect, multi sky box, portals. Due to the modular engine architecture and its very own scripting language, UnrealScript which made modding easier, it gained popularity. Thus unlike Quake, Unreal Engine had both convenience and versatility. Even though the engine was primarily constructed for FPS genres, there are many non-FPS games.


Unreal Engine 1 has two major versions, the Unreal version, and the Unreal Tournament version. The Unreal version has its build until 2xx, while Tournament has its build from 300 to 436. (in the license, the latest build of Unreal Engine was 613) The first build number was 100, which supported software rendering, glide rendering, PowerVR rendering. By the build number of 200, it supported OpenGL, Direct3D, S3 Metal renderer and had some improvements in audios. After the number passed 300, the rendering speed got enormously fast, and supported hardware T&L, vertex shader, and improved its support for OpenGL, Direct3D 7, 8, and the AI part got improved too. In the build number 420, Unreal Editor 2.0, or UnrealEd 2.0 which is based on C++ has replaced UnrealEd which had its basis on Visual Basic. The skeletal(bone) animation was added in build number 432 and the Unreal Tournament version ends in build number 436. The Tournament version includes some additional features like improvements in major rendering technologies, revision of scene graph which largely improved the rendering performance, rendering API supports became much more stable and environment mapping was included in the texture technology of OpenGL renderer and Direct3D 7 renderer that supports hardware T&L. It also supports S3TC texture compression technology and 1024x1024 size texture. Static animation also supported much more sophisticated animations. The engine supports 32-bit Windows, 32-bit Linux, 32-bit MacOS, and also was supporting PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast.


Unreal Engine was first introduced with Unreal's development on June 1994, followed by its alpha release in 1995, and the beta release in 1997. The engine supported much more powerful graphics technology than its rival game Quake 2, level editor, sound, AI system, scripting system and on. It literally destroyed id Tech by pure technology. By the release of Quake 3 in the end of the 20th century, id Tech has made great improvements, but still, Unreal Engine was better in some areas like lightings. The sole reason there were more games using id Tech 3 Engine than Unreal Engine is the price. Most of the big guys were using id Tech's Engine, while indies and small companies could only afford the cheap but powerful Unreal Engine.


Games made by Unreal Engine

  • Unreal (1998), FPS, Unreal Engine v100~226. Epic Mega Games
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: Klingon Honor Guard (1998). FPS. MicroProse
  • TNN Outdoors Pro Hunter (1998). FPS. DreamForge Entertainment
  • Unreal: Return to Na Pali (1999), FPS, Unreal Engine v224~226. Epic Games
  • Dr. Brain: Action/Reaction (1999). Puzzle. Knowledge Adventure
  • Nerf Arena Blast (1999). FPS. Visionary Media, Inc.
  • The Wheel of Time (1999). FPS. Legend Entertainment
  • Unreal Tournament (1999), FPS, Unreal Engine v321~436. Epic Games
  • Unreality (2000). 페릴리스 인스트리얼
  • Deus Ex (2000), FPS, Unreal Engine v226. Ion Storm
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Fallen (2000). TPS. The Collective
  • Rune (2000). Action, Adventure. Human Head Studios
  • Clive Barker's Undying (2001). FPS, Horror. Dreamworks Interactive
  • Adventure Pinball: Forgotten Island (2001). 3D Pinball. Digital Extremes
  • X-COM: Enforcer (2001). TPS. MicroProse
  • Rune: Halls of Valhalla (2001). TPS. Human Head Studios
  • Rune: Viking Warlord (2001). TPS. Human Head Studios
  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001). Action, Adventure. KnowWonder
  • New Legends (2002). Action-Adventure. Infinite Machine
  • Deus Ex: Conspiracy (2002), FPS, Unreal Engine v420. Ion Storm
  • Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror (2002). FPS. Kamehan Studios
  • Mobile Forces (2002). FPS. Rage Software
  • Twin Caliber (2002). TPS. Rage Software
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). Action-Adventure. KnowWonder
  • Disney's Brother Bear (2003). Adventure. KnowWonder
  • Duke Nukem Forever (2011). FPS. 3D Realms, Triptych Games, Gearbox Software, Piranha Games


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