Should Unreal Engine be 'put out to pasture'?

daninthemix

daninthemix

daninthemix

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I'm disappointed with the visuals on UE games these days - Bishock 2, Mass Effect 2 etc. Most have problems with anti aliasing, the definition on textures leaves a lot to be desired etc.

What do you think?
 
It's not as if it's a standard that developers have to adhere too, it's just another development tool. It must be relatively inexpensive and easy to program in or there wouldn't be so many games made with it around.
 
tell you what im hating of recent is the silly line cartoon style round the edges of graphics in games on characters on everything .

i dont want a black outline thankyou :p
 
No. Enjoyable games are still being made on it. If the lack of AA bothers me I'll switch it on through drivers.

The styles and textures implemented lie with the developer, so I don't see how a change of engine would fix that.
 
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That does look fantastic. How come all present UE3 games don't look very good (I haven't played Bulletstorm mind you)?

It seems all the art assets were designed for 720p and playing any higher (say 1200p) only makes them seem even worse.
 
UE does a reasonable line in acceptable quality, lots of features and gets developers a head start into actually implementing content rather than messing around with engine design.

Cell shading, etc. seems to be flavor of the month atm, all the "cool" kid developers are doing it even when it doesn't suit their game scenario :( hopefully they'll get bored.

I'd like to see a couple of new engines tho very little really pushes new ground any more.
 
The only improvement I would like to see in Unreal Engine is better handling of Eyefinity/Surround. It is one of the few game engines that uses Vert- rather than Hor+ so you end up seeing a narrow band of the middle screen stretched across all 3. UT3 is unplayable without switching back to 1 screen. :(
 
daninthemix said:
That does look fantastic. How come all present UE3 games don't look very good (I haven't played Bulletstorm mind you)?

It seems all the art assets were designed for 720p and playing any higher (say 1200p) only makes them seem even worse.
Click to expand...

i thought bulletstrom had very good graphics and the AA is probably the best i've seen in recent games tbh
 
UE3 can look amazing, it's just that so many developers play it safe and go for the chunky, shiny graphics.

Mirror's Edge is a great example of a game that you wouldn't expect UE3 to be powering, but it is. It's just a shame that you can really easily tell if a game's running UE3 or not 99% of the time.
 
Confused Stu said:
The only improvement I would like to see in Unreal Engine is better handling of Eyefinity/Surround. It is one of the few game engines that uses Vert- rather than Hor+ so you end up seeing a narrow band of the middle screen stretched across all 3. UT3 is unplayable without switching back to 1 screen. :(
Click to expand...

Is this a problem with the engine or the viewport that has been coded by the devs though?
 
KNiVES said:
UE3 can look amazing, it's just that so many developers play it safe and go for the chunky, shiny graphics.

Mirror's Edge is a great example of a game that you wouldn't expect UE3 to be powering, but it is. It's just a shame that you can really easily tell if a game's running UE3 or not 99% of the time.
Click to expand...

AKA neon lighting, over use of specular, over use of poorly designed bump maps, chunky models and UE3 seems to just be more of this.

I'm not really that impresesd by UE3 myself, the shadow reflections are nice but no one will actually notice the difference betwen that and an old school environment map in playing the game(s), most people won't even notice the difference between a bokeh filter and a hacked up depth of field effect and I know of DX7 based engines that have a passable implementation of bokeh filters. The shadows again are nice but no ones really gonna notice the difference. Seems to be for the most part slight tweaks on the same old tech and higher resolution assets. I do like the more advanced color correction and atmospheric lighting options tho.

One thing I'd love to see is more attention on water effect and physics, one of the things that always kills the immersion for me now is horrid billboard water effects especially waterfalls.

I personally find this demo much more impressive than the one linked to above http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5XahF-3DWo
 
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No, the Unreal 3 engine is still capable of some amazing visuals, developers are just limited because they have to develop for consoles so all the games end up looking very simalar.
 
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