Lunchtime Discussion: Engines
What's the best one out there?Published 28/07/2010 at 12:00.
By Kris L [raen].
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The most common criticism of modern gaming is that everything looks samey. Of course some of you will argue with me, and say that x, y or z is a much bigger issue, but the sameyness is something that those of us who inhabit TSA Towers complain a lot and something I see floating about on the internet at large. I’m also aware that sameyness isn’t an actual word, but it’s the best I can come up with; saying they’re similar doesn’t feel quite negative enough.
This issue can basically be broken down into two parts. Firstly, gaming is big business now. Big business means there’s a lot of money riding on a game and people don’t like to take as many risks when lots of money is involved. This lack of risk taking means that content can easily converge around a few basic templates that developers and publishers see as proven successes. Coupled with this is the prevalence of third party engines.
Of course third party engines have existed for a long time but the Unreal Engine, made famous by Unreal Tournament and Gears of War, really seems to have come to dominate this generation. With so many people using it it seems inevitable that games will begin to look more and more alike. However this doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.
Shadow Complex is a perfect example of this. It’s built on the Unreal Engine but looks fairly unique in my opinion. The reason? Chair Entertainment saw the benefits of the Unreal Engine, but didn’t use all of it. They decided they didn’t like the way the lighting engine made the game look so they stripped it out and built their own.
Then of course you’ve got Borderlands, also built on the Unreal Engine, but with a hugely distinctive look. It seems that a number of developers have forgotten that you’re allowed to do this with an engine. Yes you’ve licensed it, but you don’t have to use the engine in the same way as everyone else is.
Luckily there’s a new player rolling into town in the form of CryENGINE 3. Hopefully the fact that the engine is essentially identical across all platforms, as well as the ease of porting games that it brings, will draw developers to it. Maybe this will bring more variety to the look of games, or maybe everyone will jump from the Unreal Engine and we’ll just land on a new plateau of similarity.
Whilst a lot of developers chose to licence someone else’s engine it must be remembered that a lot of developers are doing brilliant work with proprietary engines. Uncharted 2 is widely accepted as the pinnacle of custom engines, but I’m really liking the look of Bungie’s handy-work in Halo: Reach. The games built on these engines do seem to stand out from the competition, but they also have a bigger budget and generally take longer to build.
So how do you feel about engines? Should more developers build their own engines? Does there need to be more of an attempt to bend an engine to the game rather than the other way round? Will added variety in third party engines change anything?
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beeje13 | 28/07/2010 12:05
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309 TSA Points | Member since: Jan 2010
I think devs should be free to use a third party engine, but customise it relevant to the type of game they are making.
CryEngine 3 ftw!!
Nauraph | 28/07/2010 12:13
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656 TSA Points | Member since: Jan 2010
It’s funny to see that there are 200+ games build on the Unreal Engine. (starting in 1998)
I think it’s a solid engine and developers should take use of it how they see fit. But I don’t think you should adjust the game to fit the engine, but the other way around.
BIGAL-1992 | 28/07/2010 12:18
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3593 TSA Points | Member since: Jan 2009
It depends on what type of game you’re making. If you’re on a budget, you’d use the PhyreEngine (Flower) for PSN games, for shooters, there’s all sorts of engines although Unreal engine 3 isn the most commonly used, for racing games, the EGO engine would be the best of the lot. It depends on what the devs want to use and what they’re making.
Origami Killer | 28/07/2010 12:21
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650 TSA Points | Member since: May 2010
Im gonna say havok, is that an engine. Its been in motorstorm, uc2 and demon souls. All great games with great gameplay and graphics
BIGAL-1992 | 28/07/2010 12:26
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3593 TSA Points | Member since: Jan 2009
It’s a physics engine. You could do things such as physics animation, cloth, ragdoll, object and behaviourial physics, but you wouldn’t be able to make a game purely on Havoc, maybe a tech demo.
Origami Killer | 28/07/2010 12:32
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650 TSA Points | Member since: May 2010
thanks, i dont know much about games deelopment
BIGAL-1992 | 28/07/2010 12:34
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3593 TSA Points | Member since: Jan 2009
No problem.
cc_star | 28/07/2010 12:35
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12558 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
Unreal Engine 4 sounds great, I can’t remember if I read whether that was targeted to the next gen (Xbox3&PS4) or not.
Anyway, we have the Unreal engine to thank for a whole range of games being made, without it devs might not have had the resources to see their ideas come to fruition. A great recent game to use it was Singularity.
It’s also flexible enough to be used in the interesting SSRPABC & racers like the awful Death Race
so a great thumbs up from me, however it does lend itself to a great deal of games having the same appearance to them and you can spot an Unreal engine game a mile off with its characteristic grain-iness
but I suppose that’s a trade-off we have to accept in the days of huge losses from the big publishers and devs closing down all over the world.
in an ideal world devs would have sufficient backing to customise the engine as mentioned in the article, but that ain’t going to happen.
also it would be nice if Sony provided more support to devs perhaps licencing Naughty Dog’s Uncharted, Guerilla’s Killzone or Sony Santa Monica’s GoWIII engine to developers who want to make PlayStation exclusives.
Or coming up with some generic middleware of their own because even after all this time the Unreal engine offers 2 x MSAA (anti-aliasing) on the 360 but none on the PS3, and games are more likely to either drop v-sync and feature screen tearing or dropped frames on the PS3. I know Sony have some sort of physics engine, but some full middleware may mean the PS3 fares better on the 3rd party exclusives front
Aimless | 28/07/2010 13:09
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260 TSA Points | Member since: Aug 2009
Sony have PhyreEngine; whilst it’s not on the Wiki list, I believe DeathSpank uses it to some degree to give a recent example.
I’m not a big fan of UE3. I appreciate that it’s useful for developers and sets a good baseline to work with, but I’m fed up of every other game being plagued by noticeable texture LOD transitions, weirdly faked ambient occlusion and other technical oddities. I suppose it’s better than putting up with myriad bespoke engines that look worse, though.
BIGAL-1992 | 28/07/2010 13:15
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3593 TSA Points | Member since: Jan 2009
It’s the lesser of the two necessary evils case. You could go for the Unreal engine 3 due to its easy licensing and easy to use coding, but it’ll look similar to many other games on the market, or not go for it and get a different engine and make one yourself, but that might not work.
3shirts | 28/07/2010 13:25
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4343 TSA Points | Member since: Aug 2008
SR20DE or maybe RB26DETT.
Forrest_01 | 28/07/2010 14:10
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550 TSA Points | Member since: Jun 2009
I quite like Thomas The Tank Engine.
DrNate86 | 28/07/2010 14:25
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1385 TSA Points | Member since: Apr 2010
Gaah I was going to say that!
Forrest_01 | 28/07/2010 14:32
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550 TSA Points | Member since: Jun 2009
Well you know what they say about ‘great minds’ & all that…
(Although quite how that relates to Thomas The Tank Engine i am not sure!)
DrNate86 | 28/07/2010 15:17
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1385 TSA Points | Member since: Apr 2010
Haha true, great minds think alike. Simple minds think of Thomas the Tank Engine.
gideon1451 | 28/07/2010 17:02
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829 TSA Points | Member since: Nov 2009
Brilliant :D
jikomanzoku | 28/07/2010 14:53
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881 TSA Points | Member since: Jan 2010
The Farcry 2 engine was nice, especially given that entire game felt like a tech demo rather than a finished product. Would have been interesting to see a more complete usage of that in a seperate game.
cc_star | 28/07/2010 14:55
Team TSA: Writer
12558 TSA Points | Member since: Forever
Odd that Ubisoft went to all that trouble and then developed a Shaun White engine and an Assassin’s Creed Engine… and the people in the board rooms wonder why they lose hundreds of millions a year
jikomanzoku | 29/07/2010 15:26
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881 TSA Points | Member since: Jan 2010
“Mr Left hand meet Mr Right Hand, he works here, to be honest we’re really baffled that you two haven’t met before”.
3shirts | 28/07/2010 15:05
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4343 TSA Points | Member since: Aug 2008
Did you not play ‘Jesus Cryst Super Star’
gideon1451 | 28/07/2010 17:01
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829 TSA Points | Member since: Nov 2009
It’s true about games using an original engine do last longer.
Take Oblivion for example. Personally, I played it for a lot longer than Fallout 3. Perhaps I didn’t play that as long because it felt like I was playing the same game, due the fact it uses the same engine. Apparently a heavily modified one, to me it felt exactly the same, unfortunately.
bunimomike | 28/07/2010 18:50
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10300 TSA Points | Member since: Jul 2009
For me the problem lies in the creative process at an artistic level. If the game has a strong sense of style (eg. Brink, Limbo, Shadows of the Colossus, Journey, Team Fortess 2, etc) then the next stumbling block is how flexible the engine is. If it’s not, the fault lies with that and developers that use said engine should give continuous feedback on how to change it for the better.