New Unreal Engine 3 demo at GDC

[MuFu]

Unfortunately, Epic isn't releasing video of the demos yet. The first demo shown involved a squad of futuristic, sci-fi soldiers patrolling the ruins of a bombed-out town or village. The town is almost medieval in nature, as the buildings are made of stone and covered in ivy. Suddenly, the squad leader stops the patrol, sensing something is wrong. As if on cue, aliens open fire from the upper floors of several buildings, and the troops scatter. It's at this point those present realized with some awe they were seeing actual live gameplay, as the demonstrator was controlling one of the soldiers as he fired his rifle at the aliens.

The second demo showed off one of the newly-announced features of Unreal Engine 3--seamless level loading. Basically, the engine is capable of loading several levels simultaneously, so the game will analyze where a player is going and load the next level ahead of time. By the time you reach the new level, it will already be in memory. This means that, after the initial load to start a game, players will not experience any level loading at all. To demonstrate this, Epic showed a futuristic dune buggy driving through the streets of what looks like a gritty European city. (If anything, it looked very much like a far more detailed version of Half-Life 2's City 17.) The buggy careened through the empty streets and then cut across a park, and it did so seamlessly. This means that in addition to no level loads, the game will be capable of creating huge, Grand Theft Auto-like worlds to explore. To finish the buggy demo, the camera pulled back to reveal a glimpse of a stunning and crowded cityscape along with the glistening waters of a huge bay.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/03...s_6120126.html

Videos: http://www.1up.com/do/download?cId=3138759

Titles based on UE3 will use the NovodeX physics engine so will be able to take advantage of the PhysX physics processor. DanW posted about it here.

Pretty awesome stuff.

[Tuxy]

Would like to see mroe adventure/roleplaying games take this route. I'm so sick of first person shooters.

[MuFu]

Originally posted by Tuxy
Would like to see mroe adventure/roleplaying games take this route. I'm so sick of first person shooters.

I agree to an extent, although games that aren't quite so one-dimensional like HL2 and KOTOR are pretty awesome IMHO. I am sure some of the developers that have licensed the engine are releasing RP or strategy-based games. You can foresee UE3 with a physics accelerator being able to display whole armies onscreen in great detail.

For those that haven't seen them, here are some stunning screenshots of UE3 from last year: http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html...gy/ue30.shtml#

BTW if you d/l any of those vids from the link above, try #4 first - very impressive indeed.

[Huge]

:drool:

I agree with most of your post Tuxy (especially after playing Doom3), but there's always been something that's fascinated me about the Unreal engine (so much so I now own a big fat book titled "Unreal Technology: The Art of Level Design".

Can Epic beat Carmack at his own game?