What would it be like to play EQ2 with the Unreal 3 engine... ?

[xOnaton1]

<div></div>If you follow the game industry at all you've heard of the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/technology/ue30.shtml">Unreal Engine 3</a>. It's the lastest, fanciest, shmanciest game engine from Epic Games that powers Gears of War, Rainbow Six:Vegas, Unreal Tournament 3 and many, many upcoming games.MMOs are a huge endeavor, taking many years and huge teams and budgets to create. They have to plan for years of development time and plan for many years of successful gameplay for the players (if everything goes well.)I was just poking around the internet and came across a couple interesting pages mentioning the Unreal Engine 3. I will not say that the pages are all correct and games in development and any live MMO is subject to change of course.Last July <a target="_blank" href="http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=10163">SOE announced they had licensed the Unreal Engine 3</a>, which was interesting because as far as I knew, their current game engines were developed in-house using some middleware tools such as <a target="_blank" href="http://www.radgametools.com/default.htm">Miles and Granny from RAD</a>. This makes sense from a business perspective because building an entire game engine these days is very costly and the Unreal Engine has proven to be very successful in the past and is continuously updated for current technologies. When I read that news I assumed that the license would be used for future games, such as the DC Universe game being developed at SOE's Austin studio. From what I've read the DC Universe MMO is being developed for the <a target="_blank" href="http://blog.wired.com/games/2006/10/soes_smedley_dc.html">PC and the Playstation 3</a>, which is perfect since the Unreal Engine 3 supports both. Incidently, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes uses the previous, Unreal Engine 2.5, in the game client. The Unreal Engine does not provide server software suitable for MMOs so that is left up to the developers to provide.Just today I was looking through the job listings at SOE and for the position of <a target="_blank" href="http://sonyonline.recruitmax.com/candidate/default.cfm?szTemplate=3&szOrderID=1778&szCandidateID=0&szSearchWords=">Environment Artist - Everquest II</a> it says:• Integrate your work in the Unreal 3 game engine and play, play, play.• Some experience with the Unreal game engine is a real plus.I thought that was a little odd since EQ2 doesn't use the Unreal Engine 3.... or does it?? How much work would it require to port and translate the game client and all the art assests (models, animations, audio etc.) to use the Unreal Engine 3? Is that even possible? I know that the EQ1 engine was revamped in the past but has any other MMO ever jumped entirely to a new engine? The server code, scripting, and database wouldn't be affected too much since it would only be part of the client software.After snooping around online a little more I came across the <a target="_blank" href="http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/">Unreal wiki</a> with some other interesting information. The Unreal Engine 3 is still fairly new, with only about three titles out so far, but a flood of new titles are coming out soon. Epic has even begun work on the Unreal Engine 4 already, currently scheduled for 2010.The <a target="_blank" href="http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki?action=browse&id=Unreal_Engine_Versions/3&oldid=Unreal_Engine_3.0">Unreal Engine 3</a> seems particularly popular in the MMO world. Current projects listed in development include Huxley from Webzen; Stargate Worlds from Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment; Lineage 3 plus four others from NC Soft; and from SOE-- DC Universe Online, three games only identified as "Mercenary MMO," "Spy MMO," and "Whimsical MMO," and... Everquest 3 (??!!)First of all, DON'T PANIC!MMOs take years to develop, so any information is likely to be incorrect and/or change over the years. Everquest 2 will be here for us to play for as long as it's profitable for SOE (or has the potential to be profitable.) Until we hear something official from SOE these can be considered just hearsay and rumors... but the Environment Artist position does say Unreal 3, whatever your interpretation of that might be. My gut feeling is that the job listing is a typo or it's just copied from another listing, maybe one for DC Universe. I can't even imagine how complicated and how much work it would take to convert EQ2 to run on the Unreal 3 engine, but my guess is that it would be cost prohibitave. Only someone in the know from SOE could really say.The only conclusion I can comfortably make is that the future of MMOs and SOE is still bright and shiny, with fancy textures and sparkly lighting provided by the Unreal Engine 3+.Othesus - Dirge - Lucan DLereVaspar - Fury - Lucan DLere<div></div>

[Sebastien]

<P>Thanks for this information; great detective work!</P> <P>Personally I think that EQ2's engine has been a considerable burden to the game's success.  However I can also say that I have had bad experiences with mmorpg's based on unreal variants in the past.  Typically they seem to have serious memory management problems.  I think it may stem from the fact that the engine isn't designed to accomodate huge persistant worlds.  But any mmo I've played which uses unreal is basically very lazy about memory.. doesn't free it aggressively enough, and as a result people with less than 2 gigs will need frequent restarts to realize decent performance.</P> <P>IMO it makes all the sense in the world for mmo developers to outsource the graphics engine.  It just seems like a huge burden to take on in-house, with relatively little payoff when one considers how quickly graphics engines typically become obsolete.  SOE took the approach of trying to build a gfx engine that wouldn't become obsolete quickly, but now we see the opposite problem.  The performance requirements turn away potential customers, and as technology evolves the older engine is not able to take advantage of the latest / most efficient ways of doing things.</P>

[ke'la]

<P>Well we all know about the Devs working on revamping the Player Race Skellingtons to make maping new outfits easier, so that they can bring more unique graphics to our armor quicker and easier. This could be part of that, they maybe using pieces of the Unreal engine as part of that.</P> <P>Also I do beleave EQlive is in the process of its third upgrade to get the whole game into a Direct X9 game, so SoE is willing to repeated upgrade it's games engines.</P>

[Gallenite]

<p>Interesting.  Sorry to squash this one, but it sounds like someone may have posted the wrong team's artist description for the EQ2 artist opening.  Thanks. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p> - Scott</p>

[Phade]

Play Vanguard and find out.

[TheSummoned]

<cite>Phalsa wrote:</cite><blockquote>Play Vanguard and find out.</blockquote>Vanguard is running on a highly modified Unreal Engine 2 and will switch to 3 sometime from now till the 1st xpack. So <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Gherig]

You do relaize your basing most of your information on a Wikipedia as a source, right? And you do relaize Wikipedia's are far from accurate, being that they are pretty much comprised of information posted by anoyone on anything, fact or not?

[Mareth]

<cite>Gherig wrote:</cite><blockquote>You do relaize your basing most of your information on a Wikipedia as a source, right? And you do relaize Wikipedia's are far from accurate, being that they are pretty much comprised of information posted by anoyone on anything, fact or not?</blockquote>The OP was speculating, not writing a thesis.

[Ishnar]

<cite>Mareth wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Gherig wrote:</cite><blockquote>You do relaize your basing most of your information on a Wikipedia as a source, right? And you do relaize Wikipedia's are far from accurate, being that they are pretty much comprised of information posted by anoyone on anything, fact or not?</blockquote>The OP was speculating, not writing a thesis. </blockquote> Gherig was attempting to inform the OP not grade his paper.

[Ji]

<p>I agree the engine needs upgrading to be competitive. No levitation and personal flying mounts due to the way EQ2 was designed is a real bummer. </p><p>Personally I was really excited about EQ2 when I heard about it because I spent 5 years playing EQ1 and thought it would really be an upgraded EQ1. In many cases it is but otherwise EQ1 was far superior in content as well as abilities to climb over hills, fly or walk on water. I also give alot of props to the EQ1 team for dedication to community. It was addictive and they did alot to encourage a stronger community (ie Plane of Knowledge as a universal meeting place). They really promoted and kind of forced players to go thru and migrate to Plane of Knowledge. That in turn gave us a stronger community. I just dont feel that in EQ2 and find Maj'Dul and Kelethin dont share that "community" type of gathering place.</p><p>Really went off the subject a bit but content and engine are both equally important.</p>

[Ji]

It's in my opinion that Unreal Tournament set the standard for all modern day graphics. It was with that game that I first had to "upgrade" just to play it. Then it was like it didnt matter what you bought the game was far more advanced than any technology that was available. Graphics and gameplay of UT started me on my online gaming experience!