Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament [UT4]

Discussions about everything else
User avatar
Hellkeeper
Inhuman
Posts: 903
Joined: Tue Feb 25, 2014 12:32 pm
Personal rank: Soulless Automaton
Location: France
Contact:

Re: Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament

Post by Hellkeeper »

Casual developers? They're a thing from the past. I don't know which UT had more custom content between UT and UT2, but they got there because one guy could make a map, a mod or a skin by himself. Already in UT3, you can see that despite a lot of custom content, there's less of a truckload of it. One guy can only do so much by himself. Casual developers will be less and less relevant, unfortunately, that's just the way things are. Despite the tools being always easier and more powerful, the sheer set of skills needed is becoming an obstacle. You can't make a cool map by just slapping together some brushes and stock textures with the complex and crude tools offered by old UnrealEd versions. Too bad but hey, that's how things are.
You must construct additional pylons.
Janssen
Novice
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu May 08, 2014 8:38 am

Re: Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament

Post by Janssen »

Wait, the real news here is... UE1 code possibly made public?
eheheh... i think it's the real news too
User avatar
Cronoloop
Skilled
Posts: 223
Joined: Sat Feb 16, 2013 10:16 am

Re: Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament

Post by Cronoloop »

Hellkeeper wrote:Casual developers? They're a thing from the past. I don't know which UT had more custom content between UT and UT2, but they got there because one guy could make a map, a mod or a skin by himself. Already in UT3, you can see that despite a lot of custom content, there's less of a truckload of it. One guy can only do so much by himself. Casual developers will be less and less relevant, unfortunately, that's just the way things are. Despite the tools being always easier and more powerful, the sheer set of skills needed is becoming an obstacle. You can't make a cool map by just slapping together some brushes and stock textures with the complex and crude tools offered by old UnrealEd versions. Too bad but hey, that's how things are.
And the people think this is a good thing... so sad...
User avatar
Feralidragon
Godlike
Posts: 5489
Joined: Wed Feb 27, 2008 6:24 pm
Personal rank: Work In Progress
Location: Liandri

Re: Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament

Post by Feralidragon »

@Paper: You are forgetting the fact that TF2 was paid before, and became F2P afterwards. So basically, exactly like UT, you would have to buy the game first.
While in this case, the game itself is free, without any transactions whatsoever, but if you want to mod you pay 20$, and you only need to pay this value once to get everything, and only again when you want updates after a month has passed (you still get the updates from the month you paid).

@Paper and Cronoloop: As for casual developers, there are no tools, because that's not the point of all this. If you are looking for a game with such thing as "casual tools", you can check Shootmania instead (from the Trackmania guys), it's just drag and drop, but then all maps look and feel the same there because of it.
And as seen in modern games with free modding support, there is a relative few amount of people doing something for them due to the sheer skill set required in order to release something on par with the game itself.
So allow me to make you a truly honest question: let's assume that UT3 magically becomes free and more like UT1, and that you have all the needed hardware in order to run the editor. If you made something "casually", would your work be something close to this?
Image

Now, that's UT3 Facing Worlds remake, if you look carefully at it, compared to other maps it's actually a rather simple and straightforward map to make, but do you consider it something a developer would "casually" do? Anyone can pretty much "casually" make a good remake of CTF-Face for UT1 in a day, could you say the same for a UT3 one?
Now consider that UT3 has about 6 years already, and UT4 is now getting developed and will probably get a visual bump of a similar magnitude as the one seen from UT version to UT version, would you personally feel capable of doing a map up to these new standards on your own, provided all the tools and hardware?

Considering the reaction of the community (including you guys) towards some UT1 maps as being something to be admired, I wonder where does that leave such modern maps of exponentially added complexity and needed effort?
Hopefully, you were not thinking in making the kind of maps we normally see for UT1 in an engine such as UE4 if you had the chance, and think that would make UT4 last?

Think very well about this.


@billybill: I am yet to see a correlation between the fact of being able to hide code and actually doing it. Some people will always hide their code, some people won't as open source supporters. It's not a matter if the technology allows it, it's mostly how people feel about it, and fortunately open source is the new trend nowadays.
User avatar
Cronoloop
Skilled
Posts: 223
Joined: Sat Feb 16, 2013 10:16 am

Re: Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament

Post by Cronoloop »

Mmmh, yes, honestly that map sucks from an art style view. I prefer this 100x times (http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/ori ... -Facin.jpg)
Thank God Steven Polge already said they are going to have a much cleaner look and easy arenas, prefering quality of the gameplay over details of the map.

Say what you want, everyone of us opened the UnrealEd at least once.
As for casual developers, there are no tools, because that's not the point of all this.
Then I can assure you, that with this point, the game is going nowhere. Epic knows this, and as I said they are already thinking on how to make the cleanest and crispiest look on the new engine for this new UT. Hopefully it won't be that hard
User avatar
Feralidragon
Godlike
Posts: 5489
Joined: Wed Feb 27, 2008 6:24 pm
Personal rank: Work In Progress
Location: Liandri

Re: Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament

Post by Feralidragon »

Cronoloop wrote:Mmmh, yes, honestly that map sucks from an art style view. I prefer this 100x times (http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/ori ... -Facin.jpg)
I didn't ask about the art, I asked about if with all the tools provided you would be able to do something close (or who knows, something better?), and you swiftly deviated from answering it, but anyway, as far as I understood, essentially you don't want UT4, what you want is this:
Image

So then why does this UT4/UE4 is even brought up if all you want you already have called "Unreal Tournament"?
Cronoloop wrote: Thank God Steven Polge already said they are going to have a much cleaner look and easy arenas, prefering quality of the gameplay over details of the map.
Which doesn't lessen the complexity of the actual maps. I play BLR, which is made in UE3, and their maps are super clean and extremely focused in the quality of the gameplay, yet they're still complex and it takes them months of work to produce them.
Cronoloop wrote: Say what you want, everyone of us opened the UnrealEd at least once.
You would be surprised about that... unless by "us" you mean "ut99.org" and not the entire UT community, which in that case that may be correct.
But on that, most get scared from it the moment they open it, not exactly the most friendly tool in history.
Cronoloop wrote:
As for casual developers, there are no tools, because that's not the point of all this.
Then I can assure you, that with this point, the game is going nowhere. Epic knows this, and as I said they are already thinking on how to make the cleanest and crispiest look on the new engine for this new UT. Hopefully it won't be that hard
Clean and crisp look doesn't have anything to do with the complexity the maps will actually require, as I explained above, it's just a direction in the art style
Models, textures and all sorts of other things will still have to be created anyway, and each one of them require thought and hard work to come out with and from external tools. They won't go back to BSP and such (not even in looks), they will still have to build lots of assets, textures, maps over those textures (normals, diffuse, etc), and a bunch of other stuff, and is expecting from the mapping and modding community to be able to produce things in the same manner.
User avatar
Cronoloop
Skilled
Posts: 223
Joined: Sat Feb 16, 2013 10:16 am

Re: Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament

Post by Cronoloop »

whatever, seems like you don't care about the new UT and the direction it's taking lol
User avatar
papercoffee
Godlike
Posts: 10443
Joined: Wed Jul 15, 2009 11:36 am
Personal rank: coffee addicted !!!
Location: Cologne, the city with the big cathedral.
Contact:

Re: Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament

Post by papercoffee »

Feralidragon wrote: If you made something "casually", would your work be something close to this?
Image
No ... but I can learn it ... if I had to pay for the Ued2 in the past, I hadn't even think about to make maps for UT.
It's not the casual mapper and map what interests me, it's the ability to learn. And this is now disabled.
Feralidragon wrote:TF2 was paid before
To make it Free2Play with In-game-purchase was an experiment what doesn't have failed ...but the game was a success beforehand and they made their money.
Cronoloop wrote:Mmmh, yes, honestly that map sucks from an art style view. I prefer this 100x times (http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/ori ... -Facin.jpg)
To be honest ... From my POV the original map sucks golf balls through a garden hose, visually ... I prefer this two remakes.
GenMoKai's and Creavion's
User avatar
Feralidragon
Godlike
Posts: 5489
Joined: Wed Feb 27, 2008 6:24 pm
Personal rank: Work In Progress
Location: Liandri

Re: Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament

Post by Feralidragon »

Cronoloop wrote:whatever, seems like you don't care about the new UT and the direction it's taking lol
... Ad Hominem ...

papercoffee wrote:
Feralidragon wrote: If you made something "casually", would your work be something close to this?
Image
No ... but I can learn it ... if I had to pay for the Ued2 in the past, I hadn't even think about to make maps for UT.
It's not the casual mapper and map what interests me, it's the ability to learn. And this is now disabled.
Let's first go to the basics: first you need to have a computer suitable to use UE4.
Don't take me wrong, my current machine is not proper to handle UE4 either (their requirements are pretty high), and I am not going to buy a new one over it either (for plenty reasons).

Next, once you get that new machine, you will instantly realize that you spent way more money to have a machine suitable to work with UE4, than you would pay for a UE4 license, meaning that by the time you are able to buy one, you certainly will have funds to at least buy 1 UE4 license.
After that, you will also realize that you need external tools: in case of 2D stuff you probably already have it, since you're an artist, but for 3D stuff you will have to either use a paid 3D modeling program (Maya, 3DStudio) or a free one (Blender, like I am using currently).
And since you want it for learning, you don't have to update it over time, you can buy it one time and remain without updates after a month and learn it out for as much time as you want. Every time you want to actually use what you learned and release something, you can simply release it.

Adding to all this, UE4 seems to be pretty pushy, and a more powerful machine to handle generally means more electricity to pay by the end of the month, so by simply using UE4 you will have to pay higher electricity bills (depends on the machine of course, that's why I use a laptop, along with other advantages of using one).

So, what is the problem exactly? Do you understand where I am coming from with this?
papercoffee wrote:
Feralidragon wrote:TF2 was paid before
To make it Free2Play with In-game-purchase was an experiment what doesn't have failed ...but the game was a success beforehand and they made their money.
Which only helps my argument: they made their money with TF2, Epic still didn't make any with this new UT stuff.
User avatar
Hellkeeper
Inhuman
Posts: 903
Joined: Tue Feb 25, 2014 12:32 pm
Personal rank: Soulless Automaton
Location: France
Contact:

Re: Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament

Post by Hellkeeper »

Janssen wrote:
Wait, the real news here is... UE1 code possibly made public?
eheheh... i think it's the real news too
I know, right? That would be so awesome... Unreal would live forever.
Cronoloop wrote:And the people think this is a good thing... so sad...
It's neither a good or bad thing, it's sad because we can't do what we previously could, but that's the price to pay for increase technological complexity and increase in visual quality. Unfortunately, that will work against us.
Feralidragon wrote:So then why does this UT4/UE4 is even brought up if all you want you already have called "Unreal Tournament"?
Game lifecycles and functionning community. A game which is just a one-off game with no successor lives on as a single coherent whole with its community producing offshoots around it. As years go by, the community grows and shrinks as players join and quit. There remains a core of dedicated people. It becomes a cultural artifact which can be referenced by itself and has a set of attributes: its community, its custom content, its own legends (the Diablo cow level), its own community story (the Nalicity disaster, the vanishing of UT2003hq which still haunts my own mind).
A series breaks that as it continues. It is not a coherent whole but splinters into smaller fractions (we are actually the prime example with the brokenest of broken player bases along the UT/UT2 rift). Several communities, sets of references and so on are created which are still linked to a single name (in our case, Unreal Tournament). Now, when you talk about UT, you must distinguish for the audience which one you're talking about, and in the most extreme cases, remind them that back in the days, it was good (DNF/Duke 3D) or preface your speech with a dismissal of such and such episodes (I need to tell people UT3 is nothing like what I'm talking about when I speak of Unreal). As the series grows, the potential for disappointment and the references becoming bad and shameful become larger and memories of the glory days get buried under a constant influx of failure (once again, Duke Nukem Forever, and many players feel Thief 3 and 4 are getting there). So basically, as the series grows, they risk ruining the general image of the name to which they are attached, which is hard for people who are deeply involved and have strong emotional ties to the game (ie. many people here). At some point, you start wishing their will never be a follow-up or a next episode in the series, so that as time goes by the game remains untarnished by bastard children and you remain with your friends as a single community around a single game to have a single type of fun and can talk about a single thing. Then the next game is announced and you learn that the community will get even more divided, your own game will fade more into obscurity as its name is hijacked by a game which has to be different (it can't be the same, and it shouldn't) and which you like less. So you have an automatically hostile reaction to the next thing because you're trying to reach back to the past and the good memories while the future marches on and brings with it all this.

Or maybe I'm just talking out of my ass. You can replace all the "you" in the above text by "Hellkeeper". Long live Unreal, I wish we were still in 2005.
You must construct additional pylons.
maximdymok
Experienced
Posts: 84
Joined: Mon May 30, 2011 5:28 am

Re: Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament

Post by maximdymok »

Well said, Hellkeeper. I find it somewhat sad that some people will stop playing UT99 and play UT instead, even if it is actually a better game and a worthy successor.
As for the $20 thing, I mostly agree with Ferali, but I fear a lot of people are not going to pay for maps. If I tried to join a server and it said "This server is running the map xxx and it costs $1. Buy?" I would click no, and find another server that has only default/free custom maps. A lot of people are going to do the same. In the end a lot of modders will realize this and make their maps free, but who knows if paying $20 and a lot of your time to make free maps will motivate people to mod. Either way, it's an interesting concept, and some QUALITY maps/mods could come out of it.
User avatar
papercoffee
Godlike
Posts: 10443
Joined: Wed Jul 15, 2009 11:36 am
Personal rank: coffee addicted !!!
Location: Cologne, the city with the big cathedral.
Contact:

Re: Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament

Post by papercoffee »

Feralidragon wrote:Do you understand where I am coming from with this?
You don't understand what my "problem" is ...

Not Quality was what made UT great and kept it alive... it was (sadly) quantity ...the countless mass produced maps and mods made from noobs ...And then some noobs turned into decent creators ...and from those some turned into people like you or Creavion and FnB*, who created masterpieces.
Those "noobs" will not mod and map for UT4 if they have to pay for the Editor ...you will get only the serious people.

I think UT4 will be a great game ... but I worry that UT99 will outlive his descendant ...again.

*just examples
Spectra
Masterful
Posts: 542
Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2013 5:23 pm
Personal rank: Nullified!
Location: (X) Unable To Locate....

Re: Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament

Post by Spectra »

Cronoloop wrote:whatever, seems like you don't care about the new UT and the direction it's taking lol
I think right now he is more interested in Unity3d rather than UE4.

First time I am seeing this, Epic giving chance to Non-Epic Developers to give birth to new UT. And no other company did such strategy like that.
Btw is there any reason why Epic doesn't want the New game name as "Unreal Tournament"?
Running UE4 in my machine is also impossible because of my poor machine model.
papercoffee wrote:To be honest ... From my POV the original map sucks golf balls through a garden hose, visually ... I prefer this two remakes.
GenMoKai's
Where can I get his map??
Feraliragon wrote:that's why I use a laptop, along with other advantages of using one).
But ultimately you will have to pay the electricity bills, since if your laptop is running on low battery and you plug in the charger.
User avatar
Feralidragon
Godlike
Posts: 5489
Joined: Wed Feb 27, 2008 6:24 pm
Personal rank: Work In Progress
Location: Liandri

Re: Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament

Post by Feralidragon »

papercoffee wrote:
Feralidragon wrote:Do you understand where I am coming from with this?
You don't understand what my "problem" is ...

Not Quality was what made UT great and kept it alive... it was (sadly) quantity ...the countless mass produced maps and mods made from noobs ...And then some noobs turned into decent creators ...and from those some turned into people like you or Creavion and FnB*, who created masterpieces.
Those "noobs" will not mod and map for UT4 if they have to pay for the Editor ...you will get only the serious people.

I think UT4 will be a great game ... but I worry that UT99 will outlive his descendant ...again.

*just examples
But that's also what I am trying to explain here. Even if UE4 was free, a noob won't simply be able to load up the editor and start making simple maps, even UDK was known by its steep learning curve, he has to literally learn a couple of things first (even if by himself like most of us did). Nowadays someone to do a map needs to dominate to an extent some sort of external tool first, and solidify some concepts such as UV mapping, texture maps, materials, all sorts of things to make a map.
Making cube maps like in the old days won't make the game last, and will only bring an overall bad image to this new UT anyway. Can you imagine skimming through the marketplace to find just 1 decent map out of 100? That would actually kill the game, not make it last.

Quantity is not necessarily a good thing in UT1 either. Personally, I think even UT1 would be way better off with less quantity and more quality. Hundreds of maps were made and are hosted by servers, yet anyone who plays in such servers can witness and confirm the simple fact that only a hand full of them are the ones voted, no one cares about the others. The only exception to this rule is BT, but only because it's a gametype that focuses in the map itself and not the players unlike every other gametype.
You go to ModDB and most UT mods are downright ignored too, only a few get attention and are generally the ones with more work input into them.

Regardless, like I mentioned before, even if I am all wrong about this and UT4 proves to need something like you say, from a business standpoint it's just plain wrong to do it now, it would be a colossal mistake from Epic from the economic point of view to give it away right now, so if it starts to fail, they will eventually give away something, even if just the editor.
Rocky wrote:
Cronoloop wrote:whatever, seems like you don't care about the new UT and the direction it's taking lol
I think right now he is more interested in Unity3d rather than UE4.
I am interested in both. I won't be using UE4 right now (I will indeed invest my time into Unity3D first), but I do care about UE4 still, since with this UT4 thing and the whole modding scene being focused on, I actually have a good feeling about it.
Rocky wrote:
Feraliragon wrote:that's why I use a laptop, along with other advantages of using one).
But ultimately you will have to pay the electricity bills, since if your laptop is running on low battery and you plug in the charger.
I always have the charger plugged-in, so I don't even mean the battery. My point with using a laptop is that a desktop with the same processing power would waste a lot more energy. Depending on the processing, it may use just 20W of power up to about 100W, while with a desktop this value would probably be 3x or 4x more.
User avatar
Wises
Godlike
Posts: 1089
Joined: Sun Sep 07, 2008 10:59 am
Personal rank: ...

Re: Epic: Future of Unreal Tournament

Post by Wises »

Hope the specs to play the games built with UE4 will be a bit less then what is needed to build them..

Like.. 2-4 core , 2-4GB Ram, radion 3k series GPU.. etc.

Or the market might be a lot smaller yet

This marketplace thing is commonground now.. and used in a lot of games / engines.. like Garry's Mod for ex.

Still... Iam interested to see what UE4 will be like.. have seen a lot of Dictators over at the forums expressing what they Don't want... so shall see..
Post Reply