by Dr.Flay » Mon Jul 09, 2018 9:42 pm
Epic put everything else on hold for a week to get Fortnite released without any hitches.
2 weeks later they realised it was more popular than expected, and when the battle royale mod was added it became even more popular.
UT4 is not the only Epic project this has effected.
Fortnite hits the mark on a few important points for the modern era of gaming, and one of the most important for popularity is how enjoyable it is to watch someone else streaming their game.
Hands-down it beats UT for watchability, as there is more variety and changes of pace.
People that don't play UT won't watch UT matches, but plenty of people that have no interest in playing Fortnite will watch Fortnite.
This makes it more valuable for advert revenue.
The UT4 team is/was all volunteers, so at any time the project risked losing the Epic devs to a more important project.
When or if UT4 will continue development is something that Epic do not know.
I see the problem that companies (and politicians) try to ignore these days.
"We don't know" is not an option as an answer, so they either release a generic statement that says nothing, or just say nothing.
Even the Chaos team have no idea or internal feedback, so are porting everything to the full UE4 engine.
As Chaos it originally a mod for arena shooters, we now have to make the whole arena shooter.
A UT/Quake style experience is the core, so any bored or lost UT4 devs would be very welcome to help make it happen faster.
The long term plan is a full Chaos game in its own right, but for now the aim is to release something close to Chaos UT4.
With enough help we could easily beat Epics schedule for UT if it comes back.
Feel free to step forward with any UE4 or UT4 dev skills to make it happen and put you name in the gaming history book.
Since UT4 development started, ID software beat Epic to the punch, and the new Quake arena experience hit all the right buttons.
However against the backdrop of other games, even this mighty beast is not the big product that Q3A was.
Raw lean arena shooters now appeal more to the competitive and old-school gamers, not the casual gamers.
Even if UT4 is completed it will not be a big name.
In the time the ChaosUT4 mod has been developing, we have seen a few of our ideas (actually they were my ideas) turn up in other games and prove to be popular.
Chaos could have been the magic mod that made UT4 into a more watchable visual feast, for non players.
Now we have the struggle to find our own player-base, so when Chaos happens it will look very cool and have plenty of comedy moments to share with friends, but without compromising a good old fashioned competitive team game.