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Why is Unreal Engine 4 taking over Japan?

C

CLEEK

Member
UE3 was a blight on last gen. You could spot games that used the engine a mile away, and so many games suffered from the same 'UE3' look. Plus is normally came with performance issues. Especially on PS3, where UE3 was pretty much a guarantee of horrible screen tear.

The best thing about UE4 is that I don't know if games are using it or not. It seems to have freed the artists to create the look of the game without being restricted by engine requirements.
 
S

Shahed

Member
If stuff like Panta Rhei and Luminous are taking resources away from Square and Capcom, I wish they'd just abandon them. Yes a lot of recources have already gone into them, but sometimes it's better to just cut your losses and move on to something that is more viable and doesn't bog down development
 
O

Orayn

Member
SPE said:
UE3 was a blight on last gen. You could spot games that used the engine a mile away, and so many games suffered from the same 'UE3' look. Plus is normally came with performance issues. Especially on PS3, where UE3 was pretty much a guarantee of horrible screen tear.

The best thing about UE4 is that I don't know if games are using it or not. It seems to have freed the artists to create the look of the game without being restricted by engine requirements.
Click to expand...

I dunno if you can really blame the engine for artists sticking close to the "default" look. That look also happened to be in vogue during the earlier part of last-gen, so it turned out to be a good fit in a misguided sort of way. Slightly later games like Borderlands and Alice: Madness Returns showed that you can do a lot more with UE3 than shiny metal corridors and washed out stone surfaces.
 
N

Neoxon

Junior Member
SPE said:
UE3 was a blight on last gen. You could spot games that used the engine a mile away, and so many games suffered from the same 'UE3' look. Plus is normally came with performance issues. Especially on PS3, where UE3 was pretty much a guarantee of horrible screen tear.

The best thing about UE4 is that I don't know if games are using it or not. It seems to have freed the artists to create the look of the game without being restricted by engine requirements.
Click to expand...
maxresdefault.jpg
 
Vire

Vire

Member
What's amazing to me is that Unreal Tournament isn't even the best looking UE4 game.

This absolutely wasn't the case in the last generation where Gears of War clearly was a leg up on all other UE3 games given the extensive knowledge Epic had of the engine. It shows that the tools and foundation are in a much better place than the previous generation.
 
V

Valkerionseven

Member
Aeana said:
While true, it's something they did not have for UE3 to begin with. Which is why the Japanese games that did use UE3 earlier on last generation produced such poor results.
Click to expand...

The Last Remnant on 360 was probably the first or one of the most early signs of trouble with UE3 over there. It would almost seem like it takes more work to make a UE3 game run poorly than run well.
 
O

Orayn

Member
Vire said:
What's amazing to me is that Unreal Tournament isn't even the best looking UE4 game.

This absolutely wasn't the case in the last generation where Gears of War clearly was a leg up on all other UE3 games given the extensive knowledge Epic had of the engine. It shows that the tools and foundation are in a much better place than the previous generation.
Click to expand...

UT is being developed by a skeleton crew who are focusing on mechanics first and leaning pretty heavily on the community for some things. The few levels where they have polished up the visuals are absolutely stunning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li0OCzVqjOU

But you're right, it's a sign that the engine is off to a good start and it doesn't take a ton of first party expertise to make an impressive-looking game with it.
 
I

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
SPE said:
UE3 was a blight on last gen. You could spot games that used the engine a mile away, and so many games suffered from the same 'UE3' look. Plus is normally came with performance issues. Especially on PS3, where UE3 was pretty much a guarantee of horrible screen tear.
Click to expand...

Unreal engine middleware allowed a ton of developers who did not have engine tools early last gen to work on games.

I think it was a good solution in the end.
 
H

HerroRygar

Member
Vire said:
Makes you wonder what last generation would have been like if Japan didn't try and do everything in-house. It's a shame that Final Fantasy XV is still using that piece of shit luminous engine.

Words cannot express how happy I am that Japanese games appear to be making a renaissance. Unreal 4 is an amazing tool and I've been incredibly impressed with results in games so far.
Click to expand...

To be fair, Luminous is damn gorgeous; it's just killing them to try to develop it while simultaneously building a very demanding game on top of it.
 
Vire

Vire

Member
Orayn said:
UT is being developed by a skeleton crew who are focusing on mechanics first and leaning pretty heavily on the community for some things. The few levels where they have polished up the visuals are absolutely stunning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li0OCzVqjOU

But you're right, it's a sign that the engine is off to a good start and it doesn't take a ton of first party expertise to make an impressive-looking game with it.
Click to expand...

Oh don't get me wrong the new UT looks beautiful and I understand that footage is still pre-alpha, I just find some other games so far using the engine just as impressive, if not more so.
 
R

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
Lathentar said:
Of course they were shocked about MK. They basically rewrote/stripped out a huge amount of UE3 in order to get it to run at 60. I'm curious if it was worth it at that point.

With the evaluations I've done of UE4, they still have a very high performance floor. It's been a few updates since I've looked at it though. Not sure what it will take to get that floor down, maybe an explosion of VR?
Click to expand...
I know they've recently added a lot of VR features lately. Not sure if that had an impact on performance.

Vire said:
Oh don't get me wrong the new UT looks beautiful and I understand that footage is still pre-alpha, I just find some other games so far using the engine just as impressive, if not more so.
Click to expand...
It shows that the old rule of devs not shipping on UE before Epic isn't necessary this gen.
 
I

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
Renekton said:
Can UE4 do Dark Souls 3 well?

There has to be a reason FROM insisted on own slightly-wonky engine.
Click to expand...

Using your own engine can also give you much more control over how you want the game to be in terms of everything from look to physics. It may not be more cost effective to start over with a middleware engine and then basically modify it enough until it matches your previous style instead of just going with that engine you already had, if the tools are suffecient
 
RoadHazard

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Orayn said:
I dunno if you can really blame the engine for artists sticking close to the "default" look. That look also happened to be in vogue during the earlier part of last-gen, so it turned out to be a good fit in a misguided sort of way. Slightly later games like Borderlands and Alice: Madness Returns showed that you can do a lot more with UE3 than shiny metal corridors and washed out stone surfaces.
Click to expand...

Mirror's Edge is one of the best-looking UE3 games IMO, and one that very much managed to hide the fact it was even using it.
 
M

Mrbob

Member
Epic is saving the console Japan games industry with UE4.

I know that is hyperbole but it seems true to an extent. I'm guessing it is the combination of great Japanese documentation alongside easy to use and low cost tools.
 
P

Philippo

Member
And i must say it suits japanese aesthetics very well.
SFV,KHIII and DQXI looks so godd they look like perfectly animated action figures.
And GG Xrd looks like an anime.

Truly impressive start.
 
W

WhiteRabbitEXE

Member
plasmawave said:
I guess that looks alright for an open world game from 2006?

Not really tho.
Click to expand...

I checked on IGN and that image is dated July 24, 2005. The build is probably even older than that and likely pretty early in development. All things considered it's not terrible. Doesn't look much worse than a lot of games the 360 actually launched with.
 
G

GrantDaNasty

Member
Ease-of-use, good Japanese language documentation and support, cheaper and less arduous than making a proprietary game engine.

I know people like to rag about UE3 games looking or "feeling" the same, but that is all a matter of creativity, you can make a game engine look and sound and do anything if you got the time and creativity for it. And frankly, I'd much rather that developers spend time making games rather than figuring out the framework that would hold it together.
 
W

WhiteRabbitEXE

Member
gdt said:
Luminous is dead as fuck IMO.
Click to expand...

Honestly, it is. Doesn't even matter if it's good. It's always going to be much, much more expensive than licensing UE4, and with UE4 already powering Dragon Quest XI, Kingdom Heart III, and multiple unannounced games Luminous is DOA.
 
T

The Baron Count

Member
Ke0 said:
That's because UE3 had a lot of "required to render" shaders, that and some of them were coupled together. Like for a number of years you couldn't get bloom without that very very very very very very very very poor fake "DoF" implementation that ended up just looking like haze.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, is that the case?

I've been trying to look into UE3 and it's characteristics a little bit lately and it's surprisingly difficult to find a lot of info on stuff like that these days specifically the version games were using in 2006-2007. UE4 dominates every search I do.

I was always curious about that DoF effect in games running early iterations of the engine.
 
R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
It seems Epic establishing an entire Japanese wing specifically for helping Japanese developers use Unreal has finally paid off. I remember Cliff Bleszinski hyping up the establishment of Epic Japan for this very reason years ago. It was like the middle of last gen around 2007 or something. It seems like Epic is the only middleware company that has put a lot of effort into attracting Japanese developers.

I personally think it's a shame Crytek didn't do the same. I'd love to see CryEngine render something with actual good art other than jungles and cities, but all we've got from that are Monster Hunter Online and I think some Korean MMOs. UE4 looks amazing though. Definitely competitive with CryEngine in the right hands.

Now it seems only the biggest western publishers are still building their own in-house engines along with a few really talented indie developers.

SPE said:
UE3 was a blight on last gen. You could spot games that used the engine a mile away, and so many games suffered from the same 'UE3' look. Plus is normally came with performance issues. Especially on PS3, where UE3 was pretty much a guarantee of horrible screen tear.
Click to expand...

I think this was true mostly until around 2008. After that we started getting much more diverse-looking UE3 games I couldn't immediately tell ran on UE3: Mass Effect, Mirror's Edge, Guilty Gear, Mortal Kombat 9, etc.
 
H

HerroRygar

Member
WhiteRabbitEXE said:
Honestly, it is. Doesn't even matter if it's good. It's always going to be much, much more expensive than licensing UE4, and with UE4 already powering Dragon Quest XI, Kingdom Heart III, and multiple unannounced games Luminous is DOA.
Click to expand...

I dunno. Still think the next Final Fantasy might be built on Luminous...gotta recoup that sunk cost.
 
F

Felix Lighter

Member
TouchMyBox said:
I think I'm the only person on the internet who likes IdTech. :(
Click to expand...

The capped framerate, the texture pop in, the notorious texture compression needed to keep the game sizes within reason and, this is only anecdotal, but it seems that pc games built on it have more than their share of technical and performance related issues. I think it's great for a game targeting 60 fps on consoles but it comes with unnecessary baggage on PC.
 
Vire

Vire

Member
HerroRygar said:
To be fair, Luminous is damn gorgeous; it's just killing them to try to develop it while simultaneously building a very demanding game on top of it.
Click to expand...

Oh sure, it may be damn gorgeous on some $3000 rig, but FFXV runs like hot doo doo on consoles, is 900p and has awful anti-aliasing to boot.

That game needs some serious work in the tech department from here till launch.
 
S

Sciz

Member
RoadHazard said:
Mirror's Edge is one of the best-looking UE3 games IMO, and one that very much managed to hide the fact it was even using it.
Click to expand...

IIRC they completely ripped out the default lighting code so they could replace it with a third party GI solution.
 
T

The Baron Count

Member
Sciz said:
IIRC they completely ripped out the default lighting code so they could replace it with a third party GI solution.
Click to expand...

Yeah, they and quite a few others were using Illuminate Lab's lighting systems last gen. Dunno where that company is at right now.

Haven't seen their stuff in a while.
 
B

benzy

Member
Vire said:
Oh sure, it may be damn gorgeous on some $3000 rig, but FFXV runs like hot doo doo on consoles, is 900p and has awful anti-aliasing to boot.

That game needs some serious work in the tech department from here till launch.
Click to expand...

Not sure what you're expecting from an unoptimized demo of an open world game? Release a KH3 demo right now and I bet it'll have significant frame dips too.
 
L

LogN

Member
As others have mentioned, it has great Japanese support now. And on top of that, they've realized that they don't need to sink money I to developing an engine for years when there's one readily available. It used to be that the Japanese built the best of everything, the playing field has leveled and they finally get a chance to use western tech :)
 
R

Renekton

Member
Felix Lighter said:
The capped framerate, the texture pop in, the notorious texture compression needed to keep the game sizes within reason and, this is only anecdotal, but it seems that pc games built on it have more than their share of technical and performance related issues. I think it's great for a game targeting 60 fps on consoles but it comes with unnecessary baggage on PC.
Click to expand...
Gotta give it some credit, it ran 60fps on consoles/toasters while looking better than MW at the time, plus variety of textures.
 
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