Too Human Dropping Unreal Engine?

[bapenguin]

IGN (http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/725/725323p1.html) has an interesting rumor, Too Human for the XBox 360 is dropping the Unreal Engine due to technical difficulties. Wha? According to the report, Silicon Knights is finding Epic's next-gen engine isn't performing sufficiently on the Xbox 360. The reports suggest Silicon Knights is now building its own engine for the title.

I think Gears of War has something to say about sufficient performance. If this is true we won't be seeing this game until 2008!

Update: Something interesting...I had a developer who wishes to remain anonymous tell me this:We use the Unreal 3 engine for our titles and it is very difficult to work with. Frankly, we are rewriting just about as much of it as we possibly can. It does have a good renderer, but the renderer is very slow (probably too slow for anything besides a few guys and a static environment). Even the unreal guys have turned off a number of the features that are in the renderer that they used to sell the game to executive teams. The internal engineering of the code is a total disaster (bloated, non-existent documentation, different coding styles through-out, tons of hack code that has stayed around). There is a real opportunity for someone to write a good licensed engine in the future and steal most of their clients. I think a vast majority of the programmers who use the unreal engine feel the same way.

I know there's something like 25 games in development on the engine...but could we see more (if this is even true) dropping UE3 too? Is this a case of Next-Gen engines just getting too complicated?

[Savok]

They only worked this out now? You'd think before diving into the thing they'd push it to breaking point to see how much room they had to play with.

[Borys]

Interesting.

There's one platform that has enough juice for anything you throw on it UE3 or not:

PC

I always love to point this out (straight from UE3 technology (http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/technology/ue30.shtml) site):

We are authoring most character and world normal maps and texture maps at 2048x2048 resolution. We feel this is a good target for games running on mid-range PC's in the 2006 timeframe. Next-generation consoles may require reducing texture resolution by 2X, and low-end PC's up to 4X, depending on texture count and scene complexity.

Can you imagine how much better Gears would looks on a DX10, Vista PC?

I can.

[Gel214th]

I'm sure we will get Gears of War on the PC, as well as most other Xbox360 games that would lend itself to the platform. I believe that's the goal of Microsoft with VISTA.

Sure would be good for the PC Industry if they can target the youths asking daddy for a PC to play games (and do homework...and wordprocessing etc. of course! ;-) ).

Unreal Engine is such an established platform that I have difficulty believing they would have dropped the ball with UE3.

[Lunar Blue]

I'm calling bullshit, no way they would drop it this late (?) in production.

[bapenguin]

I know a few Silicon Knights guys visit the site. Maybe they can (if allowed) inform us. Of if you wanna send me a PM I can update the story anonymously.

[Vandenh]

"Can you imagine how much better Gears would looks on a DX10, Vista PC?"

Vista isn't even out yet. Ofc it will look better than any console... PCs have always had the edge but of course are a bit pricier ;)

Anyway... I am getting a new Core 2 Duo en of the year.... can't wait to see PC games at full spec again ;)

Too Human dropping engine? Possible... a lot of people said the framerate was iffy at best. Maybe UE isn't made for the gameplay they want?

[Mike Jones]

Good damage control to mask the fact that Too Human look like a steaming pile of turd at E3 and was a total embarrasment. At least if the graphics aren't up to par the gameplay is coming along nicely

http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=10931&type=mov&pl=game

:D

[soco]

Interesting.
Can you imagine how much better Gears would looks on a DX10, Vista PC?



Can you imagine how much cooler the game would look if they waited 10 years and released it on windows 2016 and DX14?

I Can, and then i remember how i barely notice these things in fast-moving games, and how the gameplay is more important :D

~~~~

i've read this rumour floating around and i'm pretty hesitant to believe that it's true. according to previous interviews they'd heavily modified the engine to try and fit their cinematic camera in there, but the game still appeared to be on track for a release this year, so i can't imagine them just realizing now that it sucks so much that they can't repair it a few months before it should be released. i'd be rather surprised if they did this, but stranger things have happened.

[pheriannath]

I hold out hope that Too Human ends up being good. However, I want to see an Eternal Darkness sequel!

[EvilBob46]

I think Gears of War has something to say about sufficient performance.

Well, here is a quote from Advanced Media Network:

This is not the first we have heard in regards to developers having trouble developing software using the Unreal Engine 3. For months now, we have heard stories that the engine is not easy to work with and is very buggy. See here. (http://360.advancedmn.com/article.php?artid=7954&preview=1579)

Care to comment?

[bapenguin]

Well, here is a quote from Advanced Media Network:

See here. (http://360.advancedmn.com/article.php?artid=7954&preview=1579)

Care to comment?

I don't know enough about it...but when I see big titles like Gears of War and Mass Effect that are using it, and it looks and runs good I don't see what the issue could be for Silicon Knights. Of course...this could all be fluff.

[Eran Hawke]

Maybe the engine didn't fit the size and scope of the world they were trying to create, or maybe it didn't fit the type of gameplay.

I have a lot of respect for companies that can admit when something isn't working and change direction. Some companies can never admit ever doing anything wrong and end up making shitty products, despite common sense. Sony's PSP and PS3 come to mind.

More power to people making the right decisions, even if they are a little late.

[Frogleg Special]

Oh, noe' more delay.

Anyway do Mass Effect and Too Human kinda have the same story of flesh versus machine?

[BenN1ce]

Good damage control to mask the fact that Too Human look like a steaming pile of turd at E3 and was a total embarrasment. At least if the graphics aren't up to par the gameplay is coming along nicely

http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=10931&type=mov&pl=game

:D

Wow they need to improve the Devil May Cry knockoff gameplay. It looks terrible :(

[Nimos]

I wonder where SK income comes from ....and after this, ' will come from'.

Nintendo ?

[Balthasar]

After seeing those clips of the game back before E3, then hearing from people that actually got to see the game live how shaky the development was, to now hearing that their dropping the engine the game is running on--am I out of line in saying this game is turning into something of a disaster? I'm no programmer, so I won't pretend to have programmer knowledge, but isn't doing something as drastic as dropping the engine your entire game runs on almost as bad as starting over? Where's Draft to defend this game?

[Borys]

Can you imagine how much cooler the game would look if they waited 10 years and released it on windows 2016 and DX14?

I Can, and then i remember how i barely notice these things in fast-moving games, and how the gameplay is more important :D

Ooooh, buuuuuuuuuuuuurn.

[51|RandoM]

I don't know enough about it...but when I see big titles like Gears of War and Mass Effect that are using it, and it looks and runs good I don't see what the issue could be for Silicon Knights. Of course...this could all be fluff.

Could just be a matter of not being able to do what they thought they'd be able to do with the engine. Too Human looks like a game that would play much faster than either Gears of War or Mass Effect, which would make it far less forgiving in the framerate department.

Dropping Unreal and deciding to create your own engine seems a bit drastic, though. Do devs like this just have people conveniently laying around who can whip up an engine of equal or better quality than Unreal in the blink of an eye?

Wonder how engine licensing works? Have they paid for Unreal already? Is it tied to a specific game, or maybe they've got a 1-game license that they can apply to another title? Kind of curious how that stuff works.

[Royal Fool]

I don't think this is true, at least not when I see how complete the game is at this stage. Are SK not able to properly modify the engine for their own uses?

It's just plain weird. And the news source is not a very reliable one. Unless SK are planning on making Too Human into another Duke Nukem Forever, this must be bullshit.

[antoniogaud]

Good damage control to mask the fact that Too Human look like a steaming pile of turd at E3 and was a total embarrasment. At least if the graphics aren't up to par the gameplay is coming along nicely

http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=10931&type=mov&pl=game

:D

I hate to disagree, but that video was sad. The backgrounds look nice and all, but the stiffness and lackluster gameplay is the definition of rigor-mortis. The camera is so far back that your character looks like a flea.

This game has BIG problems. I hate it when game companies talk up their games into the stratosphere only to show a routine hack and slash. Until I see something better from this game, I am grouping this game with PS3's Untold Legends POS.

[Sinistar]

Oh, noe' more delay.
Anyway do Mass Effect and Too Human kinda have the same story of flesh versus machine?

They do have similar storylines in that respect. But, as was reported today (which may or may not be true) one game has been delayed and the other game looks simply amazing. Perhaps the reasons for moving to new engine was more damage control as someone else mentioned ... sort of like "our source code has been stolen from our servers, we'll need 18 more months until we deliver a final game...".

[dragntyr]

This game seems to become more and more likely a total failure by the minute. I can hardly believe this game is from the same folks that brought us Eternal Darkness.

[Baron Samedi]

Yet another attempt by Silicon Knights to drag their feet.

[Mike Jones]

This game has BIG problems. I hate it when game companies talk up their games into the stratosphere only to show a routine hack and slash. Until I see something better from this game, I am grouping this game with PS3's Untold Legends POS.

The difference is there are zero expectations for Untold Legends...and that game is actually playable ;) They don't have some dipshit named Dyack pre planning a trilogy claiming the camera system will change gaming forever.

[Borys]

Back on topic: is it true that MS gave ~100M bucks for Too Human Trilogy? (funded in advance)?

[Guy Mariano]

Back on topic: is it true that MS gave ~100M bucks for Too Human Trilogy? (funded in advance)?

Highly unlikely and totally retarded if so. Do you know any game that cost 33 million each to make? I don't.

[Borys]

Highly unlikely and totally retarded if so. Do you know any game that cost 33 million each to make? I don't.

MS dumped $10M (some sources say $8M other $12M) on Sickonaughts and that was a previous gen game.

[xanthome]

The Unreal engine has overpromised an underdelivered, Mark Rein is an expert at selling to the suits based on fear...

Epic is not a console house, they're a PC house. There's lots of angry devs out there that are pissed at Epic right now. I was expecting a class action lawsuit, but I guess some devs starting to realize that it's not impossible to build your own engine.

BTW There wasn't a single unreal powered game running on the PS3 during E3 (and some of those games were supposed to be launch, ouch!).

[Guy Mariano]

MS dumped $10M (some sources say $8M other $12M) on Sickonaughts and that was a previous gen game.

I have never heard of Sickonaughts but that's alot of money. Regardless it looks like it will be "Too Human Forever".

[Borys]

I have never heard of Sickonaughts but that's alot of money. Regardless it looks like it will be "Too Human Forever".

*sigh* it's Psychonauts.

[Royal Fool]

*sigh* it's Psychonauts.
A genuine 'LOL' from me here.

[Hellstorm]

Nintendo calls it again.

[Phades]

Too Human delayed? Noooo, that's never happened before. This game has only been scheduled for what, 3 consoles now?

[Rook34]

I hold out hope that Too Human ends up being good. However, I want to see an Eternal Darkness sequel!

I second that!

Too Human is standing in the way of ED! Move already! C'mon Dyack, cut your losses and recoup them with ED. TH has been in production now for HOW long?

[jeffbax]

Oh, noe' more delay.

Anyway do Mass Effect and Too Human kinda have the same story of flesh versus machine?
Er.. no. Mass Effect is a giant galaxy-wide space RPG involving a race of beings that kills like the galaxy every 10,000 years or something.

Too Human is all wrapped up in norse mythology and a more action orientated game focused on holding on to your "humanity" in light of things like cybernetic enhancements etc a la Deus Ex. Robots being in both != same story. Not at all.

[The_Darr]

TH has been in production now for HOW long?

I'm not positive, but I think it was originally for the PS1...

[pavlovscow]

Between Gears of War and Mass Effect, I would think that the engine could support a 360 game. Considering the hype of Too Human, I would wager that no engine will ever be able to support its amazing promises.

[Balthasar]

Between Gears of War and Mass Effect, I would think that the engine could support a 360 game. Considering the hype of Too Human, I would wager that no engine will ever be able to support its amazing promises.
Why does the board look like absolute ass? That's what I want to know.

[HALO 32]

i also call bullshit on this, because they say that its close to being done along with all the issues with the E3 demo are going to be fixed MANY monthes before release

plus if they are going to delay this game...again, well...there is plenty of other games out there that want my money

[Mason]

This is certainly interesting. And SK aren't necessarily insane, it's wrong to assume that such experienced professionals simply wouldn't have a clue what they're doing.

Working in any sort of framework has its advantages and disadvantages. You don't have to rewrite a lot of common functionality, but you have to live with someone else's assumptions/bugs/hacks/failure to document. Spending less time on low-level routines should let you spend more time optimizing your high-level algorithms, but then again the framework's hidden mechanisms can mask performance hits which can be difficult to pin down without extensive profiling. And if your goal falls particularly far beyond the scope of the framework, you can get all of the drawbacks with little of the benefit.

None of us know whether or not this was a good decision for SK, but ditching UE3 isn't necessarily a mark of madness. The fact that they're willing to recognize and respond to Too Human's lackluster progress indicates some sort of connection to reality. Given how bad it looked at E3, it's weird that anyone would see this in a negative light. Now TH theoretically has a chance to succeed, while before its only future prospect was to see how low game reviewers were willing to dip into the sub-50% range.

[EGO]

If the 360 can't handle a clunky Devil May Cry clone, then the world's in trouble and we should all start belieiving the marketing-BS spewed by all the fanboys of other consoles. :p

SillyCon Nites just suck. They take A MILLION YEARS to do "okay" games on starved platforms. Really, what have they done?!?!?

* Blood Omen on PSX? They took a million years to do that and Crystal Dynamics had to bail them out, then they were fired from their own series!
* Dark Legions, Cyber Empires, Fantasy Empires, etc. A bunch of crap RPG's nobody's heard of?
* Eternal Darkness? They only took a million years and 2 platforms to get that one out.
* Metal Gear Solid? A port/remix? Using models and a style already set by another game on another platform? Wow, there's a bunch of devs to watch!
* The Horde? Kirk Cameron... 'nuff said. :p

[EGO]

Also, if they didn't suck and were actually responding to Too Human's shit performance (which they only brought on themselves), why did it take so long to come to that decision?

If I were a dev, I wouldn't have shown such sub-standard crap on the floor and I wouldn't wait 3 months to blame it on an engine that I should've done due-dilligence on to begin with!

SillyCon Nites are clowns and I don't understand why people get all warm and fuzzy for their lameness.

[Xerxes]

Unreal Engine probably isn't right for a 3rd person DMC clone. Although Xbox could use one.

[Hellstorm]

If I were a dev, I wouldn't have shown such sub-standard crap on the floor and I wouldn't wait 3 months to blame it on an engine that I should've done due-dilligence on to begin with!


But you aren't a dev, and you don't know what it is like when MS spends $50+ million on you (some of which probably ended up in Nintendo's bank account) then puts a gun to your head and says, "Show something or else."

Unless you are Miyamoto, Kojima, or some other indivdual with clout, you aren't going to say no to your publisher, nor can you fight them. SK isn't Epic, or Bungie; developers that can dictate to a publisher.

[soco]

They took a million years <snip> They only took a million years <snip>

wtf does that matter? look how long we wait for other games that end up being pretty awesome. the fact that something took a long time, so long as it's enjoyable, and many of those games are generally liked, if not loved in the case of ED. besides, getting 'fired' by CD can be viewed as nothing but a compliment, especially when they moved on to work with 2 of the most revered names in game design to date.

it's hard to imagine them getting the oppurtunity out of sheer luck.

and where are you guys getting these figures from? 100m & 50m? maybe i'm crazy, but i'm doubting both of those numbers are heavily inflated. i'm guessing MS just gave them, at most, 10m, and some nice publishing terms. i'm betting the option to give more, if the first part is a success was part of the contract, and the amount wasn't a giant lump sum.

i'll be willing to bet that if the game is delayed, that it's probably for another reason, and switching the engine, is just one of several things they're doing to try to remedy those problems. (failed camera system? :D) although if anonymous reports on the net are to be believed, as some people seem to be doing about this, the 'word' is that Epic isn't giving any support to the other companies on consoles and that they're focused on GoW at the moment. lest we not forget the aborted FCK, which was gonna be the first to use the engine.

[51|RandoM]

SK isn't Epic, or Bungie; developers that can dictate to a publisher.

Isn't Bungie effectively owned by their publisher at this point? :p

[Borys]

Funny comment I saw on other forum:

Oh man I actually feel bad for Microsoft now, and that's a hard thing to do.

[Oddmaker]

Wow! This was a surprise!

[F3nyx]

Isn't Bungie effectively owned by their publisher at this point? :pYes, but Microsoft is smart enough to give them relatively free rein (except that Bungie has been forbidden from consorting with the Mac).

I don't know enough about it...but when I see big titles like Gears of War and Mass Effect that are using it, and it looks and runs good I don't see what the issue could be for Silicon Knights. Of course...this could all be fluff.I wouldn't exactly cite Gears of War as evidence of Unreal Engine 3's adequacy. Epic wasn't about to license somebody else's engine :p However, your point is still valid: UE3 is being used for Brothers in Arms 3, America's Army 3, Lineage 3, Huxley, Stranglehold, and Rainbox Six Vegas.

[Siraris]

Too Human delayed? Noooo, that's never happened before. This game has only been scheduled for what, 3 consoles now?

The cycle is almost complete! Sony -> Nintendo -> MS -> Sony.

THE END IS NIGH!

[Siraris]

On the discussion of UE3/GoW etc. Does anyone notice the lack of screenshots for Gears of War? For being hailed as the second coming of console games, there's very little media on the game. I count 10-12 ingame screenshots on IGN and 3 in-game videos. For a game that is supposed to be coming out in September or October, there's very little media that I have seen.

[valdirfv]

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a390/fitbabits/BanHammer.jpg

BANNED!

[DeadScreenSky]

I can't see them giving up the entire engine, but I could definitely see them rewriting the graphics renderer. That's a big task, but not so big it would be impossible, especially on the X360. It wouldn't be unusual either: the Splinter Cell series has been doing the same thing with the Unreal engine for several games now, and that's just one major example. The upcoming sequel is still using Unreal Engine 2 even, but they've changed the renderer so significantly you wouldn't know by looking at it.

I'm not sure why people think UE3 runs great, especially for an action game. There hasn't been one console game revealed yet that has even shown a steady 30 framerate (including Gears of War), and for a game like Too Human you would really want a solid 60 (like Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry have). UE3 also doesn't support the built-in antialiasing capabilities of the X360, effectively wasting a huge amount of GPU transistors (this is a design issue, so it can't be fixed). And Too Human is planning on having large groups of enemies involved in many battles, which is something that UE3 simply doesn't do a good job with. Writing a less fancy but more streamlined graphics renderer for Too Human would make a lot of sense.

Back on topic: is it true that MS gave ~100M bucks for Too Human Trilogy? (funded in advance)?
No, it isn't true. This was a number a Gamespy editor pulled out of his ass for a newspaper article (and you know how great mainstream journalism is at getting videogames, right? :p ). I suspect this was an estimate they threw together that combined expected advertising costs, which is still high then but not absurd. Often you spend more on advertising then you do development. But there was no real context given to this apparently imaginary number whatsoever.

[Jayo]

Am I the only one who never heared of this game before?

[bapenguin]

On the discussion of UE3/GoW etc. Does anyone notice the lack of screenshots for Gears of War? For being hailed as the second coming of console games, there's very little media on the game. I count 10-12 ingame screenshots on IGN and 3 in-game videos. For a game that is supposed to be coming out in September or October, there's very little media that I have seen.

Well they did have the game on a huge screen with 10 minutes of realtime gameplay at E3 as well as hands-on multiplayer at the show.

[TheHulk]

Dude, I'd have to look hard to find games much more fun than the original Blood Omen and Eternal Darkness. Those games were just plain fun!

[Siraris]

Well they did have the game on a huge screen with 10 minutes of realtime gameplay at E3 as well as hands-on multiplayer at the show.

Well unfortunately, I wasn't at E3 this year, so that doesn't really help me.

[Grifter]

On the discussion of UE3/GoW etc. Does anyone notice the lack of screenshots for Gears of War? For being hailed as the second coming of console games, there's very little media on the game. I count 10-12 ingame screenshots on IGN and 3 in-game videos. For a game that is supposed to be coming out in September or October, there's very little media that I have seen.

Funny, we can say the same thing about the PS3 and all 3 of it's games.

[Siraris]

Funny, we can say the same thing about the PS3 and all 3 of it's games.

ROFLMAO

That was so funny man, LOLOL. I mean since I was mentioning the PS3 and all and comparing it to Gears of War.

But since you brought it up, if you want to compare a game that's been in development for years to a system launch, that's fine. You must hold the PS3 in pretty high regard.

And if you go look at Resistance, there's 20+ screenshots available for that game, which is more than I've seen for Gears of War.

I don't know why people have to turn this shit into a pissing contest all the time. I was just mentioning how I haven't seen much of any media on Gears of War, one of the games that are making me want a 360 this fall.

[bboy]

I have to say that I am quite shocked at this news. I always thought that Tim Sweeney and his boys had the most developer friendly and extensible engine on the market. I guess I was led astray by the marketing boys. :mad:

This is a good chance for the Crytek boys to jump and pump their engine to development houses. Make it so! :D

[Majster Wichajster]

Yeah, right... Because you need a fucking leaf renderer.

I completely agree with Mason. Dealing with next-gen you have to know what you're doing if you're considering dropping an engine. This isn't fucking kindergarten. You might compare to the way 3dRealms did with Quake2 engine but there is a whole world of difference here. There are too many Washingtons at stake.

[Zanzibar]

Too Human is all wrapped up in norse mythology and a more action orientated game focused on holding on to your "humanity" in light of things like cybernetic enhancements etc a la Deus Ex.
An animator I knew used the term 'orientated' all the time and it drove me crazy. Isn't it 'oriented'?

EDIT: Aha, well, it's apparently standard in British English, but considered incorrect in the US. (http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/orientate.html)