Unreal Engine 3 on your PC

[Varsity]

Fileplanet (http://www.fileplanet.com/) is hosting a 'tech demo' for RoboHordes (http://www.fileplanet.com/159419/150000/fileinfo/RoboBlitz-Demo-%5BUnreal-3.0-Engine%5D), which to the best of my knowledge is the first public release of an Unreal Engine 3 game for the PC. The demo will apparently only work properly on Hyperthreaded Intel processors, and doesn't even launch on AMD chips. RoboHordes will be available on Xbox Live Arcade in early 2006.

Download at FilePlanet (http://www.fileplanet.com/159419/150000/fileinfo/RoboBlitz-Demo-%5BUnreal-3.0-Engine%5D) (222MB)

I'm running a 3.2GHz HT chip and still had CPU slowdown. My X800 pro couldn't maintain a very high resolution, either. On top of that it doesn't even look very good, with everything having a hideous grey/brown tinge. Gameplay is as shallow as you might expect too. But if you want to get your hands on UE3, this is your best bet.

[Borys]

Since I can't run it on my PC I've got a few questions:

- is every texture normal/ bump/ parallax mapped?
It better damn be.

- is every object Havokable? Is the terrain destructible (deformable)?
It better damn be.

- are there tons of pixel shader stuff like DOF, blur, refraction, reflection etc.?
They better damn be.

- unified lighting system as found in Doom 3? Every object cast a shadow and selfsahdows itself?
It better damn be.

If not this is a waste of download and engine.

[Oblivion]

WTF is with no support for AMD? is this a joke or something?

[Arnage]

I just gave it a try so here are your answers:

- is every texture normal/ bump/ parallax mapped?
didn't see any parallax mapping going on, but everything is bump/normalmapped

- is every object Havokable? Is the terrain destructible (deformable)?
Your robot and the enemies are all controlled by the physics engine, the environment is pretty much static except for a single huge boulder on a stick ( :confused: ) that can be shot down...

- are there tons of pixel shader stuff like DOF, blur, refraction, reflection etc.?
there are no post processing shaders like dof or blur, just some reasonable shaders combined with bad textures on everything

- unified lighting system as found in Doom 3? Every object cast a shadow and selfsahdows itself?
Yup all unified there, but a bit to similar to doom 3, every shadow has got hard, sharp edges unlike the nice soft shadows that should be possible in ue3

If not this is a waste of download and engine.

Combine that with a real tiny environment, bad use of color, crap gameplay, particle fx worse the the original unreal had and you can conclude that it's not really worth it if your bandwith is precious.

On the positive side, it did ran better then i expected on my p4 2.8 with a 6600 gt, which means it was actually playable at 800x600 and nearly so on 1024x768.

[Borys]

I just gave it a try so here are your answers:



Combine that with a real tiny environment, bad use of color, crap gameplay, particle fx worse the the original unreal had and you can conclude that it's not really worth it if your bandwith is precious.

On the positive side, it did ran better then i expected on my p4 2.8 with a 6600 gt, which means it was actually playable at 800x600 and nearly so on 1024x768.

Thanks, Arnage for your input.

Hopefully this is only a very early alpha tech demo because it doesn't sound exactly impressive :(

[Morrolan]

WTF is with no support for AMD? is this a joke or something?
This isn't a PC game, it's coming to the 360. This demo is just to give people a taste of it, so they will buy it on the 360. Since the 360's chipset is made by IBM, I can see why it might not work on AMD chips.

[Varsity]

The terrain deforms, but only very gradually.

[Ernst_Jager]

My Athlon 3700 64 blows my work computer 3.4ghz P4 out of the water.

[Varsity]

My Athlon 3700 64 blows my work computer 3.4ghz P4 out of the water.
Duh. :p

I just spotted the UI: it's the various lights on the robot's back. Should be self-explanatory.

[Suicidal ShiZuru]

So this cant run on AMD systems? Fucking lame, they can take their shit and shove it. Pentiums are trash.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y108/Suicidal_ShiZuru/FranzList.jpg

[Paranoia]

Much easier to get the next gen console to run the friggin Unreal3 engine.

[Steve_Erhardt]

So this cant run on AMD systems? Fucking lame, they can take their shit and shove it. Pentiums are trash.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y108/Suicidal_ShiZuru/FranzList.jpg
Agreed brother!

[Beelzebud]

I'm really suprised Epic would allow the first public unvieling of the UE3 engine to take place in such a way.

[Schnoogs]

My Athlon 3700 64 blows my work computer 3.4ghz P4 out of the water.

Wow...good for you...but not in the case of this game!! ;)

[Schnoogs]

Interesting...

Fired it up and tried it at 1920x1200. Game wasnt choppy it ran in slow motion.

Then I lowered the res to 1280x800 and again the game played like a John Woo slo mo sequence.

I'm use to games framing not slowing down so to speak...its as if the internal game clock is tied to the frame rate.

Graphics seem decent...a little bump mapping here and there. No HDR that I can see.

Not a lot of soft shadowing either.

Hmmm...thinking Gears of War is the best example of Unreal 3!!!

[Phanto]

LOL, remember guys this is a "tech demo" nothing is sure for now, i can almost guarantee that when a game with the Unreal Engine 3 comes out the requires spec will be lower and of course AMD will be supported :)

So don't get too exited and freak out with that silly "tech demo" ;)

[Exodus]

LOL, remember guys this is a "tech demo" nothing is sure for now, i can almost guarantee that when a game with the Unreal Engine 3 comes out the requires spec will be lower and of course AMD will be supported :)

So don't get too exited and freak out with that silly "tech demo" ;)

Some would say, oh hell I would say... Unreal 2 is a tech demo. The Awakening I think it's called?

Yah. Tech Demo. Didn't you get the memo?

[Varsity]

I'm use to games framing not slowing down so to speak...its as if the internal game clock is tied to the frame rate.
You are getting CPU bottleneck. It's smooth because the 3D card is rending fine and amount of processing the CPU has to do doesn't suddenely change.

[Schnoogs]

You are getting CPU bottleneck. It's smooth because the 3D card is rending fine and amount of processing the CPU has to do doesn't suddenely change.

No..thats not correct. Whether the CPU is slow or fast most games use the system clock to determine the synchronization of events and animations.

Don't believe me? Play a game like the original Doom on a 386 and jack the screen size to max. It frames. It does not play in slow motion. 3D acceleration has nothing to do with this because games have framed since the days of Wolfenstein and before.

This game seems to be relying on some internal counter that is tied to the speed of the game loop.

Unusual to say the least.

[SlamDunk]

This isn't a PC game, it's coming to the 360. This demo is just to give people a taste of it, so they will buy it on the 360. Since the 360's chipset is made by IBM, I can see why it might not work on AMD chips.
Nope. This has been available since June as a bundle with Intel HT processors and dates back to April 10th. Intel & Naked Sky decided to release this for the public now, apparently.

The Xbox 360 version might be totally different, or not, who knows...

[Mason]

No, there's really little reason why it would be Intel-only, outside of laziness. They should've hacked together a 360 demo and put it on Live, as a half-assed PC demo isn't too convincing here.

[Varsity]

This game seems to be relying on some internal counter that is tied to the speed of the game loop.
Isn't that more or less what I just said?

[Schnoogs]

Isn't that more or less what I just said?

No...thats not what you said. You said that it was slowing down since the CPU was a bottleneck and that the 3D acceleratorwas doing fine.

This behavior has to do with the game loop and how it determines the passage of time. The slow motion effect could EITHER be caused by the CPU being the bottleneck or the 3D accelerator.

Either way the game loop would be slow.

[Varsity]

It could be the 3D card, but if you have high frames in slomo (which is certainly what I had) it isn't going to be. AFAIK the 3D card is one-way.

[Oddmaker]

Intel only?!?! fookers..

[Pluvious]

Intel only because of Hyperthreading.. like the 360 does.. (3 procs ring a bell?) There is nothing wrong with AMD .. it's just that its using the Hyperthreaded method. As stated in the news info.

Put on your thinking caps...

[Stormwatcher]

Aren't the double core AMD processores already available? AMD CPUs are really kicking Intel's ass.

[Neosho]

Alright, so maybe someone can clear this up for me...i thought that hyperthreading was mainly for multitasking purposes. If that's the case, why is it required for this tech demo?

[feeble]

lol

who are they marketing this game for, i have a strange feeling the pc market is gonna get screwed by this game, as the market for hyperthreaded intel pcs is not very large.

oh well, now to decide to by a $2000 pc which is hyper threaded, or a $400 dollar console.

decisions decisions

[fndarkone]

IGN download manager?! wtf is that shit?! i am getting it currently from gamershell
gamershell mirror (http://www.gamershell.com/download_11856.shtml)

[fndarkone]

lol

who are they marketing this game for, i have a strange feeling the pc market is gonna get screwed by this game, as the market for hyperthreaded intel pcs is not very large.

oh well, now to decide to by a $2000 pc which is hyper threaded, or a $400 dollar console.

decisions decisions
a $400 console that is hard to find!

i think all intel p4 processors that are 2.8 ghz and up are HT. or maybe its just all p4 processors in general. i ant remember.

[The Iron Weasel]

My FX-57 bitch slaps the top of the line Pentium to my knowledge so...yeah this is utter bullshit.

[schizoslayer]

The Unreal Engine has always suffered from having a Framerate dependent clock (although only in specific cases). Poor coding and general unfamiliarity with the engine will result in the slow-down seen.

Also a fun fact: The non-karma physics in Unreal is Framerate dependent meaning that items accelerate faster on higher frame rates. This has no bearing in online games though as the server handles all acceleration so turning off graphics features to gain an advantage in that way will not work.

I'm pretty annoyed that this won't even let me install it on a win2k box though. I still have an irrational dislike of XP.

[bobbler]

For those wondering why its Intel only:

It's a demo made by Intel -- its on their website if you look hard enough... this isn't really from Epic. It's been around for a bit, and I'm not even sure Epic was all that aware it was being released.

If you look at the error screens you can definately tell its not something Epic put together (epics error screens are always incrediblly informative, often naming the function and line of where the shit hit the fan).

[Morratut]

Intel only?!?! fookers..

Now this is funny.

I will wait to play Gears of War on my 360 to see the engine ;)

[rjcc]

jesus christ, do any of you people read?

It's a TECH DEMO. it's to show off hyper threading on intel processors.

not designed for the 360

not going to run on AMD cuz guess what, it's NOT FOR THEM.

not going to be fun because guess what, it's NOT A GAME. it's a tech demo. breathe. step away from the keyboard.

[Neosho]

Hey! some tech demos are damn fun...like the physics ones.

[Varsity]

It's a tech demo for a game that will be sold as one. If they've not nailed gameplay as simple as this yet, it's not unfair to assume they won't ever.