Unigine CEO offers game engine to Wasteland 2 for free

[Lucky]

"The fact that Unigine is now represented mainly by some FPS-like demos, doesn't mean it can't be good engine for top-down/isometric, turn-based RPG. It's more a matter of time and resources to make it do all those things."

My point is that just because it is free does not make it ideal. If the devs think it is, then I have no argument.

[BMF]

Actualy they have allready said they would outsource for the engine. You should realy do a little more research befor arguing your points. InXile has said they have 2 engines they are still looking at to start making WL2 and one of them is Unigine. They have allready decided to go with a 3D engine and just saying otherwise wont make it so.

Link? or quote?

Ill make this extra easy for ya.

http://nma-fallout.com/article.php?id=61315

Push Ctrl F and copy and paste this in: Are you looking to license the Onyx engine from them? Has inXile decided on an engine?

Also I allready Linked Brother None saying it would be so and he is a mod and in the know.

[Lucky]

Thanks for the link, was that so hard?

""Are you looking to license the Onyx engine from them? Has inXile decided on an engine?

BF: We have narrowed it down to 2 engines (not Onyx) and are now running art tests to make sure it can accomplish the look we want. The other important factor is it needs to be set up so that we don't need high level programmers and artists to get the assets in. There will be SO many world states, quests and interactions for the player that we need to be able to throw enough scripters in to capture all the ideas and outcomes. This is critical.""

Looks like story is more important than graphics.

[ButchinMelancholy]

@Lucky: You don't seem to be well informed, about the game and about programming.
First of all, it has been said that they will not develop their own engine, and it's even been evoked in this topic... So yes, they will use a third party engine (like the unigine) and certainly modify it at their convenience.
Then, an engine is only some code and a set of tools, not the assets. So you can basically use it the way you want, and some engines permits to develop diametrically opposite kind of games. Just look at the list of games using unigine, you have some STR, FPS, RPG and many others.
An engine doesn't determine the kind of game you will be able to develop, it's not some mod tools...

And there is no need to oppose graphics and story etc... The game has to have graphics, in fact, and it will be some decent stuff, as everyone certainly want here.

[Lucky]

@Lucky: You doesn't seem to be well informed, about the game and about programming.

Never claimed that i was. But, i am a backer who played the original and many of Interplays games. I am old school and I am not a game designer or someone who hopes to be one.

First of all, it has been said that they will not develop their own engine, and it's even been evoked in this topic... So yes, they will use a third party engine (like the unigine) and certainly modify it at their convenience.

I stand corrected, I was not aware of that until a few minutes ago.

Then, an engine is only some code and a set of tools, not the assets. So you can basically use it the way you want, and some engines permits to develop diametrically opposite kind of games. Just look at the list of games using unigine, you have some STR, FPS, RPG and many others.
An engine doesn't determine the kind of game you will be able to develop, it's not some mod tools...

BF stated in the interview about the game engine that a critical component will be ease of use for the programmers, not how good it looks.

[BMF]

BF stated in the interview about the game engine that a critical component will be ease of use for the programmers, not how good it looks.

When your using a good engine the two go hand in hand.

[ButchinMelancholy]

BF stated in the interview about the game engine that a critical component will be ease of use for the programmers, not how good it looks.

Of course, and that's why they're discussing it. But this has nothing to do with the fact that unigine is 3D and has been used for realtime 3D games up to now (which will not prevent the game to be what it is supposed to be, that's what is important to understand, because it seems to me that you don't really for now), because they will not use an outdated engine just to save a couple of thousand dollars which they certainly have for it (thanks to us ).

[ua_equals_42]

I am a programmer and I would like to say it is ridicously easy to make a game engine be turn based. If the game engine is fast enough to handle real time, it is more than fast enough to pause the action for the player to give orders.

[bloodyDziq]

I hope you are not planning to create you're own engine

Why not use UnrealEngine3 (imho, best game engine out there right now) for WL2

[vudu]

Because Unreal 3 was made with first person games in mind, so everything looks great and super detailed in camera's near distance, but there are some characteristic problems (such as texture popping) which may render it inappropriate for a top-down game which doesn't need objects and textures shown so close and detailed.

Unigine seems to handle very fast top-down camera movement nicely, so if it's flexible enough to support extending via scripting languages (e.g. Python and LUA) which can ease mission scripting, dialog handling etc at great extent (similar to Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines, which utilized Half-Life 2 engine but used Python for quest scripting, character attributes etc), it should be the prime candidate for W2 engine.

[Rascal]

Unigine looks great!!!
I would love to see W2 build on that engine.
On one side its veery nice from Unigine guys that they are offering it for free for W2 but also they would promote their product very much in the same time. I think its a win win deal for both sides.

For all guys worried about 3d/unigine.
Engine is just a "tool" one tool gives u more possibilities than other, one is less buggy, better optimized, offering better graphic effects etc.
How the game gona look itself depends ONLY from developers who will build all models/textures from scratch, set suitable graphic effects/lights/shadows/shaders etc. So from presented unigine videos really one thing u can judge is that its a nice engine with big potential!

[Skirge]

Here's a video of the 3D engine Black Isle was working on for the original Fallout 3. Clearly, a 3D engine can do turn-based, isometric.

[The Swede]

I hope you are not planning to create you're own engine

Why not use UnrealEngine3 (imho, best game engine out there right now) for WL2

Because it is bloody expensive to get the version needed.

[Brigand231]

Possibly where some of the confusion might be coming in is the definition of "top down". The literal definition of top down merely requires that the perspective be from above looking down. If you go by the definition offered at wikipedia (yes, I know they don't always speak with authority, I quote them as this is where alot of people look first) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_graphics you could argue isometric and top down are two different things and mutually exclusive.

We don't know if Brian had that entry in mind when he said what he said or if he simply meant a perspective that looks down from something like 60 degress or greater. My personal guess is that he would consider isometric and similar to also be top down. If so, the video most of us have watched now of Oil Rush actually demonstrates a top down experience.

Edit: Sorry. I don't know how to couch some text in there to make the url look pretty and all.

[Madzookeeper]

although the angle leaves a bit to be desired... it really needed to be about ten degrees higher up i think.

[Yutty]

@ 39 secs i would consider that pretty much top down with a very slight angle. Then it zooms into a isometric view for the majority of the video. Mr Fargo said that he wanted the gameplay to play out at a much higher level so we could get a sense of scale of the world and zoom in without loading a instance for combat.

The uni engine demonstrates it can easily do exactly that at 39 secs. inXile can adjust the camera to whatever zoom they feel fit cause in the oil vid i'd say it was zoomed in too close for the top down view and the most of the video.

[vudu]

Engine type doesn't have to do anything with camera type or support for real-time or turn-based combat. Engine merely draws things on the screen, manages how objects look and move etc. Since it's a 3D engine, you can move and fixate the camera any way you want (first person, third person, top down or whatever). So again, engine is NOT a modding tool! Modding tools are "black boxes" with limited set of functions. Engines come in a form of source code and can be modified and extended any way programmer wants.

Here's an X-Com clone (isometric game) done in Quake 2 engine (first-person shooter):
http://ufoai.org/wiki/index.php/News

Engine handles graphics, physics and optionally input and sound, everything else is in form of integrated or loadable modules (libraries) which handle how the game actually behaves in terms of gameplay.

[SDF121]

There are more videos of the game engine here...

http://unigine.com/products/unigine/media/

I'm really impressed with the first video from that page which is for the Valley Demo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... y4bJvFEtHI

I'm curious to how the engine handles weather effects since I think that it would be interesting to be wandering through the wastes only to suddenly find yourself caught in a sand storm or torrential downpour with thunder and lightning. In addition to this, I would love to see an irradiated area in which it rained ash in a manner similar to the opening scene from the Book of Eli.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYrrofV76EY

[BMF]

I took some top down screen shots in the Unigine Tropics demo and I thought I would share them.
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/421v6
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/d3orl

And some from the Heaven benchmark.
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/v1tgo
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/k7tpl
http://www.freeimagehosting.net/ec4qj

These pictures dont realy do it justice because the free image hosting I used is killing the picture quality.

[psychoo]

the demos not looking bad, but don`t let demos foul you.

it`s not about graphics, it`s more about what support you can get for it and is it capable of handling everythig wasteland will need. like AI, the dialogue options and all the sandbox world. or does it work well on all kind of hardware?

and since it`s not widely used, you can`t really judge it right now. while for example unity has a huge community and you can see tons of examples what it is capable of and you can see it`s flaws more clearly as well.

so it`s a nice offer, but very risky IMHO