Unreal Engine is a game development engine. It was developed by Epic Games in the year 1988. Initially, it was developed as a first-person shooter game. Presently it is being used to create fighting games, RPGs, Stealth, and other MMORPGs. The game used C++ language coding. This game is popular among game developers and is used by them as a tool in game development. Although most of the developers use Unity for game creation. It offers basic developing techniques that help beginners and freshers a lot.
How does Unreal Engine make Working so Easy?
It is an amazing and unique game Engine that helps the user to create games. It comprises various mechanisms that provide a platform to the users and help them to run the game. In addition, it has a huge systematic set of tools and editors that help users manage their properties and modify them to create the artwork for their games. The engine comprises of parts that include a graphics engine, online module, physics engine, sound engine, input, and Gameplay Framework. Unreal Engine is free to use for creating linear content, costum projects and and internal projects.Unreal Engine is a complete set of tools that allows developers and video game designers to create realistic, interactive environments across desktop, mobile, and console platforms as well as in virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR). Development on the first Unreal Engine began back in 1995 by Tim Sweeney of Epic Games, with the first video game built on the engine, first-person shooter Unreal, released in 1998. The game was a critical success, and Epic Games began licensing the use of Unreal Engine to other developers, allowing them to design creations of their own using what quickly became known as one of the best tools for building life-like video games.
The history of Unreal Engine
Before explaining what this amazing powerful game engine can do and how it works, let us take a short trip back into the past to see how UE came about and how it has evolved into what we have today.
In 1998, the first version of UE made the modding of a first player shooting game was possible. You could replace Unreal content using your own and tweak the behavior of the non-player characters (NPCs) also known as bots (players that are controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence) using UnrealScript. Then multiplayer online features were added into UE through the development of Unreal Tournament, which is an online game. This game also added PlayStation 2 to list of platform compatibility, in addition to the PC and Mac.
By 2002, UE has improved with leaps and bounds, bringing them well ahead into the next generation with the development of a particle system (a system to generate effects such as fog and smoke), static mesh tools (tools to manipulate objects), physics engine (allows interaction between objects such as collisions) and Matinee (a tool to create cut scenes, which is a brief, non-interactive movie). This improvement saw to the development of the Unreal Championship and Unreal Tournament 2003. The release of Unreal Championship also added Xbox game console to the list with multiplayer capabilities in Xbox live.
The development of Epic’s next game Unreal II: The Awakening edged UE forward with animation system and overall improvement with their existing engine. The development of faster Internet speeds in the early 2000s, also increased the demand of multiplayer online gaming. Unreal Tournament 2004 allowed players to engage in online battles with one another. This saw the creation of vehicles and large battlefields plus improvement in online network capabilities. In 2005, the release of Unreal Champion 2 on Xbox game console reinforced UE capabilities on the Xbox console. It also saw the creation of a very important feature of a new third-person camera. This opens up a greater possibilities in the types of games you can create using the engine.
Gears of War, one of the most well-known franchises in the video games industry, pushed Epic Games to create and release the third version of its game engine, Unreal Engine 3, in 2006.
The improvement of the graphics engine used DirectX 9/10 to allow more realistic characters and objects to be made. The introduction of Kismet, which is a visual scripting system allowed game and level designers to create game play logic for more engaging combat play without having to delve into writing codes. Platform capabilities of UE3 include Xbox360 and PlayStation 3 was added. There was a revamp in the light control and materials. UE3 also had a new physics engine. Gears of War 2 released in 2008 saw the progressive improvements to UE3. In 2013, the Gears of War Judgment was released.
PC online gaming also was under the radar of Epic Game’s developers. In 2009, Atlas Technology was released to be used in conjunction with UE to allow massively online games (MMOG) to be created.
The increasing demand of mobile gaming also led in UE3’s push in the direction of increasing its supportability for the various mobile platforms. All these advancement and technological capabilities has made UE3 the most popular version of the UE engine and still very widely used today.