Friday 8 April 2016

Unreal Engine

Recently I've left mostly left Skyrim behind me and started tinkering with the Unreal Engine with a couple of friends. What are my first impressions?

First of all, what is Unreal? I guess most of you already know, but for those who don't, I'll tell you anyway.
Unreal engine, according to the official website, "is a complete suite of game development tools made by game developers, for game developers. From 2D mobile games to console blockbusters and VR, Unreal Engine 4 gives you everything you need to start, ship, grow and stand out from the crowd."
So the Unreal is a tool for making your very own games. In fact, it is actually not all that different from the Skyrim creation kit.

The main differences are that firstly,  the Unreal engine contains almost no assets from the start. There is no world to place your stuff in yet. You'll have to start from scratch.
The second main difference is the fact that Unreal allows you to do way more stuff than the kinda limited CK (this is quite logical since Unreal is made to create an entirely new game whereas the CK is made for modding an already exitsting one of course), like setting spawn points, adding new animations or making physics-driven clothing.
Lastly, the Unreal Engine is WAY easier to handle than the Skyrim creation kit. creating destructible meshes (that all apart when you hit them) is a matter of minutes in Unreal, while doing the same would require more than an hour of work on the other platform. As mentioned previously, new animations can simply be imported and used on the spot, while Skyrim modders are only now finding ways to add new animations to skyrim via FNIS and whatnot. To get your mesh from blender to unreal, all you have to do is press the export button in Blender, and then the import button in Unreal. No NifSkope needed. I love it.

Now, to the pics&vids!

Now, there is a lot going on in this video. The little white man in the bottom-right corner is my very first skeletal mesh (a mesh that has a skeleton and as of such can be animated. duh.) and animation. The giant brown thing falling from the sky is a barrel that is set to be destructible. The blue-and-yellow penis-looking thing is actually a 3D model of a vase a friend of mine made once. She's putting all of her creative handwork into one digital space, sort of like a museum-game. The glowing, smoking green ball is the first thing I ever made in Unreal, inspired by the poison globe used by skaven globadiers from warhammer (just google it).

 Landscaping is just as easy as in the CK!


 Guess which one is destructible and which one isn't :P


 scary looking glass globe thing


 My rapier, in game!


another look at my waving man




Why do you even keep waiting until someone makes the perfect game for you? Go make it yourself, yuo lazy bastard!