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Unreal Engine 3

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Unreal Engine 3(UE3) is the third version ofUnreal Enginedeveloped byEpic Games.Unreal Engine 3 was one of the first game engines to support multithreading. It used DirectX 9 as its baseline graphics API, simplifying its rendering code. The first games using UE3 were released at the end of 2006. It was succeeded byUnreal Engine 4.

History

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Screenshots of Unreal Engine 3 were presented by July 2004, at which point the engine had already been in development for over 18 months.[1]In July 2005,Sony Interactiveobtained sublicensing rights of Unreal Engine 3 for thePS3's Software Development Kit.[2]The first games released using Unreal Engine 3 wereGears of Warfor Xbox 360, andRoboBlitzfor Windows, which were both released on November 7, 2006.[3]

Screenshot of theSamaritandemo

Initially, Unreal Engine 3 only supported Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 platforms, while iOS (first demonstrated withEpic Citadel) and Android were added later in 2010, withInfinity Bladebeing the first iOS title andDungeon Defendersthe first Android title.[4][5]In 2011, it was announced that the engine would support Adobe Flash Player 11 through the Stage 3D hardware-accelerated APIs and that it was being used in twoWii Ugames,Batman: Arkham CityandAliens: Colonial Marines.[6][7]In 2013, Epic teamed-up withMozillato bring Unreal Engine 3 to the web; using theasm.jssublanguage andEmscriptencompiler, they were able to port the engine in four days.[8]The engine is no longer receiving updates.[9]

Features

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The engine was based on the first-generation but contained new features. "The basic architectural decisions visible to programmers of an object-oriented design, a data-driven scripting approach, and a fairly modular approach to subsystems still remain [from Unreal Engine 1]. But the parts of the game that are really visible to gamers – the renderer, the physics system, the sound system, and the tools – are all visibly new and dramatically more powerful," saidTim Sweeney,founder of Epic games.[10]UnlikeUnreal Engine 2,which still supported a fixed-function pipeline, Unreal Engine 3 was designed to take advantage of fully programmable shader hardware.[10]All lighting and shadowing calculations were done per pixel, instead of per vertex. On the rendering side, Unreal Engine 3 provided support for a gamma-correct high-dynamic range renderer.[10]

Unreal Engine 3 was one of the first game engines to make use ofmultithreading.[11]According to Sweeney, several systems within the engine were rewritten to employ multithreading, such as the physics, animation updates and the renderer's scene traversal loop's systems, but multithreading was not used for "systems that are highly sequential and object-oriented, such as the gameplay."[11]In its early phases of development, UE3 optimized for minimizing memory usage in favor of taking advantage of greater CPU and GPU power, which Sweeney described at the time as having seen greater improvements than that of memory.[12]

Unreal Engine 3 adoptedDirectX 9as it's baseline graphics API support, allowing the engine to incorporate more features which would be impossible to support if UE3 attempted to support older versions such as DirectX 7.[12].According to Sweeney, "a great deal of generalization, improvement, and even simplification has been made possible by eliminating legacy code paths and formulating all rendering around fully-general pixel shader programs."[13]Similarly, a major goal for UE3 was that "designers should never, ever have to think about 'fallback' shaders, as Unreal Engine 2 and past mixed-generation DirectX6/7/8/9 engines relied on."[13]In general, one of the major areas of focus for UE3 was "empowering artists to do things which previously required programmer intervention: creating complex shaders, scripting gameplay scenarios, and setting up complex cinematics."[13]

Throughout the lifetime of UE3, significant updates were incorporated,[14]including improved destructible environments,soft body dynamics,largecrowd simulation,iOSfunctionality,[15]Steamworksintegration,[16]a real-time global illumination solution,[17]and stereoscopic 3D on Xbox 360 viaTriOviz for Games Technology.[18][19][20]DirectX 11support was demonstrated with theSamaritandemo, which was unveiled at the 2011 Game Developers Conference and built by Epic Games in a close partnership withNvidia,with engineers working around the country to push real-time graphics to a new high point.[21][22]

Unreal Development Kit

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While Unreal Engine 3 was quite open for modders to work with, the ability to publish and sell games meant using UE3 was restricted to licenses of the engine. However, in November 2009, Epic released a free version of UE3'sSDK,called the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), to the general public.[23]

In December 2010, the Unreal Development Kit was updated to include support for creating iOS games and apps,[24]followed byOS Xcompatibility in the September 2011 release.[25]By 2013, it reported more than 2 million unique installations.[26]

See Also

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Category:Unreal Engine 3 games

References

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  1. ^Reed, Kristan (July 1, 2004)."Unreal Engine 3 Interview".Eurogamer.Archivedfrom the original on March 15, 2013.
  2. ^"Sony Computer Entertainment Enters into Strategic Licensing Agreement with Epic Games".sonyinteractive.July 21, 2005.
  3. ^Caron, Frank (2008-03-13)."Unreal Engine 4 to" exclusively target "next-gen consoles".Ars Technica.Archivedfrom the original on January 23, 2019.Retrieved2019-01-22.
  4. ^Crossley, Rob (December 20, 2010)."Unreal Engine 3 game comes to Android [Update 1]".Develop.Archivedfrom the original on August 11, 2017.RetrievedAugust 11,2017.
  5. ^De Vere, Kathleen (January 6, 2012)."A Top-Grossing iOS Game Like Epic's Infinity Blade II Can Earn More Than $5 Million a Month".Adweek.Archivedfrom the original on August 11, 2017.RetrievedAugust 11,2017.
  6. ^Sottek, T.C. (October 7, 2011)."Adobe Flash 11 adopts Unreal Engine 3 for better browser games".The Verge.Archivedfrom the original on July 6, 2017.RetrievedAugust 11,2017.
  7. ^Crossley, Rob (June 7, 2011)."Wii U powered by Unreal Engine 3 tech".Develop.Archivedfrom the original on August 11, 2017.RetrievedAugust 12,2017.
  8. ^Ligman, Kris (May 2, 2013)."See Epic's Unreal Engine 3 running in HTML5".Gamasutra.Archivedfrom the original on August 11, 2017.RetrievedFebruary 22,2022.
  9. ^"We are no longer shipping updates for UE3 or UDK".unrealengine.
  10. ^abcMaximum PC."Game Engines – Exposed!".Maximum PC.No. Fall 2004 (Special ed.).Future US.pp.59,62–64.Archivedfrom the original on October 16, 2019.RetrievedAugust 11,2017.
  11. ^abGelas, Johan De (March 14, 2005)."The Quest for More Processing Power, Part Two:" Multi-core and multi-threaded gaming "".anandtech.
  12. ^abReed, Kristan (2 July 2004)."An Epic next-gen adventure".Eurogamer.net.Retrieved10 July2024.
  13. ^abcTan, Anthony (18 June 2004)."Interview with Epic's Tim Sweeney on UnrealEngine3".beyond3d.Retrieved10 July2024.
  14. ^Callaham, John (March 19, 2009)."Epic Games to show off new Unreal Engine 3 features at GDC".Big Download.Archivedfrom the original on March 18, 2009.
  15. ^Shimpi, Anand Lal (December 29, 2009)."Epic Demonstrates Unreal Engine 3 for the iPod Touch, iPhone 3GS".AnandTech.Archivedfrom the original on July 8, 2012.
  16. ^"Steamworks Integration Now Available to Unreal Engine 3 Licensees".Epic Games.March 11, 2010. Archived fromthe originalon May 17, 2010.
  17. ^"Geomerics Announces New Enlighten Integration with Unreal Engine 3".Archived fromthe originalon June 5, 2012.RetrievedFebruary 22,2022.
  18. ^Ingham, Tim (June 17, 2010)."E3 2010: Epic makes 3D Gears Of War 2 - We've seen it. It's mega. But retail release not planned".Computer and Video Games.Archivedfrom the original on July 28, 2012.RetrievedFebruary 12,2011.
  19. ^"TriOviz for Games Technology Brings 3D Capabilities to Unreal Engine 3".Epic Games. October 6, 2010. Archived fromthe originalon March 9, 2012.
  20. ^Fletcher, JC (October 11, 2010)."Epic's Mark Rein goes in-depth with Unreal Engine 3's TriOviz 3D".Joystiq.Archivedfrom the original on March 12, 2012.
  21. ^Hamilton, Kirk (February 8, 2013)."Apparently, The Story Behind Epic's Dazzling 2011 Tech Demo Is A 'Doozy'".Kotaku.Archivedfrom the original on October 6, 2014.RetrievedOctober 4,2014.
  22. ^Gaudiosi, John (September 21, 2011)."Epic Games Founder Tim Sweeney Pushes Unreal Engine 3 Technology Forward".Forbes.Archivedfrom the original on October 7, 2014.RetrievedOctober 4,2014.
  23. ^IGN Staff (November 5, 2009)."Epic Games Announces Unreal Development Kit, Powered By Unreal Engine 3".IGN.Archivedfrom the original on September 15, 2014.RetrievedSeptember 14,2014.
  24. ^"Epic Games Releases Unreal Development Kit With iOS Support".IGN.Ziff Davis.December 16, 2010.Archivedfrom the original on September 15, 2014.RetrievedSeptember 14,2014.
  25. ^Grant, Christopher (September 19, 2011)."Unreal Engine 3 comes to Mac OS X, courtesy of September UDK release".Joystiq.Archivedfrom the original on January 19, 2012.
  26. ^Brian, Steiner (June 24, 2013)."How the Unreal Engine Became a Real Gaming Powerhouse".Popular Mechanics.Archivedfrom the original on March 27, 2023.RetrievedMarch 27,2023.
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