Unreal Engine

Epic Games is disrupting the gaming market and, just like any disruption, not everyone's too happy about it. It's easy enough to see the appeal of Epic's battle cry: better profits for developers and more choices for users. But in order to effect any significant change, Epic Games is employing some business strategies to get developers on its side. Those same strategies, however, are causing gamers and even some developers to draw the line in the sand, splitting the gaming community into sometimes very vocal camps.

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Fans can be quite an interesting bunch. Depending on rabidity, they can be a force for good or a pain in the posterior. Some fans, however, have enough skill and knowledge to take things where their original creators would probably never tread. Like Jason Lewis, whose applies his expertise as Obsidian's senior environment artist to redo parts of a classic Star Wars game in Epic's Unreal Engine, giving it not just beauty but the feeling of a modern game that will never be.

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Now that Fortnite has dominated the world, Epic has started branching out to other endeavors. Recently, the company changed its revenue split rules for Unreal Marketplace sellers and just last week launched its own game store to take the fight to Steam. Now, the company has announced that it will soon be making the tools it used to take Fortnite cross-platform free for other developers to use.

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Epic is making quite an epic name for itself, though not always in a good way. CEO Tim Sweeney’s tirade against Microsoft’s UWP platform and the more recent Fortnite on Android drama has given the game developer and publisher a more “pro-developer” image. And to actually put money where its mouth is, the company has just opened the doors to its shiny new Epic Games Store to entice developers with an 88/12 revenue sharing arrangement.

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Epic Games' head Tim Sweeney explains in simple terms what Vulkan API is and why the Samsung Galaxy S7 is a gaming trailblazer. This week we've seen some amazing looking graphics coming from Epic Games and Samsung. With the Samsung Galaxy S7, both groups suggest we're entering a new age for gaming on smart mobile devices. It involves Vulkan API, Unreal Engine 4, your CPU, your GPU, and a demo called ProtoStar. But what's that mean to you, the everyday average user?

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Knights of the Old Republic is easily one of the best Star Wars games out there. Star Wars Galaxies still tops my list, but sadly there's no good way to actually play that one ever again. KOTOR was one of the first times you could really engulf yourself in the Star Wars universe, and really feel like you were making a difference. Unfortunately, time has not been the greatest to this game, and a group of people has decided that it needs a new coat of paint, using Unreal Engine 4.

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What you're about to witness is the next best example of why virtual reality changes the way we'll perceive the world. Inside the Unreal Engine 4 VR editor, users will be able to manipulate everything around them inside a virtual universe. What's more - this isn't like Minecraft, where everything is boxy. This is an Unreal Engine 4 environment. That means realistic. That means so realistic that we're leaping over the uncanny valley. It's done being creepy and we're straight away into The Matrix.

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The crew at Epic Games have revealed an Unreal Engine VR editor for UE4 that places the developer within the level they're editing. Virtually. Using a virtual reality headset - the HTC VIVE in this case - the developer will be able to look around and edit the universe they're creating as they exist within said universe. It's difficult to explain without allowing you to see it, so head in to the video(s) we've got here, where your mind is about to be blown into pieces.

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Just a few days ago we caught a glimpse of a Spyro the Dragon project by a designer who chose Unreal Engine 4 to revitalize the game's first level. Today we get to see that same situation done by an entirely different designer/developer: Sheffield Hallam University student Jamie Shilvock. Today we get to see a video of that project, live and ready to roll in a video which shows the entire environment, full of movement - save the dragon himself. What Shilvock has done is give us hope that this classic game - and the even more classic character - won't be just be lost to time, space, and Skylanders.

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What you're about to see will make you a true believer in the future of computer-rendered film. It'll do that even though what you're going to see is a rendering made with a gaming engine. Not to worry, though, the folks behind the engine are fully aware of what they have on their hands. The creator of this masterpiece of a rendering goes by the name Baolong Zhang, he's a 3D character and environment artist, and he's working here with Unreal Engine 4. Imagine the possibilities in virtual reality with this type of work - meet your best buddy dwarf and have a pint with him!

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Developer CryZENx brings a fully re-imagined Metroid Prime gameplay environment into existence with Unreal Engine 4. And boy does it look fantastic. What you're going to see is a project - not an official game made for release. Here you'll see some of the capabilities of the graphics environment Unreal Engine 4, complete with realistic lighting, shadows, atmosphere, and everything in-between. Just keep reminding yourself that while this isn't a real game - it could indicate where Metroid could go, someday, maybe.

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This week the folks at Studio Wildcard and Epic Games have teamed up with Alienware to encourage creative folks to go wild in dinosaur-land. In the world of ARK, that is, a video game where the ancient world and the modern world mix in an absolutely wild open world environment. To begin, users need to sign up for a free Unreal account and download the ARK Dev Kit - which is no small task due to its size.

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