id's Tech 5 engine not to focus on graphics rather...

[Ace Pace]

Link.

In an interview with IGN, Tim Willits, co-owner of id Software, developer of some of the most famous and advanced for their time 3D engines, says that his company’s latest engine was not created with the goal to make latest PC graphics cards beg for mercy. This time, the engine is definitely tailored for consoles and the PC, whereas id used to create PC engines and let its licensees handle consoles port down the lane.

At this year’s E3 Media and Business Summit, id only demonstrated its long since announced Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, a game currently in beta test. Nonetheless, the Texan ISV did not mind talking a bit about it long awaited and recently presented technology, Tech 5.

With these E3 interviews, we got learn that id’s engine and new IP were not promised to be high end PC showcases, but we also learned about the current state of the engine across the three platforms it currently supports.

Steve Nix, director of business development at id, on his end answered Gamespot’s questions. Some of these answers shed some light on Tech 5’s flexibility. According to Nix, the engine currently runs the same content in 60Hz across all the platforms --PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Nix insists that the exact same assets run on the three platforms and that no extra steps were required.

This easy-to-use interoperability of assets across platforms in id’s solution contrasts with what developers experience with other engines, such as Epic’s Unreal Engine 3. The maturity of the engine on every platform, if verified in the facts, should be noted and appreciated by publishers and developers alike.

As mentioned to me by Destructionator, this is something that has existed for a while in pure software, having multiple platforms just a compile away, but for computer games, this is huge.

[Vendetta]

It's also where the money is. Complexity of programming is increasing, with multicore and multithreaded processors being the norm, and that increases costs hugely.

Good tools will offset that cost, hence the popularity of the Unreal 3 engine, even in Japan, where previous versions of the engine didn't get used much (lack of good documentation in Japanese was cited as the main cause)

[salm]

It´s also going to have the Megatexture implemented. Basically that´s one verly large texture that contains very many small textures. This allows developers to use flexible texture sizes and prevents tiling and repetitions.

[weemadando]

id - "We can't make a game to save our lives nowadays, but boy - can we make engines."

[Uraniun235]

id - "We can't make a game to save our lives nowadays, but boy - can we make engines."

Nothing wrong with a business model based on selling engine licenses.

[Ace Pace]

id - "We can't make a game to save our lives nowadays, but boy - can we make engines."

Nothing wrong with a business model based on selling engine licenses.

Except that from my memory, Epic up untill now could not depend on engine sales to sustain the company, and that might change only in UE3 later in the life cycle. I doubt id will sell enough engines, then again, their team sizes are alot smaller, and paying Carmack has to be easier then paying 5 other engine programmers.

[Elessar]

I was under the impression that the majority of game costs now comes from the creation of media: graphics, FMV's, voice-acting etc.

While this is a welcome change and a hell of a technical achievement, I don't see it making waves through the gaming industry.

[Uraniun235]

id - "We can't make a game to save our lives nowadays, but boy - can we make engines."

Nothing wrong with a business model based on selling engine licenses.

Except that from my memory, Epic up untill now could not depend on engine sales to sustain the company, and that might change only in UE3 later in the life cycle. I doubt id will sell enough engines, then again, their team sizes are alot smaller, and paying Carmack has to be easier then paying 5 other engine programmers.

Epic is also still actively developing new games, which in an increasingly detailed environment requires increasingly larger art departments to fill out the world. If id stopped making their own new games in favor of letting companies like Raven (Quake 4) and Splash Damage (Quake Wars) fill in the blanks, id would probably be much less expensive to operate.


Anyone have sales figures for game engines?

[Shogoki]

The Doom 3 engine couldn't have sold much, since Pray is the only non id related game that has used it, afaik.

And of course, no engine as sold more than the Quake 3 engine, it managed to not look too dated for like 5 years or so, I can't even remember all of the games that used it. I'm guessing id is aiming to replicate the success of the Quake 3 engine with their new one.

[Ace Pace]

I'll let someone else do the math but This is a list of games using the UE2 engine, and UE2.5.

The licensing terms for the UE2 engine are.

The cost is US $350,000 for one of the available Unreal Engine 2 platforms, plus US $50,000 for each additional platform. A royalty of 3% is due on all revenue from the game, calculated on the wholesale price of the product minus (for console SKUs) console manufacturer fees. In the case of massive-multiplayer online games, the royalty is also due on the additional forms of revenue including subscriptions and advertisements.

On UE3 prices:

Daniel,

We don't list pricing for Unreal Engine 3 however there is pricing for Unreal Engine 2 at http://www.unrealtechnology.com - UE3 pricing is slightly higher but nowhere near the crazy price figures you quoted.


Mark Rein
Epic Games, Inc.

Someone take a ballpark figure from the UE2 numbers listed, run them through the list of UE3 games listed, and maybe throw in a vague number to represent the licensing deals with EA and MS?

[Uraniun235]

The Doom 3 engine couldn't have sold much, since Pray is the only non id related game that has used it, afaik.

Quake Wars is also using the Doom 3 engine.

[Ace Pace]

The Doom 3 engine couldn't have sold much, since Pray is the only non id related game that has used it, afaik.

Quake Wars is also using the Doom 3 engine.

Modified version of it, a halfway version between Doom3 and the current Tech5 stuff. Uses MegaTexturing.

On the usage of the engine, I'll repeat an interview with..I think Todd Hollenshed, where they stated quite a few companies use their engine, but unlike 'other' companies, they don't force them to write PR statments about how their engine is awesome and they're using it.

[salm]

Actually the Mega Texture was allready in the Doom 3 Engine. They just didn´t use it. But a clever modder found out how to implement it. It is now used by at least one mod i know of in the Doom 3 engine.