Unreal Engine 4 Elemental Demo

[Mind Dragon]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD9CPqSKjTU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8xGb2SWhPg

[eNTi]

it's awesome. also a requirement. diminishing returns in graphical fidelity makes it so much more complex to create something worthwhile, that you gotta have the right tools with enough power to be able to do cool things in an easy way. learning all that might be very time consuming though.

[Mind Dragon]

While the level of detail required is higher and that is a burden. Other things however, make the effort easier.

Radiosity / global illumination --> you dont have to carefully add and adjust many lights to light your environment.

Skeletal animation / texture mapping tools make things a lot easier but you still have to make something good.

Things like physics, animation, deformation and particle systems can effectively do alot of stuff so you dont have to do it manually.

As you can see, the development tools give you quick turn around for adjustments and fixes. The effect systems allow you to combine building blocks instead of coding up shaders by hand.

The biggest problem is that the overall expectation is higher. People want realistic eyes, hair, and maybe something that isnt canned animations, detail such as breathing... On top of that, it still has to be a good game, fun to play, otherwise we can look for a good movie or read a book.

[LostSoul]

The issue is the cost that it comes at. Developers already see so very little from their efforts in development. Engines like Unreal often take 20-30% of the profits as part of the license agreement. That's in addition to costing thousands of dollars per full seat with source code access and face time with the engine developer(s).

The current trend isn't sustainable. The costs of just having access to the tools is rapidly inflating, their developers are wanting bigger slices of the final pie, and the actual GAME developers are getting little or nothing from the final sales figures.

We can already see the way they've been cutting corners to reduce the production costs. On the whole most of us aren't happy with it or we wouldn't be here on these forums showing our support for the fine fellows of Crate.