Unreal Engine 4 and my concerns

(Chapter 7 and beyond)

Unreal Engine 4 for Shenmue 3 (Total votes: 29)

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Unreal Engine 4 and my concerns

Postby sutoji » Tue Sep 05, 2017 2:30 pm

I'll tell you this right now, this might piss some people off so before you continue reading I advise you to keep your shenmue defense in check before replying with posts such as "no thats a terrible idea, your an idiot blah blah blah" this is just my honest opinion on not just the engine (hell its more me explaining the background of Unreal Engine itself) I have limited experience with it myself, but even the development of Shenmue 3 itself tied in with Unreal Engine 4 is not suited in my opinion. I think the opposite of Yu and recent interviews have got me concerned that this was not the way to make this game especially with a low budget game being madr by a small but experienced company being YsNet.

This free engine made by Epic Games is wonderful for people to create their own games across multiple platforms in this day and age, with good knowledge of coding written in C++ it can be a great tool. If you take a look at the types of games made by this engine, it has been well recieved and has done well in regards with both game design and gameplay, it is without question that the FPS genre triumphs with this sort of engine howver, take a look it is very well suited towards these games; Gears of War, Bioshock, Unreal Tournament 3. All perform very well as FPS games on this engine.

Now lets take a look at what it really has to offer. Unreal Engine 4 being the 4th iteration of this engine is obviously better than the previous versions with the main thing being it's support with today's current gen PC and Console games. With more stability updates constantly being released even now to improve certain aspects of the engine. Now that Shenmue 3 is using the engine and is taking advantage of the "open world" where for a Shenmue game as Yu Suzuki states himself "can offer that great Shenmue feeling with vivid colours and shaders" obviously similar to the atmosphere of the dreamcast games is what the aim is, but to a higher extent that has a modern take being HD graphics that weren't present or as detailed with technology 17 years ago.

I feel as though as great as this engine seems to be, it is not right for Shenmue, from my take on this is that there is going to be fluffs in the design when its finished. Yu Suzuki explicity stated himself its difficult for him to use.. sure he has NoconKid and the old team back but if Yu's previous knowledge as well as the old designers were to use what they had previously on old technology, the game would be more well polished. The fact that this game is happening is amazing but Yu's ambition is a bit farfetched and he needs to see that he needs to suit his expectations accordingly because theres not much time left, there could be more delays but development would either be too short or too long. We don't exactly know and that's just a little concerning.

Do not be suprised if what you expected from Shenmue 3 turns sour. It is difficult and theres nothing I could possibly do to help this and I'd really like to, I think about it a lot but Yu has decided to used Unreal Engine 4 and thats that. The simple message that I really want to get across is that using old technology from Shenmue 1 and 2 on Dreamcast would be more "APPROPRIATE" than modern "Unreal Engine 4" because despite being old, it's quality will be in line with the first two games despite being backwards in comparison to other games.
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Re: Unreal Engine 4 and my concerns

Postby Spardahunter » Tue Sep 05, 2017 2:45 pm

well,sorry for my bad english but you cannot judge a game engine by the game created with it,i have some experience in the game industry(im learning,but i have some friend in the business)i know the team who create remothered: tormented father,the one who create last day of june and murasaki baby.UE4 is the best engine i've ever seen,is the most eclectic engine i've ever seen(im really happy for the choice of suzuki san between UE4 and unity).And for who is repeating endlessy that the color palette will be different from the original shenmue...well i can introduce the concept of LUT color grading that all modern engine have but i will let you search it on google =)

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Re: Unreal Engine 4 and my concerns

Postby MiTT3NZ » Tue Sep 05, 2017 2:59 pm


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Re: Unreal Engine 4 and my concerns

Postby sutoji » Tue Sep 05, 2017 3:07 pm


I do not know many games that are made by Unreal 4, I was specifically saying in general most games are from the FPS genre that do well with it. After reading the amount of games using Unreal 4 it's very clear that theres a ton of genres but thats because it's popularity has grown (hence why Yu Suzuki is so on board with it) and is now supportive of other elements you can put in these games, graphics aside I don't find it really impressive, It's definitely better than Unity but as I said I would rather Yu use something he has some expert level in. Thanks for proving my ignorance I guess.
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Re: Unreal Engine 4 and my concerns

Postby WildManofBorneo » Tue Sep 05, 2017 3:21 pm

sutoji wrote:I feel as though as great as this engine seems to be, it is not right for Shenmue...


When a star developer like Square Enix abandons its own internal game engine (after years of development and countless dollars invested) in favor of Unreal 4 to deliver two of its most highly prized franchises, you know that Suzuki-San chose well.

phpBB [video]



The same could be said for other esteemed Japanese franchises which have all made the switch to Unreal 4.

Shin Megami Tensei, Tekken, Street Fighter, Dragon Quest, Monster Hunter, etc


Further to this point, Epic has recently announced the development of over 20 Japanese made games using Unreal 4 for Nintendo Switch.

https://www.vg247.com/2017/05/05/epic-g ... on-switch/

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Re: Unreal Engine 4 and my concerns

Postby Spardahunter » Tue Sep 05, 2017 3:43 pm

sutoji wrote:

I do not know many games that are made by Unreal 4, I was specifically saying in general most games are from the FPS genre that do well with it. After reading the amount of games using Unreal 4 it's very clear that theres a ton of genres but thats because it's popularity has grown (hence why Yu Suzuki is so on board with it) and is now supportive of other elements you can put in these games, graphics aside I don't find it really impressive, It's definitely better than Unity but as I said I would rather Yu use something he has some expert level in. Thanks for proving my ignorance I guess.

suzuki is inactive since shenmue 2(all games ysnet try to make never see the light of day)and as he said the old shenmue engine need all the library to be writed by hand,think about the amount of work for update that engine for today standard(all the library must be rewritted because the c++ has change since 2002)and new library need to be written,5 o 6 years will be not enough,and trust me the old engine like that is a pain in the ass for today standard
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Re: Unreal Engine 4 and my concerns

Postby Jibby » Tue Sep 05, 2017 3:53 pm

I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to say? You don't think Unreal Engine is suitable because it's new and Shenmue I and II are old? Yu Suzuki isn't making Shenmue I and II, he's making Shenmue III.

It doesn't matter if he's more experienced with the older technology. The things he will be able to do with moderate knowledge of UE4 far far outweigh the things he could do with expert knowledge of the Dreamcast era tech. It's a complete non issue in my opinion.

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Re: Unreal Engine 4 and my concerns

Postby Spardahunter » Tue Sep 05, 2017 3:59 pm

Jibby wrote: I'm not sure I follow what you're trying to say? You don't think Unreal Engine is suitable because it's new and Shenmue I and II are old? Yu Suzuki isn't making Shenmue I and II, he's making Shenmue III.

It doesn't matter if he's more experienced with the older technology. The things he will be able to do with moderate knowledge of UE4 far far outweigh the things he could do with expert knowledge of the Dreamcast era tech. It's a complete non issue in my opinion.

and do you think YS write all the code and shader himself on the old engine?LOL,he is a director,in the game industry the code is written by a large group of people not by a man alone,he has a lot of unreal engine expert around him and with time everything can be achieved with newest engine
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Re: Unreal Engine 4 and my concerns

Postby Your Boy Leroy » Tue Sep 05, 2017 4:43 pm

^ He's basically agreeing with you.
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Re: Unreal Engine 4 and my concerns

Postby Spardahunter » Tue Sep 05, 2017 4:48 pm

well sorry missclick
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Re: Unreal Engine 4 and my concerns

Postby FeelinLuckyPUNK » Tue Sep 05, 2017 5:35 pm

I'm not clued up on engines but I was always under the impression that an engine like Unreal is popular because it already has a lot of preset tools that make development easier, not harder. More time can, therefore, be spent ironing out the issues and expanding on the finer details rather than spending 2 weeks coding Ryo to walk forward.

Example: assigning a material to a texture to save having to animate or applying gravity/rag doll physics to a character model.
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Re: Unreal Engine 4 and my concerns

Postby Sonoshee » Tue Sep 05, 2017 7:14 pm

UE is a fantastic engine, if you just look at the amount of different games that have been built using it, it's just crazy.

Yu-san decided to use UE4 because he felt that it would give him the right atmosphere that he wants for Shenmue 3.

And he's already stated that the world of Shenmue would be much bigger than he originally anticipated just by using UE4.

He's very happy with it and that's all I needed to hear.

sutoji wrote: it is without question that the FPS genre triumphs with this sort of engine howver, take a look it is very well suited towards these games; Gears of War, Bioshock, Unreal Tournament 3. All perform very well as FPS games on this engine.


Just a little thing, but Gears of War is not a FPS, it's a third person shooter.

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Re: Unreal Engine 4 and my concerns

Postby Mr. Frozen » Wed Sep 06, 2017 4:09 am

I've worked with UE4 a bit. I think most developers hate the engine when they first deal with it because it is pretty much a pain to do anything as a newbie. Variables don't really have intuitive names, so one really needs to know the engine to get what they want. The blueprint system they use is an absolute abomination for anyone who knows how to program (something that would take up about 10 lines of code takes up your entire screen in the blueprint), but the blueprints were designed for people who don't know how to program so no surprise there. Even then, programmers and artists will need to spend significant time to figure out how to do anything in the engine. There are a lot of inter-workign parts to allow for global ease of use that is hard to trace if you are trying to figure out how things work (it took me forever to figure out how AI and other entities used nav-meshes because the engine automatically associates existing nav-meshes and sorta hides how it does it from the user... unless you are willing to go into the UE4 source code). This initial difficulty is probably what Yu Suzuki was talking about when he said it was "difficult to use."

But, once you take the time to learn things, development is a breeze. The epic team pretty much thought of everything when it comes to game development, and any idea you have you can typically prototype within a day. It is also extremely easy to create gorgeous environments since they made so many complex shaders and post processing effects easily available to the developer. I can guarantee you that anything Shenmue I & II did, UE4 can do, and more. If Shenmue I was made in UE4, there wouldn't be any need for a loading screen when transitioning from an outdoor environment to an indoor one due to the level streaming feature.

UE4 was designed as a general purpose game engine from day 1, and to say that it is only suited for specific popular games that used it is unfair. Yes, the unreal engine got it's start in FPS games, but Epic Games had enough experience in licensing the different versions of their engines, that they have a very good idea on what tools game developers need to create whatever they want. This shows in the variety of games that use unreal's engines. FPS, MMOs, racers, platformers, VR... every type of game you can imagine probably exists as an unreal engine game. I don't think there will be any problem with Yu Suzuki and his team creating what they want in UE4.

You can go hereif you want to see a list of games that currently use UE4.

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Re: Unreal Engine 4 and my concerns

Postby mjq jazz bar » Wed Sep 06, 2017 11:00 am

This thread didn't piss me off. The premise doesn't even make sense: UE4 is used for all types of games, as evidenced by the Wikipedia entry posted above. Sounds like you're hung up on the fact the engine is called "Unreal."

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Re: Unreal Engine 4 and my concerns

Postby SheepheadCG » Wed Sep 06, 2017 11:08 am

mjq jazz bar wrote: This thread didn't piss me off. The premise doesn't even make sense: UE4 is used for all types of games, as evidenced by the Wikipedia entry posted above. Sounds like you're hung up on the fact the engine is called "Unreal."


lol I agree. Started to write out a response to the thread yesterday and realised that the post itself is just pointless...
Yet again, I'm pretty sure that Yu and his team know much more than we could ever hope to know.

For the last time (even though I know it won't be the last time I say it), Shenmue 3 is in good hands!! It's in the fucking best hands, the guy who created it from the start. Remember those 2 games that you love from 16 years ago? Yeh? That guy, the genius who made them, he is making this game lol! His track record is insane, if the guy wants to choose Unreal 4, then he can choose Unreal 4! He has his reasons and so far, the game looks incredible, so he knows what he is doing!

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