Silicon Knights has gotten another heaping helping of bad news: a court order to cease production of and destroy all games that use the Unreal Engine. The document, signed by district court judge James C. Dever III on Wednesday, requires that the company destroy all versions of game code that used Unreal Engine 3 by no later than December 10, 2012.
Read more: Destroy game code, recall and destroy remaining copies »
Three developers from Bulletstorm's People Can Fly have flown the coop to start a new company called The Astronauts. As part of the announcement, the group has licensed Unreal Engine 3 from Epic Games for their future projects.
Unreal Engine 3 continues to expand its reach to new devices. Epic Games has announced that the ubiquitous multiplatform engine will be available on Windows RT when it launches later this year.
For the uninitiated, Windows RT is a version of Windows 8 that will run on ARM devices, such as tablets and Surface. Unlike Windows 8, RT will only run software available through the Windows Store, making it more like iOS than previous versions of Windows.
Update: Additional commentary from Epic Games and new details on damages.
The years-long lawsuit between Silicon Knights and Epic Games has come to an end. The Canadian developer of Too Human served Epic in 2007 for "technical problems" it encountered using Epic's multiplatform engine. The suit was originally seeking $58 million in damages, with Silicon Knights claiming it had to rework Unreal into the "Silicon Knights Engine."
Today, a judge has ruled in favor for Epic Games.
Silicon Knights sued Epic Games in 2007 for "technical problems" with the now widely-adopted Unreal Engine. The Too Human developer had modified the middleware so much that it called it the "Silicon Knights Engine." The original claim asked for $58 million in damages, however after the judge threw out Silicon Knights' "unreliable and speculative" damage assessment, the developer now faces a significantly reduced judgment.
A federal judge's ruling in the ongoing "Too Human" lawsuit brought against Epic Games does not bode well for developer Silicon Knights. (The case was granted a federal jury hearing back in May of this year.) In it, Chief District Judge James Dever III, excludes the testimony of Silicon Knights' expert witness Terry Lloyd, a Certified Public Accountant and Chartered Financial Analyst retained to provide an expert opinion on the damages alleged in the suit.
Square Enix has announced that it plans on using Unreal Engine 3 on "multiple games." The deal was brokered in part by Epic Games Japan.
"Many Western games have achieved great success with the Unreal Engine, and this milestone reflects the Japanese development community’s trust in our technical prowess," Epic Games Japan's Taka Kawasaki said in the announcement. "We can’t wait to see how Square Enix fuses the power of Unreal Engine 3 with its beautiful characters, enthralling storylines and fantastic gameplay."
Read more: Why is Square Enix giving Unreal a second chance? »
Epic Games' Mike Capps has revealed that Epic is already discussing the Unreal Engine 4 tech with hardware manufacturers, about sixteen so far, including console manufacturers. And while no one knows when the next generation will begin, Epic wants to make sure they're ready from the beginning.
"I want Unreal Engine 4 to be ready far earlier than UE3 was; not a year after the consoles are released," he said.
Along with consoles, handhelds, and toasters around the world, support for the Unreal Engine 3 has been added to Adobe's Flash Player. During his keynote at Adobe MAX 2011, Epic Games founder, CEO, and technical director Tim Sweeney presented attendees with UE3 running inside of a Flash-based environment.
During his talk, Sweeney showcased Epic's Unreal Tournament 3 running in real-time using Adobe Flash Player 11, which launched yesterday.
Remember when the joke was that Unreal Engine 3 was the best, next-gen tech to use if developers wanted to add stylish browns to their titles? Epic wants you to forget all that.
Epic Games, makers of titles like Gears of War 2 and Unreal Tournament 3, have released a new trailer featuring the enhancements made to that other thing they make: the Unreal engine. Read more »
If you were waiting on Unreal Engine support for the Nintendo 3DS before rushing out to pre-order the unit, you might want to stay home. During a GDC Online interview, as detailed by Joystiq, Epic Games vice-president Mark Rein said his company is not working on software for Nintendo's upcoming handheld, stating that "from what [Epic Games] can tell" the system does not meet the minimum specifications for the Unreal Engine. Read more »
According to a report earlier today by industry magazine Develop, Epic Games and the middleware group Scaleform are going to begin offering Scaleform Gfx user-interface tools to Unreal Engine 3 licensees later this year, free of charge.
In a pleasantly surprising follow-up announcement, the companies also revealed a deal that will bundle the tools into Epic's free-to-use Unreal Development Kit. Read more »
My first session at GDC 2010 was "Bringing Unreal Engine 3 to iPhone" and I was excited to hear all about Epic Games' plans for the iPhone, iPod touch and the like. What I got, however, was a programming-heavy talk about the challenges with bringing the technology, made in C++, to the iPhone, which uses Objective-C and Xcode.
It won't be much use to you all filtered through my brain--I've only dabbled in programming. The most interesting bit I took away was that the were able to put the engine onto the iPhone 3GS (required) 90% intact as C++ code. The remaining 10% is the platform-specific Objective-C that interacts with the engine. Read more »
Anand Lai Shimpi of Anandtech.com got an interesting tech demo when he sat down with Epic Games' VP Mark Rein last week.
Apparently, the creative folks over at Epic have figured out a way to get the Unreal Engine 3 running on the iPhone 3GS and the iPod Touch. Even if it's only in a fifteen second clip, seeing the engine that powers a number of major games, including Gears of War 2, running smoothly on a third-generation iPod Touch is impressive, as Lai Shimpi points out. Read more »
A number of ex-Midway employees, when asked about the publisher's downward spiral, had a variety of answers, but almost all of them mentioned Unreal Engine 3, the technology licensed from Epic Games that powers Gears of War.
"One issue popped up again and again: Midway's decision to license Unreal Engine and use it for ALL its games," wrote Variety's Ben Fritz of his interviews with former Midway staffers. Read more »
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