Unreal Engine
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There is more information available on this subject at Unreal Engine on the English Wikipedia. |
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Unreal (1998) |
The Unreal Engine is a game engine maintained by Epic Games. It was initially developed for Unreal, a 1998 PC first-person shooter. It has remained Epic Games' engine of choice since its inception, with games such as Gears of War and more recently Fortnite being built in the engine, but the engine is most notable for its role as a third-party engine available to any game developer, in exchange for a royalty fee, with thousands of games having been built using it, to date.
Usage in Halo games[edit]
Unreal Engine 3[edit]
In 2013, prototypes for a MEGA Brands-themed Halo game were developed by n-Space in conjunction with 343 Industries - codenamed Haggar. The Haggar prototype was built in Unreal Engine 3, though the game was ultimately cancelled.[2]
Unreal Engine 4[edit]
In 2019, alongside the launch of Halo: Reach's port to the game, Unreal Engine 4 (the then-latest version of Unreal Engine) was introduced to Halo: The Master Chief Collection to handle the unified UI elements, as the original implementation of the UI was built in a framework that was no longer supported.[3]
According to video game journalist Jason Schreier, during Halo Infinite's troubled development, 343 Industries spent months evaluating a potential migration to Unreal Engine instead of Halo's traditional engine, the Blam engine. This was due to the fact that the two decade-old engine, and in particular a constituent toolset entitled Faber, was incredibly hard to work with and had become fraught with technical debt, making it difficult to update and improve.[4][5] Ultimately, 343 chose not to migrate to Unreal, and instead persevered with the Blam engine, creating a significantly overhauled version for Halo Infinite, which they dubbed the Slipspace Engine.
Unreal Engine 5[edit]
In October 2024, 343 Industries rebranded to Halo Studios, and as part of the rebranding announced that the studio was formally transitioning from the use of Blam/Slipspace to Unreal Engine for all future Halo game projects. Studio Head Pierre Hintze cited difficulties with maintaining 343 as both a game development and an engine development studio as the reason for this change, with the move to Unreal allowing the entire studio to focus on making better games instead. The announcement was made with the A New Dawn trailer showcasing Project Foundry; a testbed collection of environments made in Unreal 5 to explore the challenges involved in shifting the studio pipeline to a new engine.[6][7]
Games using the Unreal Engine[edit]
The following Halo games utilise the Unreal Engine:
- Haggar (2013; cancelled) (Unreal Engine 3)
- Halo: The Master Chief Collection (2014) (Unreal Engine 4; implemented in 2019)
- Project Contingency (2021) (Unreal Engine 4; fan game)
- Project Foundry (2024) (Unreal Engine 5)
Sources[edit]
- ^ Game Developer, Classic Tools Retrospective: Tim Sweeney on the first version of the Unreal Editor (Retrieved on Jan 22, 2022) [archive]
- ^ YouTube, Mega Bloks Halo - Unreleased by N-Space (2013) (Retrieved on Jun 1, 2020) [archive]
- ^ Halo Waypoint, MCC Development Update - May 2019 (Retrieved on Jan 21, 2021) [local archive] [external archive]
- ^ Bloomberg, How Microsoft’s Halo Infinite Went From Disaster to Triumph (Retrieved on Jan 21, 2022) [archive]
- ^ Twitter, Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier): "343's tool set, Faber, was so difficult to use that they spent months considering a switch to Unreal. (They didn't)" (Retrieved on Jan 21, 2022) [archive]
- ^ Halo Waypoint, A New Dawn (Retrieved on Oct 7, 2024) [archive]
- ^ Xbox Wire, Halo Studios: New Name, New Engine, New Games, New Philosophy (Retrieved on Oct 7, 2024) [archive]
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