Not only is this a really awesome thing for Epic to do, it could have much further-reaching consequences than UT if it's successful.
At the very minimum, it's going to be an excellent source of quality net/graphics code samples for UE4 developers. If it's wildly successful, we may see some neat ripples around the industry.
Also, this thing is going to get Occulus'd, Hydra'd, and everything else. That's going to be fun.
A few fun ways this also looks like turn-of-the-century FPS world:
-We could see an FPS rise in eSports prominence again
-Mods built on top of one game create tons of variety accessible to one player base
-Mod developers have an easy way to become recognized game developers
Also, not related to the old Quake / UT / Half-Life scenes, but the marketplace for assets will be on top of a game that isn't Team Fortress 2, so there's much more creative latitude once mods are released (disclaimer: I love TF2).
I love the movement mechanics of previous UT games, between always-run, dodging (doubletap a direction), double-jumping, and walljumping (jumptowards a wall, doubletap opposite direction), it was a rather entertaining game to play. Add to that the completely crazy weapons by today's FPS standards, and you have something I haven't seen in a long while.
I bet it will. The open-source competitive shooters I can think of (Warsaw, Quake3's Challenge Pro Mode mod [in the sense that it was designed by community]) all had interesting and complex movement schemes.
And since we now have Github, all that awesomeness is just a pull request away...
There was even a Quake mod called "Defrag" which "de-fragged" the game (removed the killing), making it soley focused on movement. Really neat stuff; hard as hell but really rewarding when you start to get the hang of it.
Depends of the tutorials you followed. I've started with double beat strafe jumps (where you do 2 jumps before the direction change), then switched to single beat and almost got halfbeat working.
Similarly, 'surf' maps for Unreal Tournament (if I recall correctly), which was capture the flag without the shooting, requiring players to run an obstacle course and abuse the game physics; dodging sideways up a steep ramp caused people to launch in the air, that kinda thing.
Racesow (Warsow mod) did the same thing. Except in the movement repertoire you also had wall jumps and dashes. Which meant you could keep your speed even when doing 360 degree turns.
The interesting thing about the weapons was that most were rather slow-moving and projectile speeds were very important. So motion prediction was far more important than for modern shooters.
Shooting someone out of the air with a rocket launcher was a feat.
Shock combos were an especially fun one. You had to predict where someone would be and get a shock ball (probably the slowest projectile in the game) near them, then shoot the ball out of the air with a scan-hit beam to blow it up.
I'm really excited to see what they're doing here.
Right. My favourite stunt with the shock rifle was shooting a ball straight or down, then jumping over an obstacle and then hitting the ball to kill another player. Very impressive to look at, but actually doable with a bit of training.
I hope they include the impact-hammer + teleporter puck combo. It was SO FUN blasting that puck across the map then teleporting to it, not to mention trying to defend against such a move with the shock combo.
I loved that move, teleport behind someone and then shock ball them whilst they try to figure out where you are whilst getting the hell out of the way since they;re anticipating you attacking them.
Yep, though Q3 sported more very fast moving or instant hit weapons (Shotgun, Plasma, Minigun, BFG, Railgun). On the other hand, Q3 also had faster player movement speeds, making hits even with fast weapons an exercise in tracking.
I still love playing Q3 as well, especially because of the driving soundtrack ;).
We are already seeing an FPS rise in eSports again. CS:GO has held 2 $250,000 prize pool tournaments in the last 6 months. It's the second most played game on steam with daily peaks over 150,000 players.
You're right, it's gratis. I highly doubt it'll satisfy the definition of free/open source software, as it'll (understandably) lack redistribution rights.
It's still a highly daring development model, all things considered. The concept itself is hardly new, but it's the first time an AAA developer has adopted it. Correct me if I'm wrong.
It also won't satisfy the definition of free/open source software in that the source code likely won't be available under an open-source license (though they're using GitHub, so maybe).
They didn't say word one about the code being open; just the development process and the progress they're making.
You can only share the source code with other Unreal Engine licensee who is authorized to access the same version of the engine as yours, and if you copy and paste the Unreal Engine code into your own project or engine, the your product will be governed by the EULA and royalties will have to be paid.
TLDR: This is non-free. It is not open source, its not free software, and it is unlikely to ever exist in distributions like Debian and Ubuntu.
Wow, that is a pretty awesome plan. I can really see it paying off hugely for everyone involved. Now you can be part of a game development team without having a task master forcing to work 80 hour weeks, and yet you can still be part of it from the beginning to end. I wish Blizzard would do this for the WoW engine.
Yeah, but the repo is private -- the nice thing about being active on github when you aren't getting paid is that others can see what you've been committing to publicly and it looks great on a resume.
> When the game is playable, it will be free. Not free to play, just free.
> We’ll eventually create a marketplace where developers, modders, artists and gamers can give away, buy and sell mods and content. Earnings from the marketplace will be split between the mod/content developer, and Epic. That’s how we plan to pay for the game.
What distinction are they trying to make between "free to play" and "free"? To my understanding, "free to play" means the game is largely free, but with the implication that there is additional content that can optionally be purchased. "Free" means the game is free, with no implication either way of whether optional purchases exist.
If it's like previous UTs, you don't get to bring your own mods into somebody else's game. Each game is played with a particular set of mods (set by the host), and they apply equally to everyone.
I think this distinction will be largely moved along by the people who contribute to their eventual content marketplace. If there's a ton of interest in commercial mods, then you'll see non-free mods, though the base game itself will be free.
It's very hard to predict how this will shake out right now, though.
>What distinction are they trying to make between "free to play" and "free"?
I think the distinction is that Android Platform is "free". The Unreal Tournament Platform is "free".
Both give you usable functionality out of the box, and free. Both give you the opportunity to purchase additional functionality in a "store".
"Free to play" generally means the developer will add more content, or cheats, or whatever to purchase, whereas "free" in this case means they will offer a platform and a store where they will take a cut.
I guess they are talking about Team Fortress 2 here. In TF2 you are allowed to buy actual weapons and power packs in the marketplace, not just skins for them. You could also get them by playing, but it takes an awful amount of time.
Another important aspect that I hope they adopt from TF2 is that even if you use default items (e.g. weapons) you will not be in disadvantage when playing with users that spent money on items.
I'm assuming that you won't be able to buy things in the marketplace and bring them into other people's games. With mods in the previous UTs it's been very much that every player in a game is on exactly the same footing except for player skill.
You start with the same gear, and anything else you can get is sitting around the level to be picked up by everybody.
I'm not sure how the community would feel about that. UT puts you in situations where your opponent is carrying around 10 different guns at once, and the split second "he just pulled out a sniper rifle" reaction can be pretty important.
If they do have weapon skins carry into the game, Epic will have to be gatekeeper on approving all of them. If not, you'd have people reskinning their rocket launcher to look like it's something else, with negative gameplay effects.
Perhaps we'll see two tiers of aesthetic mods? Ones that anybody can create and use in their local / self-hosted games, and others that have been approved for online play?
All the gameplay-affecting weapons cost mere pennies in TF2 though (and most of them are sidegrades or downgrades anyway). The money in TF2 is basically all in purely-cosmetic items and effects.
Free to play is typically monetized. While they are allowing others to publish paid mods, and profiting from it, they seem to be indicating that they will provide a quality core UT class game, for free, without charging for any of it. Which is pretty awesome.
You're definitely right that the distinction they are making isn't very clear, and they could message that part better.
We we're only talking about gameplay effecting purchases (so not skins and what not) I think it's used to draw the distinction between where you can purchase changes to gameplay that take effect in a mixed population of purchasers and non-purchasers (free to play), and where you can buy into access to segregated gameplay populations (free with mod marketplace).
For example, free to play in a FPS could be purchasing weapons that cannot be accessed in other ways. On the other hand, free + mod marketplace could say... imagine for some reason UT4 ships without a certain game mode... say CTF with Vehicles. Some enterprising fellow can now make a mod with CTF with Vehicles, and sell it on the marketplace. Or maybe a game mode where everyone has bow and arrow and a knife. The point is that there is now a 'different' game that you pay to get access to.
Fundamentally, it would be like say... if Half Life multiplayer was free on release, but someone still went and sold Counter Strike anyways.
I guess it's free in the sense that UT4 is a complete game, you will not need to pay to experience UT4. The extra content is made by the players themselves and can be given away for free or sold.
The distinction is that they won't be monetizing Unreal Tournament 'the game'; there won't be gems to purchase, or hats to buy, or whatever else.
They will be providing a marketplace where other people can sell their own content that they create, which is optional and not (necessarily?) integrated into the main game.
The implication of 'free to play' is that the game itself is full of opportunities to monetize players, or that progression can be sped with currency which you can earn/buy, etc, and that the developer will be splitting their time between bugfixes/features and producing new content to sell to people (at varying levels of balance between the two).
The difference here is that the developers are producing two separate things: one, a 3D tournament-style FPS; and two, a shop where people can sell game content that they've created, and make money from it (or presumably give it away for free).
This will be very interesting to watch. I think I spent more time playing with skyrim mods from steam than playing the original game, which was a new experience for me, since using fan-made game mods was usually more trouble than it was worth in the past. A streamlined "app store" experience can add years of life to a game, and with the massive investments required for AAA titles these days, that has to be good for the publishers, as long as they can capture some of the revenue. It also provides a low friction platform for new game developers and artists to get their content in front of a lot of people who may not be part of the indie/casual game demographic. I really hope this model catches on, it would be a win for everybody.
After finishing the Warcraft III single-player campaign I played 2 vanilla online games before discovering the tower defense "mods"/maps in the custom ladder. For 3-4 years the only game I played was various custom maps in Warcraft 3. It certainly added years of gameplay to the game. It even gave birth to an entire new genre with DOTA.
I'm very exited to see what this will bring us, although I don't know what I think about the idea of payed mods...
It's not clear whether this will eventually be licensed under an open source license. Since it doesn't look like they're planning to monetize the game directly then it might seem to make sense to do so.
It drives up subscriptions to Unreal Engine 4, so that's probably the primary monetization strategy. They won't make any money from players until the content marketplace opens, but this could do a lot to drive people to use and learn UE4.
It's a potentially smart business move, will be interesting to see how it works out for them.
Well, they say development will be "in the open" and that "[w]hen the game is playable, it will be free. Not free to play, just free." So they use the words "free" and "open," but they don't say anything like "free software" or "open source." Even someone like Stallman acknowledges that this is a legitimate use of the word free (although the terms "gratis" or "free as in beer" are less potentially ambiguous).
This is awesome. I haven't played it in years but UT was one of my favourite games when I was younger. They had a pretty cool level editor I used to spend a lot of time playing with.
If you want to check out their current editor, $20/month gets you access to the editor and the full C++ source for the engine. You can even cancel the subscription and keep using it if you don't need updates.
I doubt it'll be included with the new UT (since that's going to be free), but it's a pretty impressive toolset.
This is amazing! I remember playing mods like Team Fortress on Quake - things people made just because they enjoyed it. The problem with mods lately is that it takes really passionate people to support them for free, and they're either hard to monetize or monetization isn't even an option (SC). There's still plenty of great UGC, but it's generally not commercial grade - time investment is high, and financial reward is 0.
This model is brilliant!! It could keep people playing for years just by trying out new mods, new content, and more. Really excited to see what happens.
This announcement just sold me on an Unreal Engine 4 subscription[1] if for nothing else than to obtain access to early Unreal Tournament builds. Unreal Tournament is one of my favorite video game series, and I love that it is possible that I will be able to contribute to the development of the latest installment.
Epic Games could potentially corner a portion of the VR market. The VR market may explode bigger than the internet. I wish Epic Games was publicly traded, I would definitely buy the stock.
Epic has completely changed this year and doing amazing things like this and the $19 engine access. Living up to their name.
Looks like they are doing the Team Fortress 2 free to play model, even though they say it is free and not free to play, the vanity store/content is the Valve F2P model used in TF2, DotA, probably CS etc. These games are huge because of the community content, Epic is seeing that.
This is such a cool thing to do and only wish they did it many years ago.
While folks are building these new mods and such, don't forget to look back to existing UT properties for ideas. Unreal 2 XMP is still one of the best team-based FPS setups I've seen. Sadly, it never recovered after they shut down the directory servers to try to force everyone to switch to Unreal 3.
It will be tricky to incorporate the fanbase because there's a huge split in UT fans about the high-speed pace of UT2k4 vs. the slower, spammier gameplay of classic UT. UT3 attempted to split the difference and was universally reviled.
Still, this is super-exciting and I hope the best for them. The classic FPS genre has needed this for years.
UT3 was reviled because it was designed for both consoles and PCs, so everything was a compromise - sort of the windows 8 of the UT series.
I know what you mean about the split, but as someone who loves both series I think either way will lead to a great game. I personally think the faster-style would be more successful because the series as a whole has always leaned more towards a arcadey/tactical style than a simulation/strategy style.
>the series as a whole has always leaned more towards a arcadey/tactical style than a simulation/strategy style.
It's interesting that you say that, because I think the biggest achievement of UT to date is the Onslaught mode, which fluidly mixed strategic and tactical, vehicular and on-foot gameplay. And as onslaught showed (on some maps - not all), you don't have to sacrifice speed or pace of close-in combat to enable strategic gameplay of CTF/ONS type.
Free as in beer. The Unreal engine is proprietary software, and this new UT game will be, too. Epic is using the word "open" and hosting the source code on GitHub, but it's still proprietary (freedom denying) software.
147 comments
[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 81.3 ms ] threadAt the very minimum, it's going to be an excellent source of quality net/graphics code samples for UE4 developers. If it's wildly successful, we may see some neat ripples around the industry.
Also, this thing is going to get Occulus'd, Hydra'd, and everything else. That's going to be fun.
-We could see an FPS rise in eSports prominence again
-Mods built on top of one game create tons of variety accessible to one player base
-Mod developers have an easy way to become recognized game developers
Also, not related to the old Quake / UT / Half-Life scenes, but the marketplace for assets will be on top of a game that isn't Team Fortress 2, so there's much more creative latitude once mods are released (disclaimer: I love TF2).
I wish it would come back.
If it has that, that game has a player.
And since we now have Github, all that awesomeness is just a pull request away...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYBs_lslyuY
ie most of the amazing stuff is done with something close to original q3 physics (1999 and earlier for beta players)
Turns out q3 physics and netcode are still among the best there is today for FPS with low player count
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-FDOhsUNrU (Warning very loud)
Shooting someone out of the air with a rocket launcher was a feat.
I'm really excited to see what they're doing here.
That, coupled with the high mobility (Jetpacks!) of the players lead to real duels that could last a while.
Tribes is a great game favoring mechanics over realism.
I played PB_mod from 00-04'.
I still love playing Q3 as well, especially because of the driving soundtrack ;).
Arguably CS:GO has been picking up steam lately hitting the #2 spot on Twitch.tv fairly constantly and spiking greatly during big tournaments.
This announcement couldn't have come at a better time as FPS is once again gaining competitive traction.
Think about it ... we're getting open-source game engines with streaming and competitive scenes reigniting, this is awesome.
It's still a highly daring development model, all things considered. The concept itself is hardly new, but it's the first time an AAA developer has adopted it. Correct me if I'm wrong.
They didn't say word one about the code being open; just the development process and the progress they're making.
https://www.unrealengine.com/faq , Ctrl-F for "copyleft".
Previous discussion on Unreal Engine 4.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7429774
TLDR: This is non-free. It is not open source, its not free software, and it is unlikely to ever exist in distributions like Debian and Ubuntu.
https://www.unrealengine.com/ue4-on-github
> We’ll eventually create a marketplace where developers, modders, artists and gamers can give away, buy and sell mods and content. Earnings from the marketplace will be split between the mod/content developer, and Epic. That’s how we plan to pay for the game.
What distinction are they trying to make between "free to play" and "free"? To my understanding, "free to play" means the game is largely free, but with the implication that there is additional content that can optionally be purchased. "Free" means the game is free, with no implication either way of whether optional purchases exist.
It's very hard to predict how this will shake out right now, though.
I think the distinction is that Android Platform is "free". The Unreal Tournament Platform is "free".
Both give you usable functionality out of the box, and free. Both give you the opportunity to purchase additional functionality in a "store".
"Free to play" generally means the developer will add more content, or cheats, or whatever to purchase, whereas "free" in this case means they will offer a platform and a store where they will take a cut.
1) Free to play. 2) Free accounts. 3) Free access to the source code.
This will end magnificently =)
You start with the same gear, and anything else you can get is sitting around the level to be picked up by everybody.
If they do have weapon skins carry into the game, Epic will have to be gatekeeper on approving all of them. If not, you'd have people reskinning their rocket launcher to look like it's something else, with negative gameplay effects.
Perhaps we'll see two tiers of aesthetic mods? Ones that anybody can create and use in their local / self-hosted games, and others that have been approved for online play?
You're definitely right that the distinction they are making isn't very clear, and they could message that part better.
For example, free to play in a FPS could be purchasing weapons that cannot be accessed in other ways. On the other hand, free + mod marketplace could say... imagine for some reason UT4 ships without a certain game mode... say CTF with Vehicles. Some enterprising fellow can now make a mod with CTF with Vehicles, and sell it on the marketplace. Or maybe a game mode where everyone has bow and arrow and a knife. The point is that there is now a 'different' game that you pay to get access to.
Fundamentally, it would be like say... if Half Life multiplayer was free on release, but someone still went and sold Counter Strike anyways.
They will be providing a marketplace where other people can sell their own content that they create, which is optional and not (necessarily?) integrated into the main game.
The implication of 'free to play' is that the game itself is full of opportunities to monetize players, or that progression can be sped with currency which you can earn/buy, etc, and that the developer will be splitting their time between bugfixes/features and producing new content to sell to people (at varying levels of balance between the two).
The difference here is that the developers are producing two separate things: one, a 3D tournament-style FPS; and two, a shop where people can sell game content that they've created, and make money from it (or presumably give it away for free).
In fact mods used to be the norm. I played more nodded Quake 2 15 years ago than I did Quake 2.
And selling them is not particularly new, Valve experimented with it back with CS1.6 and all those other mods that came out in the pack.
I'm very exited to see what this will bring us, although I don't know what I think about the idea of payed mods...
http://steamcommunity.com/market/search?q=appid%3A730#p1_pri...
It's not really their fault people want to pay $400 for a hat.
It's a potentially smart business move, will be interesting to see how it works out for them.
Yet without it being a dick move. Even if it's good for them, it's also good for us :)
I doubt it'll be included with the new UT (since that's going to be free), but it's a pretty impressive toolset.
This model is brilliant!! It could keep people playing for years just by trying out new mods, new content, and more. Really excited to see what happens.
[1] https://www.unrealengine.com/register
http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/5/5684236/oculus-wants-to-bui...
Seriously, what fantasy universe are you living in where all hardware is open and easily used for whatever you want?
I wonder what the license is?
Looks like they are doing the Team Fortress 2 free to play model, even though they say it is free and not free to play, the vanity store/content is the Valve F2P model used in TF2, DotA, probably CS etc. These games are huge because of the community content, Epic is seeing that.
This is such a cool thing to do and only wish they did it many years ago.
Still, this is super-exciting and I hope the best for them. The classic FPS genre has needed this for years.
I know what you mean about the split, but as someone who loves both series I think either way will lead to a great game. I personally think the faster-style would be more successful because the series as a whole has always leaned more towards a arcadey/tactical style than a simulation/strategy style.
It's interesting that you say that, because I think the biggest achievement of UT to date is the Onslaught mode, which fluidly mixed strategic and tactical, vehicular and on-foot gameplay. And as onslaught showed (on some maps - not all), you don't have to sacrifice speed or pace of close-in combat to enable strategic gameplay of CTF/ONS type.
I like it.