BioShock's helping hand to Unreal Engine 3's image

by Alexander Sliwinski { Aug 29th 2007 at 12:55PM }

If any company is going to benefit from the success of BioShock, beyond 2K Boston and Take-Two, it's Epic with their embattled Unreal Engine 3. BioShock has brought very public redemption and good press to the UE3 due to 2K Boston's phenomenal use of the tech. This hasn't gone unnoticed by Epic's Mark Rein who says, "We like to think we set a high bar with our own games, but more importantly we give our licensees the opportunity to take what we've done and do something even better with it ... There are a lot more great titles coming from our licensees as well and we're very proud of what is being accomplished and the helping role we get to play in their success."

2K Boston's Ken Levine didn't wimp out on talking about their issues with the UE3 during our interview with him. Levine said, "Of course, it's an engine, engine's are always a bear. Developing games is really hard, I think the mistake that a company like Epic might make is to say, 'Oh yeah, it's simple, we give you the engine and you go do it fellas, it'll be a breeze.' Development is hard, it gives you a leg up, but if you don't have a great technology team you're going to run into trouble. Even if you have a great technology team you can run into trouble." Although the exact contractual issues regarding Silicon Knights' license with Epic are something for the court to decide, SK's inability to get Too Human working with the UE3 looks pretty awkward in the court of public opinion in the wake of BioShock.

Tags: bioshock, pc, ps3, rein, toohuman, ue3, unrealtournament3, xbox360

Related From Joystiq

Unreal Engine 3 up and running (and shooting) on iPhone
5 days ago
Mike Capps answers 10 Questions from the Academy
23 days ago
Scivelation's year old 'trailer' reveals name and engine change
28 days ago

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

ymmv @ Aug 29th 2007 12:59PM

"SK's inability to get Too Human working with the UE3 looks pretty awkward in the court of public opinion in the wake of BioShock."

SK sued Epic for the Engine's performance when it was released in March 2006. It is of no relevance to their case that UE3 is performing great 18 months later.

Jeff @ Aug 29th 2007 1:34PM

and you think BioShock has been in development for... less than 18 months?

Cox Attack @ Aug 29th 2007 1:05PM

Silicon Knights is not stoke.

J-Guy @ Aug 29th 2007 1:09PM

I'm avoiding taking sides with this lawsuit. I personally never played any Epic games and I've only played SK's MGS remake.

Captain Jody Anthony XVIII @ Aug 29th 2007 1:10PM

screw bioshock. i am so tired of hearing about bioshock. always with the bioshock, you! bioshock bioshock bioshock!

...god I want bioshock :(

Jeff @ Aug 29th 2007 1:19PM

It's just about the best game ever.

You really want it.

Captain Jody Anthony XVIII @ Aug 29th 2007 1:22PM

really really want it :(

i need to get that 360 pronto

Jeff @ Aug 29th 2007 2:37PM

Man, if I wasn't a PC gamer, Bioshock would have been the game to push me to get a 360...

I love the way it plays with a keyboard and mouse though.

MasterInsan0 @ Aug 29th 2007 3:40PM

Yeah, Jeff, it's a great game. It's just a shame that they have to resort to limiting the number of times you can install the game as a DRM method.

(If you hadn't heard/noticed, you can only install Bioshock 5 times. Ever. At least, until they get the Revoke tool out which lets you "undo" the license for a given computer.)

Ian @ Aug 29th 2007 1:22PM

I've said this repeatedly. Silicon Knights, a company who's game 'Too Human' was supposed to come out in 1999 on PSX, then in 2002 on GameCube, and finally now its a 360 game, is getting all uppity because Epic was a little late in delivering some things? If ANY company, other than 3drealms, knows about late software, its SK. Its generally acknowledged that when you license an engine you're getting a massive head start and a big community for help in programming for your game. Most engines are not simply plug in your models, and game code and ship it. Especially when you're dealing with something as bleeding edge as UE3, you can't expect it to be a finished ready to ship product. Its almost always a work in progress kind of thing where you make mods, and you share them with the parent company who evaluates and if its good they merge it into their code, and ship it to everyone else.

Hachi_Roku @ Aug 29th 2007 1:24PM

Bioshock is a FPS, Too Human isnt. I think that sums it all up as far as UE3 is concerned.

copa @ Aug 29th 2007 1:52PM

Gears of War and Mass Effect are not first-person shooters.

If you are suggesting that UE3 only works with FPS's, I don't think there's a lot of evidence to support that.

shoeshine @ Aug 29th 2007 1:25PM

BioShock doesn't add any credit to UE3 for me. The game, while one of the best games in years, is chock full of bugs and graphical hitches. It could have used another month in development, but that would have put it in Halo territory and they couldn't afford that. The incompatibility with old video cards, random crashes even on the 360, and field of view problems in widescreen show a problem that can probably be originated from the engine they used. I don't see how there's any other way a game with as much polish as it has can be so full of problems like those listed above.

baby sea tuna @ Aug 29th 2007 1:39PM

Are you sure there's not something wrong with your console? I've never had any BioShock problems like the ones you just mentioned (unlike, say, Marvel Ultimate Alliance which _was_ probably rushed to market.)

I did have a game where the final textures had trouble loading but I restarted and the problem was fixed. Actually, come to think of it, I've had that problem once or twice with Gears and once with Vegas, so I guess it is an UE3 bug...but a relatively harmless one in the grand scheme of things.

Bloo @ Aug 29th 2007 1:39PM

I haven't had it crash once on the 360 and I'm 75% of the way through. In addition, the widescreen mode is the way the game was designed - there is no problem with it. Again, as I'm almost done with the game, besides the fact that it is absolutely amazing, it's as about as polished as I've ever seen a game (playing since the 2600)

shoeshine @ Aug 29th 2007 1:42PM

Nope, it's not a problem with my hardware. Lots of people have experienced the glitches I mentioned. I've never gotten the random crashing, but I have gotten Big Daddies falling down in their death animation while still alive, letting me shoot them where they lay until they actually die.

shoeshine @ Aug 29th 2007 1:48PM

And saying that the widescreen view being chopped is the way the game was designed is complete hogwash. In the developer walkthroughs before the game was released, they showed the entire bottom part of the screen. You could see both hands and you could see all the weird things that the plasmids did to you. In the shipped version on widescreen displays, you see the hands all cut off and you don't get to see much of what the plasmids do. If they designed it that way, why would they bother having those bits animated?

baby sea tuna @ Aug 29th 2007 2:12PM

Works just fine on my Widescreen Sony HDTV. I can see the health bars at the top, plasmid names at the bottom, and the full gun (including the hand.) It sucks that some people are having these problems, to be sure, but I'm definitely not one of them.

Oh, and that minor glitch I mentioned has shown up one time in one and a half playthroughs, and I haven't heard of any of my friends who got BioShock (which was about 6 or 7 of them) having any of these problems either.

dsub @ Aug 29th 2007 2:27PM

I have yet to experience a single crash or bug while playing Bioshock. The idea that you are upset that the game has compatibility issues with older cards is hilarious. What are you trying to play it on? A 9250 PCI card?

I play it on high on an AMD X2 4200+ with an X1950Pro and 2GB of RAM, but it will also run on my Athlon XP 2400+/X800XT/1GB system decently as well. The X800XT is 4 year old hardware, the Athlon XP is 7 year old hardware. If you are upset because your 5 year old video card won't run a cutting edge game, I'd say that is your fault for not upgrading, not the fault of 2K Games. That is almost equal to being angry that this game won't play on a regular XBOX.

Are you going to blame Epic and Crytek when UT3 and Crysis run horribly on your machine as well?

The FOV issue is also something that I find extremely comical when people complain about it. It doesn't affect gameplay at all. Notice that Bioshock was getting 10/10 scores before people even knew about it. You know what that means? If it wasn't even enough of an issue that was noticed while the game was being reviewed, it's hardly something to piss and moan about. I play Bioshock on a 22" widescreen monitor, it's still a fantastic game, and I really don't think the addition on 1" of FOV to the top/bottom of the screen is really going to make me say "Damn! NOW this game is sweet. It totally sucked before."

shoeshine @ Aug 29th 2007 2:34PM

Actually, the game works well on my machine. Try not being a condescending asshole for once, you'll find people actually like you more. I was talking about not supporting cards that use older shader versions that should be able to play the game. And just because people are oblivious to a problem doesn't make it a problem. North Koreans don't realize their leader is a psychopath. Doesn't make him not one.

bl13 @ Aug 29th 2007 2:36PM

The only "bug" I've seen in Bioshock so far is sometimes the subtitles don't sync up with the dialog at all. It's a shame because this seems such an easy thing to fix. Textures could be a little sharper too but it's not a major complaint.

Poisoned Al @ Aug 29th 2007 5:00PM

Hey kids, lets play "spot the bitter PS3 owner!"

THERE'S ONE!

shoeshine @ Aug 29th 2007 5:33PM

No, I do not own a PS3. I own a 360. And I'm not hating on BioShock. I absolutely loved BioShock. Best game I've played in years. I'm hating on UE3.

Maurice M @ Aug 29th 2007 1:29PM

I agree that BioShock has nothing to do with SK's problem. SK isn't making a game similar to BioShock, so there is no comparison.

dsub @ Aug 29th 2007 2:31PM

It has nothing to do with Bioshock being similar to Too Human. It has everything to do with the two games being built with the game engine. SK's complaints were that Epic was not supplying the proper support and features for the engine that were promised, and they cited that as one of the reasons for Too Humans delay and poor performance at E306. Bioshock works just fine and it was made with the same technology and engine. Therefore it DOES have relevance.

Maurice M @ Aug 29th 2007 3:08PM

No it does not, because they aren't making games that use the engine in the same way. SK needed features that 2k Boston did not need.

aegies @ Aug 29th 2007 1:37PM

That would be all fine and good, but Bioshock was largely developed on a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine 2.5. It was moved to Unreal Engine 3 mainly to take advantage of project management and iteration features. And surprise surprise, another game that "uses UE3" that couldn't make its original release date.

http://eat-sleep-game.com/news

BNinjaC @ Aug 29th 2007 1:43PM

what you said, ya bloody mind reader ;P

Attila @ Aug 29th 2007 1:43PM

From the interwebs:

"Too Human developer claimed Epic had failed to deliver versions of the licensed Unreal Engine 3 by its contractual deadline, resulting in demonstrable damage to the reputation of Silicon Knights and Too Human."

I fail to see how BioShock being a good game somehow proves that Epic delivered on their deadlines to Silicon Knights.

J.Goodwin @ Aug 29th 2007 1:48PM

Given that most of us expected Bioshock six months ago...it's just another brick in the wall of Unreal3's problematic and delay-causing image.

And yes, Too Human was supposed to street last year if not earlier. They came to the decision around the time of E3 2006 that the engine was not ever going to be able to do what they needed it to, and built their own new engine.

It hardly matters at this point whether Too Human would have been delayed 12 months by UE3 problem resolutions if they had stuck with the engine, or whether it will now be delayed 15 months because they built a new one from the ground up.

Frankly, I'm more concerned about the fact that the game just doesn't look terribly good based on the teaser trailer. Hopefully it's all CG with temporary animations because it looked really stilted and bad.

Alex K. @ Aug 29th 2007 2:03PM

i never understood why epic got any crap about the unreal 3 engine. whether or not it's late, easy to use, or whatever, it's still the best looking engine available period. you should expect it to be a little difficult.

shoeshine @ Aug 29th 2007 2:19PM

Good looks aren't all that should be expected from an engine being marketed to developers as something to make it easier to make games with.

ZippyDSMlee @ Aug 29th 2007 2:45PM

Funny Bioshock barely runs on PC without issue and is having issues running on premium 360s.

Sorry bioshock didn't go off without a hitch thus there might be something to the UE3 engine issues,or 2K released a buggy game early.

xXFenixKnight13Xx @ Aug 29th 2007 2:53PM

Buggy? BS! My 360 copy looks amazing. I cant even remember this game ever going under 60fps more than once. Fucktards!

rallion @ Aug 29th 2007 3:48PM

I had absolutely no problem with the PC version. No crashes, ran great and looked beautiful the whole way through.

Oh, wait, I'm sorry, did you somehow pull "barely runs" out of "a minority of people have trouble?" Whoops! Your mistake.

Seriously, EVERY game has bugs that prevent some portion of gamers from running it initially. You just don't always hear people whining about it this loudly.

bl33k @ Aug 29th 2007 2:54PM

Does anybody know where i can find a full high resolution of that picture? The one with the Big Daddy and Little Sister's hands. I'd love to make it my wallpaper :D

Bear700 @ Aug 29th 2007 6:29PM

Bl33k use this:

http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/downloads.html

ZippyDSMlee @ Aug 29th 2007 3:10PM

xXFenixKnight13Xx
Your sir fail
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6688

Not only dose it have shuttering and HDD issues it can all out crash,the question then comes is its MS's buggy 360 hardware or the game, with the PC version being buggy as well I say the game is not optimized enough to run as smoothly as GEARs or other UE3 games thus it brings the more unstable 360s to its knees.

or do you think the 360 has no hardware issues at all............

xXFenixKnight13Xx @ Aug 29th 2007 3:21PM

Zippidy Doo Da

Or whatever the F*ck ur name is........

You maddam.... are a retard. Did you even read my comment? I said MY COPY!!! MY!!! As well as my friends that have this game. No bugs. Smooth @$$ f*cking frame rate on my 56" 720p Samsung DLP. This game should be enjoyed by everyone so sad teh PS3 will not be getting this and so sad all the pc users who have to either upgrade or just play it in a subpar visual version.

ZippyDSMlee @ Aug 29th 2007 3:57PM

xXFenixKnight13Xx
So Mr.poo mouth you fail to understand that some people can't get the game to work on the 360, and believe that there is no problem what so ever.

Thank you for being part of the herd, please continue to not use your brain, have a nice day!

ZippyDSMlee @ Aug 29th 2007 4:02PM

rallion
I believe I said barely runs with out issue, crashes aside
theres shuttering (model and item frame rate) that needs to be dealt
with.I can't run the game on normal I have to run it on medium
because it crashes out due to shaders on high.

this game needed a few more months of bug work before being launched.

Tim @ Aug 29th 2007 11:10PM

Huh? Is someone trying to start more controversies again?

A. The Bruha over UE3 was the non/late-delivery of the PS3 version. Bioshock isn't on the PS3!!

B. Doesn't Bioshock use a heavily modified UE2 engine, not UE3??

Ian @ Aug 30th 2007 8:35AM

You clearly didn't read anything to do with anything. The complaint was that TooHuman ran like molasses on an xbox360, and that above it has been stated multiple times by Ken Levine that BioShock was migrated to UE 3 year and a half ago.

Sesur @ Aug 29th 2007 10:13PM

I just beat this today without harvesting any Little Sisters... it's a pretty heart-warming ending.

Only had issues with subtitles not synching up (very annoying), and a few moments of texture absence/delayes.

Jason Kopolow @ Aug 29th 2007 10:55PM

I have this game for the 360 and I absolutly love it. When it comes to this game being rushed, I can't agree with that. I have had no problems whatsoever, and the problems I read on the forum posted by Zippy sound like a hardware problem. My 360 started freezing randomly on processor intensive games before it RROD. That was a year ago though.

On the PC side, there is more variation between specs on PCs than consoles obviously, and that has a lot to do with performance. Every game has its little bugs and quirks, even Gears of War. There will NEVER be a game that works perfecly on every single system ever!

I'm a Comp Sci major with a concentration in game design, and without knowing the specifics of SK's issues with UE3, I can't really take a side. However whoever posted that what SK wants to do with UE3 is different tham what 2k did is correct. A first person perspective requires a rather different design that 3rd person.

Just my 2 cents