Epic acquires RAD Game Tools • Hacker News Board

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#21

Post by manfredo » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #11

randtrain34 wrote: post #8

For those interested in what RAD Game Tools actually makes, as far as I understood from their website ( http://www.radgametools.com/ ): Bink 2 - video codec Oodle - data compression suite Telemetry - profiling toolkit Granny 3D - toolkit for building 3d games Miles Sound System 10 - sound authoring toolset in 2D and 3D

What’s amazing is they have made these same products for like...25 years?

Pretty much. Though they've periodically updated them to use new techniques like animation blending. I think there's also a lot of work in optimizing for different platforms. And perhaps more importantly, there's a lot of work in making the middle ware easy to integrate. Ease of integration is often more important than performance for a lot of middleware.

I've seen their logo on tons of games. I never knew they were a local company (Kirkland, WA near Seattle).

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#22

Post by shmerl » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

What is the point of making custom codecs for Bink, instead of using state of the art free codecs?

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#23

Post by ineedasername » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

xienze wrote: post #19

Man, Epic is absolutely flush with cash. They’re moving their HQ down the road a mile or so by buying a dying mall for $100M and hiring 2k more employees.

Well, they're a bit company right now, still riding the revenue success of Fortnite and the potential of their launcher/store. So investors are interested, including Chinese investors that own a decent swathe of shares. I just hope they don't become such huge industry giants that they stomp on anything with a faint smell of competition.

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#24

Post by azornathogron » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 9:38 PM UTC

randtrain34 wrote: post #8

For those interested in what RAD Game Tools actually makes, as far as I understood from their website ( http://www.radgametools.com/ ): Bink 2 - video codec Oodle - data compression suite Telemetry - profiling toolkit Granny 3D - toolkit for building 3d games Miles Sound System 10 - sound authoring toolset in 2D and 3D

Basically any game you've played that has any pre-rendered video (for cutscenes, logos, whatever) most likely uses Bink video for it.

Their stuff is very well regarded and widely used.

At least that is the impression I have got, watching from outside the industry. It's always possible that I've got a distorted view as an outsider.

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#25

Post by zerocrates » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

nothis wrote: post #16

It always seemed like RAD makes the kinds of tools you want as a developer who likes to run its own core systems and license powerful components for key issues. To think these tools will now be locked into the bloated Unreal Engine makes me feel a bit sad. It's like a lot of game companies get bought up by giants in a "just because we can" fashion, recently, and I can't help but wonder how this de-prioritizes quality…

It certainly could happen down the road, but the post says the opposite for the time being, that they'll continue to support usage outside Unreal Engine.

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#26

Post by jcalabro » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

That's awesome! Congrats to the RAD team and Epic! Epic certainly has acquired a world-class team. Also, I've been a long time fan of Jeff's podcast, it is irreverent and hilarious if you haven't checked it out!

https://jeffandcaseyshow.com/

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#27

Post by xienze » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 9:42 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #23

xienze wrote: post #19

Man, Epic is absolutely flush with cash. They’re moving their HQ down the road a mile or so by buying a dying mall for $100M and hiring 2k more employees.

Well, they're a bit company right now, still riding the revenue success of Fortnite and the potential of their launcher/store. So investors are interested, including Chinese investors that own a decent swathe of shares. I just hope they don't become such huge industry giants that they stomp on anything with a faint smell of competition.

I’m just amazed with what Fortnite has done for them. I pass by their current HQ regularly and it’s pretty modest. You’d never suspect that’s the HQ of such a successful company. I was surprised to learn they’re still taking funding. I figured they were pulling down absurd profit.

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#28

Post by Jasper_ » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 9:58 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #14

randtrain34 wrote: post #8

For those interested in what RAD Game Tools actually makes, as far as I understood from their website ( http://www.radgametools.com/ ): Bink 2 - video codec Oodle - data compression suite Telemetry - profiling toolkit Granny 3D - toolkit for building 3d games Miles Sound System 10 - sound authoring toolset in 2D and 3D

Really hoping epic takes the opportunity to give Bink a more open license, to be honest. Much as I appreciate how advanced Bink was at the time, i don't know any dev that still use it given that av1 and such are just Good Enough.

Bink isn't the codec, though that's good too, it's the software stack. How do you render AV1 on a PS4 or a Nintendo Switch, synchronize it with the audio stream? No, seriously, tell me.

GStreamer with its ridiculous threading architecture and lock-heavy approach? You think that's going to run on a console CPU? ffmpeg / libavcodec? Yes, we can hook that up, have it crank out YUV buffers and display those on the GPU, or we can just use Bink. Yes, it costs a ton of money, but based on when I evaluated it last, it was almost twice as fast as libvpx on our target platforms, it was well-suited for games (worked well with custom allocation strategies, didn't start a bunch of threads by itself, integrated well into our renderer), was easy to integrate, the toolchain was lovely, and when we needed help with a bug, we got an email back the same day from Jeff. RAD's support is top-notch.

Multimedia is not too big of a problem that a company like Epic can probably spend a few days integrating libvpx and opus to make a custom video solution, but big enough that most smaller studios with custom engines don't have time to spend on that, and those are the sort of problems that RAD likes to tackle.

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#29

Post by ameen » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 9:58 PM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #23

xienze wrote: post #19

Man, Epic is absolutely flush with cash. They’re moving their HQ down the road a mile or so by buying a dying mall for $100M and hiring 2k more employees.

Well, they're a bit company right now, still riding the revenue success of Fortnite and the potential of their launcher/store. So investors are interested, including Chinese investors that own a decent swathe of shares. I just hope they don't become such huge industry giants that they stomp on anything with a faint smell of competition.

Sony recently infused Epic with $250M for 1.4%

Source: https://www.sportspromedia.com/news/sony-epic-games-minority...

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#30

Post by ameen » Thu, Jan 07, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

xienze wrote: post #27

ineedasername wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they're a bit company right now, still riding the revenue success of Fortnite and the potential of their launcher/store. So investors are interested, including Chinese investors that own a decent swathe of shares. I just hope they don't become such huge industry giants that they stomp on anything with a faint smell of competition.

I’m just amazed with what Fortnite has done for them. I pass by their current HQ regularly and it’s pretty modest. You’d never suspect that’s the HQ of such a successful company. I was surprised to learn they’re still taking funding. I figured they were pulling down absurd profit.

Their legal challenges with Apple might’ve put a dampener