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Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

epicgames.com

61–70 of 194 posts

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#62
post #30
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Epic's management is one of a kind; they made amazing game that millions of people love and play which makes them billions then they want to compete with Steam on digital video game marketplace in a way that they bribe devs for exclusive release on Epic Store then they got in fight with Apple over App Store fees and got their game kicked out of the store. I mean one hell of a ride. They grew some big balls in the last couple of years.

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems weird to use specialized video decode hardware when videos are almost always played in a full-screen exclusive fashion. Like, other than loading, what is the CPU doing during those times?

I worked on COD:AW and we used video in game often. The lead UI artist would have used it significantly more if performance was better. Might be an exception but it's not uncommon, I've worked on multiple titles with full 3D and video playback at the same time

Hang on, the performance of playing static video content was not good enough? (and worse than dynamically rendered game art?)

You mean a single - full screen video, or videos inside the 3D content?

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems weird to use specialized video decode hardware when videos are almost always played in a full-screen exclusive fashion. Like, other than loading, what is the CPU doing during those times?

To be clear, Kraken is for general compression, not video. Of course you can do video decoding in software, that's what Bink is. It can do 4K60 on a PS4 CPU.

Makes sense. If it were just video it'd seem like it would be cheaper to include an h.264 chip, they're a lot more common and you get the same thing

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#65
post #38

RAD had an amazing software renderer on par on the Unreal one.

Pixomatic wasn't just on par with UE1's SW rasterizer it was somewhat explicitly designed to be the SW rasterizer for UE2. The thing was notable by the fact that it had feature parity with HW Direct3D implementations of the time and worked by dynamically compiling D3D shaders into x86 code (which had the interesting feature that it used ESP as general purpose register).

IIRC the idea behing Intel's Larabee at least partly involved running pixomatic on that hardware.

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on COD:AW and we used video in game often. The lead UI artist would have used it significantly more if performance was better. Might be an exception but it's not uncommon, I've worked on multiple titles with full 3D and video playback at the same time

Hang on, the performance of playing static video content was not good enough? (and worse than dynamically rendered game art?) You mean a single - full screen video, or videos inside the 3D content?

Videos can be used for a lot of different things. You can animate textures, obviously, but you can also animate things like normal maps to get really interesting effects. I recently read an article that described how one of the more recent Assassin's Creed games used animated normal maps to make rainfall patterns on the ground.

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#67

There's a lot of focus here on Bink, but Oodle has a fascinating history as well. From world-class compression ratios/decompression speeds to being implemented in hardware by Sony in all PS5s. RAD have a great history of getting exactly the right people that are interested in their fields and are great at what they do. I echo the sentiments of many when saying I am surprised no one had scooped them up earlier (althou…

Oodle is very expensive though.

Re: Epic acquires RAD Game Tools

#69
post #30
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Their legal challenges with Apple might’ve put a dampener

They started the fight, and I think it's safe to say they knew what they were getting into.

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