Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

allarsblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–117 of 117 posts

Re: Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

#111

Post by kennethdmiller3 »

georgeecollins wrote: post #3

The amazing thing to me is that now people can make games without a bunch of great engineers. Back in the day when we made Battlezone we had at least four really amazing engineers (one was a Masters in CS from MIT, one wrote early 3d workstation code, UCLA, Cal Tech CS degrees). In those days you needed people like that to just 3D to work in Windows. Direct X helped a lot. Unity and Unreal have made things we couldn'…

Battlezone and Battlezone 2 were the first two games I worked on professionally so they'll always be special to me. That's part of why I ended up supporting them unofficially for almost 15 years after release. :D

Re: Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

#112

Post by kennethdmiller3 »

bitwalker wrote: post #32
georgeecollins wrote: post #3

The amazing thing to me is that now people can make games without a bunch of great engineers. Back in the day when we made Battlezone we had at least four really amazing engineers (one was a Masters in CS from MIT, one wrote early 3d workstation code, UCLA, Cal Tech CS degrees). In those days you needed people like that to just 3D to work in Windows. Direct X helped a lot. Unity and Unreal have made things we couldn'…

Was this the Pandemic Studios version of Battlezone (i.e. Battlezone II) or the first version of Battlezone for PC? If you had a hand in either, then I owe you a beer (or whatever you prefer) a bunch of times over because I loved both of those games so much. Endless hours of entertainment!

I worked on both of them too, along with the unofficial patches and the remastered versions Battlezone 98 Redux and Battlezone Combat Commander. 20 years of Battlezone!

Re: Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

#114

Post by kennethdmiller3 »

tomaskafka wrote: post #65
georgeecollins wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on both. Thanks. If we ever run into each other I hope we can have a drink.

Thank you! The physical model of the 'hovercrafts' in Battlezone 2 was so satisfying, I just enjoyed piloting over the landscape so much and no game has come this close to that feeling!

Hover physics was literally the very first thing I worked on for Battlezone, back when we were working in Interstate '76 and the game was called "Badlands". Within a week or so I had Groove Champion's orange Packard Piranha hovering around. There were many changes and additions later, but the core of hover physics started there.

Re: Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

#115

Post by kennethdmiller3 »

georgeecollins wrote: post #3

The amazing thing to me is that now people can make games without a bunch of great engineers. Back in the day when we made Battlezone we had at least four really amazing engineers (one was a Masters in CS from MIT, one wrote early 3d workstation code, UCLA, Cal Tech CS degrees). In those days you needed people like that to just 3D to work in Windows. Direct X helped a lot. Unity and Unreal have made things we couldn'…

It's still good to have engineers on a Unity or Unreal Engine 4 project (especially the latter). Designers can accomplish a lot with visual scripting but for a more complex game you'll often need custom components written by engineers.

Re: Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

#116

Post by vasili111 »

georgeecollins wrote: post #3

The amazing thing to me is that now people can make games without a bunch of great engineers. Back in the day when we made Battlezone we had at least four really amazing engineers (one was a Masters in CS from MIT, one wrote early 3d workstation code, UCLA, Cal Tech CS degrees). In those days you needed people like that to just 3D to work in Windows. Direct X helped a lot. Unity and Unreal have made things we couldn'…

> Unity and Unreal have made things we couldn't have dreamed of possible.

And that is why nearly 95% FPS games are practically clone of each other.

Re: Confessions of an Unreal Engine 4 engineering firefighter

#117

Post by sounds »

Kapura wrote: post #100
sounds wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think when you wrote "gregarious," you meant "egregious."

lol you're definitely right. It was one of those words with Es and Rs and a couple of Gs.

:) No worries.

But don't mistake it for "erogenous" or "gangrenous"

Post reply on HN