GitHub GitHub OctoTales • Team Stories, 3 Mar 2015

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From YouTube: GitHub OctoTales • Epic Games

Description

We recently caught up with some of our friends at Epic Games in Cary, NC a few weeks ago to talk about the latest developments with Unreal Engine and Unreal Tournament. Since opening up the engine source code on GitHub a year ago, they've released seven major updates that incorporate an array of contributions from the community such as @SRombauts' git plugin and much improved Linux support.

Our latest OctoTale captured some of Epic Games' stories and some of the amazing work that's going on in their passionate vibrant community. We think you'll enjoy it.

And finally, some more exciting news for fans of the Unreal Engine: as of this week, developers can enjoy free access to Unreal Engine 4!

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A

Back in the early days,, when I started programming, you'd get these programming. Magazines, and they'd have little sample programs that you could type in, and understand the operation of the program..

A

That was followed by 20 years of dark ages for most of the game. Industry,, where there are lots of games, shipping, but very little source.

A

That you could download, and understand, yourself..

A

I think that's finally, opening up again,.

A

Writing all sorts of things.. I wrote a game for the original ibm pc, and that led to the creation of epic games.

B

(Man) so, we're at epic's wall of games.

B

at one point, epic, was called epic megagames,.

B

So this is like back in the '90s.. Epic megagames was not only a game developer,, but almost more a publisher.

B

people would mail in their cds to tim, and he'd work out how to get these games shipped out., one of the most notable ones here is zzt..

B

This was tim. Sweeney's. tim actually drew this map out, and then built this game. Himself, kind of the first thing that I know that tim built., so this side, we're getting into more the late '90s era,.

B

The jazz jackrabbit 2,, the sequel to cliff's, game, and then epic kind of became a real developer at this point, and we built unreal, and unreal was kind of the start of unreal. Engine,.

B

But also kind of the first game that I really started knowing epic by, is playing unreal, and I think if anyone remembers the picture on the box, here,.

B

Where you boot upunreal and it does the cool camera fly-by of the castle, and under the bridge., that was one of the first things that was like this awesome graphics, demo,, built into a fun game.

B

(Tim sweeney) well from the very beginning,.

A

The unreal engine was designed to support many different kinds of games,, not just the one game that we were building at the time, and that kind of distinguished it from other early game-engine efforts..

B

Imagine if this junk here was maybe something of this distance.

B

Epic has always been a small company,.

A

Relative to the competition, and one of the keys to our success has been being able to accomplish a lot with a small team of artists.

A

And so making them as productive as possible, through tools, being able to see every aspect of your game, in real time,.

A

Exactly as it appears when you're playing, has really been a critical element.

B

Like when you let go of the controls,, it feels a lot more like a helicopter. unreal engine is the world-class game. Development platform., it's the software that, when I go home, I'd want to use it to realize my vision..

B

If I have an idea for a game,, I want to useunreal enginefor that, and we want it to be the best in the world.

B

Ever since I started epic, back in 2007,, I had been interested in what would it be like, if the engine was attainable by anyone?? That was something that was very important to me.

A

(Tim) ever since theunreal engine 3days,, we've wanted to open up the engine to the public, release the full source, and anybody can do anything with it.

A

We finally succeeded in releasing the full source to the public in 2014.

C

(Ray davis) making the source code available so that anybody out there can contribute back to it is.... It was really scary at first, it was kind of a crazy thought, we're like, "oh, my god,. This is going to be un--".

C

"We'll lose control of the engine, right?", the cool thing about it. Is it really unlocks a whole new functionality for people using the engine.?

C

There's no code hidden behind these barriers that you can't really tell what's going on. at any point,. If something seems wonky, or you just want to see how it works, it's right, there, and it's a huge learning tool,, especially for people starting out., you're impressed by that awesome, rendering technique, or how that shader was put together?.

C

Well there you go-- it's right, there,! You can see it.

B

(Mike) we've had awesome code contributions back to the engine, too,, which I think is cool.. We just had a great success story with a community member,.

B

And he created a git plugin for the engine.. We assimilated that into engine,, with his permission, and as of the next release, that'll, be a full-fledged feature of the engine,, with direct support from git..

B

Without the source code being out there,, it would have been impossible.

D

(Man) with unreal engine we, we're really aiming to bring the success closer to the developer.

D

We want to empower creativity., we want to watch people, take their ideas, and just go nuts with them.

B

Hey everyone, welcome to the weekly.

D

Unreal engine twitch livestream., I'm chance, ivey, your community manager, and I'm here with some new friends, and great friends of epic,.

D

But I just met them earlier. This week. we've got lee reilly, and rick olson from github.

D

also, we're going to get into the game jam finalists, and play those awesome, awesome games. each week,. We interact with the public on our twitch channel.

D

It's just a way that we can address our community,, listen to our community, and be available..

D

So we kicked off the game jam a couple weeks ago, and we had really great turnout..

D

There were 40 submissions,. The theme was "back to square one.".

D

We got some really,, really amazing, stuff,. So let's watch the quick highlight reel..

D

So each month, we have an unreal engine game jam., we say all right, from this moment: on, there's 72 hours, and some change,.

D

We essentially ask people to get together with a small team and build a game on unreal engine over that week, and submit it by midnight on sunday..

D

It's been really awesome to see what people can come up. With, it's just in three days, essentially.

D

♪, (music), ♪,.

D

A couple weeks after the submissions are over,, we announce three winners.. This one is suspicious detective by nimiec & slizewski,.

D

And this one's like a full murder, mystery., I'm the detective,, and so now I've got to come in and start questioning people..

D

What do you know about this knife?? I saw granny with one the other day. granny had a knife. So let's go talk to granny.

D

granny,. Tell me about this knife,. Have you seen this knife??

D

It looks like its good for chopping stuff.. Some things just get: circulated, they're, just everywhere, and everyone's like, "can. You believe this [dude's] doing this?".

D

We didn't reach out to this guy,. It's like,. Can we hire that guy?

D

things like that. people are doing stuff that is blowing our rendering guy's mind.

D

Blowing our artists' mind, like how did they do that?.

D

We want to see what these people are: doing., so,, yeah,, congratulations to all the winners.

D

(stacey). The community has always been so,, so giving.

E

They're, the most generous community, I've ever worked, with.

E

People will spend hours doing something to help you out.

E

Hi everyone, we're live at epic headquarters....

E

I get to interface with our community,, our very passionate unreal tournament. Community.

E

we look at their maps,, we give them feedback,, they give us feedback on the game,. They tell us what they like,, what they don't like,. So it's been a really,, really great interactive experience with these guys.

E

first of all, we're going to take a look at captain migraine's amazing, lea map.

E

One of the guys in our community,, his name's captain migraine., he's been a member of the unreal tournament community for a long time.. He made a remake of a map that was done back in,. I think, ut 2004..

E

We really, really enjoyed playing it,, so we decided to feature it.

E

(Jim brown): this is the game actually running in the editor.

F

You can see, if I turn on all the editor assets,, you can see.

E

(Stacey) yeah,, because if you... it looks like a painting., it's gorgeous., everybody had something to say about the map,, because it's one of the favorites. (jim) he had some discussions with the competitive players.

F

On how they could improve game play., and so they made some of their own pick-up assets, and changed armor, and really kind of changed. The way armor worked in the whole game, and used this map as a testbed to test that,, which was great.

C

(Ray), this early-access, model, and open source allows players not only to provide feedback, but to get in there themselves, and show it, or build it, and contribute it back. people on both sides appreciate,. It allows us to build not only better games, but games better crafted to the audience,, the people that love them., it's becoming almost normal for developers.

B

To have a connection with the community of [inaudible], before the game's, even close to finish, now,.

E

And hopefully the model that we set withunreal engine,.

B

And the relationship we have with our community, has just helped setting a precedent. There.

D

(Chance) anybody that comes in that wants to be a part, ofunreal engine,. We can help them be a part of unreal engine,, not just helping them make their games, but help them in the community.

E

I really, really do think that the future of gaming is going to be companies working with the community,, letting the community shape their games,.

E

♪ (series music) ♪.