21 replies to this topic

[The Liberator]

andrewlennox, on 09 June 2012 - 04:59 AM, said:

Also psyched for Tomb Raider. That Mac port possibility talked about earlier makes me giddy for this. Thankfully Underworld is coming out to satisfy my giddyness craving It looks like a new direction from previous games but I think, from what I have seen, it will be more then just an Uncharted clone like some critics are saying.

And how can we forget Watch Dogs. It's really hard to explain this in this limiting setting but it has to be this years biggest surprise. So sad that it won't come out until 2013. It you're yet to understand why I suggest this, you check out the gameplay footage. It'll blow your mind.

Yeah, I am also very interested in Tomb Raider. I have never bothered to take any interest in the series...until now. I watched the trailer and other content; it has definitely caught my attention.

I also had no idea what all the talk about Watch Dogs was about, until I watched a stage demo. Very nice indeed.

Lib.

[ltcommander.data]

The Unreal Engine 4 demo was very nice as well. The live, multi-platform rapid development aspect seems to already be used in id Tech 5 and CryEngine 3, but neither will likely be as widely deployed as UE4, so should be a major boon to game development. Major "new" graphic features like real-time dynamic lighting and eye adaptation seem like features that are promoted every new engine generation, but I guess this time it's happening for real rather than tricks and hand waving.

Although select game developers have early access to UE4, it looks like it'll be another year before UE4 is finalized and widely released. In that time, I hope they include built-in Mac support. OpenGL 3.2 is below their DX11 baseline target, but they already said the engine is going to scale down to mobile, probably the upcoming OpenGL ES 3.0 Haiti which is based on OpenGL 3.x, so Apple's slow OpenGL API adoption can be worked around. Having built-in Mac support for UE4 on launch will be very useful in encouraging native Mac versions/ports of next-gen games. It'd be best to avoid what happened to UE3 where Mac support was added after most licensees already forked their own versions of UE3. After those false-rumours of Tim Cook having a meeting at Valve, the game company Cook really should be meeting with is Epic to hammer out a UE4 Mac commitment. I guess it's too much to hope for a surprise UE4 demo during the WWDC keynote a la id Tech 5/RAGE.