Blog Archives

« The Map is not the Territory Flying Start »

Engine Paradigms (Aug 4, 2005)

Something that came out of the Quake 2 versus Unreal battle of years and years ago was the obvious distinctions between both engines. Whilst they were both capable of coloured lighting, shadows, water, details and vast swathes of area (well, Unreal moreso), both engines had a distinct look and appearance.

Of course, this was primarily due to the game themes; Quake is traditionally grey and brown, whereas Unreal was intended to be opposite and add in sparks of colour and variety. However, the pattern continued through other games, to the extent that it was generally very easy to determine which engine some new FPS was using just by seeing a screenshot or two.

These days, there are a few Quake-style BSP engines (notably Source and Q3-derived engines) and the various incarnations of the Unreal engine, but they are all capable of presenting the same basic geometry. It's the effects that are overlaid on top that typically ruin the game, like the revolutionary procedural liquids of Unreal or the real-time shadows of Doom 3.

It's not all that simple though. The most interesting difference, in my opinion, is how the style of each engine affects the architecture and designs that are created. The simple difference is that Quake-style engines require the designer to create an enclosed space within a big empty universe, whereas Unreal-style engines require the designer to cut out spaces of a big solid universe. For this reason, 'Unreal designers' seem to favour large, well connected designs whereas 'Quake designers' end up creating more intricate locations. Creating a large and sparse area in Unreal is fairly easy, but the same in Quake requires careful planning.

The difference in the two paradigms obviously affects the game too. Counter-Strike would have been a very different game if it were on the UT engine rather than the HL1 engine (which was the big decision at the time), simply because the style of the engine would have encouraged larger, vaster areas than HL1. Dust was born out of the natural leads that the HL1 engine puts on the designer, and I understand is a little trickier to make in Unreal. I'm not sure we would have seen something like Italy or Militia without the HL1 engine.

Of course, who knows what CS has missed out on by not going with Unreal? The point is, it is important to understand the benefits and restrictions of the tools you work with. Ultimately, Quake and Unreal-style engines are equally flexible, but their construction styles encourage fairly different results given the same task. They might be as capable as each other, but they will twist and contort your thinking in ways you may never have expected.

« The Map is not the Territory Flying Start »

user comments

Octavian at 19:28 on Aug 5, 2005

Red Faction is the only other subtractive geometry engine I can think of besides Unreal.

Did Red Faction use a modified Unreal engine? It had that shit where you could hack into the walls and stuff.


Die Miner!!

Simon at 10:32 on Aug 6, 2005

Nope, RF Used the Geo-Mod Engine, It didnt license the Unreal engine from Epic MegaGames.

channie at 09:43 on Aug 7, 2005

Just to drop a thought : Because of the oldiness of the HL engine (remember the 800 wpoly limit), CS maps must have been designed around that restriction, so we have corridors, and tiny outdoors to ensure smoothness of play. I think this the major reason between those engines.

Then, Unreal added smart terrain support before quake iirc. this is Team Arena Q3 addon which added a weak terrain support (heightmap based and unalterable), where unreal allowed real-time terrain modifications in the editor.

So the gap increased, and now these engines are easily recognized by their landscapes.

Surprisingly, I thought that Unreal Editor's pilosophy came through a 'dig into the matter' style, as if you were digging caverns directly from a large piece of rock. I think this pilosophy corresponds to the first Unreal Game, as the action mainly occurs indoors.
Quake style is roughly the same, even though the philosophy would be a bit less smarter :) Perhaps they were convinced they would make outdoors as technology was getting better day after day, or it was done in a hurry :D

Nowadays, Doom 3 engine is a great choice for dark indoors, as Unreal technology specialized in outdoors, and you can see id software furnishing efforts to prove D3 is also good at this game, and I hope ET: Quake Wars will definitely concurs.

Simon at 16:04 on Aug 7, 2005

Yeah the megapixel textures for the terrian in quake wars will will be fantastic if the artists use them right, Carmacks engine wil be back on top again.

Peter at 23:02 on Aug 7, 2005

Im glad that cs never got made with the quake engine, I beleive that if it did, it would not have been as popular because it could of got lost in the crowd.
-just my thoughts-

zeh at 01:27 on Aug 15, 2005

Actually.. you could even say CS was initially made for Quake 1. It was a "realism" mod, the first one I've seen, done by the same guy who worked on CS later (Mingh Lee or something?). No, it wasn't Action Quake; I can't remember the name, but when you see screenshots, there's the CS vibe right there.

I think using HL was actually a great 'move' by CS. When HL was released, it was the time cybercafés were also gaining some inertia. I remember everybody would play HLDM on cybercafés because it was "the last big thing", but when that died out, people moved to the next thing - which happened to be a mod for the same game, easy choice. CS is a good mod (although I don't like it), but I believe much of the huge following it got was because of this lucky combination with the cybercafés boom.

zeh at 01:29 on Aug 15, 2005

PS. Of course, Johnsto might know a lot more about the whole CS history, so feel free to add/correct any mistake I've done. :)