Planet Duke | Features | Interview: George Broussard (06/16/98)

George Broussard (06/16/98) on the switch from Quake II to Unreal engine for Duke Nukem Forever Article and interview by Brad Wernicke - Originally seen at Dukeworld [ Page 1 ][ Page 2 ][ Page 3 ][ Page 4 ][ Press Release 1 ][ Press Release 2 ] [ Previous Page ][ Next Page ] 1. You guys shocked the gaming world by announcing well into the development that Duke Nukem Forever would use the Unreal engine instead of Quake II. Why make that decision so late into development, and after Duke Nukem Forever was so well received at E3 using the Quake II engine? George: Actually we aren't as far along as you might think and that in part led to the decision. We started working heavily on the game after we got the Quake 2 code in mid Dec (97). So at E3 we had about 4.5 months into the demo. The decision was a business one based on where we were with the game, where we wanted to go and the financial issues involved. 2. Was the whole design team behind the decision? Were you discussing it long before E3, and when did you arrive at this decision? George: We "toyed" with the idea prior to E3, but nothing serious. After E3, we were sitting around talking one evening and someone said "Hey, let's switch to Unreal". The room got quiet for a moment and I kinda excused myself to some thinking. Once we discovered it was a doable deal, we sat as a team and said "Here's what we wanna do. Any problems?" It was unanimous. So then we set about putting the deal together. This all happened the week after we got back from E3. 3. Was there one or two things about the Unreal engine that made this decision easy, and what other technologies does the Unreal engine offer, that the Quake II engine did not? What new things will you be able to do that you weren't able to do with the Quake II engine? George: Both engines are very competent and both do different things better. But overall, we were very impressed with Unreal and it's suite of features. They had many of the things we intended to add over the next few months (like large outside areas), and some things we just added (but were not quite polished) like procedural water etc. In general I think the game is opened up a bit more to us now, and that's more conducive to a Duke game. We did great things in Quake 2 to get Duke "outside", but we wanted a little more. 4. Was doing large outdoor areas a factor? The Unreal engine certainly seems more capable of handling larger areas, but the E3 demo of Duke Nukem Forever showed many large outdoor scenes... George: We achieved what we wanted to at E3, and wanted to go farther. Again, the whole issue was "do we spend dev time and re-vamp Q2, or just switch to Unreal, and add features as we go?". There are pro's and con's to both decisions. Going with Unreal would cost us $$$ in the short term, but maybe get us tech faster than we could add it. Staying with Q2 assures more solid net play, but maybe Unreal will have that. So it was a constant balancing act that we were trying to do to decide. In the end, we just decided to switch. Right or wrong, it's what we felt we needed to do, and it made sense for us, right now. Maybe not for other developers, but for us. 5. Was the Unreal engine's superior software renderer a big factor in your decision? After all, making Duke Nukem Forever hardware only could have potentially hurt your sales... George: That was a small factor. We dropped software in Q2 in order to get some other benefits. Writing a 16 bit software renderer was a considerable chunk of time, and one we really didn't want to invest in. I really feel software is dead now anyway, but it's a nice feature to fall back on. [ Previous Page ][ Next Page ] [ Page 1 ][ Page 2 ][ Page 3 ][ Page 4 ][ Press Release 1 ][ Press Release 2 ]