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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  News  |  Topic: Silicon Knights sues Epic. Drops UE3 for Too Human. 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: Silicon Knights sues Epic. Drops UE3 for Too Human.  (Read 42728 times)
Sairon
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Reply #35 on: July 21, 2007, 05:38:33 PM

I agree that is it's bizarre to claim that an engine is your own work once you've tweaked/replaced the algorithms since that's really just the easy part of creating an engine, save for a few critical parts. The hard part of rolling your own engine is mostly the design, there's no such thing as a flawless design, or at least I've never heard of anyone accomplishing it. From my experience the quality and thought put into the design is what will save you a shitton of work and determine whatever you're building on top of the engine will resemble a hack keeping the shit together or pieces of a puzzle perfectly fitting together in order to create a piece of art. I can only guess that most likely the design of the unreal engine has had a lot more thought behind than most people would spend creating an engine while also being the result of experienced people with years of creating engines behind them. However, at the end of the day, if it's poorly documented, the implementation is of low quality ( buggy ) due to poor Q&A/rushed, and shipped way to late, it's still shit.

BTW, I'll probably regret posting this when I wake up because even if I feel I've put a great post unto this thread increasing my epeen I'm drunk as a fuck and having problems hitting the Post button. I'm happy that there's a spell check to save me from posting jibberish as well.
CharlieMopps
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Reply #36 on: July 22, 2007, 09:42:44 AM

GG is a political action committee. tongue

If that passes in the suit and SK is granted their claim for recompensation, it will put middle ware game engines out of business, which will set the industry back decades, and may be unrecoverable. Call that chicken little screaming if you like, but it's drawn my attention in a big way.


Am I the only one that WANTS the industry to get set back a decade or more? Games were WAY better 10 years ago. Now all we have is Microsoft controlled DirectX clones of one another. I haven't seen an origional idea for a game since the late 90s. I hate going to best buy and seeing rows and rows of games that all run the same engine. They are all the same flippen game for Gods sake. Someone go and invent something new! And maybe do something in Glide so the game can be ported somewhere other than windows. I havent seen a linux port of a game in nearly 10 years either.
Trippy
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Reply #37 on: July 22, 2007, 10:01:37 AM

I havent seen a linux port of a game in nearly 10 years either.
You haven't been looking then.
Kail
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Reply #38 on: July 22, 2007, 10:49:14 AM

Am I the only one that WANTS the industry to get set back a decade or more? Games were WAY better 10 years ago. Now all we have is Microsoft controlled DirectX clones of one another. I haven't seen an origional idea for a game since the late 90s

I don't think that's what he meant.  It's not like Epic is handing out licenses on a street corner, and game companies are saying "well, now that we've got it, we may as well do a game that's basically a copy of Unreal".  I believe it's generally after they have the basics nailed down (e.g. "This is going to be a futuristic story based FPS") that they start looking at their options for engines ("How can we do this with a reasonable budget").  Since using middleware is usually seen as a way to lower development costs (I think, feel free to correct me), it seems like it would be a detrimental blow to original games as much as it would be to knock-offs, because it would be one less option open to a company risking a sizeable chunk of money on an untested idea.  When someone's got some crazy original idea, they can either spend their budget trying to make it fun or they can spend their budget trying to write basic components of an engine. The Unreal Engine doesn't HAVE to be used for Unreal knock-offs; the UE2 was responsible for a ton of games, including Magic: The Gathering (Battlegrounds), Vanguard, and Ragnarok Online 2.  The original UE was used for a pinball game.
Stephen Zepp
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Reply #39 on: July 22, 2007, 10:54:24 AM

I havent seen a linux port of a game in nearly 10 years either.
You haven't been looking then.


This is only somewhat green, but you haven't seen many board games published in Swahili, either--both have good reasons.

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Stephen Zepp
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Reply #40 on: July 22, 2007, 11:01:26 AM

Am I the only one that WANTS the industry to get set back a decade or more? Games were WAY better 10 years ago. Now all we have is Microsoft controlled DirectX clones of one another. I haven't seen an origional idea for a game since the late 90s

I don't think that's what he meant.  It's not like Epic is handing out licenses on a street corner, and game companies are saying "well, now that we've got it, we may as well do a game that's basically a copy of Unreal".  I believe it's generally after they have the basics nailed down (e.g. "This is going to be a futuristic story based FPS") that they start looking at their options for engines ("How can we do this with a reasonable budget").  Since using middleware is usually seen as a way to lower development costs (I think, feel free to correct me), it seems like it would be a detrimental blow to original games as much as it would be to knock-offs, because it would be one less option open to a company risking a sizeable chunk of money on an untested idea.  When someone's got some crazy original idea, they can either spend their budget trying to make it fun or they can spend their budget trying to write basic components of an engine. The Unreal Engine doesn't HAVE to be used for Unreal knock-offs; the UE2 was responsible for a ton of games, including Magic: The Gathering (Battlegrounds), Vanguard, and Ragnarok Online 2.  The original UE was used for a pinball game.

Kail's pretty close to what my point was about--and after thinking this through for several days, I think if nothing else happens, this suit will change the way middleware works in the equation (if it continues to work at all).

What's become clear to me more than anything else is that the concept of a "game engine" is something that 90% of the customer base view as completely different from what the engine developers think--studios, indies, whatever the customer is doesn't want a game engine, they want the things that turn a game engine into a game already done for them.

Back to Charlie's point, and why I think it has some merit, it's my opinion that you see so many shooters from Unreal engine licensees is because that's the easiest path--the tools and systems that are "more than game engine, not quite full game" are already done, and therefore the least path of resistance to publishing.

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CharlieMopps
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Reply #41 on: July 22, 2007, 12:26:08 PM

I havent seen a linux port of a game in nearly 10 years either.
You haven't been looking then.


ok, maybe 10 years is an exageration... but you know what I mean. They really are few and far between.

I havent seen a linux port of a game in nearly 10 years either.
You haven't been looking then.


This is only somewhat green, but you haven't seen many board games published in Swahili, either--both have good reasons.

I'll have to call you on this one.
http://www.asymptopia.org/staticpages/index.php?page=swa-eng-01&mode=print
and, ironically, it was done on Linux
I'm willing to bet nearly every boardgame there is has been converted to Swahili.
Why? Because boardgames don't require DirectX.
Stephen Zepp
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Reply #42 on: July 22, 2007, 12:32:12 PM

I havent seen a linux port of a game in nearly 10 years either.
You haven't been looking then.


ok, maybe 10 years is an exageration... but you know what I mean. They really are few and far between.

I havent seen a linux port of a game in nearly 10 years either.
You haven't been looking then.


This is only somewhat green, but you haven't seen many board games published in Swahili, either--both have good reasons.

I'll have to call you on this one.
http://www.asymptopia.org/staticpages/index.php?page=swa-eng-01&mode=print
and, ironically, it was done on Linux
I'm willing to bet nearly every boardgame there is has been converted to Swahili.
Why? Because boardgames don't require DirectX.

Heh...ok, it was a poor attempt at an analogy, from a pure business perspective it's simply not feasible yet to maintain linux ports for most games. I hate it myself (old school linux guy), but when it costs more to port/prep for any type of linux than you can ever make in revenue, it just doesn't work yet as a business model.

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Trippy
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Reply #43 on: July 22, 2007, 07:11:50 PM

I havent seen a linux port of a game in nearly 10 years either.
You haven't been looking then.
ok, maybe 10 years is an exageration... but you know what I mean. They really are few and far between.
I would agree with that. The Cedega emulation continues to get better, though, so that's an option for many games.
UnSub
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Reply #44 on: July 22, 2007, 07:41:24 PM

Am I the only one that WANTS the industry to get set back a decade or more? Games were WAY better 10 years ago.

No they weren't. Either you hadn't played as many games 10 years ago or what you like has fallen out of fashion (e.g. turn-based combat) for mainstream publishers.

Quote
Someone go and invent something new! And maybe do something in Glide so the game can be ported somewhere other than windows. I havent seen a linux port of a game in nearly 10 years either.

I miss seeing AAA title games in AmigaOS as well, and can only hope the market realises the untapped potential of AmigaOS players.

And haven't you heard of consoles or indie game development, where a lot more slightly different stuff appears?

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Reply #45 on: July 22, 2007, 08:11:43 PM

Having read the linked article and Mr Zepp's examination of it, all I can say is that SK has (imo) a strong circumstantial and conflict-of-interest argument against Epic. Put something like that in front of a judge who might not understand the technical complexities of middleware and SK has a strong chance of winning (not an expert legal opinion).

Why? A judge may (and should) hold them to the contract that gets signed between Epic and that third party and if they find that Epic was holding up sending out new versions of the engine / engine support until after GoW had development time spent on it, which allegedly they did, it might breach a contractual clause. It's all well and good for this discussion to put the blame on SK, but if Epic has been sloppy in dealing with their engine licensees or more focussed on their game development, then they've left themselves open for this kind of lawsuit.

Yes, SK might be protecting themselves by going after Epic, but that doesn't make them automatically wrong.

Can a company serve two masters, in both releasing games AND selling licenses to for middleware use AND keep the necessary quality and protections up on both? Yeah, they probably could, but they'd have to be very, very careful about it.

MrHat
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Out of the frying pan, into the fire.


Reply #46 on: July 23, 2007, 05:09:16 AM

The USPTO needs to get burned down and rebuilt from the ground up. Same thing with the copyright and trademark office.

Will someone call me first so I can get out of the building?
CharlieMopps
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Reply #47 on: July 23, 2007, 05:52:03 AM

Software patents, especially algorithm patents, are bullshit. Period, end of story. Patents that don't even cover a specific implementation, but rather a concept in general, are even worse. The USPTO needs to get burned down and rebuilt from the ground up. Same thing with the copyright and trademark office.

... I'll stop before I have to send my own posts to Politics. undecided

I have to agree with Yoru
Trippy
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Reply #48 on: July 23, 2007, 10:54:15 PM

Shacknews does some journalism (shocking, I know):

http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=468
schild
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Reply #49 on: July 23, 2007, 10:56:22 PM

I contacted a number of people with the UE3 engine. They're under NDA about many of the things they can say about it. Basically, anyone who has anything interesting or damning to say isn't going to say a damn thing until they see how the lawsuit proceeds.
Yegolev
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Reply #50 on: July 24, 2007, 11:55:42 AM

(old school linux guy)

This made me smirk.

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
They called it The Prayer, its answer was law
Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
Stephen Zepp
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Reply #51 on: July 24, 2007, 12:03:41 PM


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Yegolev
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Reply #52 on: July 24, 2007, 01:14:23 PM

I just don't think of Linux as old despite how long it (not GNU) has been floating around.  In my mind I somehow just see abberant GUIs, unmaintaned programs, missing device drivers, etc.  Logically, I know that there are enterprise-grade implementations of Linux... but those make me smirk as well.

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
They called it The Prayer, its answer was law
Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
squirrel
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Reply #53 on: July 24, 2007, 09:13:01 PM

I just don't think of Linux as old despite how long it (not GNU) has been floating around.  In my mind I somehow just see abberant GUIs, unmaintaned programs, missing device drivers, etc.  Logically, I know that there are enterprise-grade implementations of Linux... but those make me smirk as well.

Well that's because Linux aint old. At all. *nix is. BSD is. All the other lost OS candidates are (BeOS, Warp, Planet 9) but of the modern surviving OS's Linux doesn't predate OS X (technically though as NextStep, released in 1989, it clearly predates Apple OS X), and would have a hard time claiming 'first post!' against Windows NT. (NT 3 was released early 1992, Linux would be hard pressed to claim release in 1991.)

*nix is old, but our favorite penguin is not really any older than the XP/Vista, OS X crowd it walks with. Which is good, it's aging well with them, although not commercially as viable for gaming, but then neither is OS X.

Speaking of marketing, we're out of milk.
Yegolev
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Reply #54 on: July 25, 2007, 01:28:42 PM

You made it look like I didn't do any research... which I didn't, heh.  I kinda think of XP as old but I guess the deal is where you draw the line.  My thinking might make more sense if I used the word "mature".  I'd be willing to pass over "old-school XP guy" quicker than "old-school Linux"... nevermind that Linux is just the kernel and you should say Redhat or SuSE or something instead.

I don't like Linux.

Why am I homeless?  Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.
They called it The Prayer, its answer was law
Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
Daeven
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Reply #55 on: August 20, 2007, 11:12:18 AM

Quote
It's also revealed: "Progress on the Silicon Knights’ Engine continues to date and, at this time, the Silicon Knights Engine is completely independent of Epic’s Engine and certainly derives no benefit from the unworkable source code provided by Epic."


or, if you read between the lines,

"Hey, we learned nothing at all from an engine that has been used to make more games than any other in the business, so we're going to go ahead and, starting completely from scratch with no input whatsoever from this example that has had zero success, ever, accomplish something that took you almost a decade and more dollars than we could ever make in our company's lifetime, in time to make our game. Oh, and it's ours.

Let me expand on this, based on developing software for way to many years now:
Developer, in charge of foozle integration, has a 'Not Invented Here' moment, and decides they can do this bit better.
Developer (or the team lead by Lead) ends up wandering around in the woods far longer than they thought, fatally delaying the project.
When pressed for a reason, Developer (or Lead) repeats the initial NIH reasoning to Business Person, who only really hears 'The Licensed Engine was Crap'.
Hysteria and Blame ensues, as people try to save their jobs by pointing fingers at Licensed Engine in a desperate attempt to Not Loose Their Jobs.

Everyone Dance.

"There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of a character in a book with those of the author. That term is idiot." -SMStirling

It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion
cmlancas
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Reply #56 on: August 20, 2007, 03:33:53 PM

*does a necro dance just for you!*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT90keJ51bY

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