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About Unreal... Unreal is a first person shooter that was released last year.
What is special about Unreal is it's exceptionally impressive graphics engine. It's
true 3D engine with dazzling effects and great customizability (is that a word?) make it a
great engine for companies who would like a jumpstart to the development process by
licensing an engine. The Quake2 engine and the Unreal engine are currently the
favorites for licensing.
Duke Nukem Forever is the next game in the Duke Nukem series.
3D Realms has originally licensed the Quake/Quake2 technology for DNF.
However, if you have ever edited for a Quake engine game, you will see it has many
limitations. A key thing in editing is how long it takes to compile a Quake2 map.
Try to compile a large Quake2 map on a high end system and it will take half a day.
If you aren't blessed with a faster machine, say you have a P233, it could take
days. When 3D Realms started work on DNF with the Quake2 engine, they bought
something insane like a Quad PPro 200 with 1 GIG of RAM (best thing money could buy in 97)
just so compiles wouldn't be as bad. With Unreal, compiling your level takes a
matter of minutes for a large map, or just seconds for a small level-- and this is on a
average system, nothing fancy.
Obviously that is an issue when choosing an engine to develop
with. On top of that, Unreal's engine was designed to be editable-- many more
changes can be made to the engine without as much work. Also, ever try to put a
large outdoor area in Quake2? It just won't run good. Unreal handles huge
outdoor areas with ease, as the game shows off in many areas. With all of these
facts taken into consideration, 3D Realms decided to go with Unreal's engine instead of
Quake2's...
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Shot of Unreal |
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Shot of UnrealED |
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About UnrealED...
UnrealED, which is included with the full
version of Unreal, is an all-purpose editor where you can edit your level, add 3d objects,
textures, sounds, music, and script using UnrealScript. Every aspect of editing
(aside from creating 3d models, texture art, and sound files to import) is done inside
UnrealED. Unlike editing Quake 2 where you need different programs for everything,
and BUILD where you needed BUILD.exe for level editing, EDITART for art, and a text editor
for scripting CON files, UnrealED is an all-in-one solution. In addition, Unreal
maps compile much faster than Quake 2 maps, as mentioned above.
Making the connection...
When Duke Nukem Forever is released, 3D Realms
will follow up their precedent set by Duke Nukem 3D for including the tools they developed
the game with. With Duke Nukem 3D they included the BUILD editor, EDITART, CON file
support, and other things. The editor that comes with Duke Nukem Forever will be
called DukeED, which will be a modified version of UnrealED. There
will be new features added to DukeED that differentiate it from UnrealED, however the
level construction should remain just as it is in UnrealED. It has also been
confirmed that levels for Unreal WILL be able to be imported into DukeED. So fire up
UnrealED and get started today if you want to be prepared to make levels, addons, and more
when Duke Nukem Forever is released!
To keep you up to date about how editing for
Duke Nukem Forever will be the same as and different from UnrealED, I have added a UnrealED vs DukeED section to keep you up to date
as we get more information about DNF. Since this tutorial probably won't be
actively updated and revisited, I will update that section as more is learned.
For the most comprehensive collection of
currently known information about Duke Nukem Forever, visit Dukeworld's
Official DNF FAQ.
For information about Unreal, the game, visit
Epic's official Unreal site: www.unreal.com.
For news about the continuing development of
Unreal's technology, visit the Unreal Technology Page.
This tutorial is complete! I
hope it told you what you needed to know about why this site covers UnrealED if you
haven't caught on already. Your next step should be installation if you choose to
start editing with UnrealED... |
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