Epic just dropped the subscription fee on the Unreal Engine!

[Hambeau]

Now anyone can download the dev-kit for free. There used to be a $19/mo. subscription to get access.

How many (show of hands, please o/ ) would like to see a version of Minecraft written using a real graphics engine at it's core?

Imagine a couple of scenes:

1). Blowing up your (or a) base with a nuke and seeing blocks fly everywhere, generating "splash damage" when they hit, instead of a server crash.

2). A "Knockback" weapon throwing the mob with "ragdoll" effects (flailing arms, bouncing when they hit. etc.)

Probably won't happen, with the requested 5% royalty on quarterly sales over USD3000, but it's fun to think about

 

[asb3pe]

Dynamic lighting is what would help improve the game the most IMO... I would include "shaders" in that category - much better and more realistic lighting/shadows.

The biggest way to improve this game would be finding a way to eliminate "loaded" and "unloaded" chunks, but I'm not sure a new graphics engine would help with that. All chunks should be loaded and active at all times, but I'm pretty sure we'll never see that happen.

 

[PhoenixSmith]

Great, that subscription fee is money I will never get back. They gave me 30 dollars to spend in there store though...

 

[CuriousKey]

Dynamic lighting is what would help improve the game the most IMO... I would include "shaders" in that category - much better and more realistic lighting/shadows.

The biggest way to improve this game would be finding a way to eliminate "loaded" and "unloaded" chunks, but I'm not sure a new graphics engine would help with that. All chunks should be loaded and active at all times, but I'm pretty sure we'll never see that happen.

Quasi-infinite world + all chunks persistent = not possible with a computer smaller than your average planetoid. You pretty much have to choose between limited persistence (chunkloading one area) or limited worlds.

There are ways around that though. You could have a system that dynamically loads regions that have important events triggered in them, so you could have a world changing and moving around you, while only having small parts of it loaded at any one time.