The Future of Halo Is Being Built With Unreal Engine 5 (theverge.com) 21
Along with 343 Industries now becoming Halo Studios, future Halo games will be developed using Unreal Engine 5. The Verge's Tom Warren reports: Halo moving to Unreal Engine 5 is being positioned as the first step of a transformation for Halo Studios to change its technology, structure, processes, and even culture. "We're not just going to try improve the efficiency of development, but change the recipe of how we make Halo games," says Pierre Hintze, studio head at Halo Studios. The team building Halo will move from the studio's Slipspace Engine to Unreal, after the proprietary engine it built for Halo Infinite became difficult to use and strained development. Halo Studios has had to dedicate a lot of staff to developing the Slipspace Engine, and parts of it are almost 25 years old.
"One of the primary things we're interested in is growing and expanding our world so players have more to interact with and more to experience," says Chris Matthews, art director at Halo Studios. "Nanite and Lumen [Unreal's rendering and lighting technologies] offer us an opportunity to do that in a way that the industry hasn't seen before. As artists, it's incredibly exciting to do that work." Halo Studios isn't committing to any release dates or new Halo game announcements just yet, but the team has been building some examples of Halo running in Unreal. Dubbed Project Foundry, the work is "neither a game nor a tech demo," but more of a research, development, and training tool. It's also the foundation for how the studio is changing up the way it builds Halo games.
Project Foundry has been built as if it was a shipping game so that a bunch of it can appear in Halo games in the future. "It's fair to say that our intent is that the majority of what we showcased in Foundry is expected to be in projects which we are building, or future projects," says Hintze. Project Foundry includes more detailed landscapes for Halo biomes, as well as foliage levels we haven't seen in Halo games in the past. Master Chief's armor has even been remodeled in this footage [...]. Halo Studios is now working on multiple Halo games, while the Slipstream Engine will continue to power Halo Infinite. "We had a disproportionate focus on trying to create the conditions to be successful in servicing Halo Infinite," says Hintze. "[But switching to Unreal] allows us to put all the focus on making multiple new experiences at the highest quality possible."
"One of the primary things we're interested in is growing and expanding our world so players have more to interact with and more to experience," says Chris Matthews, art director at Halo Studios. "Nanite and Lumen [Unreal's rendering and lighting technologies] offer us an opportunity to do that in a way that the industry hasn't seen before. As artists, it's incredibly exciting to do that work." Halo Studios isn't committing to any release dates or new Halo game announcements just yet, but the team has been building some examples of Halo running in Unreal. Dubbed Project Foundry, the work is "neither a game nor a tech demo," but more of a research, development, and training tool. It's also the foundation for how the studio is changing up the way it builds Halo games.
Project Foundry has been built as if it was a shipping game so that a bunch of it can appear in Halo games in the future. "It's fair to say that our intent is that the majority of what we showcased in Foundry is expected to be in projects which we are building, or future projects," says Hintze. Project Foundry includes more detailed landscapes for Halo biomes, as well as foliage levels we haven't seen in Halo games in the past. Master Chief's armor has even been remodeled in this footage [...]. Halo Studios is now working on multiple Halo games, while the Slipstream Engine will continue to power Halo Infinite. "We had a disproportionate focus on trying to create the conditions to be successful in servicing Halo Infinite," says Hintze. "[But switching to Unreal] allows us to put all the focus on making multiple new experiences at the highest quality possible."
Maybe they could try making it fun again (Score:2)
Re: Maybe they could try making it fun again (Score:3)
Now you get to buy two consoles, two copies of the game, and two subscriptions to Xbox live!
They are looking for cheaper hires (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't write video games, or at least not anymore, so my understanding of the Unreal Engine is limited.
What I've gathered is that the engine and the tooling around is are now advanced enough that a hobby level developer can create a game by mostly clicking around to generate the general aspect of the game and that there is little advanced coding required. It is not as dumbed down as Scratch, which my 9y old son is using to create basic games, but it seems that a lot of game development is heading in this d
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
advanced enough that a hobby level developer can create a game by mostly clicking around to generate the general aspect of the game and that there is little advanced coding required
if by "advanced coding" you mean low level gpu stuff or complex rendering algorithms, yes, game engines provide all that functionality via an api that can indeed be used via a graphical metaphor (called "blueprints" in unreal). however those apis tend to be huge and convoluted (unreal's specially so) and take a while to know and master, so it's a little more involved than just "clicking around", you do need a clear sense of what you are doing and why, and that must be learned. actually writing the code or w
Re: (Score:2)
those apis tend to be huge and convoluted (unreal's specially so) and take a while to know and master, so it's a little more involved than just "clicking around", you do need a clear sense of what you are doing and why, and that must be learned. actually writing the code or wiring up component boxes with drag and drop is your least concern, the hard part is figuring out which components to use/wire and how for any given task.
And that is potentially the reason why games using Unreal Engine are having many difficulties hitting the canonical performance targets (30 fps, 60fps) at all times. Digital Foundry comment on the recent PS5 Pro reveal was that no UE5 games were shown in that reveal view, being those UE5 games the ones that usually perform poor and the ones that could benefit the most from the extra computing power. MVG mentioned in his Silent Hill 2 Remaster review that there are many stutters on the PC version.
Game engine
Re: (Score:2)
Yes and no. The problem with Unreal Engine is it's incredible capabilities. In the hands of a programmer you can quite quickly over exert even highly capable hardware if you don't show the required level of restraint. It isn't the fact that you are better off optimising your game, but rather that every idiot will crank all the effects up to 11 to create that eye popping "wow" effect in their game's trailer without considering just how shitty their target hardware will still be in 5 years when they release t
Re: (Score:2)
Maintaining their own engine probably isn't viable long term. It's expensive and that cost can only be amortized over their games, not hundreds of games like Unreal Engine is. They have to keep throwing resources at it to keep it competitive.
It's not just the engine either, it's stuff like the tools to take models and animations from popular apps that the artistic team uses and put them into the game.
Compatibility and support are issues too. The engine will need to work on multiple platforms. Issues have to
Re: (Score:2)
> 1. ... all you can do is file a bug report to Epic and wait.
That's incorrect.
You DO have access to the source code so you CAN investigate and try reproduce the problem. You can even fix the bug and submit it back upstream to Epic. They DO pull fixes from studios.
I mean what would you do if you were using your own engine? You would need to schedule an engineer to investigate and fix it. Using an external engine doesn't change that.
It also depends on how severe the bug is. If many high profile studio
Re: (Score:2)
Maintaining an game engine is not only hard, it can also be expensive and otherwise hamper a project regardless of how good a developer may be. Unreal Engine has been in constant development as an engine since it's inception, virtually no one has put that level of effort into their own engines. The problem is that as we fast forward through the years the single purpose engine has become hampered by resources - it just isn't worth it for one game, and that lack of resourcing means the engines go old and stal
They're trying to not waste money (Score:2)
Maintaining your own proprietary rendering engine today is as high expense and risk-filled as writing your own database engine or programming language specifically for your business.
This is a welcome move aimed at focusing the studio on making games, not reinventing the wheel.
FFS, even Nintendo is starting to use Unreal Engine for first party games.
How old are parts on Unreal Engine 5? (Score:1)
>Halo Studios has had to dedicate a lot of staff to developing the Slipspace Engine, and parts of it are almost 25 years old.
I don't know anything about Unreal Engine 5, but unless it was rewritten from scratch since the first release of Unreal Engine, wouldn't parts of it also be 25 years old?
Re: (Score:3)
From my understanding, this is EXACTLY what Epic did actually. UE3 was hindered by proprietary licenses with different modules inside of it contributed back from 3rd party companies developing games and expanding on the engine capabilities.
UE4 was a complete re-write to get away from all the licensing BS, and simplify the licensing and contributing process.
UE5 is then a continuation on UE4 with major enhancements.
Re: (Score:2)
Well technically given that UE4 development started in 2003 parts of it are almost 25 years old as well, despite the ground up re-write.
Going cross platform? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure this opinion might make people a little upset, but I think going to unreal is likely the signal that they do not want to make hardware specific first party games anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
The fundamental problem is that 343 ^H^H^H Halo Studios doesn't know how to make a fun game.
Look at all the problems [steamcommunity.com] of their previous title Halo: Infinite. Fast forward 1 and 2 years later it STILL has numerous issues. [reddit.com] And you expect the same studio to deliver on their next product when they couldn't even fix their last one?? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
How do we know this? The player base is gone [steamcharts.com] holding steady around 4K players. It fell off HARD back in May 2022 and never re
Not salvageable (Score:4)
It's a classic case of the "new guys" thinking they're better than the legends even though they've never in their life made anything that even remotely measured up to what the legends did (this is becoming increasingly common in gaming and seemingly elsewhere too). There's no respect for the original work or what went into making it great, they're just a bunch of self-absorbed pricks who spit on the legacy of the greats. Renaming the studio and moving it to UE5 isn't going to fix the root of the rot.