Postby FrankieV » Wed Apr 16, 2014 4:13 pm
The fact of the matter is FrozenSand has moved on to using Unreal 4 as our engine of the future not because it may or may not be the best engine choice but rather after years of investigating it is the logical choice that will allow Urban Terror as a franchise game to continue to grow into something that we all hope it could have been or can become.
Perhaps the number one reason to switch to Unreal 4 is the support being offered by Epic by maintaining a breathing project in the shape of the Unreal Engine as well as direct access to individuals over at Epic who are responsible for catering to individual teams, such as ourselves, based on unique requirements.
The ideal for FrozenSand would have been if the licensing terms and conditions for the idtech3 engine could have been finalized that would have allowed us the freedom to continue working on the fstech1 design, and in the process developing more advanced tools necessary to continue to improve the base game, but that was not to be and to continue to develop on a leaky game engine platform only risks failure and death by obsolesce by design.
That being said switching out an engine at this late stage of the game is not a 1.2.3. process and does take a fair amount of time and effort, not to mention money, to move an entire development pipeline over from one engine platform, that has it's own unique requirements, over to a more advanced design that requires individuals on the team to kit up so to speak.
With that out of the way we do have plans in the works to be a bit more open about the future development of the UrTHD brand and a bit more definitive as to our goals and intentions which has always been limited by the unsupported nature of the idtech3 engine that has been resolved with our partnership with Epic who are interested in our game design ideas of an already established working title.
More than anything that is why I'm here now not to help make things better but to let you guys know we are paying attention.