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'Our engine is better for designers than Unreal,' says Call of Duty 5 dev
Chris Dring Jun 23 2008, 12:24pm
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Treyarch ready to battle middleware when it comes to World at War
The developer of the next Call of Duty, Treyarch, has been fleshing out the work on its new game and collaboration with original developer Infinity Ward in the latest Developmag.com Q&A - and has also been discussing the use of the shared Activision technology and how it compares with current middleware top dog Unreal Engine 3.
New title Call of Duty: World at War will be built on the Infinity Ward-developed engine used to make recent blockbuster Call of Duty: Modern Combat - and according to Treyarch's senior producer Noah Heller the technology is better than Epic's offering when it comes to serving designers.
He told us: "I’ve worked on plenty of engines in my career, including Unreal. And I’d say the big difference with this engine is how close it allows designers to get their vision into the game. You’ll be startled to see how close the concept art is to what was replicated in the game. If an artist wants to make a bottle in the game, he designs it and hits a button and a minute and a half later it is in the game."
For more from Treyarch click here to read the full interview.
Comments
“Anonymous”
Posted: Jun 23, 12:49pm
Real useful information for studios outside the Activision family.
“Re: Anonymous”
Posted by: Actually - Jun 23, 12:57pm
I think it IS interesting that Activision is resisting Epic via its in-house tools. Ubisoft and EA think the engine is the bees knees, conversely.
“Re: Re: Anonymous”
Posted by: Anonymous - Jun 23, 4:15pm
Not many studios have the time or resources to develop their own tools like Infinity Ward and Treyarch have done. EA's new stance is that they will let the individual teams decide on what to use, Ubisoft has a wealth of in-house tools from Jade and Anvil to Dunia.
I don't think it's a case that developers are resisting Epic.
“Re: Re: Re: Anonymous”
Posted by: Ni Ni Ni Ni - Jun 25, 11:29am
Interesting in the light of the comments from Ubisoft's CTO at GDC Paris that what is needed is a cross studio solution - one that works on a wide variety of consoles and genres - That would seem to suggest that the single genre engine is heading the way of the dinosaurs - and that the goal studios have set themselves now is to develop or buy in middleware that means work done on one project can be ported to and built on in the next, even if it's quite disparate. I don't see how Treyarch or UE3 even start to compete on that basis - UE3 is a very tightly focused (but highly polished) tool for FPS and Treyarch doesn't appear to be doing anything different