Unfortunate Circumstances
Yesterday, on April 1st, we announced that we would be switching to the magnificent DOOM engine, to take advantage of its gorgeous graphics and advanced features like sprite support. Unfortunately, since publishing that announcement, we have discovered some pretty major roadblocks standing in the way of that switch, and it is with heavy hearts that we must retract that announcement. Effective immediately, we leave behind our dreams of a DOOM-based realRiven, and return to the (admittedly lower quality) Unreal Engine.
As a consolation for this heartbreaking news, here is another development shot of an area we’ve been working on, running in the Unreal Engine.
We acknowledge that this in no way can make up for our departure from the beauty of the DOOM engine, but we think that with a lot of hard work, we will someday get Unreal to approach that level of quality.
April 2nd, 2014 at 6:43 pm
That’s it, I’m done. It’s obvious that the developers have no interest in creating the best possible product they can, and their unwillingness to stick with the infinitely superior DOOM engine is undeniable proof of this. I can’t believe you think such a disgustingly low amount of perfectly orthogonal angles and such garishly high-resolution textures is acceptable for a game in this day and age.
I assure you that I will not be supporting this joke of a project anymore. Good day to you sirs.
I SAID GOOD DAY!!!
April 2nd, 2014 at 7:16 pm
Still say I want to see someone build a riven.wad, maybe it would have to be in the Hexen era engine to take advantage of hub levels, buuut…
That control room. Starry Expanse continues to turn out utterly jawdropping screenshots. Can. Not. Wait!
April 2nd, 2014 at 10:06 pm
Awesome! Will you be switching to Unreal 4?
April 2nd, 2014 at 10:24 pm
We’re currently experimenting with UE4 and loving it, but until Epic announces how they intend to handle team-based projects (rather than individual subscriptions), we have nothing concrete to announce.
April 2nd, 2014 at 10:29 pm
Zib, I think quite a lot of us Linux users wouldn’t mind helping you guys save up for UE4 in case the group deal turns out to have quite the cost. In the end, we don’t mind paying if it keeps us from having to boot windows 🙂
April 2nd, 2014 at 10:49 pm
That wood texture looks really nice
April 3rd, 2014 at 8:06 am
The boards are wider than they are in the original game, though. Will the final wood texture be more faithful?
April 3rd, 2014 at 7:01 pm
I don’t know whether it quite matters, considering there are many other rather trivial details that are *technically* inaccurate to the original but go well together with the upgrade to new technology.
Overall, I wouldn’t have noticed the difference in wood plank width, because that at least has no impact on the final atmosphere.
In fact, I’d say that the overall appearance of the room is humongously more convincing than the original. I’d say that it’s almost convincing enough to be a photograph.
Awesome job guys!
~Ryan
April 3rd, 2014 at 5:33 pm
I gotta say the texture work is really on par with the original game, if not better due to not being compressed.
More please!
May 8th, 2014 at 12:51 am
Now that you guys have converted to UT4, we would like to see a comparison of this shot between the two engines. From your recent post, you referred to the appearance of UT3 as ‘URU’ – now lets really see the difference.
May 8th, 2014 at 12:54 am
This image actually was taken from Unreal 4, believe it or not! It was one of our test areas in deciding to make the switch. 😉