Posted September 07, 2017
Visually, I think I just miss the (not necessarily realistic) shine on everything in X3. It gave all the ships a real hard-metal feel. I think Rebirth's station section selections, object highlighting, and flat-design icon theme sort of forced them down a more matte finish look that, at certain times, almost reminded me of cell shading. And while I loved Borderlands, that's just not the visual aesthetic I'm looking for in a space sim.
To provide a bit of further insight, in case you're interested, Unreal Engine is open-source for registered developers (registration is free) and, if you know C++, you can tweak it any way you like to suit your development needs. In turn, they regularly accept community patches to make the engine better.
My only real complaint (so far) about Unreal Engine 4 is that it's really designed for high-end gaming rigs—and the development environment is even more demanding—so it's a resource hog and isn't really very useful yet for just making simpler games... which is a shame, since the Blueprints system makes it REALLY easy for non-programmers to create complex game logic, they have a fantastic (albeit complex) materials system, and a great animation system. Their lighting system is the closest thing I've seen to photorealistic in a real-time render.
If you haven't already seen them, check out some of the awesome UE4 architecture and interior design videos on youtube... architecture firms are apparently using UE4 to create interactive design previews for their clients these days.
(end of geek-moment)
Themken: Not being a programmer I just let my mouth run and maybe I was spewing out BS. I just thought that, while probably possible, it would be too tricky to tweak an existing licensed engine.
Not at all—your comment was a reasonable outsider question, and really not off-base. Besides, you're a gamer... you're supposed to think about game engines and wonder about their capabilities =) To provide a bit of further insight, in case you're interested, Unreal Engine is open-source for registered developers (registration is free) and, if you know C++, you can tweak it any way you like to suit your development needs. In turn, they regularly accept community patches to make the engine better.
My only real complaint (so far) about Unreal Engine 4 is that it's really designed for high-end gaming rigs—and the development environment is even more demanding—so it's a resource hog and isn't really very useful yet for just making simpler games... which is a shame, since the Blueprints system makes it REALLY easy for non-programmers to create complex game logic, they have a fantastic (albeit complex) materials system, and a great animation system. Their lighting system is the closest thing I've seen to photorealistic in a real-time render.
If you haven't already seen them, check out some of the awesome UE4 architecture and interior design videos on youtube... architecture firms are apparently using UE4 to create interactive design previews for their clients these days.
(end of geek-moment)
Post edited September 07, 2017 by xixas