Engine News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Ever the versatile games, the first two Doom entries are staples of the dedicated mod community. With the original being crossed over with Doctor Who, it seems mixing franchises is not off the table for the plucky FPS. That also includes other titles from id Software.

The Unreal Engine 5 is going to power some of the best games coming in the next few years, but the new version of the engine by Epic is already being used by fans to breathe new life into some older games.

Even back when Apex Legends launches in 2019, there were many who keenly felt its technical deficiencies, brought on in large part by the fact that the game was built on the outdated Source engine. And though there are many in the free-to-play battle royale shooter’s community who’ve been hoping for an engine upgrade for a while, it doesn’t seem like that’s something that developer Respawn Entertainment is planning on.

Mortal Online 2 is now running on Unreal Engine 5 and has ushered in its version 2.0.0. The upgrade isn’t just visual, as the team had to rebuild and repair the game world during the process, and there are new zones and features.

A fan Diablo 2 Unreal Engine 5 demo has been made available for download, featuring Act 3's Durance of Hate dungeon.

Mortal Online 2 ’s big Unreal Engine 5 update will finally be here tomorrow, and Star Vault is preparing for the game’s biggest update ever.

It’s crazy to think that Everwild, Rare’s next game, was announced in 2019, especially since development has been ongoing since 2014. While there haven’t been any new announcements or details, the company is still hiring for the project.

For developers just starting in the industry, the task of choosing the best game engine can be daunting. Here, we'll try to address many of the issues concerning one of the most popular game engines, Unity, so you can see if it's the right game engine for your project.

It’s such a shame Back 4 Blood couldn’t quite scratch that Left 4 Dead itch. It was, after all, supposed to be a spiritual successor to Valve’s iconic zombie co-op series. Sadly, ’twas not to be. However, with the original L4D turning 15 recently, one of the OG developers reflects on the game.

With ARK: Survival Ascended (ASA) launching this week on Xbox Series X/S and joining the PC survivors already traversing the island, we thought we’d gather a list of reasons to play this new next-gen remake game! A top-to-bottom remake of the original game, so here are a few of the key differences you may have noticed in the gameplay trailer.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was released 25 years ago, and today a dedicated fan released an impressive Unreal Engine 5-powered video that celebrates the game's legacy in the best possible way.

YoYo Games, creator of the popular GameMaker engine, has switched up its pricing model and appears to be much more accessible as a result.

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Mortal Online 2  has opened up its 4th PTR ahead of the Unreal Engine 5 upgrade set for next week. 

Game development engine GameMaker is now free for non-commercial use, with a one-time fee replacing the subscription model for commercial use.

In the wake of Unity’s massive pricing controversy, which saw game developers boycotting the engine, GameMaker is doing something different with its technology: making it free for all non-commercial use. GameMaker is also switching is PC-based commercial license to a one-time fee of $99.99. Console game developers will still need to purchase the “enterprise” license, which is a monthly $79.99 fee, or $799.99 yearly.

For developers just starting in the industry, the task of choosing the best game engine can be daunting. Here, we'll try to address many of the issues concerning one of the most popular game engines, Unreal Engine, so you can see if it's the right game engine for your project.

Apple announced several new features and tweaks with the announcement of the iOS 17 update. With the new OS update, now users will be able to easily switch browsers during the private browsing mode without any hassles. As Google's antitrust trial is ongoing, Bloomberg reported that an Apple executive shared that iOS 17 update now enables users to change the default search engine within Safari's private browsing mode. This will enable users to not always use the Google search engine, but any other search engine on their iPhone. Know how you can change the default search engine in Safari during private browsing mode.

Following the release of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and Update 2.0, CD Projekt RED was able to further elevate the game's visuals compared to the already amazing base game thanks to additions like NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 (Ray Reconstruction).

A new Unreal Engine 5.3 comparison video was shared online recently, putting Lumen and path tracing side by side in a specific game to highlight visual and performance differences.

Unity has announced the next version of its engine will launch in 2024 and expand on its «responsibly sourced» AI tools.

Krafton, the studio behind battle royale PUBG, is trying something different: a Sims competitor built in Unreal Engine 5.

Satisfactory developer Coffee Stain Studios has released a new update for the Early Access game which upgrades it to Unreal Engine 5.

Cyberpunk 2077's sequel, currently only known as Orion, will be powered by Unreal Engine 5, and developing the game with the new engine by Epic is proving to be a challenge.

With Cyberpunk 2077 receiving its last major update and the Phantom Liberty expansion, the development team at CD Projekt is focusing on its sequel, Project Orion. There is no release window, and it’s currently in the “conceptual design” stage on Unreal Engine 5.

Let’s take a moment to show some appreciation for the publishers who have the guts to keep kusoge available for purchase. Ziggurat. Nightdive. Thank you for giving me a megaphone to cry for help. Hopefully, someone will hear my pleas.

Cyberpunk 2077's lead quest designer Pawel Sasko has shared a few thoughts on the next Cyberpunk game, the mysterious "Orion" project. It's at a very early stage, with a core team that currently includes Cyberpunk 2077 game director Gabriel Amatangelo, narrative director Igor Sarinski and Sarah Gruemmer, expert quest designer, who worked on the storyline for Judy Alvarez in the previous game. They've all moved or are in the process of moving from Poland to Boston in the USA, where CD Projekt have opened a new office. One of the major challenges, right now, is getting to grips with Epic's Unreal Engine.

Having just passed its 12th birthday, Skyrim continues to take up real estate in the AAA gaming sphere. As one of the most successful RPGs in recent memory, Bethesda’s epic Elder Scrolls game is still quite pretty, but has evidently aged over the past decade or so.

Mods are one of my favourite things about PC gaming, and Baldur's Gate 3 is no different. Give players even the slightest bit of access to your code, and they'll create whole new games, stunning graphical overhauls, and community patches to squash bugs. Then there's also the horrors.

An impressive original Resident Evil fan-made remake is currently in the works, and it looks fantastic in a new trailer shared online today.

It has been a while since a new entry in the Wolfenstein series was released on PC and consoles, and if you have been missing the series, you will be happy to know that a playable demo for a Unreal Engine 5-powered fan-made remake of Return to Castle Wolfenstein is now available for download.

Live service games are evolving. The major multiplayer shooters of the 2010s are starting to show their age in the 2020s, leaving their stewards to answer an interesting question: How do you move a service game into the future without disrupting its active player base, or starting completely fresh? In the cases of Overwatch 2 and Counter-Strike 2, Blizzard and Valve decided to make a spectacle of it, packaging revamped maps, reworked balance, and engine upgrades as official sequels that effectively overwrote the old games.

To celebrate N7 Day, BioWare released a brief new teaser trailer for the next instalment in the Mass Effect franchise yesterday, revealing a new character sporting N7 colours and seemingly being set up as the series’ next protagonist (though all may not necessarily be as it seems).

Upon its release late last month, Alan Wake 2 earned praise as possibly the best-looking game available to date. This week, Remedy published a lengthy blog post that went into the evolution of its in-house Northlight engine from Control to Alan Wake 2.

I keep a mental list of kusoge I want to cover in this column, and near the top of them is 1998’s Extreme Paintbrawl. Supposedly the worst game to ever be created using Ken Silverman’s Build Engine.

In the past few months, several developers attempted to recreate The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time with modern visuals using the power of Unreal Engine 5, but never before has someone attempted to do so using anime aesthetics inspired by Studio Ghibli.

Okay, this is absolutely insane. Over on Twitter, the excellent Reporters On Duty account has showcased a demo of Unreal Engine 5 running on the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

On Friday, Star Vault is opening up a new PTR for Mortal Online 2’s Unreal Engine 5 upgrade. This round of testing will focus on performance and getting things ready for the release of the brand new upgrade on November 28th.

It's common knowledge that Google pays Apple to be the default search engine on Apple devices, but the exact amount has been the subject of much debate. Typical guesses are north of $10 billion, but two sources tell The New York Times that the bill was "around $18 billion" in 2021.

Capcom has revealed that its developers working on the current and next-gen RE Engine are using high-end PCs equipped with NVIDIA's RTX 4090 GPUs and AMD Threadripper PRO CPUs.

Following the debut of HDR10+ GAMING in Nexon's looter shooter game The First Descendant, an Unreal Engine 5 plugin is now available to all game developers to facilitate integration.

Capcom have unveiled the next generation of their in-house RE Engine, which came in alongside Resident Evil 7 in 2017 and has been used by a bunch of projects over the years, from the excellent Devil May Cry 5 to the forthcoming possibly-excellent Dragon's Dogma 2. RE Engine's successor, the REX engine, is a response to three things - 1) RE Engine productions getting bigger in terms of assets, and more diverse in terms of genre, 2) RE Engine games being increasingly made by overseas developers who speak different languages, and 3) unflattering comparisons with various commercial tools, like Unreal Engine and Unity.

With Ember Sword’s first group dungeon The Ultra Deep now laid bare for the public to scrutinize, Bright Star Studio’s has stood firm that they are willing to show a little vulnerability in favor of making progress. During my time at Bright Star Studios (BSS), I had the chance to speak with several of the developers, and while I still have more information on the way, today’s article will focus on one of the most enlightening conversations I had.

CAPCOM's R&D YouTube channel posted a series of videos focused on the RE Engine. One of these looks into the past and the future of the technology.

Capcom seems to be working on a major upgrade to its RE Engine, which was used in a number of more recent Capcom titles, including Resident Evil 7 Biohazard, Monster Hunter Rise, and most recently, Resident Evil 4. As caught by Okami Games, the upgraded engine was spoken about in a new video published on Capcom’s R&D YouTube channel.

Capcom is working on a next-generation version of RE Engine, the powerful but flexible technology powering games ranging from Monster Hunter: Rise to Resident Evil 4 Remake.

The first in-engine trailer for Konami’s Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater remake has been met with a mixed reaction on social media following its debut during Xbox’s Partner Preview event earlier this week.

At last night's Xbox Partner Preview showcase we finally saw in-engine footage of Konami's Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater remake for the first time, but it received a mixed reaction from fans.

Konami revealed the very first Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater in-engine footage during the Xbox Partner Preview showcase yesterday (October 25), and it looks absolutely breathtaking.

Konami has revealed the first in-engine trailer of Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater.

Metal Gear Solid 3 arrived on PC for the first time yesterday thanks to the stealth-action series’ Master Collection. Unfortunately, it seems to be a fairly underwhelming PC debut for Hideo Kojima’s frog-munching masterpiece, with Snake Eater’s Steam page full of negative reviews about the barebones port’s restriction to 720p resolution, reported startup crashes and lack of Steam Deck support.

Konami dropped the first in-engine look at Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, during the Xbox Partner Preview. It showcases many familiar sights and sounds, from the unsettling quiet of the jungle to the alligators that Snake will encounter, all captured in-game in real time.

Earlier this year, Konami provided a first teaser for Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, their remake of the classic PS2-era game, and while it offered some eye-catching imagery, it was short on anything resembling gameplay. Well, today during the new Xbox Partner Preview showcase, Konami provided a new look Metal Gear Solid Delta, showing off actual in-game environments. It’s hard to say if this qualifies as “gameplay,” but it’s in-engine as does show Big Boss doing various Metal-Gear-style things. Speaking of engines, it’s also confirmed that MGS Delta will be running on Unreal Engine 5, rather than the Fox Engine that powered past games in the series. Check out the trailer for yourself, below.

We've gotten our first look at in-game action in the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake - or Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, as Konami prefers to call it - and with it we have confirmation that the game is being built on Unreal Engine 5.

I give my life. Not for honor, but for you.

Konami has released the first in-engine look at Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater remake Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater.

Konami has shared the first ‘in-engine look’ at Metal Gear Solid 3’s remake.

If you're weary of Baldur's Gate 3's whimsy, or you've finished gnawing the bones of Diablo 4 and are hungry for more of that sweet, sweet grimdark, you might like to check out Beast from Polish developer False Prophet, which goes into Steam early access today. It's a turn-based tactics RPG with a Gothic historical setting, an extremely late-noughties insanity mechanic, a heavy metal soundtrack, plagues, heresy, dynastic feuding, and a protagonist with a dramatic eye scar and possibly non-metaphorical "inner demons". Amongst other things, it looks like you can run people over with a horse-drawn carriage. M-Rated enough for you, edgelords? Here's the trailer.

A modder has created a tool which takes assets from Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas and makes them compatible with Fallout 4's Creation Engine.

Thomas the Tank Engine has become a gaming mod staple, having appeared in everything from Elden Ring to Skyrim over the years. Remarkably, though, the dread train has never appeared in Alien Isolation, the now-classic horror game built around the conceit of being stalked by a Xenomorph. At least until now.

Mortal Online 2 is fast approaching the release of its Unreal Engine 5 upgrade. The PTR for the overhaul closed today, and Star Vault is enlisting the community to help make a trailer for the final release.

When it comes to the topic of the best horror games of the last PlayStation era, Alien: Isolation typically ranks high. And why wouldn’t it? With its terrifying atmosphere, deadly antagonist, and choo-choo train, its horror is as memorable as it is intense.

What's scarier than a 10-foot tall, indestructible Xenomorph lurking about and stalking you to your death? Yes, you guessed it — Thomas the Tank Engine.

Rockstarmag has shared some new rumors about Grand Theft Auto 6, but in a different direction than most of the other rumors we have heard about so far.

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80 Days, Heaven's Vault and the Sorcery! games were all created by Inkle using their own scripting language, called Ink. It's a powerful tool for creating game narrative using simple markup rather than code, and it's open source so it can be used by other developers.

Motive Studios is going to be employing Unreal Engine 5 for its upcoming Iron Man game.

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In September of last year, Electronic Arts' Motive Studio revealed it was working on a single-player Iron Man game as the first part of a new EA/Marvel collaboration. Motive general manager Patrick Klaus has shared new details about the game in a studio update released today, including that the Iron Man game is being developed in Unreal Engine 5. 

A free update arrives for the classic Spookypasta-themed game.

NightDive Studios would be a great fit for remasters of Raven Software's Hexen and Heretic, according to the studios's lead engine developer.

Despite having been released over ten years ago, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim continues to be among the most popular games still played to this day. Still, a modern remake taking advantage of the latest technology would be rather welcome, as highlighted by a new video shared online this week.

A journalist has claimed that Microsoft's 343 Industries is working on a new Halo campaign within Unreal Engine.

It’s cold at the recording studio at Bandai Namco’s offices in Irvine, California. Tekken 8 producer Michael Murray and I are mic'd up, waiting for the go-ahead from the production team. We’re talking about the weather in the different places we’ve lived, the two American fighting game majors we’re representing (I’m wearing an EVO shirt; Michael is wearing a Combo Breaker hoodie), and Tekken. Lots and lots and lots of Tekken. We spent most of the prior day playing and talking about Tekken 8, but it’s always a little different doing it in front of a camera, and we wanted to be prepared.

The humble ant will take a starring role in 2024 in Empire of the Ants, a new real-time strategy adventure based on the 32-year-old sci-fi novel series of the same name. And thanks to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5, Empire of the Ants will look really, really good. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a video game ant look this good, let alone hundreds of them on screen at once.

Senior creative director on the upcoming EA Sports WRC, Ross Gowing, has explained studio Codemaster’s decision to make use of Unreal Engine 5 for the game. In an interview with VG247, Gossing stated that the studio’s older engine, called EGO, was reaching its limits when it came to creating longer stages and larger environments.

What is Friday without an article about an amusing mod that we have found. This week, a rather freight-ening mod has pulled into that station we call Starfield, which swaps out every ship in the game with that of Thomas the Tank Engine. Because, of course.

It's time. Starfield finally has its most important mod—more important than the script extender, more vital than StarUI—something that changes the game entirely. Thomas the Tank Engine is not, by any means, looming horrifically in the dark corners of my room and forcing me to write this.

Starfield’s story is ultimately about hope for the future of humanity, but the game has so much scope and scale that there’s plenty of room to make your own adventure. For instance, some players might be pirates and smugglers, while others prefer to protect the Settled Systems. If you’re particularly spicy, there’s a new mod that allows you to replace all of your ships with Thomas the Tank Engine.