Unreal Research - Game and Engine History

Unreal

In 1998, Epic Games released Unreal. This was primarily a single player game with an attached multi-player mode including the famous Deathmatch game type popularised by Doom and Quake before it.

Unreal Tournament

After Unreal's initial release and seeing how popular the multi-player mode was, Epic began working on a multi-player expansion pack for the original Unreal. Part way through development, they felt it should be expanded warranted being a full standalone product, which spawned the first release of Unreal Tournament.

The engine itself was designed to be highly adaptable so that they themselves and later other developers could make games with a better workflow and easier implementation of functionality.

Unreal Tournament 2003

This was the first major upgrade to the engine, supporting all the latest (at the time ) graphics cards and new effects.

The engine continued to be licenced to other developers who enjoyed it's toolset and ease of use.

Unreal Tounament 2004

Just a year later the next iteration was released, though there was a big update. Native vehicle support. This changed the dynamics of the game and introduced new modes with vehicles.

Developers were also able to take advantage of the new vehicle system and this meant easier implementation of vehicles into future Unreal Engine games.

While there were some minor side instalments on the XBox, the next full PC release was:

Unreal Tournament 3

Though it is the 4th major Unreal Tournament instalment, the 3 refers to the engine version.
This new engine was their best and easiest to use yet.
Many great franchises used this engine including Gears of War and Bioshock.
This version of the eingine also spawned UDK, a development suite for both professionals and enthusiasts.

Unreal Tournament/Unreal Engine 4

Continuing it's market share, this new Unreal Tournament is an ongoing project funded by licence and marketplace sales and co-developed by the community itself.

And this is where we come in. This is what we will be working on for this unit.