To Epic Games: i would like to design a space sci fi storyline subtitle interactive dialog game with your game engine using original game characters and storyline and concepts, I want to make a game to beable to travel from one galaxy to another. I believe the universe and the galaxies in it are in the public domain so I believe i should beable to use this idea of space travel around in my own ship and talk with my crew as long as the rest of the game universe I create is original. But its very hard to try to keep all ideas and concepts 100% original and free from patents issues with thousands of games now being made and my game is only in script development form at the moment, not in the engine yet because the problem when you start making something original that many people’s ideas and concepts can sometimes overlap into each other into the stuff you’re already doing without even knownig it, when there’s too many people now making all the games and using similar ideas in their games, so I don’t know how to sort this mess out so that my game does not overlap the patents barriers…
Thanks for your interest in Unreal - I hope you use it to make an awesome game. I’m not sure if you’ve got a specific question, but we’re not able to provide legal advice about what third party IP you can or can’t use. But you might find some community members on here who’d like to share their opinion with you.
Yes would like to hear from the community of other game developers, i even created the concept of a device that shifts a wormhole if you cant get access into it if the system has all kinds of junk and clutter in the way but you can only get this device it if you can find a certain trader.
The thing I did like about Unreal 4. no more crashing black screens as I got all the time with UDK 3 when building lightmaps. And I can now play the preview simulator of the level while waiting for the lightmaps to build, that’s a welcome improvement. What I woul like to see eventually is Unreal having a screen and logo title editor for doing the Game title screens a menu editor for designing all the menus, not third party programs like flash to do it with and a hyperlink system to integrate the menu options with the game engine, instead of using code scripts to manually link it up with. Why not use hyperlinks instead to do the linking up then we will beable to get the menu linked in a few minutes with a couple of mouse clicks instead of spending half an hour or an hour messing about editing all the script classes of the engine and then messing about also with flash scripts to try to link it up with as was with UDK.
BSP Brushes now seem to render automatically when dragging them into the map and can be now instantly resized, no need for the builder brush no more. . The issues with BSP now seem to be resolved. No more faces falling all apart or warping as was with UDK 3 when trying to move the built brushes…
One thing I did want to see in unreal 4.8 ect or 9, either the Text Pop Up Announcement Message to make a comeback or a Dialog Tree Editor to do interactive text subtitles on cutscenes with to allow you to build the dialog tree.
Now if Unreal 4 has the power to build up a terrain ten times the size of Skyrim as in the kite demo, then surely I would expect an engine like that to be able to handle thousands of lines of text dialog to allow big dialog trees to also be built Not have to build up a blueprint node tree from scratch to try to display a piece of text on the screen with which took about 10 minutes for the guy to configure all the parameters in his blueoprint nodes as I watched the tutorial on that and thought, 10 minutes to configure a piece of pop up text? I thought that would take too long when I have thousands of lines of dialog text to put in the game…
I was hoping that in the latest unreal engine there would be a more faster way of doing text pop up messages for cutscenes or in game and have the option to turn subtitles on or off, have your cutscenes in paranorma, or cinema change screen size and width of cutscene ect.
I am seeing improvements with the engine now…
I don’t know if Unreal 4 can handle thousands of lines of dialog text with audio yet, I don’t know if the tools are there … Was impressed with Unity’s 3d Model Procedural Generator in the engine called UMA.
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Unreal 4 can handle the things you count and the way of it being harder to make / edit is all up to you. Blueprints System is a visual scripting tool, but that doesn’t mean it has to have the best solutions. Somethings you create at c++ is much better and easier to edit and create then creating them as blueprint.
Blueprint is just a way for people to create things if they don’t know how to code, and a fast way to test things before doing them as coding if you are a programmer.
There are a few examples about quests and dialogues in Marketplace for not so expensive. Maybe they can be useful for you.
But then, noone is stopping you from experimenting and see if the Editor really fits to your needs. Engine is free after all.
Blueprints are only suitable for doing small things in the engine with. So it won’t suit 60,000 lines of dialog text. What it will do is create too many blueprints if I tried that, but I don’t understand the blueprint system very well, the system I did understand was Red Faction’s Red Editor where you could edit the script through a pull down parameters Window interface inside the editor to change all the script value settings depending on what type of game script event it was. But I don’t know yet how to get the engine to display a title game screen in the blueprint and with menu options and then switch to the game engine to start the game. neither do I know how to set up procedural weather systems for the planets either, the blueprint system may look easy, but it soon gets complicated because of all the many groupings like with the Advanced Ocean Shader with over 200 nodes in the material editor.
Hi tozan,
Blueprints are capable of quite a bit. Both Bierzerkers and Into the Sky are primarily being made from blueprints, so don’t count them out yet! I’m actually not entirely certain why so many have trouble with blueprints, as I have yet to reach a scenario where something that I am attempting to do simply isn’t capable of being done in the blueprint system. They are quite capable of running a full branching dialog system, I did a proof of concept tutorial a few months ago on the subject:
It is fully functional, though to be honest I would highly recommend pulling data from a csv table as opposed to trying to run the selector system through blueprint variables as I did. The purpose of this tutorial was to show that it was possible to create an array of arrays and switch between them efficiently without outside resources, not that it was the most efficient solution to create dialogue systems with. You can utilize csv tables through blueprints to create a system in which the bulk of the data is located in your csv file, and the functionality in the engine is simply pulling the information that you tell it to. The difficult part is setting up how it pulls the information, once you get that done you can alter the parameters to fit your needs without having to worry about re-writing the code for each and every instance.
In most cases, the limit of how much data can be used/stored is not directly related to the engine, but to the hardware running it. 60,000 lines of text should not be hindered by the engine, but if it is being run with 4gb of RAM and a dx10 card, it will potentially run into problems functioning correctly.
My game uses lots of game flag states as the sci-fi game I made its all written in windows batch code and these game state flags are responsible for setting up all the game counters and all the branches of storyline dialogs on what dialog to switch on or to leave off and by what state flag event, so its quite complicated in trying to keep up with all the changes of events happening in the storyline… It would be good if there was a batch to C++ converter so unreal engine can use it…
the dialog needs to be widescreen in cinema cutscene full screen view not with little window mouse boxes… I don’t need any overlapping pop-up windows on the screen to put my dialog text on.
I had trouble trying to get the custom imported 3d models to work in Udk 3 . I can’t get them out of the t-positions, so hopefully it will be easier now with unreal 4.
also the material editor scan shader I put into Udk 3 from a tutorial I followed on you tube won’t import into unreal 4, appears it don’t have backward compatabiliy with maps made in udk3,.
One of the levels I wanted to start work on would be a huge labs complex and I wanted it to be all dark when you enter into it and have scanning lights moving everywhere and only then you can see the genetic creatures inside the complex when the scanning runs over them to show where they are.
In batch language I have two ways of doing the dialog
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as branches (choices) to choose to goto which branch to ask the game character more questions.
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using flags if I need a new branch of dialog with that character further long in the storyline or some game event has been triggered. then flags is what I use…
Instead of doing endless clickable dialog branches, I only have a few, but for most I use a dialog counter instead to present new dialog lines.
But in Unreal I need the same dialog system but done instead with static Meshes
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