Me and a small group of friends want to create a horror game. We all are dismayed at the current state of survival horror, and want to bring our vision to the PC. The twist is that we want to do something very few people want to do: use the Unreal Engine from way back in 1998. Why on earth would we do this? Well, we’re very familiar with the engine from our time with Unreal Gold, and we feel that older game engines can create a horror atmosphere that is lost in modern game engines. Muddy textures, short view distance, and origami models give the player a sense of unease. We want to do with the Unreal engine what Cry of Fear did with the GoldSrc engine. Not a mod, a standalone game.
The only problem is that we can’t find any info on licensing it. We don’t know if it’s free, if we can still download it, or find any information on developing for it. I know this is a very odd and specific request, but we’re at a loss.
if you want the younger generation to be scared by it i wouldn’t go with origami models…most would probably not even play a game with what they saw as substandard graphics…there are alot of old game engines you can use for free now though even for commercial projects…when i think of your idea i see something like a pixelized style working with the horror theme…theres so many horror games that if you do something different it might just work…i would recomend using ue4 though so at least you are learning current tech…i used idtech 2 3 4 in the past and 5 briefly until subscribing here and I would say that its better to use the newer engine to make it look older also you can deploy on mobile if you want that and i have read that occulus believes that the mobile platform will suit the rift since by the time its released mobile rendering power will provide the 75 fps needed and i imagine horror games will be huge on it…so you could miss out on a huge part of the upcoming horror game scene if you go for an old engine
You can contact the licensing manager for North America, Jason Mangold, at Jason.Mangold<at>epicgames.com
Good luck as an engine that old it is very difficult to find tools that still works or still available even if they give you the engine for free.
Totally understand your reasons but something to consider is obsolesces by design and it only takes a 3rd party, say a MS Windows 12, to remove a nut or bolt and your game won’t even run.
I would encourage you to build a prototype by modding the original game before you get started. I believe you’ll find there are unexpected challenges in this, and you could get ahead of them easily by picking up a copy of it off of GoG and getting started there.
Once you have a compelling prototype that runs on the range of hardware you want, you’ll be in great shape to move forward.
As others have suggested, why couldn’t you simply do this with Unreal Engine 4? I don’t hear anything that couldn’t be accomplished. It seems odd to attempt licensing an engine going on 16 years old.
