<img attachment="utk2007_outside.jpeg" align="left" class="frame"><a href="http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3140119&did=1">The Next Unreal Tournament</a> gives a preview of the engine and development process that will create UT2007, coming to a graphics workhorse near you in 2007. Epic is overhauling the gameplay in this version in order to address some of the issues affecting the previous two incarnations of UT. Namely, that they didn't seem to be as much fun to play as Quake because of all the bouncing around, unbalanced weapons and medium- to long-range weapons play. They're taking a new approach, tweaking level design before finishing (or even starting on) textures and making it "pretty". <bq>You can tell from our [demo] levels," Steve says, "we're not trying to make a prettier UT2K4. We're really trying to make a very new game.</bq> <img attachment="utk2007_soldier_face.jpeg" align="right" class="frame" caption="Detailed facial animations">Part of the reason for this approach is the level of detail afforded by the Unreal 3 engine; there just isn't time to readjust textures and art if the gameplay of a level turns out bad. Now it's a matter of economics in the age of multi-million-dollar games. <div style="margin-right: 225px"><bq>Building a shell before we actually had artists trying to pretty it up was always a good idea ... but now it's really mandatory with the amount of time it takes for the new engine technology assets to be created. It just takes so much longer to build these million-poly models that you'd better be damn sure that what you build gets used and that everybody likes it before it gets made</bq></div> <h>Bots</h> I mentioned Quake earlier for a reason. Reading the article, I get the impression that Epic is acknowledging several game issues that id Software had already ironed out with Quake III. For example, they note that <iq>more people play offline than they do online</iq>. That means that your bots can't just be lame clones of one another and need their own personalities. The ones Quake III provided did this to the best of the technology's ability, and the Unreal 2007 bots are finally bumping the level even farther. The bots will speak (trash-talking and responding to orders) and also respond to spoken commands, relieving players from learning arcane "talk" commands that no one could ever really use. This will let a player control bots in the same way that players run teams at LAN parties (because they're all in the same room and communicate effiently). <bq>For example, each level will have specific locations that you'll be able to use voice command to tell the bots to act on, so you can say, 'Go cover the cavern,' and they'll know what that means. They'll also be a lot more responsive, so you'll be able to ask them questions about their status: 'Is there anybody down in the cavern?' 'No, cavern's all clear.' Or you can throw out warnings like, 'There's a sniper on the tower. Go get the sniper.'</bq> This is very cool, but more evolutionary than revolutionary, as UT is still going to be about a <iq>tournament story [that] kind of ties together why you're playing these different matches</iq>. Sounds like the same complex back-story that Quake III had. <h>Player movement</h> UT is finally accepting that <iq> it's not so cool when you can't hit the people you're playing against because they're doing [so much jumping around]</iq>. Wow, what a realization. Quake has long held the title for player movement, with Half-Life 2 adopting the same more staid approach to moving around a level in a way that makes the player feel a part of the world rather than a ping-pong ball. Combined with the relatively overpowered weapons and lack of balance, <iq>you miss the feeling you get from being in someone's face and fighting with them</iq> because players tend to run and hide in the immense levels and snipe from a distance or spam from medium distance. The techonology is amazing and seems to be vying for the best engine-driven game crown with id --- except that id stopped playing that game with Quake III and released a pretty good single player game in Doom III. I guess there has to be some game that can be used for one-on-one tournaments in the future; it might as well be one with the word "Tournament" in the title.