Epic Games to Reveal New Unreal Engine 3 Features at Annual Game Developers Conference
Epic Team Members to Participate in Daily GDC Speaker Sessions
CARY, N.C. (March 04, 2010) Epic Games, Inc., will reveal the latest Unreal Engine 3 features and partner updates at a press conference taking place during next week’s annual Game Developers Conference (http://www.gdconf.com) in San Francisco, CA. The press conference will take place in Epic’s expo suite (Moscone Center – South Hall #202) where the new features will be demonstrated alongside free advanced training sessions for existing users. Epic will also offer one-one-one presentations for its prospective customers, evaluators, licensees, and members of its Integrated Partners Program.
What’s New in Unreal Engine 3
Discover why top developers and publishers use Unreal Engine 3 to power their games for PC, Xbox 360® and PLAYSTATION®3. Epic will showcase the most recent upgrades to the Unreal Engine in a private theater within its Expo Suite (#202) located in the South Hall.
Epic is constantly making improvements to the power, productivity and performance of Unreal Engine 3 and will showcase some of these at GDC. Unreal Engine 3’s strength is in its ever-expanding toolset and this year Epic will demonstrate a procedural artist-driven tool for constructing buildings used in the development of city-based games; a spline-based tool for rapid creation of continuous branching objects such as roads, sidewalks, tentacles, roots, vines, cabling, and railway tracks; and a mesh painting tool enabling artists to efficiently customize the appearance of every object in a game.
The presentation will showcase a new outdoor foliage demo that highlights new engine features, tools, lighting, shadowing and procedural animation. Attendees will also be able to view the demo in gorgeous stereoscopic 3D and preview Unreal Engine 3 running on iPhone/iPod Touch.
This year, Epic Games China will also be demoing Atlas Technology, Unreal Engine 3`s purpose built development and technology solution for MMOGs. Interested parties should contact Mike.Hines@EpicGamesChina.com to arrange an appointment.
Licensees of the Unreal Engine can take advantage of free training sessions on topics including game optimization, content and programming tips, rendering, animation, physics and visuals, as well as workflows for the Unreal Editor, level design and tools at GDC.
Hours for Epic’s booth are the same as expo hours: Thursday, March 11, 9:00 a.m.– 6:00 p.m., Friday, March 12, 9:00 a.m.– 6:00 p.m., and Saturday, March 13, 9:00 a.m.– 3:00 p.m. Demos are scheduled to run on the half hour each day of the show and appointments are not required.
Those wishing to individually meet with Epic should email Mark Rein at mark.rein@epicgames.com. Please specify three possible meeting times, the number of people planning to attend, and whether those individuals would like to see a technology demonstration, chat with Epic business representatives, speak with Epic technical representatives or discuss other matters. Availability may be limited, so please respond early. Those unable to confirm an appointment in advance are invited to drop by, and Epic will do its best to accommodate visitors. In addition, representatives from Epic Games Korea and Epic Games Japan will be on hand to talk with licensees and prospective customers from those regions.
Epic Press Sessions and Media Availability
Epic will host two GDC media briefings, which will take place at 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 11 and Friday, March 12 in Epic’s booth (South Hall, Expo Suite 202). Limited space is available and journalists are encouraged to book places in advance by emailing Laura Mustard at laura@chairentertainment.com, with contact details for each attendee, publication and preferred date. Each 60-minute briefing will consist of demos, short talks by Epic spokespeople and question and answer sessions. As a special treat for the media Realtime Worlds be on hand to give a live demonstration of APB – the Unreal Engine 3-based massively multiplayer online game coming soon from Realtime Worlds and Electronic Arts.
Employment Opportunities at Epic
Epic Games is aggressively seeking experienced and talented game developers to fill key positions across its organization. Developers looking to discuss opportunities within Epic Games (North Carolina), Chair Entertainment (Utah), and People Can Fly (Poland) should contact Tim Johnson at tim.johnson@epicgames.com. Information on specific job openings can be viewed at: http://jobs-epicgames.icims.com.
GDC Speaker Sessions Featuring Epic Employees
Key members of Epic’s development team will contribute to the following GDC speaker sessions:
Rod Fergusson will present the discussion “So You Want to be a Great Producer” during the “Producer Boot Camp” session being held on Wednesday, March 10th from 10:00 a.m.– 6:00 p.m. in North Hall, Room 112. This presentation will discuss key aspects of the production discipline from both an external and internal perspective, describe common production pitfalls, and how the role of Producer has become even more critical to success.
“Bringing UE3 to Apple`s iPhone Platform” will be presented by Josh Adams on Tuesday, March 9th from 3:00 p.m.– 4:00 p.m. in South Hall, Room 306. The session will cover the methods Epic used to bring a large-scale game engine over to a mobile device in only a few months and discuss how the iPhone stacks up as a game platform, how to target it for their own games, and how to avoid certain pitfalls.
Jim Brown will present as part of “Level Design in a Day: Best Practices from the Best in the Business, ” a day-long tutorial where attendees will gain deep insights from some of the most experienced level designers in the industry. The session will take place on Wednesday, March 10th from 10:00 a.m.– 6:00 p.m. in South Hall, Room 301.
“Building Blocks: Artist Driven Procedural Buildings” will be presented by James Golding on Thursday, March 11th from 10:30 a.m.– 11:30 a.m. in North Hall, Room 130. Attendees will learn new ways of thinking about buildings, novel ideas for creating them in games and how to implement their own system using these ideas, or incorporate them into their own pipeline while avoiding some of the challenges.
Dan Schoenblum will present “Zero to Millions: Building an XLSP for Gears of War 2” on Friday, March 12th from 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. in South Hall, Room 303. Attendees will walk away with knowledge about the technologies used as well as what went right and wrong during the development of the system.
“Prototyping Based Design: A Better, Faster Way to Design Your Game” will be presented by Lee Perry on Friday, March 12th from 4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. in North Hall, Room 125. Attendees will learn new ways of thinking about the role of a designer, rethinking who on their teams can be more involved in the direct production of gameplay design, and walk away with ideas for their own projects that would benefit from such production methods.
Michael Capps will moderate the panel “Agile: No Silver Bullet,” which will discuss the good and the bad of agile development, answer audience questions directly and help diagnose how and why Agile projects went wrong, and methods teams and companies can use to get their processes back on track. The panel will take place on Friday, March 12th from 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. in South Hall, Room 303.
“Designing Shadow Complex” will be presented by Donald Mustard on Saturday, March 13th from 9:35 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. in North Hall, Room 130. The session will discuss the approach to designing the hit XBLA game and key insights unique to downloadable console titles, ideas on how to embrace the “limitations” of the platform and use them to streamline game design, prototype, and boil a feature set down to its core essence of “fun.”
Tim Johnson will participate in the panel “Rising to the Top: How to Land a Triple-A Job” on Saturday, March 13th from 3:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. in South Hall, Room 306. Attendees will gain a firmer grasp on the importance of networking, who to contact when exploring career opportunities, and how to succeed in the interview process – including how to negotiate the best compensation package possible.
About Unreal Engine 3
The award-winning Unreal Engine is known for cutting-edge graphics and its best-of-breed toolset. Unreal Engine 3 maintains those features in addition to multi-core processor support, Xbox 360® and PLAYSTATION®3 optimizations, massive world support, and a highly mature tool pipeline. Unreal Engine 3`s consistently evolving toolset is designed to accelerate developers` productivity for PC and console games, visualization applications, training simulations, and linear animated content. Additional information on Unreal Engine can be obtained through the Unreal Technology Web site at http://www.unrealtechnology.com.
About Epic Games
Epic Games, Inc., based in Cary, NC and established in 1991, develops cutting-edge games and cross-platform game engine technology. The company has created multiple, million-selling, award-winning titles in its “Unreal” series, including “Unreal Tournament 3” for PC, PLAYSTATION®3 and Xbox 360®. Epic’s “Gears of War” won over 30 Game of the Year awards, and the sales of "Gears of War" and “Gears of War 2” have eclipsed 11 million units. Epic`s Unreal Engine 3 is the three-time consecutive winner of Game Developer magazine’s Best Engine Front Line Award, was the 2008 Hall of Fame inductee and won Best Engine again in 2009. Unreal Engine 3 has also been recognized as the number one game engine by Develop magazine. Additional information about Epic can be obtained through the Epic Games Web site at http://www.epicgames.com.
Epic, Epic Games, Gears of War, Gears of War 2, Unreal, Unreal Development Kit, Unreal Engine, and Unreal Tournament are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Games, Inc. in the United States of America and elsewhere. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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