Widescreen Gaming Forum

I don't necessarily see a problem here. Epic is saying this about themselves. So Epic has Gears of War which is their big thing. They're not bringing it to the PC so what does it matter? As a game developer they really haven't done much lately.

The choice is still entirely up to the developer. It's a simple change in the PlayerController class. I guarantee you 100% of the games using UE3/UDK will edit, modify, rewrite, or extend the PlayerController class. This is where everything to do with the camera, player movement, etc. is set.

This is bad news for games in the future because the UDK is so prevalent in the industry as the go-to licensed engine. Thankfully the engine can be modified to the developer's liking, but probably at a higher cost. Even then it is exceptionally difficult to find an Unreal engine game that have proper aspect correction.

There is no change in cost. You can change the behavior of this easily in UDK. There is nothing in the license agreement that says you cannot modify it or they will charge you extra.

For the full UE3 license, you not only get access to everything included with UDK (where you can already change the behavior), but you also get access to the full engine source code and editor source. You can change the behavior in any way you see fit then.

Going back to my first paragraph, it really isn't Bioware's fault for the game lacking proper aspect correction. I guess Epic is the second publisher/developer to go onto my boycott list next to Activision. It's not like they have put out anything good in the last seven years anyway.

Wrong. This was BioWare's decision. They could have easily changed the behavior and made it work on surround. This was likely a decision by the publisher not to put the extra cost into supporting Surround, as it would have created more work for the artists, QA team, etc. and likely delayed the release.

Just a quick question for anyone else using the UDK, is there any easy way to set your game to Hor+ without using any stupid UnrealScript hacks, like a setting in the level editor or somthing.

UnrealScript hacks? You do realize those are not hacks. That's where everything about the game happens. Using Kismet is more of a hacky/easy way to do it (which I don't think you can do it via Kismet, but then again why would you?).

Modifying that behavior is very easy in UnrealScript. Just look at PlayerController.uc.

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There is no change in cost. You can change the behavior of this easily in UDK. There is nothing in the license agreement that says you cannot modify it or they will charge you extra.
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Wrong. This was BioWare's decision. They could have easily changed the behavior and made it work on surround. This was likely a decision by the publisher not to put the extra cost into supporting Surround, as it would have created more work for the artists, QA team, etc. and likely delayed the release.

I think there was a breakdown in understanding here with the way I worded my statement. You thought I was talking about the cost of licensing the engine when I was, in fact, talking about development costs increasing as you have suggested. Although I don't see why artists have to bitch about this, since things like the HUD are easily positioned and scaled through code if the assets were properly designed in the first place.

Now I've only done asset production in the UDK, but what I have read on their forum and elsewhere suggests that it is difficult to change the presentation of the viewport with the engine as it is designed due to the way control and a lot of other things are tied into it. It may very well have been Bioware's decision, but I wouldn't put past them not wanting to put in the extra time for proper widescreen support using the Unreal engine as part of that decision.

It seems to me that no matter how easy it is to make an Unreal 3 engine make hor +, simply making it default to vert - means that some devs won't even think to change it. And changing it to hor + might not be all that simple necessarily - look at Batman: Arkham Asylum. It's usually hor +, but cinematic camera angles (such as when you perform finishing moves) are vert -. I highly doubt that's by design. More likely, alternate camera types come with their own "hor +" switch and they forgot to flip some of them - an oversight they wouldn't have made if the engine defaulted to hor + like Source does.

Likewise, if the engine defaulted to hor +, I'm sure Mass Effect would have supported surround just fine implicitly, no "extra cost" involved. I'm certain that not one aspect of Half-Life 2 was created with surround in mind, and yet it's pretty much perfect for it.

The point is that what Epic said was in regards to their own personal decision, not anyone who licenses the engine. You can easily change how the FOV works with both UnrealScript and, of course, the full engine source code if you have the license. So if a developer doesn't support it properly, that's still the developers fault for not checking or modifying it correctly. I'd hardly blame Epic for that. That's the publisher or developer just focusing on consoles.

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I do blame Epic for that. Aspect ratio control is an engine feature, not a game-specific one. Game developers shouldn't have to worry about it, and I'm sure most of them don't. Defaulting to incorrect AR behavior is a bug in the engine, and developers who license an engine shouldn't be held responsible for fixing bugs in the engine, even if they do have that ability. If Unreal 3 Engine had a bug in it that crashed the game on February 29th's, would you blame game developers for not fixing it?

And I don't buy that this is a "personal decision" from Epic. Unless someone can tell me what games they are referring to with their last paragraph, they flat out lied to justify this "personal decision." The engine has always defaulted to vert -, and most likely they just didn't want to bother changing it.

You can easily change how the FOV works with both UnrealScript

If it's so easy, why does Batman: Arkham Asylum have mistakes?

100% of the games that use UE3 modify the camera controls, player movement, etc. in some way. You cannot do this without going around the PlayerController and Camera classes. The code they modify is right there in front of them. It's up to the developer how they want to support it. It's even commented in the source how it behaves. There's no way the developer can miss it. They can overlook it, it can be a low priority of changes by the publisher, any reason can be in place that they didn't change or fix it. Seeing as how much they focus on console games, a lot of them are just designed to operate in 16:9 and anything else is just whatever.

I couldn't tell you why Arkham Asylum as mistakes. I don't have access to their source.

It's so easy, even HaYDeN has found a simple fix for existing games that not only fixes the behavior of the FOV, but also fixes the HUD, cutscenes, menus, etc. in all kinds of different UE3-based games.

It is that simple. Blame the publishers and developers of the games.

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Everything you've said in defense of Epic is that this flaw is easy for devs to fix. My point is that an engine bug that's easy for devs to fix is still an engine bug. Just because it's easy to fix (and Batman: Arkham Asylum raises doubt that it really is that easy) doesn't mean devs should have full responsibility for fixing or working around a flaw in the engine.

The only really disturbing thing to me is how Epic, who supposedly has been working closely with both AMD & Nvidia as a developer and as a publisher, appears to be in complete denial of Eyefinity/Surround.

The only really disturbing thing to me is how Epic, who supposedly has been working closely with both AMD & Nvidia as a developer and as a publisher, appears to be in complete denial of Eyefinity/Surround.

Indeed, I agree with cranky it really is just unacceptable for it to be Vert- by default and I really don't blame the end users, The whole point of using something like an Unreal Engine is so that you do not have to muck with such things unless you actually want to.

EPIC is just all about the $$$ from licensing their engine for console games now. I doubt they don't know about surround. It's just a matter of us being .008% of their potential buyers and not being enough of the bottom line to give a crap about.