Unreal Engine

Meta article
The following is a meta-article, which explains a concept which usually falls out of one of the wiki's categorizations, yet it's still important to explain something.

A comparison of Unreal Engine 1, 2 and 3's rendering capabilities using the Malcolm model from Unreal Tournament, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Unreal Tournament 3 side-by-side.

The Unreal Engine is a widely-used game engine developed by Epic Games.

Overview

First illustrated in the 1998 first-person shooter game Unreal, this game engine has been the basis of many games ever since. Although primarily developed for first-person shooters, it has been successfully utilized in a variety of genres, including 3rd-person stealth, fighting games, platformers and MMORPG.

Its core is written in C++, giving the engine a high degree of portability, supporting a multitude of platforms including Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS and Mac OS X on personal computers and many video game consoles including the Dreamcast, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and Wii. A great deal of the gameplay code is written in UnrealScript, a proprietary scripting language, and as such large parts of the gameplay can be modified without delving deep into the engine internals. Additionally, as with other middleware packages, the Unreal Engine also provides various tools to assist with content creation, both for designers and artists.

The current release is Unreal Engine 4, designed for Microsoft's DirectX 11 and 12 (for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, Windows RT); GNM (for PlayStation 4); OpenGL (for macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Ouya, and Windows XP); Vulkan (for Android); Metal (for iOS); and JavaScript/WebGL (for HTML5 web browsers).

Versions

• Unreal Engine 1
• Unreal Engine 2
• Unreal Engine 3
• Unreal Engine 4
• Unreal Engine 5

External links and references

• The official Unreal Developer Network documenting the Unreal Engine
• Unreal Technology
• Unreal Engine 1 Features
• Unreal Engine 2
• Unreal Engine 2.5
• Unreal Engine 2X
• Unreal Engine 3.0
• Unreal Engine 4 System Requirements
• Unreal Engine 5 System Requirements

See also

• Game engine on Wikipedia
• Unreal, the original game
• UnrealScript, the scripting language used in Unreal Engine
• Unreal Editor, the Unreal level editor
• Gamebryo, a competing engine
• Torque, a competing engine