Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/457057
j a n u a r y . f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 5 c g w 2 1 adventure game currently available on Steam's Early Access program. "Unity's Asset store was a hidden surprise for us. We watched when Rust was released through Steam's Early Access, and it shot up to number 2, using all placeholder assets," says Charlie Cleveland, Unknown Worlds' CEO. "For us, that was an eye-opening experience. Now we buy assets, shaders, and code all the time on the Asset Store, but we always replace them with our own development before we ship our games." Cleveland says he started using Unity in the early proto- typing of Subnautica and found it extremely easy to use. "Within just a few months, I had a work- ing game. It gave me the ability to create quick scene changes as well as tweak things in real time, like the game's physics," he explains. "For me, working in C# was another plus." Unknown Worlds is a rare studio that has created its own game engine, called the Spark Engine. Originally built for Natural Selection 2, the studio's sequel to Natural Selection, the engine is also being used on another of the company's up- coming games, Future Perfect. As Cleveland notes, "The Spark Engine is only for Windows and Linux at the moment, and the choice to use it for Future Perfect was due primarily to the game having a much more technical focus beyond game- play and game experience." UNREAL Founded in the mid-1990s by Tim Sweeney and Mark Reins, Epic has been at the forefront of graphics, game development, and engine design since the company's inception. Back in 1998, when Epic launched its FPS Unreal, the company de- veloped a proprietary engine by the same name, and hence the Unreal Engine was born. In 2012, Tencent acquired 48 percent of the company for $300 million, resulting in an exodus of many senior staff. Nevertheless, last March, the fourth iteration of the Unreal Engine, the Unreal Engine 4 (UE4), was released. At CES 2015, Nvidia show- cased a mobile demo of Epic's stunning Elemental running on the Nvidia Tegra X1 mobile chip. Elemental was originally shown as a benchmark for the high- end PCs back in 2012, then the PS4 in 2013. "The trend in mobile is clearly toward more sophisticated and visually compelling titles. The fundamental driver for this is the need to differentiate – today's mobile app stores are flooded with unremarkable 2D titles," says Andy Hess, Epic's technology evangelist. "Lever- aging a modern game engine, like UE4, allows developers to express their artistic vision in an uncompromised way." Epic and the Unreal Engine have always been synony- mous with the highest level of graphics. "Epic has an enormous brain trust working on graphics rendering – Hollywood-quality graphics are now totally possible on today's consoles and high- end PCs," explains Hess. While the company's primary focus has been games, UE4 is finding success in many non-gaming areas, such as film and enter- tainment, simulation, visualiza- tion, and training. While Unity uses C# for programming, Unreal relies on C++. However, last March Epic announced a partnership with Mozilla to support asm.js, a sub- set of JavaScript for browser- based game development. "We believe there's incredible power in opening the source for UE4 to the community. In addition to finding and fixing bugs, the community has contributed dozens of great features to UE4, which brings even more value to the engine," says Hess. "And anyone who has ever shipped a sophisticated 3D game will tell you that source access is critical. There's nothing more frustrating than to have a bug or performance issue when UNKNOWN WORLDS ENTERTAINMENT WAS ABLE TO TAKE A DEEP DIVE WITH ITS SUBNAUTICA GAME BY USING THE UNITY ENGINE.