Epic unveils Unreal Engine 4, with real-time debugging and editing

Epic the company behind the ‘epic’ Unreal Engine has released a video showing off the capabilities of their latest engine – Unreal Engine 4. The engine is said to offer fully dynamic lighting features that help reduce development time.

A video has been released by Epic showing of the visual capabilities of the next version of the Unreal Engine.

Epic has said that a couple of next-gen games are being developed on the Unreal Engine 4. By next-gen we presume that this is the tech that will drive games on the PC, next generation Xbox 720 and PS4.

Game Trailers has an interview with Alan Willard – Sr., technical artist at Epic Games. In the interview, he gives an in depth lowdown of the capabilities of the new engine. Find it at the end of the article.

Some of the salient features of the engine as listed on the unreal engine website are as follows.

• Make updates directly in game without ever pausing gameplay with Hot Reload. This tool allows you to quickly find and edit C code and see those changes reflected immediately in game.
• After an update is made, Instant Game Preview gives you the power to spawn a player and play anywhere in game without needing to wait for files to save.
• The all-new Code View saves you time by allowing you to browse C functions directly on game characters then jump straight to source code lines in Visual Studio to make changes.
• Live Kismet Debugging enables you to interactively visualize the flow of gameplay code while testing your game.
• Now you can quickly debug and update gameplay behaviors when they happen through the new Simulate Mode. This tool lets you run game logic in the editor viewport and inspect AI as the game characters perform actions.
• View your game in full-screen within the editing environment with the Immersive View tool. This allows programmers to complete iterations on gameplay changes without added UI clutter or distractions.
• Possess/Eject Features allow at any time while playing in editor to easily “eject” from the player and take control of the camera to inspect specific in-game objects that may not be behaving properly.