Just to throw my opinion in, does the UNREAL ENGINE make commercial quality games?
let's see.
ANIMATION:
The Unreal Animation system features:
Skeletal animation system supporting up to 4 bone influences per vertex and very complex skeletons.
Full mesh and bone LOD support.
AnimSet Viewer tool for browsing and organizing animations and meshes:
Ability to add game-specific notifications at specific points in the animation.
Tool for graphically placing ‘Sockets’ on bones to be used for attaching objects to the skeleton in the game, complete with preview.
Ability to preview ‘overlay’ meshes based on the same skeleton (e.g. armor).
Animation is driven by an “AnimTree” - a tree of animation nodes including:
Blend controllers, performing an n-way blend between nested animation objects.
Data-driven controllers, encapsulating motion capture or hand animation data.
Physics controllers, tying into the rigid body dynamics engine for ragdoll player and NPC animation and physical response to impulses.
Procedural skeletal controllers, for game features such as having an NPC's head and eyes track a player walking through the level.
Inverse Kinematics solver for calculating limb pose based on a goal location (e.g. for foot placement).
AnimTree Editor allows programmers or animators to create complex blends and controller setups and preview them in realtime in the editor.
New node and controller types can be easily added for game specific control.
Export tools for 3D Studio Max, Maya and XSI for bringing weighted meshes, skeletons, and animation sequences into the engine.
FPSC ANIMATION:
you can animate your characters any way you want as long as you follow the strict set of animations. you have more frames for more animations. must be done in another program. (so really no animation options within the engine)
SOUNDS
The Unreal Engine audio system features:
Support for the latest major audio compression scheme for all platforms.
Transparent to the user.
SIMD optimized compression and decompression of improved quality Ogg Vorbis on the PC.
3D sound positioning, spatialization and attenuation.
Cross-platform DSP effects.
I3DL2 reverb on all platforms.
Per source low pass filter for attenuation or other effects.
EQ effects.
Multi-channel playback (4.0, 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1).
Batch control of pitch and volume using sound groups.
Seamless looping of sounds on all platforms.
Extensive debugging tools monitor resource usage.
Visual Sound Tool in UnrealEd:
gives sound designers complete control over sounds, sound levels, sequencing, looping, filtering, modulation, pitch shift, and randomization.
Sounds parameters are separated from code to an extent that sound designers can control all sounds associated with gameplay, cinematics and animation sequences.
FPSC sounds feature: full script control of all sounds.
must be .wav
music, shooting, voices, anything done simply by using a sound zone.
PHYSICS
Powered by NVIDIA PhysX.
Rigid body physics system supporting player interaction with physical game objects, ragdoll character animation, complex vehicles, and dismemberable objects.
Cloth simulation.
Soft body simulation.
'Physical Material' system that allows per-object or per-surface properties such as friction, sounds and effects.
Physics-driven sound.
Fully integrated support for physics-based vehicles, including player control, AI, and networking.
Gameplay-driven physical animation – capable of driving physics based on animation, and blending the results in many ways.
Unreal PhAT, the visual physics modeling tool built into UnrealEd that supports creation of optimized collision primitives for models and skeletal animated meshes; constraint editing; and interactive physics simulation and tweaking in-editor.
Fracture tool in UnrealEd allows you to take a mesh and break it into pieces.
FPSC Physics: full physics system including player interaction with objects, ability to have multiple rigid bodies with physics applied to them at once. no animation blending or ragdoll. cube, cylindar, and polygonal collision options. no cloth or water.
PARTICLES:
UnrealCascade, the visual particle effects system, features:
Simple tool used by artists and level designers to to create visual effects for games and cinematics.
Preview any visual effect in real time in the exactly as it is seen in the game itself – make dynamic tweaks to an effect such as an explosion or a burning fire without any turnaround time.
Interacts with many different systems to create an intuitive, efficient, and integrated environment for true creative freedom.
Built around the concept of modules, and adding a new feature is a simple as adding a new module which drops right in and integrates seamlessly with the rest of the already existing functionality.
FPSC particles: no particles, they are replaced with decals.
MAP EDITOR:
The Unreal Editor (UnrealEd) is a pure “What You See Is What You Get” content creation tool filling the void between asset creation tools like 3ds Max, Maya and XSI, and shippable game content. The editor itself is actually a suite of various tools for realizing your content in the Unreal Engine. Features include:
State-of-the-art visual level designer for placement and editing of gameplay objects such as players, NPCs, inventory items, AI path nodes and light sources.
Fully interactive real-time rendering of levels while editing, including dynamic lighting and shadows. All level content in the editor is presented consistently with the game engine itself!
Built on a data-driven property editing framework, allowing level designers to easily customize any game object, and programmers to expose new customizable properties to designers via script.
Load and edit huge environments composed of many seamlessly streaming sub-levels.
In-editor “Play Here” button puts gameplay just one mouse click away. You can test gameplay in one editor window while modifying objects and rearranging geometry in another.
Brush-based architectural design system for rapid level prototyping and shelling.
Takes full advantage of multiple processor cores for accelerating workflow, such as generation of static light and shadow interaction.
Includes a suite of content editing tools
FPSC map editor:
visual level designer to "on the fly" place entitys, NPCs, and interaction objects that will affext gameplay. literally, the designer can PAINT his levels together using intelligent linking "SEGMENTS" to make level geometry the player can place lights, but not dynamically. the FPSC level designer is not WYSIWYG. it is aimed at making smaller, indoor levels using a small grid system.
ONLINE GAMEPLAY:
Internet and LAN play has been a hallmark of action games as demonstrated in Epic's Unreal Tournament series. The Unreal Engine has long provided a flexible and high-level network architecture suitable to many genres of games, as well as simulation projects; and is fully supported on PC and all console platforms.
Integrated voice communication on all platforms.
Unreal Engine gameplay network programming is high-level and data-driven, allowing UnrealScript game code to specify variables and functions to be replicated between client and server to maintain a consistent approximation of game state. The low-level game networking transport is UDP-based and combines reliable and unreliable transmission schemes to optimize gameplay, even in low-bandwidth and high-latency scenarios.
Client-server model supporting up to 64 players as provided.
Supports network play between different platforms (i.e. dedicated PC serving console clients).
Engine-level and content security.
Game code writes to one API that works across all online platforms.
All gameplay features are supported in network play, enabling vehicle-based multiplayer games, competitive team games with NPC's or bots, cooperative play in a single player focused game, and so on. Support for auto-downloading and caching content, including cross-platform compatible UnrealScript code. This feature enables everything from user-created maps, to bonus packs, to complete game mods to be downloaded on the fly.
Server browsing capabilities for finding and querying servers, keeping track of favorites, friends, in-game chat, etc.
Party system: the ability for a group of players to meet in a networked lobby and transition from match to match as a group.
Supports Games for Windows Live, Xbox Live, and GameSpy (PC and PS3) network platforms.
Support for Microsoft’s LIVE Server Platform (LSP).
Networked Title Updating system: allows for modification/customization of game features via downloaded files from an LSP so updates can happen without a TU.
Support for PS3 downloadable games via Sony’s Game Content Utility: UE3 games can be run as retail disc games, downloaded from the Playstation Store, or even a patch, all without the need for recompiling the code.
FPSC online play:
Support for internet and LAN deathmatches; make your game online with one click. up to 8 players, no team deathmatch support.
SCRIPTING LANGUAGE:
UnrealScript gameplay scripting language is a full-integrated, high-level Java-like object oriented programming language. It features:
Native language support for many concepts important in gameplay programming, such as dynamically scoped state machines and time-based (latent) execution of code.
Provides automatic support for metadata; persistence with very flexible file format backwards-compatibility; support for exposing script properties to level designers in UnrealEd.
Strongly typed.
Syntax similar to C++.
Managed object lifetime and garbage collection.
Built-in compiler.
Platform agnostic; bytcodes executed by virtual machine..
Built-in support for networking.
can tag functions to execute on server-only, client-only, or both.
easily control which data will be transmitted across network as part of the game state.
Native binary format is compiled into separate packages (similar to .dlls), with support for cross-package references.
Integrated preprocessor.
Support for a variety of data types.
Support for interfaces.
Delegates.
UnrealScript debugger.
FPSC FPI Scripting features:
simple game scripts with easily understandable actions and commands, easy to learn, and goes surprisingly deep. state based.
so as you can see, is that the FPSC engine is what would happen if you took the unreal engine, stripped away all, I MEAN ALL the frills (and added a few different ones) and released it. but for 50 dollars, It's pretty amazing. I've seen MANY games made in FPSC that I would play and liked better than UNREAL ENGINE games. It's pretty amazing, ALL thats necessary to make an FPSC game sellable in my eyes is originality. If I play an FPSC game, it's not worth much if I can TELL it's an FPSC game. the buyer of hte FPSC game should say:
"this is an awesome FPS game."
NOT
"this is an awesome FPSC game."
THAT my friends, os the difference between a sucessful, distributable FPSC game, and "oh no, another FPSC game"
CHEERS!