Epic Games is back in the spotlight after GDC 2014 where it revealed new information on its upcoming titles like Couch Knight. This was subsequently followed by information on Fortnite. Epic still has a lot more to showcase according to co-founder Tim Sweeney.

In conversation with EDGE, Sweeney says that the studio is working on a game that is “going to push next generation graphics as you’d always expect Epic to do.

“There’s a lot [of Unreal Engine 4 games] on the way and a large number of them haven’t been announced. You’ll see lots of triple-A stuff coming out over time.” The game could be based off the previously seen tech demos for Unreal Engine 4, namely Samaritan and Infiltrator.

These games might not be the same AAA releases you’re used to though. “The industry’s changing. This generation it seems like there are about a third of the number of triple-A titles in development across the industry as there was last time around – and each one seems to have about three times the budget of the previous generation. I think we’re heading towards a future where triple-A is the minority.”

What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments.

Epic Games’s Samaritan is still alive, as the developer revealed some new character art work from the tech demo at a recent GDC panel session “Animation Bootcamp: Animation Prototyping for Games” hosted by lead animator Jay Hosfelt.

For those who don’t remember, Samaritan was the character in a tech demo which showed off the Unreal Engine 4 engine. Hosfelt emphasized on the Samaritan while confirming a new IP the company is working on, and how creating assets quickly helps to improve and optimize them. Check out the original Unreal Engine 4 tech demo for “Samaritan” below.

Interestingly enough, epic also showcased the “Infiltrator” demo – another Unreal Engine 4 tech demo – right after “Samaritan”. This doesn’t mean they’re part of the same game though – it could easily be two new IPs for all we know. This goes along with Fortnite, another Epic Games project for which more details will be revealed later.

Thoughts on the same? Let us know below.

(Source)

In a post on the official forums, he states that, “Fully dynamic lighting and precomputed lighting are just two tools in our UE4 toolbox. We have games being made like Fortnite that are using fully dynamic lighting, no lighting build times, and the game has full flexibility to change what it desires at runtime.

“In the case of Fortnite, this is used to great effect with building and harvesting of resources. We don’t yet have a solution for dynamic GI in the fully dynamic lighting path, this is something we hope to address in the future.

On the other hand, using precomputed lighting where you don’t need dynamicness frees up a lot of processing power. The infiltrator demo that we released at GDC leverages this heavily. In short: we would have had to scale down Infiltrator massively without precomputing some of the lighting.

“There are over 1000 lights in some of the scenes, and about half of those cast shadows. Dynamic shadows have a huge cost on graphics hardware, but precomputed shadows are very cheap. Our general purpose reflection method (Reflection Environment) also relies on pre-captured probes.

“By having the general purpose reflection method be cost efficient, we were able to spend the extra GPU time on Screen Space Reflections, which provides extra detail where it is available (due to screenspace limitations).

“Precomputed lighting is also really useful for scaling down, to low end PC, 60fps, mobile, etc.

“In summary: UE4 supports multiple tiers of lighting options, and games can use what suits them best. Fully dynamic lighting provides maximum interactivity, editor workflow and game design flexibility, precomputed lighting provides maximum quality and performance.”