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GameSpot's "Rumor Control" (Which is basically speculation on rumors and not controlling anything) said that GTA IV could run on the Table Tennis engine, and by the engine, I mean graphics wise (Though serving a ping pong a certain way to jack a car could be intresting). Any thoughts on this (Like if it's even possible?) look at San Andreas graphics:

Compared to Table Tennis':

Now seeing those awesome graphics with 10 guys charging at you with guns. That seems pretty sweet to me. I hope this comes true.

Table Tennis did really well in the market by the way. It was a good idea. And unreal engine is for FPS or anything identical to FPS (Ahem Gears of War) it wouldn't work with GTA

Lol Unreal Engine 3 would work for GTA. But they would have the change the name to Grand Theift Auto: Night Life. Or something lol... Seems like Unreal Engine 3 is better at thoes dark looking FPS, and yea Huxley is going to be a awesome MMOFPS. Im getting that game once it comes out; however, I wonder how well it would do comp vs console...

Yea it seems like I know why they made the Table Tenis game it was to test out there new engine. They wanted some game that is quick to make that mean obviously a sports game, and table tenis isnt the most complicated thing...

But I read on this article the graphic would be lowered a lot to create the GTA massive world… I mean it is obvious big game does have less graphic. I bet if GTA was some kind of mission type of game it would have a whole lot better graphic. Well it’s pretty cool they made a whole new engine for GTA. Now the people will look like they have a real face, than a fake 3D with a paper face type of look lol.

If they get anywhere close to Table Tennis' graphics i'll be happy. GTA's suck right now.

I'm assuming those SS's are from computer versions? Becuase the GTA: SA graphics don't look like that at all on the PS2. And I've never heard of this Table Tennis game. I must be behind on the times?

you got to keep in mind it is the "next-gen" so graphics will improve big time.



exlusive to 360, and its not such a big title. But its selling pretty well becuase its being sold at 40 bucks per copy unlike other 360 games.

That looks pretty nice. I'm not a big GTA fan, but I can only expect other games to have graphics like this too as time goes on, so

And what gaming platform is GTA 4 coming out on? Is it coming out on the computer?

There is no Table Tennis for PC. But yes the "best looking GTA" is from computer. Since apparently it looks best on PC, but still sucks.


Or maybe it's a good game?
And I know it's next generation and so far it's disappointed me. Guess which one is the Xbox360 version:


They shouldn't be that close.


It's going to be for Ps3 and Xbox360 on "Day 1" but it's most likely it'll come out to PC 8 months later, like what happened with San Andreas.

I disagree.

UE3 would be a perfect canidate for an engine. It supports basically every shader method out there and multiple shader methods at the same time on the same map. It has some of the best tools on the market to work with. An overall nice physics engine(Based on Agiea\Novadex). Epic games have always had very good networking. Support for all the latest Bump Mapping\Normal Mapping\Parallax Mapping. Free Roam support. Already support for Ps3 and 360 and PC. Great documentation. Designed from the ground up to be licensed.

Either that or Crysis's engine. That thing has basically the same features although CryTek I don't believe has the best tools\documentation so im not sure if there engine would be as easy to work with.

Now for those that thing this engine wouldn't work? UE3 is for an FPS? Well guess what HL2's Source is for a FPS....yet quite a few mods are designing an RTS\FPS. Zombie Master looks quite amazing.

All that really changes between making an FPS something else would be changing the where the camera is pointed. Thats all. And since your getting the barebones engine(no game) all you would do is set the Camera up in a 3rd person perspective.

To dark? Well thats probably because all the UE3 games you've seen are ment to be a little darker. All the mapper really has to do is edit a setting.

The UE3 engine is more than a perfect candidate for almost any game.

From what I've seen of the Crytek engine and Unreal Engine 3 they wouldn't fit GTA's style. GTA has a slighty cartoony feel to make the game not so serious, so the jokes can be taken in. Like if they made a dildo joke in the middle of Indigo Prophecy would anyone laugh at it? Unreal Engine is TOO good looking for GTA, and I don't think Helicopter flying, Open Ended gameplay, stealing cars, shooting people in third person, drive bys, and other things would fit very well with UE3. And wouldn't it cost to use the engine?

An engine doesn't make a game cartoony or realisitic. It does not. All the engine does is display the graphics, shadows, physics, etc.. How they actually look is up to the Developer. You could make a game look cartoonier than WoW on the UE3 engine, on the Source Engine...it dosn't matter.

What makes a game look cartoony or realistic is:
1.)If the models look cartoony or realistic
2.)How the lighting in the levels are set up.

Those are the major factors.

If you wanted to you could make the crapiest looking game in the world on the UE3 engine.

The engine is just some code that the developer can use to interact with the user, hardware, and operating system.


Why not? The only difference between 3rd person and 1st perosn is the camera and the controls. That is the main difference. It isn't that hard to change a value on the camera. And no extra 1st person gun models. And the controls have nothing to do with the engine. Thats a developer thing.

Stealing Cars? That has nothing to do with the game engine. All stealing cars are is this:
-Player clicks button
-Engine detects model is near another model
-The other model is a car model.
-Plays an animation of you opening the door, throwing the guy out, and getting in.

Thats all that is done. Basically any decent engine can do that.

Helicopters? What does that have to do with a game engine? All they are is a model that is moving around in 3d space. They are no different than a model of a person person walking in the street. They are both moving around in 3d space. They both have collision code so they wont pass through other objects. They do have different controls and they are allowed to move differently. Those both can be eaisly accomplished on any modern engine.

An engine license would cost money you are right. Although im sure Rockstar has plenty of money. Although you would cut a lot of development time creating an engine and time is money.

On your next-gen thing your arugement is not really correct. Dynasty Warrior was pretty much a 100% port, look at some other games like GRAW. Its multiplatform but it brought the next-gen graphic over. And games like King Kong they actually improved graphic, unlike Dynsaty Warrior. You cant call that Dynasty Warrior game a 360 game, just call it a port or something.

And Dynasty Warrior on the 360 does look nicer a little bit, but it looks pretty much the same as the ps2 version.

Also look at games like Oblivion I would definatly consider that next-gen. People have to much hypes about next-gen; however, next-gen is pretty much a high end pc and i bet you know that...

Actually larger enviroments do make a game have weaker graphics but not by much infact its very slight. This is because objects far of way have most of there detail scaled down(LOD, Level of Detail) so it can easily handle them.

What larger enviroments do actually do is cause more data on the ram. It wont impact performance really because you are only rendering what you are currently looking at so everything behind you wont mean anything and everything far away is like butter.

Although because the enviroments are bigger you have more objects and more objects requires more ram. Since consoles don't have that much ram when compared to Pc's, pc's do have other processes that need the ram. Although even then Pc's do have more ram. This often is a reason why when games become more graphically advanced Pc's graphics after a few years because graphics start looking better and better and they need more ram and can hold more data at once. As texture sizes and models look better\more polygons there sizes take up more space, more ram is needed to store the textures and models in the ram. Now if a Pc has 1 gig of free ram and a console has 512.....well you can easily push higher textures and bigger model sizes on the pc than a console.

Thanks for the long post Min, I don't know much about engines... But:

I'm guessing you mean the most basic of graphics? Like without any textures, just what you can interact with and not what you see?


The good thing about GTA was that it was succesful. So they could make more, but there are a lot of lawsuits, and they do lose a handful. They obvious have more money then when they started. But UE3 seems like a pretty big spender engine, and I don't think Rockstar would have that kind of money. And their current engine seems fine, or the "RAGE" engine (Since that would cost less)

I've said this in another thread. The difference between Metal Gear Solid 1 and Metal Gear Solid 2 is huge, or Perfect Dark and the first First Person Shooter for ps2/gamecube/xbox generation. The difference between King Kong on Xbox360 or Ps2 is noticeable, but it's not the same jump. I'm guessing this generation will be a tune up generation, and get new things like "500 Units on Screen".

I mean; It takes all the models, textures, physics data, etc.. puts it togeather and has the graphics card render it.


I believe the UE3 engine would be between 500 grand and a million. And trust me with a success like GTA series they have more than enough money.

Half-Life 2 & Source costed $40 million to make. In that time Valve had lawsuits with Vivendi and huge code leak so they had to basically upgrade everything and get that all up to date. Costs people to do that. They hired the people who made the Counter-Strike mod and bought all the rights to that mod and put this retail. Introduced Steam, they had to pay people to develop that, buy servers and bandwidth, and hire people to main those servers. That $40 million did not include this. So whats my point?

All this costed a lot of money, most of which they got from HL and CS. Now since console games get much MUCH bigger than pc games I'd figure since the 3rd GTA(when the series went big) they would have easily made a lot more money than a company like Valve.

Putting a million down on an engine wouldn't be much.

Although doing major upgrades to there current engine wouldn't be at all a bad idea. It though would involve completely rewriting how shadows and lighting are done and having them done in real-time. Adding support for Bump Mapping\Normal Mapping\Parallax Mapping. Adding in High Dynamic Range. Increasing any polygon\triangle limitations. Adding support for higher texture sizes. Adding in physics. Completely rewriting the engine for Cell. Infact they would have to basically completely rewrite the whole graphics portion code and add in more code. They would probably rewrite the sound to take advantage of new sound abililties by the console. Most of the engine would have to be rewritten. Although in the end it actually wouldn't be a bad idea.

If Rockstar was looking to buy an engine I would say it would definently be the UE3 engine. Also throw in this:
The UE3 engine is actually a unified code base that is ready to be compiled for PS3, 360, and PC. All game content and data files are also completely cross compatible on PS3, 360, and PC. Making it very easy to release everything on the consoles and pc. This would decrease development time. And less time is less money. Less time also would make fans happier.

Half Life and Grand Theft Auto are two different cases though. The original HL came out in like 1998? Half Life 2 came out 6 years later, I'm guessing the old engine was outdated. So they needed a new one (I'm guessing) and they didn't have anything but the old Half Life engine, that's not the case with GTA. They have this new RAGE engine (Or just the one they've been using and upgrading lately) so they don't need a huge overhaul. So it'd be an unnessacry spending of money to get UE3 for GTAIV, it'd also take longer to make.

Wowa how did you get engines out of when I was talking about valve?

What I am talking about is cash. If Valve had over $40 million to throw around cuz of HL and CS then im sure Rockstar would have easily much more than that to make a game considering how big the GTA series is.


Going from Ps2\Xbox to Ps3\360 and having it look extremely damn good would require a completely new rendering engine and physics engine. Trust me on that. Going from precomputed shadows to fully pixel perfect soft shadows requires a major change!. Throw in having more more advanced lighting effects and HDR requires all the lighting to be completely overhauled and work on a completely different graphics butter. Physics? You have to design the graphics engine with physics in mind to. Also there engine probably was not designed to be very modular. Most engines arn't on less a major reason they are making it is to license it.

What they could have done is when they began plans to work on GTA4 would be to license UE3 and work on it from there. Not only that but since you wouldn't have to worry about recoding your engine on the Ps3 that would really increase development time.

I'm just saying that if they were to license an engine, UE3 would be the engine. I would suggest that they should start creating a whole new engine by themselves that is extremely modular. All engines are modular but some more than others. Take for example Source, Valve is now adding things like HDR, IBR, Motion Blur, Film Grain, and Color Correction. They designed Source to be extremely modular. They can rewrite lets say the lighting portion of the engine without having to recode everything else. If Valve do put IBR into Source I will be absolutely amazed. Image Based Rendering is amazing.

Dude thats obvious its from 2D to 3D. And there still is a big gap between Metal Gear Solid 3 and 4 becuase its not a port, and it made to take advantage of the PS3's power.



And thats becuase King Kong is a port, thats what I was saying... And your whole Dynasty Warrior thing fails.

What isn't a port right now? King Kong looks the same as Perfect Dark Zero.

And it's not 2D to 3D have you played the original Metal Gear Solid? It's in 3D, that was the whole new thing for the Ps1 and N64 generation.

You were talking about Half Life to Half Life 2, and I'm guessing the engine would need an overhaul.

But they already have an engine that works. And they have another engine that's made by Rockstar (Not Rockstar North, but it's still rockstar) that would be cheaper to use, a lot cheaper. And it's better to use less money then more.

I know im agreeing that they should just completely rewrite there current engines entire graphic portion. Although I am also saying that if they did decide to venture out into licensing an engine UE3 would be the engine.


I was talking about how much money Valve spent on HL2\Source and why UE3 engine should be easily affordable to Rockstar considering there games are much more popular than Valves and have taken in much more cash than Valve.

So basically what I was saying. If valve can put $40,000,000 into a game. Rockstar could easily afford a $1,000,000 engine for a game considering they should have much more money than a company like Valve.

I was responding to you saying that your not sure if Rockstar had the money to license an engine like UE3.

Im not talking about engines, like using the Source engine or something. Im talking about $$$$$$$$$$$$.


I think what he was trying to say is that you wern't giving a fair comparision.
Basically some games are just ported from Xbox to 360. Slight graphic changes are it. Those games are not showing how well the 360 performs. Other games get a complete overhaul on the graphics.

Half-Life and Counter-Strike, along with most of Valve's other early game, all sold tremendously well. I do not find it hard to imagine them being able to come up with $40mil.

I think you misunderstood me.
Hl and Cs sold tremendously well but so did every GTA game since GTA3. I'm just saying that if Valve had all that money....Rockstar probably has more and therefor they have the financial capabilities to license an engine like UE3.