14 DAY TRIAL // Video game developer Gazillion Entertainment has announced that it plans to use the Unreal Engine 3 game engine from Epic Games to create the upcoming Marvel Heroes MMO.
Jeff Lind, who is the studio director of Gazillion’s Secret Identity Studios, stated, “We love Unreal Engine 3’s streaming system. It’s made our entire technical approach possible and is easy to work with. We also love the flexibility we get from the actor components, which have empowered us to make all kinds of customizations without sacrificing the built-in features of the engine.”
Art director Josh Book added, “Our artists love the Unreal Content Browser, the visual art pipeline, and how functional UE3 is with different 3D packages. We had assets in the game within hours of starting work with the engine. In addition, Unreal Lightmass is a very advanced global illumination tool that has helped push the look of our game further than we thought it could go.”
Joe Kreiner, who is the licensing manager for North America at Epic Games added that his firm was honored to be able to deliver the technology that would allow for iconic characters like Captain America or the X-Men to be brought to virtual life.
Epic Games has shown off a tech demo for Unreal Engine 4 but has not announced when the new engine might be introduced, although it has suggested that it will only be made available when Sony and Microsoft introduce their new line of home gaming consoles.
Marvel Heroes is being developed in collaboration with Disney and the Marvel comic book company and will use the free-to-play and microtransaction business model when it is launched.
The MMO will use an innovative and yet unrevealed technique to make sure that all players can choose their favorite heroes without any restrictions, allowing more than one version of each one to exist on a server.