Enemy quantity in Unreal
Posted: 23 Jul 2018, 15:00
I'm writing an article on Unreal for Hardcore Gaming 101 (which had to be completed on game's 20th anniversary, whatever). Obviously I drew comparisons with other shooters of the era, mostly those made by iD Software (of coruse) and one major difference between Unreal and Quake or Doom is the amount of enemies you encounter. Why there are so few opponents at once in Unreal?
Take a look at Doom - this game is a slaughterfest. Areas where enemies appear in dozens are very common, though most of low-level foes die after taking a shot or two from a shotgun. In Unreal your very first actual enemy is a bullet-spongey Brute, firing a barrage of missles at you. On the highest difficulty setting there are just three of them attacking you. Heck, every other enemy that's not a sentient plant or an animal takes a lot of punishment before going down. Quake I and II also have high number of mooks to be slaughtered while being in full 3D at that.
What's the reason of such balance? My money is on that Epic had to reduce enemy count in levels because contemporary PCs would just choke when processing AI of numerous pawns like Skaarj etc., as if the game wasn't hardware-demanding as it was already. I just need to confirm if my theory is true or not. And I want to be done with this article as soon as possible, to be honest, but I don't wanna scew it up.
Take a look at Doom - this game is a slaughterfest. Areas where enemies appear in dozens are very common, though most of low-level foes die after taking a shot or two from a shotgun. In Unreal your very first actual enemy is a bullet-spongey Brute, firing a barrage of missles at you. On the highest difficulty setting there are just three of them attacking you. Heck, every other enemy that's not a sentient plant or an animal takes a lot of punishment before going down. Quake I and II also have high number of mooks to be slaughtered while being in full 3D at that.
What's the reason of such balance? My money is on that Epic had to reduce enemy count in levels because contemporary PCs would just choke when processing AI of numerous pawns like Skaarj etc., as if the game wasn't hardware-demanding as it was already. I just need to confirm if my theory is true or not. And I want to be done with this article as soon as possible, to be honest, but I don't wanna scew it up.