In their latest update to Kickstarter backers, the Xing team have announced that they’re in the process of migrating Xing: The Land Beyond to Unreal Engine 4 and have posted candid details and screenshots on he process.
UDK to UE4
I’ve already heaped praise on Epics brand spanking new 3D game engine and its development environment, as have many. And it seems that the people that actually matter, i.e. the talent behind the games we play are impressed too. In a recent Kickstarter update and development blog post, the team detail their reasoning behind switching from the ageing UDK (based on the ubiquitous Unreal Engine 3) to Unreal Engine 4. After around a year of time investment in UDK, the choice to switch wasn’t clear cut; “At first we decided to spend 4 days seeing how much we could learn and accomplish on the new engine. If we made our set goal after those 4 days, we agreed we would make the switch.”
On the engine’s blueprint system versus UDK’s Kismet visual scripting system; “After recreating things in blueprints in minutes (that it took us hours to do previously in unrealscript+kismet), we decided that the time it took us to make the switch would most likely be made up by how fast we could get a lot of our mechanics back up and running.”
The team also include new screenshots from the rainforest level, direct from the UE4 version of the game plus some comparative shots from the UDK version. It’s certainly looking mighty pretty.
We were excited for Xing before the update, the move to Unreal Engine 4 and it’s clear technical and creative benefits means we’re even more eager to get our hands on the game.
You can find more info on Xing: The Lane Beyond by checking out the website here.