Unreal Engine 2.0

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Development of UE2 began in 1999. It debuted in 2002 with Unreal Tournament 2002 (and later Unreal Championship on the Xbox, one of the first games to use Xbox Live). UE2 saw success through licensing partnerships; notable games included Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Deus Ex: Invisible War, EA's Harry Potter games, and BioShock (which used a heavily modified Unreal Engine 2.5, not plain UE2). A specialized version called UE2X was designed for Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict on the original Xbox. In March 2011, Ubisoft Montreal revealed that UE2 was running on the Nintendo 3DS via Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell 3D. Unreal Tournament 2004 introduced a patch of UE2 commonly referred to as Unreal Engine 2.5.

In Their Own Story

The rendering code for UE2 was completely reworked from UE1 and made use of new hardware and graphics APIs such as the GeForce 3 series. As Tim Sweeney said, 'Software rendering was important to us in games up to Unreal Tournament. Now, we can start looking at GeForces and NV20s as the baseline hardware for our next game. We're really focusing on taking advantage of the hardware 100%.' UE2 was also the first version to make use of DirectX 8, which was released in 2000 and was the first DirectX version to support pixel shaders and vertex shaders. According to Sweeney, this would allow game developers to 'customize every aspect of a game's look and feel–especially animation and realistic lighting.' Hardware T&L was used to support larger outdoor environments, which Epic Games' Jack Porter described as being greatly improved in UE2.

Reader's Guide

UE2's rendering code was completely reworked from UE1, designed with GPU acceleration in mind. It was the first version to use DirectX 8, supporting pixel shaders and vertex shaders. Hardware T&L supported larger outdoor environments. UE2 supported the PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube. Features included a cinematic editing tool, particle systems, export plug-ins for 3D Studio Max and Maya, a skeletal animation system, and a rewritten UnrealEd interface in C++ using wxWidgets. It used the Karma physics engine for ragdoll collisions and rigid body dynamics. Unreal Tournament 2004 added improved optimization, physics, editor updates, more particle effects, and vehicle-based gameplay via the Onslaught mode, developed by Psyonix.

Did You Know?

• UE2 was the first Unreal Engine version to make multi-platform support an important focus.
• The Karma physics engine used in UE2 was developed by UK-based studio Math Engine.
• Psyonix, which later developed Rocket League, was hired as a contractor to implement vehicle gameplay in Unreal Tournament 2004.