Discussion, live development of a game using Unreal Engine 4, and a Q&A about commercial game engines.
Even just twenty years ago, video game development, whether independent or professional, used to be a treacherous task. Given the limited resources that the developers had to work with, programmers and designers had to spend months and years working hard - to find the most optimal solution to make the game run smoothly, without glitches. More often than not, that had to involve hundreds of thousands of lines of code written from scratch. But with research and development of game engines, games have improved at a rapid rate, both in graphical quality and gameplay. Especially, in recent years, commercial game engines like Unity3D, Unreal Engine, and CryEngine have become free to download and use, making it much easier for the game development enthusiast or the indie developer to create games of high quality. These engines make it easier for both designers and developers by offering convenient features, such as drag-drop-functionality to place game objects in the level, and also an object-oriented, event-driven approach to the programming involved.
The first part of the panel will involve us talking about game engines in general, and giving an overview of their interesting features. The next part will be a live development of a video game using Unreal Engine 4. A small but complete single-player third-person game will be built and coded live by the panelists, to showcase the exciting functionalities that game engines of today offer. In the final part, we will accept questions and comments, and try to discuss how people interested in independent game development can find opportunities to start with.
