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On the evening of March 20, Epic Games held its annual State of Unreal as part of the developer conference GDC 2024 – during an hour-long presentation, they showed a trailer for Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra on UE5 and announced the launch of a mobile digital store on iOS and Android in 2024. We have collected the most interesting announcements and news.
Unreal Engine 5.4. What's new
Unreal Engine 5.4 Preview 1 is now available in the Epic Games launcher, GitHub repository and for Linux. The full release will take place at the end of April. The UE 5.4 update features a number of rendering performance improvements, including major updates to Nanite technology such as Nanite Tessellation for greater visual fidelity without increasing disk meshes.
Animation in UE 5.4 has also reached a completely new level – support for Motion Matching character animation technology has appeared, which uses machine learning to create smooth transitions between movements and requires ten times less memory than regular Motion Matching . This technology has been used in Fortnite on all platforms since the launch of Chapter 5, and later this year Epic will publish a free (educational) set of over 500 AAA animations created from high-quality motion capture data.
Multi-Process Cook received a number of optimizations, thanks to which it began to work three times faster, compiling significantly fewer shaders in the editor. The developers have not forgotten about sound designers – the new Audio Insights profiling tool will offer more opportunities for creating and fine-tuning audio.
Procedural Content Generation Framework (PCG) — a set of tools for procedural content generation in Unreal Engine — also received a number of improvements. Epic has also decided to release a PCG Biome plugin for procedurally generated water, rivers, lakes and swamps.
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Captain America vs Black Panther. First trailer 1943: Rise of Hydra on UE 5.4
The presentation started with a rather unexpected announcement – the first look at 1943: Rise of Hydra, a new Marvel game on UE5 (more precisely, Unreal Engine version 5.4) about Black Panther and Captain America in the setting of World War II. It's a story-driven action game from Amy Hennig (writer and creative director of the first three Uncharted titles) and the studio she founded, Skydance New Media. The studio is also developing a new game in the Star Wars franchise. Both are part of Disney's growing portfolio of big-budget games, which has previously tapped big-name developers including Insomniac, Quantic Dream, Ubisoft, Bethesda, Respawn, Arkane and others to revive the gaming genre.
As the story unfolds, players will switch between four central characters: young Steve Rogers (aka Captain America), Azzuri the Wise (Grandfather of T’Challa and the Black Panther during World War II), Gabriel Jones (an American soldier and member of the Howling Commandos special forces) and Nanaly (a spy from Wakanda who was sent to occupied Paris).
The debut trailer reveals some plot details and contains gameplay footage recorded in the engine – it looks pretty good, like a real next-gen. Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra will be released in 2025, but there is no exact list of platforms yet.
Epic Mobile Digital Store
Epic has once again confirmed plans to launch the Epic Games Store on iOS and Android before the end of 2024. A full announcement of the mobile EGS with all the details will take place later, and the concept art demonstrates the already familiar Epic Games Store interface. Mobile only. Developers will receive 88% of sales in it, the same as in the PC version, while Epic's commission will be 12%.
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Epic Games emphasize that their Epic Games Store will be the world's first multi-platform gaming store that will work on PC, Mac, iOS and Android. It remains to remember the figures from a recent report: in 2023, the number of EGS users on PC exceeded 270 million (+40 million), and taking into account cross-platform Epic accounts – 804 million.
MetaHumans + Unreal Editor for Fortnite
Last year's Epic Games presentation at GDC was, among other things, memorable for the announcement of the powerful Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN). Now a number of new functions have been announced for it. First up, MetaHumans, the acclaimed tool that lets you create realistic models of people using your iPhone, is now available at UEFN. You can import any characters created using MetaHuman Creator and MetaHuman Animator into UEFN, and then turn them into NPCs in your own games.
Other improvements planned for release before the end of 2024 include elements for Fall Guys-style level creation (May), the ability to do a first-person perspective, which is sorely lacking, and a “physical gameplay sandbox” that includes “the ability to use physically modeled characters in UEFN and Creative and simulate any static meshes.”
It's all part of Epic's ambitious plan to turn Fortnite into a Roblox platform for gaming, with user-created games making up a significant portion of it. According to Epic, more than 80,000 islands created with UEFN have been published since 2023, joining major official releases such as Lego Fortnite and the Fortnite Festival.
Fortnite + mini-games in LEGO style
And to avoid getting up twice, continuing the theme of new features in the Fortnite editor, Epic continues to expand its partnership with LEGO. The new level allows Fortnite users to create LEGO-themed mini-games – templates and all the necessary tools are already available in both Fortnite Creative and UEFN.
Like all other user-created games in Fortnite, LEGO games include royalties in addition to other terms and conditions, and the restrictions are somewhat tighter than with typical Fortnite Creative islands. So, for the USA there must be compliance with the ESRB E10+ rating (from 10 years and older), and for Europe – PEGI 7 (from 7 years and older).
Building all new islands, limited only by your imagination.
Create your own LEGO® Island with LEGO Elements and Island Templates in UEFN and Creative — starting now! pic.twitter.com/KJif56WKa7
— Fortnite Creators (@FNCreate) March 20, 2024
Fortnite's LEGO game library has seen some notable additions lately: the Minecraft-themed survival game Lego Fortnite came out in December, followed by two more games in February – the multiplayer Lego Raft Survival and the obstacle course Lego Obby Fun. The latest addition is three more Lego games coming to Fortnite: Prop Hunt, Battle Arena and Cat Island Adventure.
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