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The Net Effect
These early multiplayer bumps notwithstanding, Unreal has another major strength that should be particularly relevant to the Internet. It is one of the most highly customizable games ever released. Because of this feature, Epic believes the game will have a very long life. "It was a conscious decision from day one to let users customize the engine. It's very open-ended," explains Rein. "The customizability will not just help the game stay alive, but help it grow into a whole community of users." At the same time, Sweeney's scripting system, UnrealScript, is something he thinks will make a big difference to future games. "UnrealScript is going to change the way games are made. Now a programmer can express concepts such as, for a monster, 'When I'm attacking a player, run forward two seconds, fire my weapon, find a new attack spot, run to it and evaluate, and create a new attack strategy.' No one else has ever done that."
"As the online community learns more about building levels, we will see complete online worlds spanning hundreds or even thousands of levels, interwoven by teleporters."
- Tim Sweeney
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Sweeney is also extremely excited about Unreal's rapidly-growing Internet community. "There will be lots of interesting things happening on the Internet with Unreal over the next year," he says. "Unreal defines a web style of traversal, where players can go between servers by walking through teleporters, [automatically] downloading any new content they need - levels, textures, scripts, and so on. As the online community learns more about building levels, we will see complete online worlds spanning hundreds or even thousands of levels, interwoven by teleporters. New kinds of games will evolve out of the Unreal community, whether they are sci-fi or even role-playing." The possibilities are intriguing.
Next: A New 3D Standard?
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New Mountain Dew® Game Fuel™
