[regawdless]

As ubiquitous as Unreal Engine may be in this day and age, there's at least one global superpower that wishes to steer clear of its grasp: Russia. In what looks to be an attempt at diversifying its tech portfolio and setting itself apart from any software kits from the West, the Russian Ministry of Digital Development has seemingly become interested in the development of a domestic video game engine to compete with industry giants.

The need for a new, locally developed game engine has been described as "important and urgent," though it comes with the obvious caveat of production cost. Namely, the Russian government would need to spend "billions of rubles over many years" to see the engine fully produced and ready for use, though it's worth remembering that funding may be an issue now that game piracy has been legalized in Russia, effectively invalidating the industry, to begin with. Anton Gorelkin, the vice-chairman of the Information Policy Committee, has even requested that Russia blocks access to Unreal Engine within its borders.

It's not particularly difficult to understand why the Russian government might be interested in setting itself apart from its Western competitors. The Russian invasion of Ukraine had decimated the country's economy to the point where Roblox currency was worth more than the Ruble. If the sources reporting on this matter are correct, then it stands to reason that the Russian Ministry of Digital Development has grown suspicious of the domestic developers' reliance on Western software, and would take steps to reduce it.

Though Epic Games blocked its commerce with Russia early on, the company deliberately left open access to its toolkits and products. This was to facilitate an open line of dialogue for as long as possible, which may well have been one of the reasons why Gorelkin would be interested in blacklisting Epic and its services. Russian game developers may also be concerned that they will lose access to game engines such as Unreal and Unity in due time, effectively leaving them behind as the global gaming industry marches on.

Source

Going to be great. But they'll have to Putin a lot of work.

 

[Cravis]

In the middle of a war with Ukraine but they need to create a new game engine. Video games. Serious business.

 

[HE1NZ]

In the middle of a war with Ukraine but they need to create a new game engine. Video games. Serious business.

Taxpayer money laundering never stops.

 

[Thing on a Spring]

Good news, I've managed to get my hands on their tech demo.

 

[IFireflyl]

Spoiler

sanctions

 

[and 3 others]

In the middle of a war with Ukraine but they need to create a new game engine. Video games. Serious business.

Why did I read this in Trumps voice?

 

[lock2k]

Is it going to be full of mold like their McDonald's competitor? lol

Seriously, though, I don't know about game engines but in terms of animation studios Russia has some really talented people.

 

[regawdless]

Will they then also make their own games and not allow Western games anymore?

 

[Sean Mirrsen]

"Allegedly". Good god.

It's like these people never heard of who makes Unigine.

An engine, I should remind, primarily used for "serious simulators", including industrial and military training programmes.

Unigine 2 got an Unreal-like "community version" not so long ago. It sort of lacks a community, and lags behind on some features, but it's already plenty powerful.

 

[Sejan]

"Allegedly". Good god.

It's like these people never heard of who makes Unigine.

An engine, I should remind, primarily used for "serious simulators", including industrial and military training programmes.

Unigine 2 got an Unreal-like "community version" not so long ago. It sort of lacks a community, and lags behind on some features, but it's already plenty powerful.

Maybe I'm missing something, but Unigine's primary purpose seems like it might be benchmarking. The wiki for it is at least 4 years out of date. One of the "upcoming games" released on steam in 2018, another I checked released in 2019. Overall the wiki lists 13 games and one that is cancelled as the unigine gaming library.

Even their own website quotes a developer of a subway simulation as saying, "For me, UNIGINE's best feature is that it's a C++ library, not a stand-alone programming environment."

This quote raises a lot of red flags to me about the viability of Uningine as a game engine as it's almost definitely missing a slew of necessary features for it to be a legitimate gaming engine. Maybe Russia can transform this engine, but it really seems like it's missing a lot right now.

 

[Perc Angle]

Bet tractors are banned.

 

[Sean Mirrsen]

Maybe I'm missing something, but Unigine's primary purpose seems like it might be benchmarking. The wiki for it is at least 4 years out of date. One of the "upcoming games" released on steam in 2018, another I checked released in 2019. Overall the wiki lists 13 games and one that is cancelled as the unigine gaming library.

Even their own website quotes a developer of a subway simulation as saying, "For me, UNIGINE's best feature is that it's a C++ library, not a stand-alone programming environment."

This quote raises a lot of red flags to me about the viability of Uningine as a game engine as it's almost definitely missing a slew of necessary features for it to be a legitimate gaming engine. Maybe Russia can transform this engine, but it really seems like it's missing a lot right now.

Unigine is used for a variety of benchmarks, but fundamentally it's a simulator engine, of the "serious simulation" kind. Benchmarks are just its way of showing off its capabilities.

As I said, the weakest part about Unigine 2 "Community Edition" is the lack of said community. If there are games made using the engine, hardly anyone bothers to add them to a wiki. There isn't a gaggle of enthusiasts with their model libraries and solutions for every possible problem. But it's still very powerful - it has great rendering capabilities, its physics and especially water physics are absolutely excellent, there's some good AI in there, and it's one of the few engines providing support for 64-bit coordinate spaces - allowing accurate modeling of scenes on the scale of outer space, for example, without fiddling with shifting origin points.

Also I really don't get the red flag thing. The fact it's a library is really a strength. It's not a one-stop-shop for game creation, it's an engine. It has various fancy features (albeit somewhat poorly documented because no community), but having its own IDE when every self-respecting programmer already has one of their own custom-fit to their preferences, would only make integration harder.

 

[Sejan]

Unigine is used for a variety of benchmarks, but fundamentally it's a simulator engine, of the "serious simulation" kind. Benchmarks are just its way of showing off its capabilities.

As I said, the weakest part about Unigine 2 "Community Edition" is the lack of said community. If there are games made using the engine, hardly anyone bothers to add them to a wiki. There isn't a gaggle of enthusiasts with their model libraries and solutions for every possible problem. But it's still very powerful - it has great rendering capabilities, its physics and especially water physics are absolutely excellent, there's some good AI in there, and it's one of the few engines providing support for 64-bit coordinate spaces - allowing accurate modeling of scenes on the scale of outer space, for example, without fiddling with shifting origin points.

Also I really don't get the red flag thing. The fact it's a library is really a strength. It's not a one-stop-shop for game creation, it's an engine. It has various fancy features (albeit somewhat poorly documented because no community), but having its own IDE when every self-respecting programmer already has one of their own custom-fit to their preferences, would only make integration harder.

What I'm saying for the "red flag" statement is that it seems to be lacking those features that game designers need. Engines like Unreal and Unity serve as one stop shops for everything. You use the same tools to develop your graphics and physics, but also for sound, AI, and a number of other features required for game making. In its current situation I don't think Unigine is ready to for real game development on any large scale as it likely lacks a ton of features that designers are looking for in their engine.

Overall, it's more than I expected, but it's likely a few years from being a fully featured game engine.

 

[Sean Mirrsen]

Overall, it's more than I expected, but it's likely a few years from being a fully featured game engine.

Well, yeah, kind of. Up until people cajoled the devs into releasing the free+ iteration called Community Edition, Unigine 2 was an engine for professional development. Rather than a one-stop-shop that does everything (and risks doing some things badly, deteriorating the usability of the whole thing), it just does the things it needs to do. Professional IDEs exist for coding that programmers already use, it doesn't need modeling or sound composing tools, etc. But the things it's designed to do, it does have the tools for. Scenes, assets, AI, etc.

I do agree it can't compete against, e.g., Unreal, when it comes to drawing in the kind of person that expects a one-stop-shop, or only has experience with such integrated environments. But it's a great tool otherwise. I guess I could say it's a Russian game engine. Much like regular Russian engines, it's no-frills and kinda basic, but it'll give you everything you need and then some if you know your way around a toolkit.