Gaming

Barrage Shares Months Of Process Working With Unreal Engine 4

By Chris BurnsMarch 27, 2015 4:40 pm EST

It's only just been announced to be heading to Steam's Greenlight program, but it already looks like a heavy hitter. This is Barrage, a game created by Tectonic Studios with Unreal Engine 4 – so you know it's going to look just lovely. This game is about bombardment, pointed strikes, and defending your home world. Research, launch, and kill. But that's not the best part – the best part is watching the process, Unreal Engine community involvement, creation, development, and everything step by step.

Below you'll see the Steam Greenlight announcement trailer for this game. Inside you'll see the depth of gameplay – even here before the game has reached full potency for final release. This is a sort of preview for an early release of a game that's not yet in full Beta mode, as it were.

Barrage is a what its creators call a "fusion of action and real-time strategy gameplay." Inside you'll find "big lasers, massive rockets, devastating experimental weapons and planetary base building on a grand scale."

Beyond the game itself – which should prove to be an interesting piece of work – the team has provided early fans with close-up looks at their development process. Through the team's @BarrageGame Twitter account, working with Unreal Engine 4 comes to life.

Above you'll see the team delivering an update from December of 2014. There they're working with Quixel and rendering in Unreal Engine 4.

Below you'll see a video delivered by Quixel that shows a different environment – a Dues Ex Environment. This, they say, was "textured by one artist in 1 day using Quixel SUITE only. Rendered in Unreal Engine 4."

Back in August, the development team showed some early looks at a missile mesh rendered in Unreal Engine 4.

Early in development, the team began posting screenshots of their work every Saturday, allowing peeks at their process for the public.

The sun! Also back in August of 2014 the team shows detailing on a sun in a very short 7-second clip. Behold as the sun burns your eyes out of their sockets.

You'll see a quick glimpse of an Unreal Engine 4 development window here as well.

All the way back in June of 2014, the team asks the public how a "completely overhauled UI" might look. Imagine creating something with as many critics as you have Twitter followers, trading insight for early looks as you traverse the developerscape.

The coolest part of this whole situation is that it's not entirely rare. So-called "indy" developers everywhere are taking part in this very social process of creating games, making use of the web to refuel their creative tanks and drive through weeks, months, and years of development.

Epic Games have taken hold of this community development process with their own highly-active forums and encourage sharing on all social media platforms.

Epic Games has also turned this environment into a place where people can make creations on a macro scale, making themselves useful to a potential litany of future creative venture. Inside Unreal Engine 4, developers will create bits and pieces and put them up for sale in the official Unreal Engine Marketplace.

Development teams like Tectonic Studios will make use of these creations in their games.

Below you'll see a gallery of additional shares – not even half, not even a fourth – of what this development group shared in their time between start and Greenlighting the project.