Dreamforge® Intertainment is the 3rd party company contracted to code the OpenGL ports for Unreal.
While most people know them for their current release of Sanitarium, there were a lot of questions about who Dreamforge® was, what they’ve done in the past, and why Epic chose them for the mammoth task of coding an OpenGL port for a breakthrough engine like Unreal.
I hope this gives everyone in the Unreal community an idea of the people behind the code.
c o m p a n y b a c k g r o u n d
DreamForge® Intertainment, was founded on May 1st, 1990 by Christopher L. Straka, Thomas J. Holmes and James H. Namestka. The Company's main objective is to provide creative entertainment software, with quality being its first priority.
Since its inception in 1990 DreamForge® has had many critically acclaimed products distributed worldwide and translated into many languages.
Our first product, ‘DarkSpyre’, was released December 1st, 1990. Our next titles were ‘Dusk of the Gods’ (1991), ‘The Summoning’ (1992), ‘Veil of Darkness’ (1993), and ‘Dungeon Hack’ (1993). ‘Dungeon Hack’ began DreamForge’s highly successful collaboration with Strategic Simulations, Inc. and TSR, Inc.’s Advanced Dungeon and Dragons license. These titles also included ‘Ravenloft: Strahd’s Possession’ (1994), ‘Menzoberranzan’ (1994), and ‘Ravenloft: Stone Prophet’ (1995). ‘Anvil of Dawn’ (1995), a game set in a world created by DreamForge, won Computer Gaming World and Computer Game Review’s role playing game of the year. ‘Chronomaster’ (1995), a game written by famed science fiction and fantasy author Roger Zelazny, was nominated for Computer Gaming World’s adventure game of the year. In 1996 we began developing for the recently released Win95 operating system using Microsoft DirectX. ‘War Wind’ (1996), a real-time strategy game for Win95, won a PC Gamer Editor’s Choice. In 1997 we released both ‘101 Dalmatians: Escape from DeVil Manor’ and ‘WarWind II: Human Onslaught.’ In the beginning of 1998 we released ‘Sanitarium’ which has already garnered much critical acclaim, and has also been named a PC Gamer Editor’s Choice.
The Company is currently at about 50 employees and is expecting steady growth in the years to come.
t h e p e o p l e b e h i n d t h e p o r t
I’d like to introduce the Unreal community to the two men responsible for the task of writing the OpenGL port.
Tom Holmes
Has worked in the computer gaming industry since 1987, right after graduation from University of Pittsburgh.
"I worked for Paragon Software for four years working on a variety of titles including text adventures, a Marvel superhero game, and a MegaTraveller game. In 1990 I left to join up with Jim and Chris to form DreamForge.
I was the only programmer on "DarkSpyre" and "Dusk of the Gods." Worked as the lead programmer on "The Summoning," "Veil of Darkness," and "Anvil of Dawn." I was the only programmer on "Dungeon Hack," which used the Eye of the Beholder III engine to do random dungeons. I also did the initial DirectX (starting with DX1 and DX2!) development here, which was used in "WarWind," "WarWind II," and "Sanitarium."
I had been doing a variety of 3D research here in Direct3D and OpenGL, so the opportunity to work on the OpenGL renderer for Unreal was an exciting project to dive into."
Keith Leonard
Keith graduated in 1996 from the University of Pittsburgh, and was hired by DreamForge for his strong programming background, enthusiasm about gaming, and his 3D and OpenGL knowledge. Keith worked as a team member on the "WarWind II" project and is currently working on a 3D title for next year. Given his experience using OpenGL and interest in 3D gaming, he was also very excited about working on the Unreal OpenGL port.
i n t e r v i e w
Tom took some time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions about the project. I wanted to ask some detailed questions about the way they were going to implement the code, but Dreamforge® is bound by an NDA with Epic. We’ll have more detailed information in the following weeks once Epic and Dreamforge® can talk about it.
What has impressed you most with the Unreal engine at this point?
There is a huge amount of stuff in the Engine and Tim wrote a lot of it. That's impressive. The cool things in the engine that we like are the reflective surfaces, volumetric lighting/fog, and the fire engine (real-time generated textures). The detail textures add to the game, too.
Can you give us a status report on the OpenGL port for Unreal? Percent complete, etc?
Actually the port has been running and feature complete for a while. Mainly we have been working on optimizations, bug fixes, and working with the hardware venders to get their OpenGL drivers running the game.
What sort of time frame are we looking at for a release of the OpenGL port for Unreal? Weeks? Months?
That is pretty much up to Mark Rein at Epic. The port is complete enough that a Beta could probably be posted soon, but it doesn't run great on all the cards we are targeting right now. So, some people could run it OK, but others won't. Also, we are working with OpenGL drivers from the hardware venders that in some cases they aren't ready to release to the public yet either.
How close is Epic involved in the work/testing of the OpenGL port for Unreal?
Epic hasn't been really close, at the start they were really busy shipping the game. Tim has been a big help (obviously) and has been able to answer questions for us whenever we needed them. Since then we have been regularly updating them with the port so that they could see the progress.
Major logistics involved with a project like this (because it's a new engine ie: radically different than other first person 3D engines like Quake/Quake 2)?
Well we started work on the renderer before Unreal shipped (a couple weeks before E3). We had to comprehend the Glide renderer and figure out how to accomplish the same things in OpenGL. We got the game running, but knew that the Unreal renderer code was going to change before shipping, so after E3 we got that code and had to take some time to get the renderer running again. It has also been interesting working with a variety of hardware, since we have to check stuff on multiple cards, both PCI and AGP, see if we have bugs, see if we think the OpenGL driver has bugs, get info back to the manufacturer. Once Unreal shipped the manufacturers could get a copy and then they could try out the renderer on their own hardware, give us suggestions about what we could do to make it faster as well as work on their own optimizations.
Do you think the OpenGL version you are working on is breaking any new ground?
Well, we are using OpenGL functionality that GLQuake and Quake2 don't use, so the hardware people have really had to work hard on their full OpenGL drivers to get Unreal running. A quake minidriver just didn't have enough OpenGL in it to run Unreal. Unreal really pushes the display hard, so performance has been a big issue. We have some moderately complicated code to manage textures since Unreal moves a lot of textures all the time, with the dynamic lighting and real-time texturing in the game, not to mention the volumetric lighting/fog and the detail textures. We have caused some new extensions to be written.
Are you working closely with graphic card manufacturers to insure the renderer is going to be compatible?
Yes we are working closely with the card manufacturers so that they can test the renderer on their hardware and see how it works. We are mostly using Beta versions of their OpenGL drivers which haven't been released to the public yet, as well. We have been working with Rendition, ATI, nVidia, Real3D, Intel, 3Dfx, Matrox, and 3DLabs.
What type of performance can people expect to see with the OpenGL version?
We are hoping to get performance close to what the cards can pump. It is highly dependant upon how the hardware functions and how "tweaked" their driver is. The way Unreal is setup it places certain demands upon the hardware. Some cards say "no problem," others are more like "if you do that it is going to run slow." So some cards will be slower than you'd think because of the way the Unreal rendering architecture works.
Your Bio says you are working on a 3D title for next year, can you give any information on this?
The product hasn't been officially announced yet, I'm hopeful that the publisher will announce the product next week. Whenever I hear something I'll let you know!
Will Dreamforge be updating their web page soon? (I had to ask because people are complaining that there is no info available on you!)
Yeah, our "site" is defining new ground in terms of "sparse." I've been trying to see what we can cobble together for a couple weeks now, but everybody here is busy making games or something. It is really odd. Anyhow, we should have some stuff up today (that's the plan, at least). It still won't be a big site, but should at least change from being "sparse" to perhaps "minimalistic."
(Note: The web site is up and running now, so go check it out right here http://www.dreamforge.com)
I’d like to thank Tom and the rest of the Dreamforge® team for taking the time to do this. I’ve been exchanging email with Tom for the last week and a half, and I can assure people that these guys are very dedicated to what they are doing.
-Yellow 5
