Games - Epic Games

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Epic Games, formerly known as Epic MegaGames and also known as Epic, is a computer game development company based in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States.

History

They were initally founded under the name Potomac Computer Systems in 1991 by Tim Sweeney in Rockville, Maryland, Potomac Computer Systems released its flagship product, ZZT, the same year. The later portion of ZZT's life span the company became known as Epic MegaGames. Gradually, the Epic brand grew with the advent of its shareware games, including Epic Pinball, Jill of the Jungle, Jazz Jackrabbit and One Must Fall: 2097. During this time, they also published and sold games developed by other developers such as those by Safari Software and also XLand's Robbo, Heartlight, and Electro Man; and Renaissance's Zone 66. In 1997 Safari Software was acquired in whole by Epic and some of their titles as well as other pre-1998 games are sold under the Epic Classics brand.

In 1998, Epic Games released Unreal, a 3D first-person shooter, which expanded into a series of Unreal games. The company also began to license the core technology, or Unreal engine, used for the series to other game developers. In 1999, the company changed its name to Epic Games and moved its offices, including its Rockville headquarters, to Raleigh. Subsequently came the Unreal Tournament series. At present, the company is working on the Xbox 360 title Gears of War, as well as Unreal Tournament 2007 for the PC.

Designers at Epic Games include the aformentioned Lead Programmer Tim Sweeney and Games Industry Celebrity and Level Designer Cliff Bleszinski.

Game engines

Epic is the proprietor of three of the most successful game engines in the videogame industry. Each Unreal Engine, as they are called, has a complete feature set of graphical rendering, sound processing, and physics that can be widely adapted to fit the specific needs of a game developer that does not want to code its own engine from scratch. Epic has so far made three engines. These are the Unreal Engine, the Unreal Engine 2 and its 2.5 point release featuring support for ingame vehicles and improved netcode, and Unreal Engine 3, which is a next-generation game engine featuring per-pixel shaders, lifelike physics that support accelleration with the PhysX card, and a plethora of improved developer tools to accellerate the development process.

Epic has also revealed in interviews that an Unreal Engine 4 is in the works, despite the fact that there are not yet any Unreal Engine 3 titles that have shipped, although there are more than a dozen in development.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Epic Games ]

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