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MK11 is on a heavily modified UE3! (explanation inside)

Eddy Wang

Skarlet scientist
Kind of sad when they had literally like 4-5 years to actually get the ball running on a completely new engine then to go and falsely advertise as if they have a new engine is downright despicable.

Also answers the question as to why the animations still look sloppier than ever and the facial models look horrendous.
The animations won't look smoother and facial models won't look better just because one has a new engine, that's purely depends of the work of people working in the games they're making.

Despite that NRS has definitely made MK11 animations a lot better from past MK games, and so does facial models.
 

Eddy Wang

Skarlet scientist
It's probably better than UE4 for the purpose of creating these specific games, with all else likely removed to reduce load time.
Yeah, they have probably added their own formulas and features to use over the years, which is a good thing considering they can change graphics and anything else they feel like it.
 

GLoRToR

Positive Poster!
Yeah, they have probably added their own formulas and features to use over the years, which is a good thing considering they can change graphics and anything else they feel like it.
Graphics and anything else - as you call them - are commonly referred to as "assets" and are probably the easiest thing to change because they are literally outside addendum to an engine. What resolution an engine can display its assets at on your screen is something they do need to tweak themselves, however, so if U3 didn't have 4K/8K support and MK11 will, chances are it's their own doing.
The liberty you have if you can program and have the crew and money is insane once you legally own an engine.
 
I knew It was UE3 before they even announced the game because in an interview -I think it was around 2014-15- Ed Boon talked about how at some point they've stopped getting builds from Epic Games and that they were making it kind of their own engine.

People want NRS to move to Unreal4 but I really don't see a good reason to do so. also a new engine isn't necessarily better to make fighting games. Tekken 7 and SoulCalibur 6 both are Unreal4 but non of them runs above 720p on the regular Xbox One (a sacrifice they had to make in order to achieve 60fps), whereas MKX was dynamic 1080p and Injustice 2 was 900p on the same console. it's not the engine that makes the difference, it's how You use it to make Your game.
 

GLoRToR

Positive Poster!
I knew It was UE3 before they even announced the game because in an interview -I think it was around 2014-15- Ed Boon talked about how at some point they've stopped getting builds from Epic Games and that they were making it kind of their own engine.

People want NRS to move to Unreal4 but I really don't see a good reason to do so. also a new engine isn't necessarily better to make fighting games. Tekken 7 and SoulCalibur 6 both are Unreal4 but non of them runs above 720p on the regular Xbox One (a sacrifice they had to make in order to achieve 60fps), whereas MKX was dynamic 1080p and Injustice 2 was 900p on the same console. it's not the engine that makes the difference, it's how You use it to make Your game.
This. And optimisation is always a bitch.
 

STRYKIE

Are ya' ready for MK11 kids?!
The game looks so good that i though it was UE4.
To be honest I think it's just that NRS have naturally gotten better at optimization. Injustice 2 on UE3 already looked better than the console version of Tekken 7 on UE4 (as much as it annoys me to say that lol), even without a change in source engine it was inevitable that MK11 would was going to look as good as well.
 
Although I don't for a second buy the idea that it is physically impossible to replace the frame of a boat, let's make this much simpler and say we're dealing with a raft instead of a boat. There, no frame. Just individual beams every one of which is perfectly equal!
Then the analogy doesn't work anymore, I understand what you mean but the custom engine of NRS is still built around the source code of Epic Games, and legally the engine is still their property. NRS still owe royalties to EG each time they make money with their games.
 

trufenix

bye felicia
The good news is those of us who are smart enough actually know what a "graphics engine" is or dumb enough not to care think NRS are doing a great job.
 
Engines are just frameworks that abstract away alot of the grittier details of graphics and logic programming and platform specifics, and are generally quite extensible that you don't need to upgrade to get better results if you have a decent amount of talent available (though you generally get access to more convenient goodies if you upgrade).
 

Mind Flex

Mind Gamer. BOOSH
Derek shot down Konquest pretty hard here;


The major non-story mode is gonna be towers of time.
Wow thanks. That's kind of heartbreaking news for me but I can't argue with that. Konquest mode would be a huge undertaking. I restarted Deception Konquest this week out of hype for Mk11. haha
 

SindelQueen

Sindels gay husband
Yeah, not sure who thought this was a new engine. You could tell immediately from the reveal that graphically it looks like an updated version of the same codebase from MKX.
I wouldn’t say you could tell immediately .. it’s impossibke really . Pretty sure it’s a study saying the eyes can tell the difference of quality of anything above 720p
But the fact that people thought it is ue4 is good ! Means they did a great job
 

Might-Taro 19

by each death, we learn more..
no kidding, the graphics are highly improved compared to mortal kombat x. I think they decided to stick with the modified unreal engine 3 cause they have had more experience and found ways to make it look better. Unreal engine 4 is a different engine, It would have not been a smart move to suddenly switch to unreal engine 4 without having any experience with it. Good job netherealm! I applaud you.
 

Onilordasmodeus

My GT: UncappedWheel82
I heard that MK11 was made in a new engine, but honestly, hearing that this isn't a new engine sort of puts at ease.

New engines invite bugs, and though I have a ton of faith in the NRS team, with a new engine they'd have to create new EVERYTHING from scratch.

If this is a modified version of the MKX engine, then they already have a lot of the groundwork laid, so that tells me they are way more ahead of the curve than I previously thought.
 
Well, then that's one -Hell- of a modification. Props to them. I seriously thought it was UE4. I stand corrected.
Still, it makes no sense to use Unreal Engine 3 instead of Unreal Engine 4. No matter how much they've modified it, UE3 is so old now there is no way you could bring it up to what UE4 can do. I really don't understand why they didn't use UE4. They've limited what they can do with the game by going with UE3. My only guess is this was done to make the game compatible with the Switch. I can't imagine the Switch running UE4 and still maintaining a decent performance. What are the minimum system requirements for UE4? Does the Switch even have enough RAM to run UE4? Anyway, if this was done to make the game compatible with the Switch then that means the game is effectively being held back to accommodate Switch players. They could have done so much more with the game if they had dropped the Switch version and used Unreal Engine 4.
 
They've limited what they can do with the game by going with UE3
Easy to make a claim like that, but in what way exactly? What would they get from UE4 that would make the game that much better? If it was better for development then surely they would have taken that option. Also taking into account them having to try and import what they already have in UE3, or recreate everything from scratch, taking away time from coding the actual game.

Interestingly Injustice 2 Mobile is listed as a UE4 game on Wikipedia, could be a mistake? Or they tried with that and they're working to move to it in time.

For comparison Rising Thunder, Soulcalibur VI, Tekken 7, Street Fighter V are all built with UE4, do they look/play any better than what MK11 does at the moment? Quickly looking at some videos, there's nothing in those games that strikes me as better than MK11; the lighting and stage detail looks better in MKX, to me, let alone MK11.

Again, people's jaws dropped when they saw the first images and thought it WAS UE4, now all of sudden everything looks like shit because it's only UE3, and UE4 would have made it X times better. Classic case of cognitive dissonance if i'm not mistaken.

I'd laugh if after all this they were just trolling and announced "Hah, gotcha, we did use UE4!!"