The Dunia Game engine

The Dunia Game Engine
Chris Swann

After two years in development, the Dunia engine, making its debut with Farcry 2 in europe on October 24th 2008, presents one of the most advanced and immersive game engines created.
It was developed by the Ubisoft Montreal team specifically for Far Cry 2 in an attempt to tie in with the games large map which the player can explore. Around 3% of the original “Unreal” engine used in the original Far-cry made it through to the sequel, which just gives some impression of how different the gaming experience will be. The Dunia engine was developed to take full advantage of the multi-core CPUs that have been released recently to the PC gaming market. Developer Alex Amancio says that this allows them to create one huge world instead of the traditional ‘levels’ seen in other first person shooters. The Dunia engine was developed with a realistic, ever-changing environment in mind and it is impressive to say the least. The A.I (Artificial Intelligence), when handled with the Dunia engine will develop a personality. Not only will they try and stop the player from achieving their main goal, they have personalities. Kill one of the enemy soldiers brothers for example and you could find him acting recklessly to finish his grudge with you. They will take lunch breaks, retire to camps at night and become weary as the day goes on. The dynamic weather effects created by the Dunia engine are always changing and this will have an effect on your environment. For example, a few days of rain will cause extra vegetation to grow, allowing the player to hide in the grass and stealthily kill his enemies. As the wind picks up, grass will blow and this will affect the trajectory of long range bullets the player shoots. Dust is also affected by the wind. If the player leaves a vehicle on a dusty road then it will be covered in dust after a couple of hours. This is also the case if the player drives fast down a dust track, the vehicle will handle differently when it is caked in dust.

The Dunia engine is a very exciting release in the gaming world, and the scope it brings to new developers could be endless and very impressive indeed. Many players have been comparing the Dunia engine to the Cryengine 2 featured in Crysis due to the open world game-play and the advanced physics. If played on a PC, the criticism is the Dunia engine will require a very expensive gaming computer to run, with top of the range multi core systems costing well over £1000. With an anticipated title such as FarCry 2, there is often pressure on gamers to upgrade their computer just to play the game, especially after all the hype surrounding it.
The main point I am trying to make about the Dunia engine is its flexibility and potential for new developers to make use of, I believe that some brilliant games will be created off this advancement in technology.
Chris Swann