During a livestream, Epic Games officially launched game engine Unreal Engine 5 and also revealed Lyra – a shooter that allows players to use it as a base to build their own games.
As part of The State of Unreal 2022 broadcast today (April 5), Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney announced that Unreal Engine 5 has officially launched.
“Today we’re launching Unreal Engine 5.0 to all developers. It’s been battle-tested in Fortnite Chapter 3 [which] launched last December, so download it today and get started,” announced Sweeney.
During the stream, Epic shared that developers who wish to move from Unreal Engine 4 to 5 should find the process “straight forward and well documented,” and added that Unreal Engine 5 will be updated with “new features, improvements, and optimisations” further down the line.
During The State of Unreal 2022, Epic Games also debuted Lyra, a shooter game that’s built-in Unreal Engine 5. What sets Lyra apart from Epic’s other games is that rather than being its own game, Lyra is more of a foundational block for players to build their own shooter.
“It’s a complete end-to-end networked multiplayer game project that is an excellent foundation to build a game upon, without having to start from a blank state,” shared Epic.
“It’s built from modular components, utilises Epic Online Services for matchmaking, and is designed to run on PC, console, and mobile.”
To demonstrate how Lyra works, Zak Parrish – Epic Games’ technical art direction lead – shared a demo of the game. In it, Parrish shows that players will be able to customise the lighting, maps, and many more features in the game.
In other gaming news, Creative Assembly has released update 1.1.0 for Total War: Warhammer 3, which brings a host of fixes and major changes for issues that the community has identified since its launch.
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