You ever wonder what Minecraft would look like running on Unreal Engine 4? Of course you have! But now you can stop wondering, as Youtube user John Alcatraz has posted a video showing off everybody’s favorite build-it-yourself adventure running on a beefier engine.
According to John Alcatraz, the object of this project was to show people how Unreal Engine 4 can make even a game like Minecraft look super spiffy. While the textures are clearly sharper and more lifelike (well, as lifelike as giant blocks can get, anyway), the big difference here is the lighting and other visual effects.
The creator claims that he did not originally set out to create a game so similar to Minecraft, but rather show how good a voxel-based game could look running on UE4. Once he discovered that the internet was overflowing with public domain textures for Minecraft, though, it was easy to decide which direction his project would go next.
What’s super interesting is the fact that John Alcatraz says he never looked up information on how Minecraft was created, which made the discovery of figuring things out for himself all the more enjoyable.
Clips from the final project can be seen in the video above, called “World of Blocks.” The video’s description calls it a “Minecraft-like Infinite Voxel World running in Unreal Engine 4.”
Also worth noting is the fact that this game was created entirely in Blueprint, without a “single line of C++” being written to complete the project. If nothing else, that serves as a nice example of how easy (relatively speaking, anyway) it is these days to build your very own game.
The game certainly looks the part of Minecraft, but with a blindingly brilliant sun playing off of the environment. There’s also a nice layer of morning mist hanging over the landscape and, even though it has nothing to do with the visuals, I like the addition of birds twittering in the environment.
After exploring for a while, the video demonstrates some of the player interaction, including digging holes, mining and chopping down trees. That’s where you’ll see some subtleties popping out of the new engine, including leaves that sway in the breeze.
John Alcatraz even does a bit of building, plopping his dirt, stone and wood in a random pattern.
Not that Minecraft really needs a graphical overhaul, but something like this certainly makes me wonder what it would look like if the team at Mojang decided to take a crack at it. Maybe we’ll see something like this out of Minecraft 2? That is, of course, assuming such a game ever sees the light of day.
