Co-founder of Guerilla Games and former technical director of Epic Games, Arjan Brussee, has announced that he is working on a European alternative to Unreal Engine and Unity. As he states, the intention is to rival American and Chinese engines, and the project's name is The Immense Engine.
Brussee is a veteran of the industry, having worked as a programmer on the Jazz Jackrabbit series at Epic Games, and in 2003 he founded the studio Guerilla Games (Killzone, Horizon). He also co-founded the now-closed studio Boss Key with another former Epic employee, Cliff Bleszinski, before returning to Epic where he spent another eight years as the director of Unreal Engine.
After returning to the Netherlands, he claims to have started working on The Immense Engine. In an interview for the Dutch podcast De Technoloog, he said the following: "Currently, no one is developing an engine that is made in Europe, by Europeans, and that respects European rules and guidelines. Creating usable 3D worlds is becoming increasingly difficult, not just for gaming, but for other areas as well."
Brussee also sees potential in an engine built on new principles with full integration for artificial intelligence. According to him, Unreal is designed for people who have to use a mouse click for every menu, meaning if they want to change something, it has to be done in the entire program. "The rise of artificial intelligence means that developing something new must be approached in a completely different way. As someone who is older and has a vision of how things should work, I see a lot of potential in this."
He added that if you are smart and know how to create a good framework for UI agents, you can do the work of ten to fifteen people.
