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It’s hard to divide the huge success of a game like Epic’s Fortnite from its popularity with influencers and streamers – the two go hand-in-hand. And Epic is now giving back to that community with a brand-new Fortnite replay tool, announced today during its GDC keynote.
The replay tool allows for complete replays of games, with full timeline control, slow motion, plus an impressive range of camera functions, including field of view and depth of field settings among others. In addition you can bring up overlays showing damage and shield levels, weapon equipped and player names. An impressive demo video of footage captured with the tool and then cut together to music proved the point.
For the launch of new tool, Epic brought on stage YouTube megastar Ali-A – who is nearing 3bn views on his YouTube channels. And who demoed the new tool with Epic’s Michael Gay, director of cinematic production. The two showed a replay of a two-on-two skirmish they had, allowing them to direct the camera and explain the fight in detail.
Ali-A also pointed out it’s a handy tool for players who want to get better at the game: "For content creators like myself it’s going to be an amazing way to elevate our content, but for the day-to-day player it’s going to let them jump back into a game they’ve just had and improve – see what went wrong and what went right enroute to that victory royale."
The replay tool isn’t just for Fortnite either, it will become a standard part of the Unreal feature set, so developers will be able to add this functionality to their own games, and help their communities create better content around those titles.
It will be debuting soon in Fortnite for PC and console platforms only, and will roll out in UE4 later this year for use by developers. It’s a huge boon for so many games, saving developers the time and effort of creating their own replay tool, and allowing them greater engagement with their community of content creators.
