RuneTek

A screenshot of the RT5 Standard Detail engine.

A screenshot of the RT5 High Detail engine.

RuneTek is the game engine used for RuneScape. RuneTek 5 is the current version of the engine which replaced RuneTek 4 on 2 September 2009. RuneTek 5 combines Standard Detail (SD) and High Detail (HD) modes. The updated SD in RuneTek 5 includes fullscreen and resizeable window modes, distance fogging and sky colour, ground/path blending and smoothing, and underwater visibility. The updated HD also includes further shadowing, sky boxes and particle effects.

Development

Andrew Gower, Mod Chris E and four other Jagex staff have recently finished RuneTek 5. It is unknown what they are working on at the moment.

In a developers' blog, Mod Chris E says that these improvements have been inspired from another Jagex product called MechScape, which has been renamed and reworked into an entirely new game titled Stellar Dawn.

“	The impetus for some of these improvements has come from the development of "Mechscape", and RuneScape is now able to benefit from these too. Development is still continuing; another member of the Game Engine team has just commenced work on the DirectX RT5 implementation, and we have several awesome features in the pipeline. For a variety of reasons, this RT5 update also finally allows us to fix the long-standing mis-click bug in the Grand Exchange (unwanted walking/friend adding, etc), along with any number of smaller long-standing issues.	”
	— Mod Chris E, Game Engine: RuneTek 5<ref>Mod Chris E. "RuneTek 5". 26 August 2009. Developers' Blogs. *</ref>

It has been stated in a Q&A with Andrew Gower on 3 September 2009 that this update has made RuneScape that much closer to becoming a console game.

“	Darkdeeje asks: In the last Q&A I think you confirmed that RuneScape will be ported to consoles in the near future. Any news on that? Andrew: We are currently focusing on making the 3D engine more platform independent, so it is easier to port in the future. Our new 3D engine, RuneTek 5 (RT5), has been heavily rewritten to make this possible.	”
	— Q&A: Andrew Gower's Answers<ref>Andrew Gower. "Andrew Gower's Answers". 3 September 2009. Developers' Blogs. *</ref>

On the 22 December 2010, Jagex released a new trailer for RuneScape, showing a whole new level of graphics. Later, on RuneScape's Swedish Facebook, Mod Valkyrie posted about the new trailer and it was confirmed that the trailer was made using a new game engine that is currently being worked on.

“	RuneScape Svenska Ny trailer för RuneScape. Allt är "filmat" i spelet, en ny update är på gång. :) Translation: New trailer for RuneScape. Everything is "shot" in the game, a new update is on the way. :)	”
	— RuneScape Svenska@Facebook<ref name="devblogpost1">RuneScape Svenska. "Ny trailer för RuneScape.". 22 December 2010. Developers' Blogs. *</ref>

Later, in the comments, in the same post, Mod Valkyrie answered a question stating this:

“	RuneScape Svenska Trailern visar ett smakprov på den nya spelmotorn som vi arbetar på just nu. :) Det kommer ta ganska länge innan den är klar, men den som väntar på något gott...! Translation: The trailer shows a sample of the new game engine that we are working on right now. :) It is going to take pretty long time before it's finished, but he who waits for something good...!	”
	— RuneScape Svenska@Facebook<ref name="devblogpost1"></ref>

History

RuneTek Version	Date	Revision No	Major Milestone
RuneTek 1	1998–2000	n/a	Devious MUD
RuneTek 2	2000–2003*	1-193	RuneScape Classic
RuneTek 3	2003–2007	194-502	RuneScape 2
RuneTek 4	2007–2009	503-554	RuneScape HD
RuneTek 5	2009–present	555+	Cross-platform engine with both SD and HD
RuneTek 7	TBA		RuneScape 3

* While the RuneTek 2 engine is no longer used by RuneScape 2, it is still used by RuneScape Classic.

Gallery

• 
  A screenshot of RT1.
• 
  A screenshot of RT2.
• 
  A screenshot of RT3.

Trivia

• On the RuneTek 5 images, one can see a blurred out spot which is the Objective system arrow. This image was released before the Objective system update. The text in the chatbox reads: "A starting arrow has been added to your world map", indicative of the existence of the Objective system during the release of this blog.
• The updated log out button was also visible in these screenshots before Runetek 5's release.

File:RuneTek engine hint.png

Mod Mark hinting that RuneTek might be publicly available some day.

References

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