APB Reloaded receiving 'massive' engine upgrade in 2014

All Points Bulletin Reloaded, Reloaded Productions' massively multiplayer free-to-play action title, will receive a "massive" engine upgrade "sometime at the end of Q1, 2014," CEO Bjorn Book-Larsson recently announced.

In APB Reloaded, a game that's "similarly themed" to Grand Theft Auto 5, players partake in missions as either Criminals or Enforcers. It currently runs on the 2007 version of the Unreal 3 engine; according to Book-Larsson, an upgrade is necessary to up performance and add improvements.

"Due to the vintage of the engine, we keep bumping up against performance limitations, and also severe limitations in our product development speed," Book-Larsson wrote. "Because we use many custom systems in the game, it takes a very long time for our team to make material changes to the game, resulting in a lot of features being shelved or delayed.

"An upgraded engine would let us tackle important things like min-spec system performance, lighting system improvements, net code improvements and new graphic card optimizations and it would likely lead to a faster content creation pipeline by taking advantage of new systems available in the updated engine."

More details on the engine upgrade, including test information and a definite release date, are expected in the months to come. Book-Larsson added that upgrading the engine will also open other possibilities — such as "a path to launch on other platforms in the future."

APB Reloaded is available for Windows PC.