28 replies to this topic

[CocoaJin]

If you had the opportunity to re-invision MWO and CW, which game engine would you use? What would you do different?

This is open to the players also. What would be the advantages and disadvantages of your choice engine?

My first choice would be ARMA's game engine. It's already set up for both PvP and PvE, either separate or together. It uses islands that are big enough to approximate whole planets or regions of planets capable of supporting its own territory capture campaign consisting of several to dozens of objective areas.

The physics modeling is more than sufficient to handle mechs, it could also support tanks and aero assists, both player and AI controlled if we wanted to go there. The world is expansive enough to evade aero assists, vast enough to provide true recon/scouting, has the ability to create mobile spawns that would allow for Dropships to be used for deployment.

The damage modeling for mechs could be improved upon, we could have day/night cycles and I believe weather. Dynamically spawned AI units would give the map a lived in feeling and the option for dynamic PvE content like patrol missions, supply convoy interdiction, etc.

Drawbacks: the game might have less eye candy. The game might be a little more resource intensive.

My second choice would be Unity, but it might have less eye candy.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

Unreal or idTech5.

Unreal because of how much documentation there is for it not to mention free tutorial/resources there are for the engine. It is easy on hardware without looking terrible and its collision detection doesn't seem to be as hit/miss as the Cryengine seems to be.

idTech5 because the engine is fluid, from what I've been told by my professor, it has a scheduling system as well as an adaptive renderer that adjusts the quality of your graphics and game overall to ensure you get a fluid experience. Only problem is that this engine has barely any games behind it so help for working with it is incredibly scarce.

[CocoaJin]

WM Quicksilver, on 22 November 2014 - 12:13 PM, said:

Unreal or idTech5.

Unreal because of how much documentation there is for it not to mention free tutorial/resources there are for the engine. It is easy on hardware without looking terrible and its collision detection doesn't seem to be as hit/miss as the Cryengine seems to be.

idTech5 because the engine is fluid, from what I've been told by my professor, it has a scheduling system as well as an adaptive renderer that adjusts the quality of your graphics and game overall to ensure you get a fluid experience. Only problem is that this engine has barely any games behind it so help for working with it is incredibly scarce.

I never heard of idTech5.

Can Unreal do expansive areas well...can it run as a persistent world? I can't think of an Unreal game off hand that was used for a persistent world.

[Kirkland Langue]

BigWorld - because I believe that if you could replace the tanks in World of Tanks, with Mechs; you'd have an amazing game.
At least you'd have an amazing battleground which could then be placed into an amazing game.

[Zeriniel]

CocoaJin, on 22 November 2014 - 03:38 PM, said:

I never heard of idTech5.

Can Unreal do expansive areas well...can it run as a persistent world? I can't think of an Unreal game off hand that was used for a persistent world.

Of course unreal can do expansive areas. One of the first things added to UE4 was persistent and/or streaming levels. Also you'd be surprised what types of games weren't made with UE3. IdTech5 is, well, id's engine. Ever hear of doom? Quake? I can't recall if idtech5 is the Rage engine or the upcoming doom reboot engine?

[Lil Cthulhu]

Zeriniel, on 22 November 2014 - 06:34 PM, said:

Of course unreal can do expansive areas. One of the first things added to UE4 was persistent and/or streaming levels. Also you'd be surprised what types of games weren't made with UE3. IdTech5 is, well, id's engine. Ever hear of doom? Quake? I can't recall if idtech5 is the Rage engine or the upcoming doom reboot engine?

Looks like the new Doom is going to be id Tech 6

[Y E O N N E]

Zeriniel, on 22 November 2014 - 06:34 PM, said:

Of course unreal can do expansive areas. One of the first things added to UE4 was persistent and/or streaming levels. Also you'd be surprised what types of games weren't made with UE3. IdTech5 is, well, id's engine. Ever hear of doom? Quake? I can't recall if idtech5 is the Rage engine or the upcoming doom reboot engine?

idTech 5 is the engine that was used for RAGE and the most recent entry of Wolfenstein.

The thing with idTech, however, is that environment lighting is implemented in a rather primitive way. The way they do it is baking the shadows and highlights and diffuse into the megatexture and then using simple lightmaps to say "hey, this general region should be dark." The result is that shadows don't get accurately cast to dynamic objects, the ambient light in that area just becomes less and the whole object darkens accordingly.

This same system is the reason RAGE doesn't have a Day/Night cycle. It would require a new megatexture for every change in lighting.

[Tekadept]

as if the devs would comment on this, they chose cryengine, so its the best engine evah for a game in the best state evah.

[CocoaJin]

Tekadept, on 22 November 2014 - 09:02 PM, said:

as if the devs would comment on this, they chose cryengine, so its the best engine evah for a game in the best state evah.

Well by this time in the games development, Im sure there are new lessons learned about what and where they'd like the game to go and how this game engine or another is able to fulfill those goals. Im sure they have found limitations and restrictions in Cry that they hadnt considered or knew of...and since then, other engines may have very well demonstrated the ability to achieve these goals better, differently, easier or more in line with current objectives.

Not to mention, games do have sequels...maybe it wouldnt be unheard of to see a MWO2 that utilizes a different engine. Who knows, maybe our current MWO could be a dual engine game. Cry for deathmatches/PuG matches as we know MWO now, but some other engine for an upgrade to CW, to allow for a truly persistent world/theater of war for CW.

[Y E O N N E]

Tekadept, on 22 November 2014 - 09:02 PM, said:

as if the devs would comment on this, they chose cryengine, so its the best engine evah for a game in the best state evah.

CryEngine itself has very little to do with the state of the game. It could be running UE3 and be just as "bad" as you think it is now.

The problems are with the content (the coding, the models, the chosen format of play, etc.), not the engine. There is nothing this game does that Crysis 2 doesn't also do in some form, and Crysis 2 had some very fluid and consistent multiplayer. It was also very well optimized.

[KraftySOT]

They should have taken that 5 million and developed an engine.

[CocoaJin]

KraftySOT, on 26 November 2014 - 10:31 AM, said:

They should have taken that 5 million and developed an engine.

Is that enough(that's an honest question, I'm ignorant of engine dev costs)? How much did it cost to develop Planetside2's engine?...because that's roughly what we needed for a thoroughly fleshed out CW.

[KraftySOT]

CocoaJin, on 26 November 2014 - 11:03 AM, said:

Is that enough(that's an honest question, I'm ignorant of engine dev costs)? How much did it cost to develop Planetside2's engine?...because that's roughly what we needed for a thoroughly fleshed out CW.

[color=#333333]By the time the Unity released their first game, it was 3 years of basement-dwelling for 3 full-time developers. By the time Unity released Unity version 1, it was a team of 7. So version 1 of Unity, you could calculate at 15 person-years or so. At 10k per month of employer expenses, we can get a nice round estimate of [/color]$1,800,000

http://unity3d.com/history.html

So its in the ballpark. It would have taken much longer to get to out, but would have been arguably better.

[Clydewinder]

Arma3 engine would certainly add some terrain depth to the game as well as HUUUUGE maps. Aerospace fighters, anyone? Tanks? Infantry? Heck ya.

Whatever that graphics engine is that runs Just Cause 2 is pretty kick ass. Lovely exploding things everywhere. View distance is a bit short for some stuff but compared to most MWO maps still pretty impressive.

Howsabout something like the Wargame:Airland Battle engine for company commander with added 1PV engine for mech pilots?

[Creovex]

Tekadept, on 22 November 2014 - 09:02 PM, said:

as if the devs would comment on this, they chose cryengine, so its the best engine evah for a game in the best state evah.

SC is using it... maybe a newer version and they are doing everything from FPS to Space Sim...

Going forward with the engine... This group has come a long way, hopefully some HUD reworks or tweaks could help with FPS....

[CocoaJin]

Clydewinder, on 26 November 2014 - 12:42 PM, said:

Arma3 engine would certainly add some terrain depth to the game as well as HUUUUGE maps. Aerospace fighters, anyone? Tanks? Infantry? Heck ya.

Whatever that graphics engine is that runs Just Cause 2 is pretty kick ass. Lovely exploding things everywhere. View distance is a bit short for some stuff but compared to most MWO maps still pretty impressive.

Howsabout something like the Wargame:Airland Battle engine for company commander with added 1PV engine for mech pilots?

I think ARMA3 has a higher system requirement compared to ARMA2. Is the improvements in 3 worth the hit to player accessibility?

[AztecD]

ATARI 2600

nothing but the best

[Matthew Ace]

I have little knowledge about game engines, but what about Frostbite 2?

[Slepnir]

Matthew Ace, on 26 November 2014 - 04:44 PM, said:

I have little knowledge about game engines, but what about Frostbite 2?

Seconded!
MWO using the frostbite engine would have been glorious.they already showed us what they could do with destructible terrain and huge maps as far back as bad company II, then took it a step further whith the armored kill expansion for BF3.

then toss in the various unit types and we could have had the expanded in universe immersion that included infantry, armor, vtol, and mechs.


I was sad when I found out they were using cryengine instead.

[Y E O N N E]

Frostbite is very hard to work with, as it was never intended to be something that EA licenses out. The tools are hodge-podge and sourced from many places.