40 replies to this topic

[Jackofallpots]

I know a lot of people are a bit flustered that there arent destructible environments and mechs cant go over a certain speed, which I heard is because it uses Cryengine

Couldnt they just license another engine and just add the existing mechs and maps to it and then add the features that the current engine doesnt allow for?

[FupDup]

Possible? Maybe, I'm not informed enough to fully know. At least some things should be portable.

Probable? Effectively 0% chance. It will not happen, ever, never ever ever. They're not gonna do it.

[stjobe]

Sure they could.

Technically there's nothing stopping them.

What's stopping them is probably that it's a very, very foolish idea, since it would take a lot of time and drain a lot of resources from the live game.

There's the distinct possibility that doing so would kill both MWO and PGI.

[RoboPatton]

Just... gonna leave this here...

[Rhaythe]

No.

They're running CryEngine as the base engine. But it's been heavily modified to support their game. You can't yank the rug out from under an entire game and try to plug in, say, Unreal 4, without some *major* overhaul. Doesn't work that way.

[Zeusus]

It's software. Anything is possible given infinite time and money. Every feasibility study ends with 'yes'.
Practically speaking it's not worth it.

[Ghillie Dhu]

Yes they will port it or rather upgrade to another engine in a year or two .... other wise the clammer for pritty graphics .. maybe even 3d .... will kill the game ... this is cyberville... upgrade or die...thats the rule.

[Zeusus]

Ghillie Dhu, on 19 March 2015 - 10:30 AM, said:

Yes they will port it or rather upgrade to another engine in a year or two .... other wise the clammer for pritty graphics .. maybe even 3d .... will kill the game ... this is cyberville... upgrade or die...thats the rule.

Please point to an mmo which has replaced it's engine without being a new game. I am genuinely curious if one is out there.

[RoboPatton]

Dude, no need to completely gut the engine. Cryengine itself is getting upgraded constantly.

I have no idea if assets are plug'n'play across the board in Cryengine builds, but if it is then you could still see destructible environments in the future.

Engines for several mmo's have been "upgraded" over time, but I can't recall an instance where it was completely migrated to a new one. Ie from cryengine to UE.

[Zeusus]

True but an upgrade is relatively minor, and they already did CryEngine 2->3 already (pretty sure). If CryEngine is the limiting factor we'll likely never see destructible environments in mwo.

With that said I'm fairly confident they just haven't done it because they want to support mwo running on potatoes, which would blow up the first time a building falls over.

Want better gfx and effects? Get them to stop support potatoes.

And with that I am now hungry...

[RoboPatton]

Zeusus, on 19 March 2015 - 10:56 AM, said:

True but an upgrade is relatively minor, and they already did CryEngine 2->3 already (pretty sure). If CryEngine is the limiting factor we'll likely never see destructible environments in mwo.

With that said I'm fairly confident they just haven't done it because they want to support mwo running on potatoes, which would blow up the first time a building falls over.

Want better gfx and effects? Get them to stop support potatoes.

And with that I am now hungry...

See the video I posted above, supposedly destruction is possible. I have no ideas the limits of said destruction. "Potatoes" lol! So true! There are limits to what many people can run, and PGI wants to max exposure.

However, anyone remember Red Faction Guerrilla? That ran on an X-Potato and Potato Station 3.



edited for clarity--

Edited by RoboPatton, 19 March 2015 - 12:49 PM.

[Zeusus]

Can't watch since I'm at work, but I fully believe CryEngine supports it (which is what I assume you linked too), hence my potatoe comment. I fully believe it's solely a desire to run on old machines holding us back. Just like how we have feet which don't move with terrain.

And if we want to talk red faction, PS2 had the original which let you skip while levels by drilling through the walls.

[terrycloth]

I thought the problem with destructible terrain was keeping the destruction consistent across the server and 24 clients, since it affects weapon flight paths.

Cosmetic destructible terrain (knocking over trees, crushing cars) is probably what we'll see first. I thought at one point Russ said they were going to do that?

[Egomane]

It's not the engine that's the limitation for destructible terrain. It's part of the problem but not the only one.

The CryEngine can do destructible environment just fine, but it costs performance. Lots of it. That's why even the prime CryEngine titles Crysis from Crytek had very little of it.

The other aspect is that it causes network traffic and server load in significant numbers. This can be buffered to some degree for less of an impact.

The next issue is the fact that it could create imbalances with the current maps. For example if you start shooting holes into the buildings of River City, or even worse, when you are leveling the whole town. The map would need to be readjusted to compensate for this.

I'd love to see some destructible terrain. We have/had a few examples of it. Falling lamps in River City, when shot with explosive weapons (missles or ACs). Those where cosmetic and as far as I know limited to your own computer. I would love to see more of those. Destructable and burning cars, damage textures for buildings. Nothing that really changes the map as such, but a noticable difference in looks.

[Funkmaster Rick]

An engine upgrade is minor if and only if the engine they're upgrading to is functionally the same. Otherwise, all the workarounds and shortcuts they used to make the old engine work the way they want it to are wasted, and require a massive time sink to fix.

It's like opening up your car and putting an entirely new engine block in, one not made for your model of vehicle. You're talking major, major work.

[zagibu]

Porting textures, sounds, and models is relatively easy. Animations and shader-based effects depends a bit on what exactly you do there, but can also be done. If they made a good architecture for their game code, even that could be ported with only partial rewrites. The question is a bit irrelevant, though, because 1) Cryengine supports destructible terrain (PGI doesn't do it because it's a lot of effort for little gain), and 2) every current engine has problems to maintain good visual fidelity and bulletproof collision detection at speeds close to or exceeding 50 m/s, especially in a networked environment.

Edited by zagibu, 19 March 2015 - 01:13 PM.

[KraftySOT]

zagibu, on 19 March 2015 - 01:12 PM, said:

every current engine has problems to maintain good visual fidelity and bulletproof collision detection at speeds close to or exceeding 50 m/s, especially in a networked environment.

http://il2sturmovik.com/

Cept Oleg's.

[Darklord]

It's a poor workman who blames his tools.

Look around at other projects using the Cryengine and you will see PGI just doesn't have the knowledge to use it or even care to try.

[zagibu]

KraftySOT, on 19 March 2015 - 01:14 PM, said:

http://il2sturmovik.com/

Cept Oleg's.

I don't know this engine, but a lot of engines for racing games for example, that also feature speeds over 50 m/s (180 km/h) cheat. The cars in those games don't actually travel that fast, the illusion of speed is created with camera settings and graphical effects. Also, this flight sim has completely different requirements than a ground based game. The ground doesn't need a lot of polies, because of the high altitute and steep camera angle. You can also do a lot of detail fluff like rocks and other smallish objects with textures and precomputing, which has to be rendered as actual models in real time in ground based games.
Not saying that he's doing any of that, it's always possible that someone found some clever tricks to push graphics to new limits.

[RoboPatton]

Darklord, on 19 March 2015 - 01:19 PM, said:

It's a poor workman who blames his tools.

Look around at other projects using the Cryengine and you will see PGI just doesn't have the knowledge to use it or even care to try.

To some degree that might be true, hence the new "hires" at PGI to supposedly cook up content. What content? I'm not sure.

But it's more like-- why use those "extra tools" when using the same one over and over, makes all the money? Ie Mech Pre-orders.

I'd be happy with just visual destruction too. Have faces of a building pit, visual destruction of cars, canisters, transparencies, etc... "Fully destructable environment" isn't what the game NEEDS, but the feeling that my 100 tons of steel and explosions invokes when I shoot a little car, and nothing happens is a little sad.