67 replies to this topic

[TheArisen]

Looks like I was wrong, I let my excitement run away with me and this isn't correct.

Edited by TheArisen, 24 June 2017 - 12:47 AM.

[Peiper]

If it means adding in all the assets we've been missing to flush out the game like AI controlled VTOL's, Aerospace, Armor/tanks, Smoke/chaff/arty deployed minefields, salvage, economy, black market, supply lines - and raids against them, then hell yeah!

The game has grown stagnant, not just because there hasn't been a new map in a year, but because the matches have no meaning, other than scouting matches - which help factions take what? More planets with no meaning?

The game needs much more depth. I do like the public queue, but I would be motivated to spend my days in faction warfare if I felt that I was helping my faction gain in game support assets and supply (in the form of cbills) and mech factories and stuff. It has been suggested that MWO is limited in scope because of the game engine. If so, and Unreal4 is the answer, then that's the answer.

[Navid A1]

He is referring to solaris mode... not porting to U4

[MechaBattler]

Anyone with programming experience, is it possible for them to use their work on MW5 as a base for recreating MWO in Unreal 4?

[Thorqemada]

Though it could be a selling point - taking the Solaris Mode to get experience with the Unreal Engine and if ist established and runs well announce MWO in UE and take all the lessons learned in MWO TwooopointOhhh...

Edited by Thorqemada, 23 June 2017 - 11:44 PM.

[Deathlike]

You're going to have a host of problems and not much on the content front while doing such a transition.

Basically, it'll be more of the same MWO with additional unintended bugs/consequences for another year+.

[Luminis]

Hell, launch it as MWO2 (without taking everyone's progress away, obviously), advertise it as the "multiplayer component" to MW5 and it might draw a bunch of new players into the game, or so I'd like to believe. Well, to be perfectly fair, looking like a contemporary game might do a lot in that regard in and off itself, but it's a huge opportunity to keep MWO going for another five or so years.

And the investment needed to do that should be at an all time low, what with MW5's development and whatnot.

MechaBattler, on 23 June 2017 - 11:39 PM, said:

Anyone with programming experience, is it possible for them to use their work on MW5 as a base for recreating MWO in Unreal 4?

If Harebrained Schemes can port MWO's assets over to Unity, I see no reason why PGI wouldn't be able to port stuff to Unreal 4, especially considering they'll have to get models, animations and whatnot sorted for MW5 anyway. At that point, it's probably mostly a case of adding all the 'Mechs and the netcode for multiplayer, but UE4 is unlikely to be as much of a hassle to work with as the notoriously complicated frankenstein version of CryEngine 2 they've got.

[Koruthaiolos]

Yup, this has needed to happen for a long long time.

The only issue I can see is that Unreal Engine 4 doesn't have the greatest netcode.

[MechaBattler]

Luminis, on 23 June 2017 - 11:49 PM, said:

Hell, launch it as MWO2 (without taking everyone's progress away, obviously), advertise it as the "multiplayer component" to MW5 and it might draw a bunch of new players into the game, or so I'd like to believe. Well, to be perfectly fair, looking like a contemporary game might do a lot in that regard in and off itself, but it's a huge opportunity to keep MWO going for another five or so years.

And the investment needed to do that should be at an all time low, what with MW5's development and whatnot.


If Harebrained Schemes can port MWO's assets over to Unity, I see no reason why PGI wouldn't be able to port stuff to Unreal 4, especially considering they'll have to get models, animations and whatnot sorted for MW5 anyway. At that point, it's probably mostly a case of adding all the 'Mechs and the netcode for multiplayer, but UE4 is unlikely to be as much of a hassle to work with as the notoriously complicated frankenstein version of CryEngine 2 they've got.

I guess it's more of a question of whether they want to keep adding onto the foundation of their franken-engine. Or if they want to rebuild anew.

Given how poorly optimized MWO is. I think it would be a huge boon for them. Especially if they had support from the creators of Unreal 4.

Raasul, on 23 June 2017 - 11:53 PM, said:

Yup, this has needed to happen for a long long time.

The only issue I can see is that Unreal Engine 4 doesn't have the greatest netcode.

Worse than an older version of Cryengine?

[Juodas Varnas]

Raasul, on 23 June 2017 - 11:53 PM, said:

The only issue I can see is that Unreal Engine 4 doesn't have the greatest netcode.

Because MWO right now has a *great* netcode

I'm totally supporting UE4, and totally not only because it would rid PGI from the excuse of "engine limitations" when it comes to Quadrupeds. *Cough*Cough*

Edited by Juodas Varnas, 24 June 2017 - 12:00 AM.

[Ratpoison]

Yes!!! This old engine has been preventing new features with technical hangups and archaic limitations for years. So many things will finally be possible by moving to a new engine, and many other development aspects will become much easier(aka faster development). It may be difficult, but it is so very worth it, perhaps even necessary for large scale growth of the game.

[TheArisen]

Navid A1, on 23 June 2017 - 11:25 PM, said:

He is referring to solaris mode... not porting to U4

Are you sure? I mean you posted to port mwo to unreal4 and that was Russ's response.

[DAYLEET]

Deathlike, on 23 June 2017 - 11:47 PM, said:

You're going to have a host of problems and not much on the content front while doing such a transition.

Basically, it'll be more of the same MWO with additional unintended bugs/consequences for another year+.

They are already doing the work for mw5, they are learning. I remember that townhall where Russ said it would stop development for 6 months. Well fk it im willing to stop everything to change to an engine that will survive the test of time at better framerate, better eyecandy and support for actual features. This crytech thing is not aging well. Also it would get rid of the mess that is the old code that make it difficult to change things.

Edited by DAYLEET, 24 June 2017 - 12:22 AM.

[Luminis]

MechaBattler, on 23 June 2017 - 11:57 PM, said:

I guess it's more of a question of whether they want to keep adding onto the foundation of their franken-engine. Or if they want to rebuild anew.

Given how poorly optimized MWO is. I think it would be a huge boon for them. Especially if they had support from the creators of Unreal 4.

Well, from what I've learned about the topic (little as it is), they're not getting tech support on their engine and the documentation is supposed to abysmal, partially because the specific version sits somewhere in-between two actual releases or something along those lines.

They've been hacking something together for years now and I am under the impression that they've really hit a dead end with that engine. I mean, how long has it been since we got placeholder weapons because ammo switching isn't possible?

TheArisen, on 24 June 2017 - 12:20 AM, said:

Are you sure? I mean you posted to port mwo to unreal4 and that was Russ's response.

Even the tweet was about Solaris, there's merit in discussing the port to UE4. That idea has been thrown around by PGI already and there's ample reason to push for it now.

DAYLEET, on 24 June 2017 - 12:21 AM, said:

They are already doing the work for mw5, they are learning. I remember that townhall where Russ said it would stop development for 6 months.

What development?

Edited by Luminis, 24 June 2017 - 12:24 AM.

[TheArisen]

Luminis, on 24 June 2017 - 12:22 AM, said:

Well, from what I've learned about the topic (little as it is), they're not getting tech support on their engine and the documentation is supposed to abysmal, partially because the specific version sits somewhere in-between two actual releases or something along those lines.

They've been hacking something together for years now and I am under the impression that they've really hit a dead end with that engine. I mean, how long has it been since we got placeholder weapons because ammo switching isn't possible?

Even the tweet was about Solaris, there's merit in discussing the port to UE4. That idea has been thrown around by PGI already and there's ample reason to push for it now.

What development?

Maybe I let my excitement run away with me.....

[UnofficialOperator]

Basically more of the same lobby shooter but prettier...

They should look towards EVE... there is a reason that they are so successful.

[Deathlike]

DAYLEET, on 24 June 2017 - 12:21 AM, said:

They are already doing the work for mw5, they are learning. I remember that townhall where Russ said it would stop development for 6 months. Well fk it im willing to stop everything to change to an engine that will survive the test of time at better framerate, better eyecandy and support for actual features. This crytech thing is not aging well. Also it would get rid of the mess that is the old code that make it difficult to change things.

You're still creating a new mess though, with its own set of bugs.

While it's not a transitive thing (while affects one engine will after the other - which usually isn't common, but it happens), it's a function of the factor of transitioning.

Think of it like UI 2.0. Outside of the crappy job of its initial debut for the mechlab, it did cause other things to not be available that we were used to like double clicking to add the highlighted equipment into the mech. On the other hand, despite actually gaining the weapons group menu in UI 2.0 (which honestly was not dependent on UI 2.0, they just never got around to it before), we still can't set chainfire directly there.

It's just stuff that will show up naturally trying to copy/replicate parts of older code into new destinations.

Edited by Deathlike, 24 June 2017 - 12:52 AM.

[vibrant]

While they will be able to re-use most of the MWO game assets (specifically models, textures, sounds), I would hazard to guess that they've butchered Cryengine so much, and architected the game so poorly that relatively little could be salvaged. "Transferring" it to UE4 is literally creating an entirely new game, and it'd take them years.

In my eyes, they'd be better off architecting & developing MW5 with client/server netcode in mind, and re-using much of that code to build MWO2.

[Thorqemada]

That is why they should do it, their work on MW5 has given them the understanding of the ME and Solaris would give them understanding of Multiplayer using UE in a scenario that is very controllable and thus a Knowledge- and Experiencebase to build upon.

[Luminis]

vibrant, on 24 June 2017 - 01:51 AM, said:

In my eyes, they'd be better off architecting & developing MW5 with client/server netcode in mind, and re-using much of that code to build MWO2.

Well, "transfering" MWO to UE4 and "building" MWO2 in UE4 (based on lessons learned from developing MW5) is basically the same thing, as far as I am concerned.

It's highly unlikely for PGI to just scrap the assets they've developed for MWO and from the MW5 trailer, I'd say they've already stuffed some MWO models into UE4. I believe that they'll pretty much have to re-do MWO at some point - the game won't hold up forever without some technological advancement, I believe. Whether it's called MWO or MWO2 afterwards hardly matters... Considering that the whole conversion thing was discussed by PGI at some point anyway makes me believe that they know fairly well they can't keep MWO running successfully on an outdated, hacked together engine.

I mean, it sounds like a solid project to tackle once MW5 is out of the door.

What's important, though, is to not kill everyone's progress. I have a distinct feeling that people would leave the game in droves if PGI announced MWO2 without carrying over the money and grind that went into the current 'Mech collection of the players.

Edited by Luminis, 24 June 2017 - 03:26 AM.