Lose the unreal engine!

fwhite

Ok, so this is the third MMO that I have looked at that uses the Unreal Game Engine.  This makes for great collision, physics, landscapes, and junk on the ground that either gets in your way or doesnt depending upon how important it is - very nice.

However, the models for characters and NPCs of all types are simply horrible.  They are gangly, animate poorly, and rely on the model to handle the textures instead of the skins handling the textures.  All in all, this leads to bad perfomance and gaphically hideous game.

Could we just have games with modeling and graphics created by the studios?

aristoculous

Originally posted by fwhite


Ok, so this is the third MMO that I have looked at that uses the Unreal Game Engine.  This makes for great collision, physics, landscapes, and junk on the ground that either gets in your way or doesnt depending upon how important it is - very nice.
However, the models for characters and NPCs of all types are simply horrible.  They are gangly, animate poorly, and rely on the model to handle the textures instead of the skins handling the textures.  All in all, this leads to bad perfomance and gaphically hideous game.
Could we just have games with modeling and graphics created by the studios?

Sigil went with unreal 2.5 even though at the time unreal 3 was available. The games that are released now and during the whole 2007 will look much better. Unreal 2.5 does not have full dx9 support .



I am actually surprised to hear that the game does not run so well from so many posts on mmorpg and other sites, or the fact that you need a beefy machine.

I have played UT2k4(unreal 2.5 engine) on geforce 4 and it ran great, and was visually impressive at that time(still decent now), few years ago.

Rekindle

Its kinda late now.

fwhite

Even after release, its never too late to totally change everything about game ... if its good people will still buy and play it ... hell even when its not good but just new and what their friends play.

And honestly, I was asking for opinions.

Hochete

Originally posted by fwhite


Even after release, its never too late to totally change everything about game ... if its good people will still buy and play it ... hell even when its not good but just new and what their friends play.
And honestly, I was asking for opinions.

One word: SWG.



SOE won't be risking another 'rebuild' any time soon, especially this soon after release.

fwhite

Bah SOE.  Sometimes I like the blizzard way of doing things where they constantly push back release dates until the game works according to their standards.  It so happens I dont like their current MMO product but the animation in it is very good.

What makes many games so cool is that they use simpler models with good skins/texture maps to keep the performance good instead of really intricate models that require a lot of hardware to continuously rerender.  This is why games reproduce the same model over and over with different skins ... its not to cut down on the time it takes to develop the models, its that these models are already optimally performing.  Put in some good animators and viola, you have a game that looks awesome even with many things resembling many others.

With each character in Van:SoH having over 20 features that can be customized, no wonder the performance suffers despite the bad animation.  Each character is a different model and has to be rendered individually.

... not good art direction here.

Lateris

it might really be on the hands of the 3d team- they might be trying to communicate a certain theme-maybe? The world itself looks amazing. I always though that the UT engine for an MMO is very much a memory hog? I could be wrong--just word of mouth.

Drumwiz

Originally posted by fwhite


Even after release, its never too late to totally change everything about game ... if its good people will still buy and play it ... hell even when its not good but just new and what their friends play.
And honestly, I was asking for opinions.

Ummm very wrong, go look into Star Wars Galaxies, and maybe every other game that was totally changed after release...

Korrowan

Originally posted by Hohbein

Originally posted by fwhite


Even after release, its never too late to totally change everything about game ... if its good people will still buy and play it ... hell even when its not good but just new and what their friends play.
And honestly, I was asking for opinions.

One word: SWG.



SOE won't be risking another 'rebuild' any time soon, especially this soon after release.It would not be much different than what they did with EQ1 which characters and what not were updated.... the whole game looked different 3 years in than it did when it was first released.  I do not see why they would not do it... personally I play in first person so I could care less what I look like... I prefer to see the great looking landscape myself.

dunadurium

Originally posted by fwhite


Ok, so this is the third MMO that I have looked at that uses the Unreal Game Engine.  This makes for great collision, physics, landscapes, and junk on the ground that either gets in your way or doesnt depending upon how important it is - very nice.
However, the models for characters and NPCs of all types are simply horrible.  They are gangly, animate poorly, and rely on the model to handle the textures instead of the skins handling the textures.  All in all, this leads to bad perfomance and gaphically hideous game.
Could we just have games with modeling and graphics created by the studios?

What in thee hell are you talking about?

ok first of all the Unreal engine was what they used as a base for Vanguard. It is very heavily modified.

As far as the actual geometry (the pollys) of npcs and all other world assets are concerned, that is completely on the in house artists and is not created or generated in unreal ed so it has nothing to do with the engine.

Also skinning a model and texturing a model are 2 different things. When there are "skins" for models in games made by third parties, they are basically just texture packs, nothing more. real skinning refers to weighting the skin on a model so it can animate properly.

The only thing that the engine will impact is the way it renders these textures and that is based on the effects the engine will allow including things like world lighting.

edit: and changing the engine this late in development is next to impossible unless you want another 3 years in development. What EQ did was just new models.... which is what this thread is really about not the engine.

~Dunadurium

Lateris

Why is it such a resource intensive game? No offense I am interested on the technology side of this issue.

fwhite

1) I am familiar with the skinning/texturing procedure and have done it for my own animations.  I am remarking upon the similarities in animation from the 3 games I have observed using the same engines.



2) Unique Models create a performance hit.  The more unique models you have in the same rendered space, the more memory is required to store them and the more processor time is required to animate them.  Becaus each character in Vanguard is basically an individual model (so ... many ... options), areas with a lot of them are very intensive (newbie zones, cities).  By making fewer unique models and more unique textures, you free up memory and processor time because textures require less memory or time (usually) than more models. 



So I mention the models because they are what is being animated, and as they can vary in every direction, the engine directly correlates to model animation and how it works.



To summarize, has anyone else played games with the unreal engine?  What did you think of it?  Do you see any similarities to those games and Vanguard?



... and please try to address the subject.

JelloB2000

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Originally posted by fwhite
(...)To summarize, has anyone else played games with the unreal engine? What did you think of it? Do you see any similarities to those games and Vanguard?... and please try to address the subject.

---

Only the fps games (up to UT2003) & they tend to be friendly to low end cards (when compared to other fps:s of the same period).

I think the mmorpg:s using the unreal-engine want to cut down costs on software-development & to get decent net-code.

Sharkypal

Originally posted by fwhite

1) I am familiar with the skinning/texturing procedure and have done it for my own animations.  I am remarking upon the similarities in animation from the 3 games I have observed using the same engines.



2) Unique Models create a performance hit.  The more unique models you have in the same rendered space, the more memory is required to store them and the more processor time is required to animate them.  Becaus each character in Vanguard is basically an individual model (so ... many ... options), areas with a lot of them are very intensive (newbie zones, cities).  By making fewer unique models and more unique textures, you free up memory and processor time because textures require less memory or time (usually) than more models. 



So I mention the models because they are what is being animated, and as they can vary in every direction, the engine directly correlates to model animation and how it works.



To summarize, has anyone else played games with the unreal engine?  What did you think of it?  Do you see any similarities to those games and Vanguard?



... and please try to address the subject.

I smell a less than adequate PC here!

 

dunadurium

Originally posted by fwhite

1) I am familiar with the skinning/texturing procedure and have done it for my own animations.  I am remarking upon the similarities in animation from the 3 games I have observed using the same engines. I also have done alot of modeling and animation, and hence i just dont see what you mean... the engine does not determine the quality of models, animations, textures, the rigging of models etc...these are all independant art assets



2) Unique Models create a performance hit.  The more unique models you have in the same rendered space, the more memory is required to store them and the more processor time is required to animate them.  Becaus each character in Vanguard is basically an individual model (so ... many ... options), areas with a lot of them are very intensive (newbie zones, cities).  By making fewer unique models and more unique textures, you free up memory and processor time because textures require less memory or time (usually) than more models.  yep and also considering the realistic style sigil is going for, every model in Vanguard is generally pretty high in polygons not to mention heavy use of  vertex and pixel shader  effects and the large clip plane. This is all extremly taxing on systems. Textures also contribute, especialy if they are high resolution . Also Vanguard is using true volumetric clouds (so the clouds really exist in 3d space using particle effects[we'll be able to fly through them on flying mounts for example, which is just sick if you ask me] wheras other games have clouds textured as part of their sky boxes)



So I mention the models because they are what is being animated, and as they can vary in every direction, the engine directly correlates to model animation and how it works. ... how exactly does the engine correlate to how the models are animated? Sorry fwhite i dont mean to bash you or anything i just dont see where you get this notion from.. each animation is created by an artist and is "run" when the script calls for it....for example, when i press "w" to move my character, the script retreves the run cycle animation from the game folder and the engine simply renders it..the actual motions in the run cycle are the same no matter how it gets rendered be it through a game engine, a modeling program or whatever else .



To summarize, has anyone else played games with the unreal engine?  What did you think of it?  Do you see any similarities to those games and Vanguard?



... and please try to address the subject.

~Dunadurium

fwhite

Originally posted by Sharkypal


I smell a less than adequate PC here!
 

You most definately do.  Testing includes minimums. I have several machines of varying power however and the modeling and animation are still clunky IMHO and I wish to know if the engine is responsible because I have seen similarities.

gonko

Originally posted by fwhite

1) I am familiar with the skinning/texturing procedure and have done it for my own animations.  I am remarking upon the similarities in animation from the 3 games I have observed using the same engines.



2) Unique Models create a performance hit.  The more unique models you have in the same rendered space, the more memory is required to store them and the more processor time is required to animate them.  Becaus each character in Vanguard is basically an individual model (so ... many ... options), areas with a lot of them are very intensive (newbie zones, cities).  By making fewer unique models and more unique textures, you free up memory and processor time because textures require less memory or time (usually) than more models. 



So I mention the models because they are what is being animated, and as they can vary in every direction, the engine directly correlates to model animation and how it works.



To summarize, has anyone else played games with the unreal engine?  What did you think of it?  Do you see any similarities to those games and Vanguard?



... and please try to address the subject.

Here is a link to all games developed by the Unreal Engine:

http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/powered/released.shtml

I have played Splinter Cell games and I thought they looked great.

Carrara

Just listen to dunadurium is saying then. He's not full of crap you know! Jeez, besides forums, doesn't anybody care to read up on things like "how a game is put together"?

The artist creates the animation for the model. The 3d engine reads a script like a program that points to where the mini animation like video is on the hard drive, and plays it back inside the 3d engine when the corresponding key is pressed that causes the chain reaction.

If the animation is clunky, it's because of the system not meeting the requirements for fluid animation play back. It will look like stuttering on the animation's part because of the system, it cannot process all of the frames that actualy exist. Reducing the amount of frames that it plays back should help the PC perform a little better BUT make the game look crappy.

oh and fyi - a license for Unreal Engine is upwards of $350,000.00 USD depending on the support contract you choose. That's the cheapest commercial 2.5 license they offer. Most recently, a company (that I will not mention here) reported that they have licensed the Unreal Engine 3.x for more than $3,000,000.00 USD. Yeah, seems like game developpers are trying to cheap out. *DUH*

dragonace

Originally posted by Carrara


Just listen to dunadurium is saying then. He's not full of crap you know! Jeez, besides forums, doesn't anybody care to read up on things like "how a game is put together"?
The artist creates the animation for the model. The 3d engine reads a script like a program that points to where the mini animation like video is on the hard drive, and plays it back inside the 3d engine when the corresponding key is pressed that causes the chain reaction.
If the animation is clunky, it's because of the system not meeting the requirements for fluid animation play back. It will look like stuttering on the animation's part because of the system, it cannot process all of the frames that actualy exist. Reducing the amount of frames that it plays back should help the PC perform a little better BUT make the game look crappy.
oh and fyi - a license for Unreal Engine is upwards of $350,000.00 USD depending on the support contract you choose. That's the cheapest commercial 2.5 license they offer. Most recently, a company (that I will not mention here) reported that they have licensed the Unreal Engine 3.x for more than $3,000,000.00 USD. Yeah, seems like game developpers are trying to cheap out. *DUH*

If I remember correctly the decision to go with 2.5 over 3.0 had to do with a number of factors.



1) 2.5 was more stable than 3.0

2) The dev team was more comfortable with 2.5 than 3.0

3) Some of the code was already written with 2.5 and they decided that it was better to use that than re-do it in 3.0

4) The price of the license.



If anyone else remembers the discussion from back then on the Vanguard boards they might be able to add more, but those are what I remember.  Or else, it's this flu bug I'm still getting over. 

fwhite

Well,



the forum conveniently dindt post my last post.  Basically I have lineage 2, Vanguard, and Legend of Spellborn as examples.  They all suffer from the same ailments.



The unreal engine renders the animations, so it is a potential candidate.



but I have had enough "stfu noob" for one discussion - I have access to an unreal sandbox so I'll just test it myself.

Carrara

Please accept my appology for sounding and replying in this tone. I'm simply getting overworked at the general ignorance of the general public. I know better than to talk to others that way. Sorry.

The Unreal Engine uses very strange "tweening" values. It's not all that easy to get the animation timings perfect. You only have 1 control over playback. So it all comes down to the animation artist's ability to get it masterfully timed. It is NOT easy.

RyuukoGo

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Originally posted by fwhite
However, the models for characters and NPCs of all types are simply horrible.  They are gangly, animate poorly, and rely on the model to handle the textures instead of the skins handling the textures.  All in all, this leads to bad perfomance and gaphically hideous game.

---

I agree...and I guess that is why they look like they were made with Poser which came out in.. 1995.

taus01

Originally posted by gonko

Originally posted by fwhite

1) I am familiar with the skinning/texturing procedure and have done it for my own animations.  I am remarking upon the similarities in animation from the 3 games I have observed using the same engines.



2) Unique Models create a performance hit.  The more unique models you have in the same rendered space, the more memory is required to store them and the more processor time is required to animate them.  Becaus each character in Vanguard is basically an individual model (so ... many ... options), areas with a lot of them are very intensive (newbie zones, cities).  By making fewer unique models and more unique textures, you free up memory and processor time because textures require less memory or time (usually) than more models. 



So I mention the models because they are what is being animated, and as they can vary in every direction, the engine directly correlates to model animation and how it works.



To summarize, has anyone else played games with the unreal engine?  What did you think of it?  Do you see any similarities to those games and Vanguard?



... and please try to address the subject.

Here is a link to all games developed by the Unreal Engine:

http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/powered/released.shtml

I have played Splinter Cell games and I thought they looked great.

You can not compare a FPS to a MMORPG with huge 'seamless' outdoor areas. FPS games can be optimized with portals to minimize rendering of polygons. Even if they have outdoor areas they are enclosed and effekts such as shadows can be baked into textures because there is no change in world illumination or weather effects. Vanguard has a real day cycle and you simply can not have full dynamic world shadows (not yet effectively, i have myself worked on a multitexture shader for baked shadow textures with mixed results).



The game does run better every day. Performance and stability are getting better with every patch (and they patch every day since 01/04/07). I have worked with a few AAA Engines and the development version is usually ~20% slower than the final build.



That does not mean that Vanguard is not demanding, it simply means we can not judge the final performance from what we see with the uncomressed and unoptimized Beta Client Code.

cerebrix

ok there are some rather large assumptions that are being thrown in this thread and as someone that has actually been developing content with this engine for a few years now i thought i should pop my head in here and clear a few things up.

 

a) there would have been no extra fee to use unreal 3 over 2.5 code from epic games.  you purchase a license for a period of time.  i believe it is in 3 year blocks.  any engine code epic releases you have rights to use during that time.  unreal is an ongoing engine development.

 

b) the tools from unreal 1 to unreal 3 are not really all that different.  the biggest change from 2.5 to 3 were as follows.  the move from karma physics to ageia, a new particle engine, zoneless bsp landscape rendering.

 

c) animations can be imported from ANY tool ANY animator would use, all industry standard stuff.  if the animations suck, its because the animators on vanguard suck, its as simple as that.

 

 

d) keep in mind unreal games made by epic run so damn well because they have tim sweeny (arguably the smartest programmer alive) spearheading all technology and development there.  you can buy a great engine from epic at a better price than anyone could offer for anything even remotely close to the code quality that tim provides.  but that doesnt mean your dev team will make a killer fast running game.  if there is lag and performance issues, it speaks WAY more about the vanguard development team competency level (or lack thereof in this case) than it does about the engine, or the team at epic games. 

random11

You hit the nail on the head here.



Unreal engines are the most efficient engines out there, and animations have nothing to do with it. I think the problem was, that VG had very creative artists, but they had no rules whatsoever that would constraint them for performance oriented thinking. Usually the code optimization is at the very end of the development cycle, and they are running late now. And don't go and blame SOE, the popular devil, for this, I am familiar with how this works, sony has deadlines, in contract I must add, and it is the VG team that failed to finish.

Carrara

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Originally posted by cerebrix
a) there would have been no extra fee to use unreal 3 over 2.5 code from epic games.  you purchase a license for a period of time.  i believe it is in 3 year blocks.  any engine code epic releases you have rights to use during that time.  unreal is an ongoing engine development.

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While on every other point you're bang on the money, you're way off on the licensing thing unless they've changed their licensing from the last time I inquired about it; which isn't that long ago.

Your license cost covers engine and tool C++ source code for the prefix version "v" of the engine, but you do however get the "x" as regular updates to the engine build. So if you license version 2.5 of the engine as a 1 retail product license, you can bet your bottom dollar that you're paying round $350,000.00 for it. If you want the unlimited retail product license, you're looking at $1,000,000.00. Every license for 3.x is minimum $1,000,000.00. All of these prices were listed to me in USD currency.

You cannot get pricing off their website. You must go through a rather lenghty process to get in touch with their inside salesman, and it all begins with an email. The reason the prices are as such is because they offer a generous amount of information, support and training as reasonable price vantages. The more options you throw into your package, the more it's gonna cost. Obviously there are alternate ways to purchase the license, and they provide indepth options that I won't cover here, but the general concept is a % of your returns on a set #s of units. Anyhow.