If they wanted to do Atmospheric Flight again the game would need a whole need Engine to do it... Little rumor I heard back in the day before we go on.... The rumor was that when Koster and the other's left/got fired from EA at the time they had been working on a whole new game engine for Ultima Online 2, or whatever they where calling the game that month... I think at that point it was Worlds of Ultima Online or something... Anyway! As the rumor I heard go's, when Koster and the other's left they where allowed to take the UO2 game engine with them, and that the SWG Game Engine is really the UO2 Game Engine... I do believe that story to be true, the UO2 engine had things in it like a whole dancer/entertainer system. And also a little fun fact as well, the guys who worked on Jump to Lightspeed where the guys working on Wing Commander Online over at EA. That's why JTL plays more like a Wing Commander game, rather then the old X-Wing/TIE Fighter games... That rumor is so insane and out there that I can only believe it to be true... Still.... The game would need a new Engine, the big fault right now is SWG is for the most part a 'flat earth' game. All the Planets in the game are just flat, something we all most likely know. Also the other thing (and this is ahead of it's time imho) is to really make it work, we'd have to have a ship in Space go from flying in space, to going into an 'Atmospheric Flight' now that may sound easy on paper... But think about the amount of code that would have to be done just to do that.... I don't know tho, I'm not a programmer... But that doesn't sound like any easy task to really do.
That is really interesting. Where did you hear this?
EQ is the same engine as SWG. They have flight. Same memory issues as well and some of the same bugs! But they (EQ II) have progressed with this engine because they have more staff. Simple solution.If SOE put the money into SWG the engine can be made to handle it. Just look at Eve Online as an example of an engine upgrade. It is not hard when you have a team to focus on it. But incorporating flight on planets into the game play is needed. Did you know that SWG has the largest "items" database for any MMO? I think SWG needs a graphic engine update first. But what about those KOTOR rumors?
Just because the two games are based on the same Engine doesn't mean they can do the same things with out significant upgrades. It's probably a bit like Windows - Windows 2k, XP and Vista are all based on the same Engine but each sucessor offers support for stuff the older one can't.
SWG could do with a graphics update, although it still has better graphics then many of the MMO's coming out today. I don't know what all is involved with a graphics update though, but I'd imagine it would mean going through every texture file and refreshing it - something that I think would be a bigger task in SWG then EvE.
The engine in SWG is supposebly having a minor upgrade this year when they re-make the animation system so it can handle the faster paced combat. Currently, it's still only designed to handle the pre-cu combat speeds.
Yep I agree 100%. I think fans o f the game like yourself and people like me who will watch the developement to see if it gets better would really like the engine upgrade for a more fluid game play that can open the door for more possibilities. Plus they have 3 more programmers that have been added to the staff.
With all the rescent updates (Beast Mastery, profession revampts, collecion system that Ive enjoyed I noticed one thing. The basic gameplay remains untouched.
All the bugs that were present when I started playing SWG (just before chapter 5) are still there (Targeting issues, misfiring specials due to lag, collision detection bugs, instance entering). If they cant solve these, dont get your hopes up for other game engine changes.
Im basically done waiting for these things to be fixed.
Comments
Just because the two games are based on the same Engine doesn't mean they can do the same things with out significant upgrades. It's probably a bit like Windows - Windows 2k, XP and Vista are all based on the same Engine but each sucessor offers support for stuff the older one can't.SWG could do with a graphics update, although it still has better graphics then many of the MMO's coming out today. I don't know what all is involved with a graphics update though, but I'd imagine it would mean going through every texture file and refreshing it - something that I think would be a bigger task in SWG then EvE.
The engine in SWG is supposebly having a minor upgrade this year when they re-make the animation system so it can handle the faster paced combat. Currently, it's still only designed to handle the pre-cu combat speeds.
With all the rescent updates (Beast Mastery, profession revampts, collecion system that Ive enjoyed I noticed one thing. The basic gameplay remains untouched.
All the bugs that were present when I started playing SWG (just before chapter 5) are still there (Targeting issues, misfiring specials due to lag, collision detection bugs, instance entering). If they cant solve these, dont get your hopes up for other game engine changes.
Im basically done waiting for these things to be fixed.