What I don't get is that why they choose instancing in this way?
If you cannot be in an instance with more than 100 people(remember zones are huge), then I say it ill-coded. Reason can be:
1. Server are not able to handle more than 100 people in a zone
2. Clients are not able to handle more than 100 people in a zone
I think you missed out on the most likley one. The main attraction of this game (imo) is the high end graphic. Since the graphic is sooo "cool" I would think they put most of thier time and founds on the looks and adding content as a side thingm, that of the old engine brought them here. If this game was not instanced as much as it is now people would be piled ontop of eachother, concider collision and we got a unplayeble game. If they want to add bigger zone they need more space, simple? If you look at other games like wow/lineage ect they got multiple starting zones, one for each race to support a larger initiate population, funcome rather took the path of instancing since it req less of an investment.
Funcom has stated before that the technology used to develop Age of Conan was also used in their PC adventure game Dreamfall. They had a choice, either modify how the content was loaded with that engine, or be lazy and keep it the same using loading screens. It's seems they took the lazy route, i can relate in that it would be alot of work to modify the engine to load the content differently. However it limits the game from the get-go.
The mass of instancing in Age of Conan was bought about through bad development decisions, starting with the original game engine.
The reason is legacy code, legacy content development tools, and legacy content management systems. AoC wasn't quite built from scratch. Anarchy Online's code and tools were used as the starting point.
Most of the subsystems and tools were rewritten over the years of development of AoC. But when you rewrite things piecemeal like that, you never have a chance to break the mold and rethink the overall architecture of the engine.
And going from a zoning system like in AO to an open world like in WoW would have required some fundamental redesign of the engine, as well as the tools and content development processes.
This is a huge step backwards indeed, though.
When funcom decided the remake the AO engine for this game i am sure they had a cheak list of what this engine need to be able to acomplish to suit this game. I think this kind of think is more of strategy rather than limitaions due to bad choise. They must have known the limitations but felt this engine could offer all that was needed for thier next gen game. It could be compared to GW buissnes model.
EVERY game has zones, the trick comes with streaming the zones into memory so that things LOOK seemless, and funcom didn't do that. Still, I find some of the zones are big enough for my liking and everything loads quickly enough to not be considered a problem. I think the whole "Seamless World" requires a new type of Hard Disk to pull data from... that or enough RAM to load it all in at once and not worry about it : / At this point, for a seamless world you have to lower the amount of players that occupy it, or the level of graphics your world has. If not that, then there is some sort of trade-off taking place somewhere. It's like manufacturing a product: Cheap, Fast, Good <- Pick 2 and throw away the third. If you want it cheap and fast, it aint going to be good. If you want it cheap and good, it aint going to be fast. If you want it good and fast, it aint going to be cheap.
Ahem..... server clusters
section out a large world among multiple computers to handle the workload. one fails, lots left to run the world as a backup.
EVERY game has zones, the trick comes with streaming the zones into memory so that things LOOK seemless, and funcom didn't do that. Still, I find some of the zones are big enough for my liking and everything loads quickly enough to not be considered a problem. I think the whole "Seamless World" requires a new type of Hard Disk to pull data from... that or enough RAM to load it all in at once and not worry about it : / At this point, for a seamless world you have to lower the amount of players that occupy it, or the level of graphics your world has. If not that, then there is some sort of trade-off taking place somewhere. It's like manufacturing a product: Cheap, Fast, Good <- Pick 2 and throw away the third. If you want it cheap and fast, it aint going to be good. If you want it cheap and good, it aint going to be fast. If you want it good and fast, it aint going to be cheap.
Aion got graphic compareble to aoc and is NOT instanced, there we go. It's using a customized Cryengine (first) and this was specs for korean CB
Minimum
Pentium 4 2.8ghz, AMD Athlon 2800
512 mb RAM
GeForce 5700, Radeon 9600
Recommended
Pentium 4 3.0ghz, AMD Athlon 64 3000
1 gb RAM
GeForce 6600, Radeon x1550
When the game is optemized pre release they are probebly gonna be lower, specs i meen.
I played AOC since cb and i think the limitations is obvius, this game can never be truly what i wish to play because of the INSTANCING. I also noticed that korean game, Aion in particular got much smoother and better looking char models/animation. Funcom did this good but i think it looks even more realistic in aion, mb because of the enigne support here aswell.
I think if Funcom had picked up Cryengine 1/2 it could have been great game and it goes well with xbox aswell.
I would also like to say that not all game got zones, all comes down to how the game is designed to work from scratch. Streaming the zones into memory, is server side, it dosen't matter to your computer where you are, example.
You are in zone 1 , you move the "border" to zone 2. Do you really think that the entire zone 2 has to be loaded?
The reason the game is "zoned" is because it's instanced. Why they made it this much instanced (big sacrefise imo) only funcom can tell. Its obvius some of the instances is there to ensure better gameplay (questing) whitout adding more content. Instead of making many quests to support a larger population they make less quests and instance them. Maby it was shorcut, it's costy having a game in development and limited founds might have been the reason.
The question I have for you since you seem to know a little about Aion. Is the fighting in Aion more like WOW and other MMO's or is it more controlled by the gamer like Conan? In other words do you just hit a button and your character keeps attacking and if you run away and dodge arrows and spell will they follow you like heat seeking missles or can you run and dodge attacks? If its more like a regular MMO then most people will probably find it boring, if its more like Conan where you have some control over your fighting then it may have promise.
Conan is a gateway game, the fighting style is unique to most MMO's. Now a game I think will be really good, if you look on youtube for mobinogi heroes (not it doesn't look like mobinogi, it looks more like Conan), this could beat Conan in every way if done right.
EVERY game has zones, the trick comes with streaming the zones into memory so that things LOOK seemless, and funcom didn't do that. Still, I find some of the zones are big enough for my liking and everything loads quickly enough to not be considered a problem. I think the whole "Seamless World" requires a new type of Hard Disk to pull data from... that or enough RAM to load it all in at once and not worry about it : / At this point, for a seamless world you have to lower the amount of players that occupy it, or the level of graphics your world has. If not that, then there is some sort of trade-off taking place somewhere. It's like manufacturing a product: Cheap, Fast, Good <- Pick 2 and throw away the third. If you want it cheap and fast, it aint going to be good. If you want it cheap and good, it aint going to be fast. If you want it good and fast, it aint going to be cheap.
Ahem..... server clusters
section out a large world among multiple computers to handle the workload. one fails, lots left to run the world as a backup.
yupp, battleground europe - ww2online is doing that ...no zones no instances, but well no high end graphics instead great pvp content hehe
The mass of instancing in Age of Conan was bought about through bad development decisions, starting with the original game engine.
The reason is legacy code, legacy content development tools, and legacy content management systems. AoC wasn't quite built from scratch. Anarchy Online's code and tools were used as the starting point.
Most of the subsystems and tools were rewritten over the years of development of AoC. But when you rewrite things piecemeal like that, you never have a chance to break the mold and rethink the overall architecture of the engine.
And going from a zoning system like in AO to an open world like in WoW would have required some fundamental redesign of the engine, as well as the tools and content development processes.
This is a huge step backwards indeed, though.
When funcom decided the remake the AO engine for this game i am sure they had a cheak list of what this engine need to be able to acomplish to suit this game. I think this kind of think is more of strategy rather than limitaions due to bad choise. They must have known the limitations but felt this engine could offer all that was needed for thier next gen game. It could be compared to GW buissnes model.
FACT 1: DreamWorld Engine is not the most powerful engine currently avaible. period! There is a very valid reason why there is any other companies there are using it.
FACT 2: There was orignal five people there founded Funcom, four of these key-person have already left the company, Only Gaute remain.
FACT 3: The average age is 24 of the developers/programmers
Seriously, Quake 3 ran at about 200fps on my old computer, Age of Conan ran at about ... 15fps? Why cant I render the textures. We are in year 2008.
The mass of instancing in Age of Conan was bought about through bad development decisions, starting with the original game engine.
The reason is legacy code, legacy content development tools, and legacy content management systems. AoC wasn't quite built from scratch. Anarchy Online's code and tools were used as the starting point.
Most of the subsystems and tools were rewritten over the years of development of AoC. But when you rewrite things piecemeal like that, you never have a chance to break the mold and rethink the overall architecture of the engine.
And going from a zoning system like in AO to an open world like in WoW would have required some fundamental redesign of the engine, as well as the tools and content development processes.
This is a huge step backwards indeed, though.
When funcom decided the remake the AO engine for this game i am sure they had a cheak list of what this engine need to be able to acomplish to suit this game. I think this kind of think is more of strategy rather than limitaions due to bad choise. They must have known the limitations but felt this engine could offer all that was needed for thier next gen game. It could be compared to GW buissnes model.
FACT 1: DreamWorld Engine is not the most powerful engine currently avaible. period! There is a very valid reason why there is any other companies there are using it.
FACT 2: There was orignal five people there founded Funcom, four of these key-person have already left the company, Only Gaute remain.
FACT 3: The average age is 24 of the developers/programmers
Seriously, Quake 3 ran at about 200fps on my old computer, Age of Conan ran at about ... 15fps? Why cant I render the textures. We are in year 2008.
Come on , I could run q3 on a P2. They knew what they were getting when they picked this engine but probebly thought it would work fine with thier concept.
The mass of instancing in Age of Conan was bought about through bad development decisions, starting with the original game engine.
The reason is legacy code, legacy content development tools, and legacy content management systems. AoC wasn't quite built from scratch. Anarchy Online's code and tools were used as the starting point.
Most of the subsystems and tools were rewritten over the years of development of AoC. But when you rewrite things piecemeal like that, you never have a chance to break the mold and rethink the overall architecture of the engine.
And going from a zoning system like in AO to an open world like in WoW would have required some fundamental redesign of the engine, as well as the tools and content development processes.
This is a huge step backwards indeed, though.
When funcom decided the remake the AO engine for this game i am sure they had a cheak list of what this engine need to be able to acomplish to suit this game. I think this kind of think is more of strategy rather than limitaions due to bad choise. They must have known the limitations but felt this engine could offer all that was needed for thier next gen game. It could be compared to GW buissnes model.
FACT 1: DreamWorld Engine is not the most powerful engine currently avaible. period! There is a very valid reason why there is any other companies there are using it.
FACT 2: There was orignal five people there founded Funcom, four of these key-person have already left the company, Only Gaute remain.
FACT 3: The average age is 24 of the developers/programmers
Seriously, Quake 3 ran at about 200fps on my old computer, Age of Conan ran at about ... 15fps? Why cant I render the textures. We are in year 2008.
Come on , I could run q3 on a P2. They knew what they were getting when they picked this engine but probebly thought it would work fine with thier concept.
They should have licensing a third-party engine like so many other online RPG companies do
The mass of instancing in Age of Conan was bought about through bad development decisions, starting with the original game engine.
The reason is legacy code, legacy content development tools, and legacy content management systems. AoC wasn't quite built from scratch. Anarchy Online's code and tools were used as the starting point.
Most of the subsystems and tools were rewritten over the years of development of AoC. But when you rewrite things piecemeal like that, you never have a chance to break the mold and rethink the overall architecture of the engine.
And going from a zoning system like in AO to an open world like in WoW would have required some fundamental redesign of the engine, as well as the tools and content development processes.
This is a huge step backwards indeed, though.
When funcom decided the remake the AO engine for this game i am sure they had a cheak list of what this engine need to be able to acomplish to suit this game. I think this kind of think is more of strategy rather than limitaions due to bad choise. They must have known the limitations but felt this engine could offer all that was needed for thier next gen game. It could be compared to GW buissnes model.
FACT 1: DreamWorld Engine is not the most powerful engine currently avaible. period! There is a very valid reason why there is any other companies there are using it.
FACT 2: There was orignal five people there founded Funcom, four of these key-person have already left the company, Only Gaute remain.
FACT 3: The average age is 24 of the developers/programmers
Seriously, Quake 3 ran at about 200fps on my old computer, Age of Conan ran at about ... 15fps? Why cant I render the textures. We are in year 2008.
Come on , I could run q3 on a P2. They knew what they were getting when they picked this engine but probebly thought it would work fine with thier concept.
They should have licensing a third-party engine like so many other online RPG companies do
Here are the choices they had.
1. License an engine for a few hundred thousand or over a million dollars (not sure how much it costs to license an engine).
2. Use an older engine and try and beef it up which would cost very little.
3. Build a new engine which takes time and money.
They did what they thought was right with what money they have. If they licensed a new engine then they would have to skimp no something else.
The question I have for you since you seem to know a little about Aion. Is the fighting in Aion more like WOW and other MMO's or is it more controlled by the gamer like Conan? In other words do you just hit a button and your character keeps attacking and if you run away and dodge arrows and spell will they follow you like heat seeking missles or can you run and dodge attacks? If its more like a regular MMO then most people will probably find it boring, if its more like Conan where you have some control over your fighting then it may have promise. Conan is a gateway game, the fighting style is unique to most MMO's. Now a game I think will be really good, if you look on youtube for mobinogi heroes (not it doesn't look like mobinogi, it looks more like Conan), this could beat Conan in every way if done right.
A bit offtopic but Aion uses Combos and Statistic element system, its still in Cb so hard to tell where it will end up, just look at aoc :S
Comments
I think you missed out on the most likley one. The main attraction of this game (imo) is the high end graphic. Since the graphic is sooo "cool" I would think they put most of thier time and founds on the looks and adding content as a side thingm, that of the old engine brought them here. If this game was not instanced as much as it is now people would be piled ontop of eachother, concider collision and we got a unplayeble game. If they want to add bigger zone they need more space, simple? If you look at other games like wow/lineage ect they got multiple starting zones, one for each race to support a larger initiate population, funcome rather took the path of instancing since it req less of an investment.
It's zoned for one reason, and one reason only.
Funcom has stated before that the technology used to develop Age of Conan was also used in their PC adventure game Dreamfall. They had a choice, either modify how the content was loaded with that engine, or be lazy and keep it the same using loading screens. It's seems they took the lazy route, i can relate in that it would be alot of work to modify the engine to load the content differently. However it limits the game from the get-go.
When funcom decided the remake the AO engine for this game i am sure they had a cheak list of what this engine need to be able to acomplish to suit this game. I think this kind of think is more of strategy rather than limitaions due to bad choise. They must have known the limitations but felt this engine could offer all that was needed for thier next gen game. It could be compared to GW buissnes model.
This is actually completely correct. The problem is code and code only.
It's hard to explain to people.
What's funny, is Funcom invented instancing. Maybe for the same reason?
section out a large world among multiple computers to handle the workload. one fails, lots left to run the world as a backup.
Game gets pretty dull after 30..... fast.
Aion got graphic compareble to aoc and is NOT instanced, there we go. It's using a customized Cryengine (first) and this was specs for korean CB
Minimum
Pentium 4 2.8ghz, AMD Athlon 2800
512 mb RAM
GeForce 5700, Radeon 9600
Recommended
Pentium 4 3.0ghz, AMD Athlon 64 3000
1 gb RAM
GeForce 6600, Radeon x1550
When the game is optemized pre release they are probebly gonna be lower, specs i meen.
I played AOC since cb and i think the limitations is obvius, this game can never be truly what i wish to play because of the INSTANCING. I also noticed that korean game, Aion in particular got much smoother and better looking char models/animation. Funcom did this good but i think it looks even more realistic in aion, mb because of the enigne support here aswell.
I think if Funcom had picked up Cryengine 1/2 it could have been great game and it goes well with xbox aswell.
I would also like to say that not all game got zones, all comes down to how the game is designed to work from scratch. Streaming the zones into memory, is server side, it dosen't matter to your computer where you are, example.
You are in zone 1 , you move the "border" to zone 2. Do you really think that the entire zone 2 has to be loaded?
The reason the game is "zoned" is because it's instanced. Why they made it this much instanced (big sacrefise imo) only funcom can tell. Its obvius some of the instances is there to ensure better gameplay (questing) whitout adding more content. Instead of making many quests to support a larger population they make less quests and instance them. Maby it was shorcut, it's costy having a game in development and limited founds might have been the reason.
The question I have for you since you seem to know a little about Aion. Is the fighting in Aion more like WOW and other MMO's or is it more controlled by the gamer like Conan? In other words do you just hit a button and your character keeps attacking and if you run away and dodge arrows and spell will they follow you like heat seeking missles or can you run and dodge attacks? If its more like a regular MMO then most people will probably find it boring, if its more like Conan where you have some control over your fighting then it may have promise.
Conan is a gateway game, the fighting style is unique to most MMO's. Now a game I think will be really good, if you look on youtube for mobinogi heroes (not it doesn't look like mobinogi, it looks more like Conan), this could beat Conan in every way if done right.
Ahem..... server clusterssection out a large world among multiple computers to handle the workload. one fails, lots left to run the world as a backup.
yupp, battleground europe - ww2online is doing that ...no zones no instances, but well no high end graphics instead great pvp content hehe
When funcom decided the remake the AO engine for this game i am sure they had a cheak list of what this engine need to be able to acomplish to suit this game. I think this kind of think is more of strategy rather than limitaions due to bad choise. They must have known the limitations but felt this engine could offer all that was needed for thier next gen game. It could be compared to GW buissnes model.
FACT 1: DreamWorld Engine is not the most powerful engine currently avaible. period! There is a very valid reason why there is any other companies there are using it.
FACT 2: There was orignal five people there founded Funcom, four of these key-person have already left the company, Only Gaute remain.
FACT 3: The average age is 24 of the developers/programmers
Seriously, Quake 3 ran at about 200fps on my old computer, Age of Conan ran at about ... 15fps? Why cant I render the textures. We are in year 2008.
When funcom decided the remake the AO engine for this game i am sure they had a cheak list of what this engine need to be able to acomplish to suit this game. I think this kind of think is more of strategy rather than limitaions due to bad choise. They must have known the limitations but felt this engine could offer all that was needed for thier next gen game. It could be compared to GW buissnes model.
FACT 1: DreamWorld Engine is not the most powerful engine currently avaible. period! There is a very valid reason why there is any other companies there are using it.
FACT 2: There was orignal five people there founded Funcom, four of these key-person have already left the company, Only Gaute remain.
FACT 3: The average age is 24 of the developers/programmers
Seriously, Quake 3 ran at about 200fps on my old computer, Age of Conan ran at about ... 15fps? Why cant I render the textures. We are in year 2008.
Come on , I could run q3 on a P2. They knew what they were getting when they picked this engine but probebly thought it would work fine with thier concept.
When funcom decided the remake the AO engine for this game i am sure they had a cheak list of what this engine need to be able to acomplish to suit this game. I think this kind of think is more of strategy rather than limitaions due to bad choise. They must have known the limitations but felt this engine could offer all that was needed for thier next gen game. It could be compared to GW buissnes model.
FACT 1: DreamWorld Engine is not the most powerful engine currently avaible. period! There is a very valid reason why there is any other companies there are using it.
FACT 2: There was orignal five people there founded Funcom, four of these key-person have already left the company, Only Gaute remain.
FACT 3: The average age is 24 of the developers/programmers
Seriously, Quake 3 ran at about 200fps on my old computer, Age of Conan ran at about ... 15fps? Why cant I render the textures. We are in year 2008.
Come on , I could run q3 on a P2. They knew what they were getting when they picked this engine but probebly thought it would work fine with thier concept.
They should have licensing a third-party engine like so many other online RPG companies do
The average age is 24 of the developers/programmers
Ouch, that sounds very young...but i guess theyr lead instructors will have more work exprience i guess
When funcom decided the remake the AO engine for this game i am sure they had a cheak list of what this engine need to be able to acomplish to suit this game. I think this kind of think is more of strategy rather than limitaions due to bad choise. They must have known the limitations but felt this engine could offer all that was needed for thier next gen game. It could be compared to GW buissnes model.
FACT 1: DreamWorld Engine is not the most powerful engine currently avaible. period! There is a very valid reason why there is any other companies there are using it.
FACT 2: There was orignal five people there founded Funcom, four of these key-person have already left the company, Only Gaute remain.
FACT 3: The average age is 24 of the developers/programmers
Seriously, Quake 3 ran at about 200fps on my old computer, Age of Conan ran at about ... 15fps? Why cant I render the textures. We are in year 2008.
Come on , I could run q3 on a P2. They knew what they were getting when they picked this engine but probebly thought it would work fine with thier concept.
They should have licensing a third-party engine like so many other online RPG companies do
Here are the choices they had.
1. License an engine for a few hundred thousand or over a million dollars (not sure how much it costs to license an engine).
2. Use an older engine and try and beef it up which would cost very little.
3. Build a new engine which takes time and money.
They did what they thought was right with what money they have. If they licensed a new engine then they would have to skimp no something else.
so every other game with instancing similar to AoC did it because of a console? i think you are hugely mistaken.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
A bit offtopic but Aion uses Combos and Statistic element system, its still in Cb so hard to tell where it will end up, just look at aoc :S