Pantheon Progression

Kumapon

Here is a photo progression of Pantheon, from the earliest of times to about mid 2018. 


The purpose is to show people that there's a process, and they're putting a lot of work into this project.

While some aren't in perfect order and you'll see a number of older pictures appearing in a later spot, this is really best used as a method to give a broad look at the game and how it's come along over the last few years.

Every picture is openly available and neither were obtained through a secure account or network. All are available on the internet.

Before you click the below link, a forewarning, please DO NOT open this link on a mobile network without unlimited data or if your network has data limitations. Many if not most of the pictures are a high to ultra high resolution.

Credit goes to Janus for putting this timeline together. 

https://imgur.com/a/izvISdX

bennylong

Kumapon said:

Here is a photo progression of Pantheon, from the earliest of times to about mid 2018. 

The purpose is to show people that there's a process, and they're putting a lot of work into this project.

Credit goes to Janus for putting this timeline together. 

https://imgur.com/a/izvISdX

AWESOME! SO AWESOME! Graphics remind of of EQOA on the PS2 when  I played it back in 2003

Kyleran

At the end of the day I don't care how much work they've done. 

What I want to know is how much work remains and when will it likely be finished?

A picture of a single project plan would be fine.

  

Amathe

Looks great to me.

delete5230

Nice..... A few things. 

The last few live streams are beautiful, separate from that it's an environment and a style that I want to live in.  I'm always bitching about gameplay first and graphics second, however contrary from that, I have to say details give the player a warm feeling and makes the player want to log in..... I still say game play MUST come first, I want time and energy going into deep character development and world anomalies.... But the beauty of this game is making me eat my words. 

I now want both !! 


I'm still worried about coding.  I'm no programmer, far from it.  I'm only going from what I know from being a player.  Everquest, Everquest 2 and Vanguard all had the same glitchy feeling to their games.... Along with that, they seem to have the same bugs that were passed down from their generations.  I can't help but say I'm seeing the same glitchy feeling now in 2018.  

It appears will be seeing our hardware running at max, falling through the world, freeze ups, hesitations and kicked off the server issues that all SOE developer games suffered.  How do I know this ?... I don't... I'm guessing...  

Where people are watching for beauty, I seem to key on esthetics.  

Kyleran

delete5230 said:

Nice..... A few things. 

The last few live streams are beautiful, separate from that it's an environment and a style that I want to live in.  I'm always bitching about gameplay first and graphics second, however contrary from that, I have to say details give the player a warm feeling and makes the player want to log in..... I still say game play MUST come first, I want time and energy going into deep character development and world anomalies.... But the beauty of this game is making me eat my words. 

I now want both !! 


I'm still worried about coding.  I'm no programmer, far from it.  I'm only going from what I know from being a player.  Everquest, Everquest 2 and Vanguard all had the same glitchy feeling to their games.... Along with that, they seem to have the same bugs that were passed down from their generations.  I can't help but say I'm seeing the same glitchy feeling now in 2018.  

It appears will be seeing our hardware running at max, falling through the world, freeze ups, hesitations and kicked off the server issues that all SOE developer games suffered.  How do I know this ?... I don't... I'm guessing...  

Where people are watching for beauty, I seem to key on esthetics.  

I think the reason almost all MMORPGs suffer from the issues you mention is devs almost always say (and players support) things like, "it's only alpha, we'll optimize it later before it launches" or something similar.

It's almost always harder to solve problems like this at the end of development, optimization should be coded into the earliest builds and constantly measured against the SLA all through development. 

No code check ins should ever be permitted to remain if they degrade performance below established levels.

A few years back I joined a large project in mid stream which had all sorts of stakeholder desired functionality, but early on testing showed response times were severely below the SLA, and the devs said they would optimize it all at the end.

So after four plus years of development, millions of dollars spent, and migrating several critical customers to the new platform it was discovered / confirmed the application would not ever deliver acceptable response times due to early design decisions which could not be undone.

The decision was made to halt development and come up with an alternate solution which took another 4 years to build and complete migration starting with the unlucky customers stuck on the original platform.  (Fallback wasn't an option, another terrible design / implementation error)

The new application was built as I said above, performance was paramount and to this day we regularly test all significant code check ins or new functionality to ensure they won't or don't degrade performance in any way.

If they might, the design or coding will be rejected and if something makes it to testing and found deficient even in the slightest, it is pulled until  fixed or scrapped if it proves unworkable.

The past two years since first implementation over thirty large systems have been connected, significant new functionality added, yet application performance and client response times have improved year on year, and it hasn't been hard to accomplish.

TLDR version,  optimize early in the design and check constantly to ensure performance is never permitted to go in any direction but up.

delete5230

Kyleran said:

delete5230 said:

Nice..... A few things. 

The last few live streams are beautiful, separate from that it's an environment and a style that I want to live in.  I'm always bitching about gameplay first and graphics second, however contrary from that, I have to say details give the player a warm feeling and makes the player want to log in..... I still say game play MUST come first, I want time and energy going into deep character development and world anomalies.... But the beauty of this game is making me eat my words. 

I now want both !! 


I'm still worried about coding.  I'm no programmer, far from it.  I'm only going from what I know from being a player.  Everquest, Everquest 2 and Vanguard all had the same glitchy feeling to their games.... Along with that, they seem to have the same bugs that were passed down from their generations.  I can't help but say I'm seeing the same glitchy feeling now in 2018.  

It appears will be seeing our hardware running at max, falling through the world, freeze ups, hesitations and kicked off the server issues that all SOE developer games suffered.  How do I know this ?... I don't... I'm guessing...  

Where people are watching for beauty, I seem to key on esthetics.  

I think the reason almost all MMORPGs suffer from the issues you mention is devs almost always say (and players support) things like, "it's only alpha, we'll optimize it later before it launches" or something similar.

It's almost always harder to solve problems like this at the end of development, optimization should be coded into the earliest builds and constantly measured against the SLA all through development. 

No code check ins should ever be permitted to remain if they degrade performance below established levels.

A few years back I joined a large project in mid stream which had all sorts of stakeholder desired functionality, but early on testing showed response times were severely below the SLA, and the devs said they would optimize it all at the end.

So after four plus years of development, millions of dollars spent, and migrating several critical customers to the new platform it was discovered / confirmed the application would not ever deliver acceptable response times due to early design decisions which could not be undone.

The decision was made to halt development and come up with an alternate solution which took another 4 years to build and complete migration starting with the unlucky customers stuck on the original platform.  (Fallback wasn't an option, another terrible design / implementation error)

The new application was built as I said above, performance was paramount and to this day we regularly test all significant code check ins or new functionality to ensure they won't or don't degrade performance in any way.

If they might, the design or coding will be rejected and if something makes it to testing and found deficient even in the slightest, it is pulled until  fixed or scrapped if it proves unworkable.

The past two years since first implementation over thirty large systems have been connected, significant new functionality added, yet application performance and client response times have improved year on year, and it hasn't been hard to accomplish.

TLDR version,  optimize early in the design and check constantly to ensure performance is never permitted to go in any direction but up.

Instead of just giving you an insightful icon and leave it at that, I feel I have to say I'm very impressed with your knowledge ! 

Thanks 

Gdemami

Kyleran said:  

I think the reason almost all MMORPGs suffer from the issues you mention is devs almost always say (and players support) things like, "it's only alpha, we'll optimize it later before it launches" or something similar.

It's almost always harder to solve problems like this at the end of development, optimization should be coded into the earliest builds and constantly measured against the SLA all through development. 

No code check ins should ever be permitted to remain if they degrade performance below established levels.

A few years back I joined a large project in mid stream which had all sorts of stakeholder desired functionality, but early on testing showed response times were severely below the SLA, and the devs said they would optimize it all at the end.

So after four plus years of development, millions of dollars spent, and migrating several critical customers to the new platform it was discovered / confirmed the application would not ever deliver acceptable response times due to early design decisions which could not be undone.

The decision was made to halt development and come up with an alternate solution which took another 4 years to build and complete migration starting with the unlucky customers stuck on the original platform.  (Fallback wasn't an option, another terrible design / implementation error)

The new application was built as I said above, performance was paramount and to this day we regularly test all significant code check ins or new functionality to ensure they won't or don't degrade performance in any way.

If they might, the design or coding will be rejected and if something makes it to testing and found deficient even in the slightest, it is pulled until  fixed or scrapped if it proves unworkable.

The past two years since first implementation over thirty large systems have been connected, significant new functionality added, yet application performance and client response times have improved year on year, and it hasn't been hard to accomplish.

TLDR version,  optimize early in the design and check constantly to ensure performance is never permitted to go in any direction but up.

....this is what happens when armchair developer speaks up.

Why do people feel the urge to talk about stuff they have absolutely no clue about? It's mind boggling.

Gdemami

delete5230 said:

Instead of just giving you an insightful icon and leave it at that, I feel I have to say I'm very impressed with your knowledge ! 

Thanks 

...it's easy to impress an ignorant.

jimmywolf

@Gdemami

nice counter point  you have their to counter his insight....  


he share his view which is a important  one,  as it shows a deadly outlook which can cost money an time. another game which did the same is stonhearth,  they ran out of money and said enjoy the game we give you since we cannot afford are original vision. 


his expression  is a concern that as a indie developer on a  budget they could fall into the same trap an suffer the same fate.


or we have your insight that offers?

delete5230

jimmywolf said:

@Gdemami

nice counter point  you have their to counter his insight....  


he share his view which is a important  one,  as it shows a deadly outlook which can cost money an time. another game which did the same is stonhearth,  they ran out of money and said enjoy the game we give you since we cannot afford are original vision. 


his expression  is a concern that as a indie developer on a  budget they could fall into the same trap an suffer the same fate.


or we have your insight that offers?

Gdemami said:

delete5230 said:

Instead of just giving you an insightful icon and leave it at that, I feel I have to say I'm very impressed with your knowledge ! 

Thanks 

...it's easy to impress an ignorant.

@Gdemami ;
Instead of giving you a WTF icon, I feel I have to give you a "who the hell are you ? "

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Kyleran

delete5230 said:

jimmywolf said:

@Gdemami

nice counter point  you have their to counter his insight....  


he share his view which is a important  one,  as it shows a deadly outlook which can cost money an time. another game which did the same is stonhearth,  they ran out of money and said enjoy the game we give you since we cannot afford are original vision. 


his expression  is a concern that as a indie developer on a  budget they could fall into the same trap an suffer the same fate.


or we have your insight that offers?

Gdemami said:

delete5230 said:

Instead of just giving you an insightful icon and leave it at that, I feel I have to say I'm very impressed with your knowledge ! 

Thanks 

...it's easy to impress an ignorant.

@Gdemami ;
Instead of giving you a WTF icon, I feel I have to give you a "who the hell are you ? "

He is no one .

Kyleran

blueturtle13 said:

As long as they keep using Unity for their mmorpg the game will remain a second or third class citizen. 

Terrible engine for an mmorpg. It is the engine for the underfunded. Performance will always remain an issue. Nothing can or will be done about that.
For single player games it is fine. For an mmorpg it is not a good choice. 

Prepare to zone, zone, zone. 

As it's not designed to properly support the performance requirements of a large MMO it's never going to work well, just a hard fact.

Kyleran

Gdemami said:

Kyleran said:  

I think the reason almost all MMORPGs suffer from the issues you mention is devs almost always say (and players support) things like, "it's only alpha, we'll optimize it later before it launches" or something similar.

It's almost always harder to solve problems like this at the end of development, optimization should be coded into the earliest builds and constantly measured against the SLA all through development. 

No code check ins should ever be permitted to remain if they degrade performance below established levels.

A few years back I joined a large project in mid stream which had all sorts of stakeholder desired functionality, but early on testing showed response times were severely below the SLA, and the devs said they would optimize it all at the end.

So after four plus years of development, millions of dollars spent, and migrating several critical customers to the new platform it was discovered / confirmed the application would not ever deliver acceptable response times due to early design decisions which could not be undone.

The decision was made to halt development and come up with an alternate solution which took another 4 years to build and complete migration starting with the unlucky customers stuck on the original platform.  (Fallback wasn't an option, another terrible design / implementation error)

The new application was built as I said above, performance was paramount and to this day we regularly test all significant code check ins or new functionality to ensure they won't or don't degrade performance in any way.

If they might, the design or coding will be rejected and if something makes it to testing and found deficient even in the slightest, it is pulled until  fixed or scrapped if it proves unworkable.

The past two years since first implementation over thirty large systems have been connected, significant new functionality added, yet application performance and client response times have improved year on year, and it hasn't been hard to accomplish.

TLDR version,  optimize early in the design and check constantly to ensure performance is never permitted to go in any direction but up.

....this is what happens when armchair developer speaks up.

Why do people feel the urge to talk about stuff they have absolutely no clue about? It's mind boggling.

Almost 30 years delivering software solutions, some good, some not so much.

You? Nada, which is clearly evident, but hey, never change, you bring great comedy to this forum.

So I have to ask, do you even lift bro?

  

acidblood

Kyleran said:

delete5230 said:

Nice..... A few things. 

The last few live streams are beautiful, separate from that it's an environment and a style that I want to live in.  I'm always bitching about gameplay first and graphics second, however contrary from that, I have to say details give the player a warm feeling and makes the player want to log in..... I still say game play MUST come first, I want time and energy going into deep character development and world anomalies.... But the beauty of this game is making me eat my words. 

I now want both !! 


I'm still worried about coding.  I'm no programmer, far from it.  I'm only going from what I know from being a player.  Everquest, Everquest 2 and Vanguard all had the same glitchy feeling to their games.... Along with that, they seem to have the same bugs that were passed down from their generations.  I can't help but say I'm seeing the same glitchy feeling now in 2018.  

It appears will be seeing our hardware running at max, falling through the world, freeze ups, hesitations and kicked off the server issues that all SOE developer games suffered.  How do I know this ?... I don't... I'm guessing...  

Where people are watching for beauty, I seem to key on esthetics.  

I think the reason almost all MMORPGs suffer from the issues you mention is devs almost always say (and players support) things like, "it's only alpha, we'll optimize it later before it launches" or something similar.

It's almost always harder to solve problems like this at the end of development, optimization should be coded into the earliest builds and constantly measured against the SLA all through development. 

No code check ins should ever be permitted to remain if they degrade performance below established levels.

A few years back I joined a large project in mid stream which had all sorts of stakeholder desired functionality, but early on testing showed response times were severely below the SLA, and the devs said they would optimize it all at the end.

So after four plus years of development, millions of dollars spent, and migrating several critical customers to the new platform it was discovered / confirmed the application would not ever deliver acceptable response times due to early design decisions which could not be undone.

The decision was made to halt development and come up with an alternate solution which took another 4 years to build and complete migration starting with the unlucky customers stuck on the original platform.  (Fallback wasn't an option, another terrible design / implementation error)

The new application was built as I said above, performance was paramount and to this day we regularly test all significant code check ins or new functionality to ensure they won't or don't degrade performance in any way.

If they might, the design or coding will be rejected and if something makes it to testing and found deficient even in the slightest, it is pulled until  fixed or scrapped if it proves unworkable.

The past two years since first implementation over thirty large systems have been connected, significant new functionality added, yet application performance and client response times have improved year on year, and it hasn't been hard to accomplish.

TLDR version,  optimize early in the design and check constantly to ensure performance is never permitted to go in any direction but up.

Sounds more like a general system design issue than an optimisation one... in which case I agree, if you aren't mindful of the performance requirements of a system when you are designing it then no amount of optimisation later on is likely to save you... e.g. you can't just hack multi-tasking into a system that was never designed for it and expect it to perform well, I've seen it done and it's not pretty.

What you have basically described though is 'premature optimisation', which is very often a large waste of time, as you rarely know ahead of time (unless you've written the same thing a dozen times already) exactly what the implementation of a feature is going to look like, or if / how much it will change during development, and as such, how best it can be optimised.

I would agree though that it is best not to let highly un-optimised code past more than the first layer of release control (i.e. the active dev branch), as 'fix it later' has a terrible habit of becoming 'fix it never' (unless the customer actively complains about it).

TLDR; Design your system with the required performance in mind, plan appropriately for what will be optimised later (e.g. flexible / readable network data vs. optimised binary), but don't waste time squeezing performance out of code that will rarely be hit, or any other asset that may be changed / scrapped anyway.

Gdemami

jimmywolf said:

@Gdemami

nice counter point  you have their to counter his insight....  


he share his view which is a important  one,  as it shows a deadly outlook which can cost money an time. another game which did the same is stonhearth,  they ran out of money and said enjoy the game we give you since we cannot afford are original vision. 


his expression  is a concern that as a indie developer on a  budget they could fall into the same trap an suffer the same fate.


or we have your insight that offers?

You are right, you don't have to be a developer nor to be exceptionally tech savvy to understand simple reasoning:

There is no other way to properly optimize the system when not all/most systems are in place. 

You simply cannot optimize for something that isn't there, it would be incredibly costly and futile to "optimize early in the design and check constantly" when you know that newly added piece are going to break your toy.

That is why pretty much any game you join in alpha/beta/early development performs so poorly and then majority of all optimizations happen when closing to release, and performance jumps up rapidly.

Developers aren't optmizing at the end of the development cycle because they are stupid....

Note, I am not saying no optimization could/should happen during development process but nothing in context what was written, that is sheer ignorance on topic.

delete5230

acidblood said:

Kyleran said:

delete5230 said:

Nice..... A few things. 

The last few live streams are beautiful, separate from that it's an environment and a style that I want to live in.  I'm always bitching about gameplay first and graphics second, however contrary from that, I have to say details give the player a warm feeling and makes the player want to log in..... I still say game play MUST come first, I want time and energy going into deep character development and world anomalies.... But the beauty of this game is making me eat my words. 

I now want both !! 


I'm still worried about coding.  I'm no programmer, far from it.  I'm only going from what I know from being a player.  Everquest, Everquest 2 and Vanguard all had the same glitchy feeling to their games.... Along with that, they seem to have the same bugs that were passed down from their generations.  I can't help but say I'm seeing the same glitchy feeling now in 2018.  

It appears will be seeing our hardware running at max, falling through the world, freeze ups, hesitations and kicked off the server issues that all SOE developer games suffered.  How do I know this ?... I don't... I'm guessing...  

Where people are watching for beauty, I seem to key on esthetics.  

I think the reason almost all MMORPGs suffer from the issues you mention is devs almost always say (and players support) things like, "it's only alpha, we'll optimize it later before it launches" or something similar.

It's almost always harder to solve problems like this at the end of development, optimization should be coded into the earliest builds and constantly measured against the SLA all through development. 

No code check ins should ever be permitted to remain if they degrade performance below established levels.

A few years back I joined a large project in mid stream which had all sorts of stakeholder desired functionality, but early on testing showed response times were severely below the SLA, and the devs said they would optimize it all at the end.

So after four plus years of development, millions of dollars spent, and migrating several critical customers to the new platform it was discovered / confirmed the application would not ever deliver acceptable response times due to early design decisions which could not be undone.

The decision was made to halt development and come up with an alternate solution which took another 4 years to build and complete migration starting with the unlucky customers stuck on the original platform.  (Fallback wasn't an option, another terrible design / implementation error)

The new application was built as I said above, performance was paramount and to this day we regularly test all significant code check ins or new functionality to ensure they won't or don't degrade performance in any way.

If they might, the design or coding will be rejected and if something makes it to testing and found deficient even in the slightest, it is pulled until  fixed or scrapped if it proves unworkable.

The past two years since first implementation over thirty large systems have been connected, significant new functionality added, yet application performance and client response times have improved year on year, and it hasn't been hard to accomplish.

TLDR version,  optimize early in the design and check constantly to ensure performance is never permitted to go in any direction but up.

Sounds more like a general system design issue than an optimisation one... in which case I agree, if you aren't mindful of the performance requirements of a system when you are designing it then no amount of optimisation later on is likely to save you... e.g. you can't just hack multi-tasking into a system that was never designed for it and expect it to perform well, I've seen it done and it's not pretty.

What you have basically described though is 'premature optimisation', which is very often a large waste of time, as you rarely know ahead of time (unless you've written the same thing a dozen times already) exactly what the implementation of a feature is going to look like, or if / how much it will change during development, and as such, how best it can be optimised.

I would agree though that it is best not to let highly un-optimised code past more than the first layer of release control (i.e. the active dev branch), as 'fix it later' has a terrible habit of becoming 'fix it never' (unless the customer actively complains about it).

TLDR; Design your system with the required performance in mind, plan appropriately for what will be optimised later (e.g. flexible / readable network data vs. optimised binary), but don't waste time squeezing performance out of code that will rarely be hit, or any other asset that may be changed / scrapped anyway.

Not to sound like the Redneck hillbilly that I am, 

It's kind of like using the same oil filter with a crack in the seal over and over in my pickup truck. Only to find out later "I have no oil". 

I should stop that, Visionary Realms should too 

Gdemami

acidblood said:
What you have basically described though is 'premature optimisation', which is very often a large waste of time, as you rarely know ahead of time (unless you've written the same thing a dozen times already) exactly what the implementation of a feature is going to look like, or if / how much it will change during development, and as such, how best it can be optimised.

Indeed. Comparing "regular app" vs. graphical interface heavy, extreme complexity, scope and dynamic nature of MMO is abysmall ignorance...

Gdemami

Kyleran said:

Almost 30 years delivering software solutions, some good, some not so much.

And yet, you haven't learned anything, sad.

Xiaoki

Kyleran said:

Almost 30 years delivering software solutions, some good, some not so much.

You? Nada, which is clearly evident, but hey, never change, you bring great comedy to this forum.

So I have to ask, do you even lift bro?

  

Yeah, thats great but unless those 30 years of "software solutions" was video games then your experience is mostly useless.

Video games dont optimize until the end because they dont optimize until the feature set is finalized which is always at the end.

You could spend 2 years optimizing your game for a specific lighting engine just to dump it for a newer better lighting engine. So, those 2 years of optimization was wasted.

Or you could decide to add parallax mapping to ground textures. Oh, hey, you now have to re-optimize everything. Way to go!

Things are constantly changing, being added or removed during video game development all the time. Trying to optimize at the beginning of the process is probably the worst idea ever for video games.

Gdemami

delete5230 said:

@Gdemami ;
Instead of giving you a WTF icon, I feel I have to give you a "who the hell are you ? "

No need to take it personally.

I am just pointing out that unless you are savvy yourself, you cannot(or it is very difficult) distinguish knowledge from bullshit.

Optimization/scaling is particularly difficult with MMOs and major reason why they don't look as good as single player games.

The issue is that with single player game, you have very good control over each scene unlike with MMOs where you don't know how many and where you will need to draw objects. That makes it very difficult to predict and optimize and thus most developers go for lower visual fidelity and/or compromise security.

Warlyx

bennylong said:

Kumapon said:

Here is a photo progression of Pantheon, from the earliest of times to about mid 2018. 

The purpose is to show people that there's a process, and they're putting a lot of work into this project.

Credit goes to Janus for putting this timeline together. 

https://imgur.com/a/izvISdX

AWESOME! SO AWESOME! Graphics remind of of EQOA on the PS2 when  I played it back in 2003

another "stonewatcher" here good times

Gdemami

Xiaoki said:

Yeah, thats great but unless those 30 years of "software solutions" was video games then your experience is mostly useless.

Nah, unless your "solutions" are very simple ones, you would know as it happens in any a bit more complex system :-P

You don't even need to be a developer to understand that, or you need to be a very bad one, hehe.

Lokero

blueturtle13 said:

As long as they keep using Unity for their mmorpg the game will remain a second or third class citizen. 

Terrible engine for an mmorpg. It is the engine for the underfunded. Performance will always remain an issue. Nothing can or will be done about that.
For single player games it is fine. For an mmorpg it is not a good choice. 

Prepare to zone, zone, zone. 

@blueturtle13 - I wonder how much the new, upcoming Unity engine will improve the possibility of developing large-scale games, though.

I haven't messed with it, myself, but if they ever get the ECS system fully implemented and their new networking solutions in, it could potentially offer more flexibility for larger-scaled projects.

I'm sure you'd need to build a networking solution from scratch for an MMO, regardless, but the general performance improvements associated with the new system they are implementing are nothing short of spectacular for the engine.

Moot point for Pantheon/Crowfall, since it'll be too late for them, anyhow.