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Bigworld Technology and Dark and Light. Good Engine, bad game? Or Bad Engine, Bad game? Contrast wit
gillvane1
Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 1,503
MMORPG developers spend a ton of time making an engine from scratch, and THEN making the game that will run on that engine. Shouldnt' they spend their time and effort on the game design, and less time making the engine if there's one they can just purchase and use?
Vanguard sort of did this with the Unreal Engine, but they monkeyed around with the Engine so much they screwed it up and made it laggy and buggy.
Dark and Light was a flop. They used the BigWorld Tech engine. The engine sounds solid, so I'm not sure, but I think the devs of Dark and Light managed to take a decent engine, and use it to make a piss poor game. On the otherhand, perhaps the Bigworld Engine isn't suited for making a good MMORPG?
I think Vanguard should have used the Bigworld engine, instead of trying to jury rig the Unreal engine to make it do what they wanted. They spent a lot of time trying to make the Unreal engine jump thru hoops, but if I'm not mistaken the Bigworld engine already does most of what they would have needed. Then they could have concentrated on just making the game, and actually adding all those features they listed, instead of trying to fix bugs and worrying about "chunking" problems.
I know MMORPG engines might be a sort of esoteric subject, but I'd like to see someone else use the Bigworld engine to make a good game. It looks like it has a lot of potential in the hands fo the right developers.
Absinthe lovers
Vanguard sort of did this with the Unreal Engine, but they monkeyed around with the Engine so much they screwed it up and made it laggy and buggy.
Dark and Light was a flop. They used the BigWorld Tech engine. The engine sounds solid, so I'm not sure, but I think the devs of Dark and Light managed to take a decent engine, and use it to make a piss poor game. On the otherhand, perhaps the Bigworld Engine isn't suited for making a good MMORPG?
I think Vanguard should have used the Bigworld engine, instead of trying to jury rig the Unreal engine to make it do what they wanted. They spent a lot of time trying to make the Unreal engine jump thru hoops, but if I'm not mistaken the Bigworld engine already does most of what they would have needed. Then they could have concentrated on just making the game, and actually adding all those features they listed, instead of trying to fix bugs and worrying about "chunking" problems.
I know MMORPG engines might be a sort of esoteric subject, but I'd like to see someone else use the Bigworld engine to make a good game. It looks like it has a lot of potential in the hands fo the right developers.
Absinthe lovers
Comments
I don't think the Dark and Light fiasco had anything to do with the engine, just a group of developers that have no business writing a MMO, they just wrote a horrible game.
Vanguard was a victim of Brad. He had no focus and led his team down the wayward path.
I don't think making changes to an engine is bad, as long as you have people that understand it and have the skills to make changes to it. Vanguard's development team had no business messing with it, as they did not have the skillset to do it.
If I ever see Brad McQaid's name attached to another game, I will be leading the pack in making everyone aware of how bad a developer he is.
If they don't have the knowhow to do the heavy stuff, how can you ensure they can fix any given problem?
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
Lineage 2 and Vanguard uses the same graphics engine and yet it's the older Lineage 2 that looks better of the two.
I forgot to say that it's the Unreal 2 graphics engine.
Is that a 'game' engine or a graphics engine because they're very different things. Vanguard used the Unreal Engine which is a full engine but you still have to write all the code and rules for behaviors of different systems. Its not a simple 'install' and use on the developer's side only on the artists side.
Having real world experience in graphics engine development I can tell you its all well and good to 'buy' a pre written engine to leave more time for other things but it takes time to research and find ones that are going to do what you want it to do or be flexible for you to adjust it without alot of chaotic hassle. Then your developers also have to spend time learning how to use the engine which can lead to complications depending on how good the documentation is for said engine (and i'll be honest most aren't that well documented, even Microsoft's stuff is horribly documented on all levels).
If you dont' understand how to program graphics at all then your ability to use an engine prewritten or not is about 10 times harder. Because something that sounds simple enough to you to do is probably not that simple when it comes to keeping the rendering pipeline choke free. If you lack the knowledge of the math, the pipeline, and the concepts ... well its that much worse but Vanguard hired veterans which to me sounds like someone royally F'd up management wise.
In all honestly sometimes its just cheaper and more cost effective to build your own engine instead of having to pay and shell out thousands of dollars for liscencing to use someone elses and deal with someone else's techincal support sucks too.
Vanguard's biggest problems were mismanagement of time, what resources they did have, and failure to take their heads out of the clouds so they could create a solid plan. Planning is really key in all fields of development of any sort, you let the designers ideas flow till its time to get it on paper and actually plan how to make it happen and whats the absolute date to stop adding on new ideas. I really feel for the programmers and artists that got shafted because of the Sigil's leaders.
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
Is that a 'game' engine or a graphics engine because they're very different things. Vanguard used the Unreal Engine which is a graphics engine, they still had to develop the code for the game, they still have to put together all the systems that makes everything work. Its not a simple 'install' and use on the developer's side only on the artists side.
Having real world experience in graphics engine development I can tell you its all well and good to 'buy' a pre written engine to leave more time for other things but it takes time to research and find ones that are going to do what you want it to do or be flexible for you to adjust it without alot of chaotic hassle. Then your developers also have to spend time learning how to use the engine which can lead to complications depending on how good the documentation is for said engine (and i'll be honest most aren't that well documented, even Microsoft's stuff is horribly documented on all levels).
If you dont' understand how to program graphics at all then your ability to use an engine prewritten or not is about 10 times harder. Because something that sounds simple enough to you to do is probably not that simple when it comes to keeping the rendering pipeline choke free. If you lack the knowledge of the math, the pipeline, and the concepts ... well its that much worse but Vanguard hired veterans which to me sounds like someone royally F'd up management wise.
In all honestly sometimes its just cheaper and more cost effective to build your own engine instead of having to pay and shell out thousands of dollars for liscencing to use someone elses and deal with someone else's techincal support sucks too.
Vanguard's biggest problems were mismanagement of time, what resources they did have, and failure to take their heads out of the clouds so they could create a solid plan. Planning is really key in all fields of development of any sort, you let the designers ideas flow till its time to get it on paper and actually plan how to make it happen and whats the absolute date to stop adding on new ideas. I really feel for the programmers and artists that got shafted because of the Sigil's leaders.
My knowledge is somewhat limited. I've only tried to make a simple 2D engine using directx and that is hard enough for me. I still haven't gotten one up and running. So far I can use it to draw triangles on the screen and to place textures on top of the triangles. As you say microsoft has horrible documentation for their methods/functions and how to use them. I'd imagine if you are a game maker it would be a lot easier to buy a game engine then make one yourself even though making one yourself would allow you to make it do the things you want it to do better.
I think its largely the lack of money/funding that results in a game being launched to early.
Sure its the developers skills but people assume its all the programmers fault, artists have a lot to do with it as well, content writers etc etc
Now playing: VG (after a long break from MMORPGS)
Played for more than a month: Darkfall online, Vanguard SOH, Everquest, Horizons, WoW, SWG, Everquest II, Eve
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
My god, man. Learn how to make a subject line.
There is a lot going on behind the scenes that a lot of people don't understand. LIneage 2 has very little to no character customation that helps the engine render MUCH easier. Vanguard on the other had has tons of options for your character, the art style and direction of Lineage 2 might be better but on a pure graphics level I don't feel that it can even compete.
I believe that the Big World Engine can be used to make some amazing graphics, but its all up to the developers to take advantage of it.
Cool topic btw
------------------------------
Check out some of the mmo's I have played:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/129987/page/1
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> Vanguard sort of did this with the Unreal Engine, but they monkeyed around with the Engine so much they screwed it up and made it laggy and buggy.
I work as a game developer and i'm working on my second game using the Unreal Engine. The first was an MMO that was scrapped. They are only using pieces of the Unreal Engine. I'm not sure about the networking (client / server) component of the engine, but I imagine that if they did use that piece it was so heavily modified to work with the unique requirements of an MMO that it doesn't look anything that came out of the original package. They are using the mesh loaders, texture loaders content pipeline (as is evidenced by the usx, and utx, files on your hard drive), not sure what else.
One thing they aren't using is the core global rendering engine (or its so heavily modified again as to be unrecognizable). The way the Unreal Engine works for rendering a level or game zone in simplicity is this... take a big brick of clay, hollow out the inside and fill it full of props. This is true for all the unreal tournament games and I imagine anyone who has used unreal ed to make their own maps is familiar with this, and this is also true (by default) of someone building their own game with the unreal engine (2, 2.5. and 3 never worked with anything previous).
Most other game engines do things differently, instead of hollowing out a clay brick, you just add things floating in the air using 0,0,0 as your initial point of reference. Doing things the way the unreal engine does has numerous rendering benefits but does require more foresight in level design. One of the biggest things you will find is that it's almost impossible to build a "level" or "zone" that you can fall through (in fact the tools that we have won't even let our zones build like that). I can't count how many times i've fallen through the world playing vanguard.
However, I can't imagine a way to build a world as big as vanguard while having the view distance that it does while still using the clay brick method and still not need a computer from the year 3000 to run. Especially considering they are using complete zone overlaps to load regions instead of loader choke points like wow.
Other things that are in the engine canned like depth of field, which are handled well and look amazing in unreal engine look like trash in vanguard and don't appear to be quite the same more like they built something themselves and its buggy. Sometimes trees right next to you are blurry while trees off in the distance will be nice and sharp. I've never seen that once in anything i've built or played that uses any of the unreal engines.
In the interview with the unnamed developer that was fired he also mention no scripting support? Scripting comes in the Unreal Engine (called unreal script) ? I've got to wonder if epic only provided them with some free stuff for marketting?
<edited to fix some typos>
... transmitted on 100% recycled electrons ...
The Unreal 2 engine chosen for Vanguard was extensively modified, it is said, because it was not really suitable for a large-scale world with lots of dynamic objects. First-person shooters have different optimization profiles than MMOs. I'm not saying that whatever happened was not Sigil's fault, only that there are more technical issues than most of us are able to comment on knowledgeably. Most of those with the necessary knowledge, I believe, are more likely in roles of "justifying", "apologizing", "rationalizing", "sympathizing", or "expressing relief at not getting sucked into that mess", than in the roles of "pontificating" or "flaming".
Yes!
Use the Unreal 3 game engine, it's good enough and concentrate on making the actual game.
Vanguard should have used the Unreal 3 game engine but I guess that it didn't exist some five (?) years ago so they used the Unreal 2 game engine instead.
Which is the same game engine that the better looking Lineage 2 uses, I guess that Ncsoft has better artists than Sigil.
A common misconception with many game engines (and furthered by Graphics Engines) is that game creation can be made easy.
MMOs, in their current state, are planned to run for years. Yet we have many companies who claim to be using 1 engine or a Platform so that they can produce a title in very little time. It begs the statement:
"You get what you put into it."
Look back on your list of favorite MMOs. Everybody has that list of games that they'll remember forever. How many of them used their own engine? How many of them built their engine themselves?
Looking at the list on the left I can eyeball the games I enjoyed playing immensely over the years:
AO, CoX, EQ2, EVE, GW, Ryzom, WoW... games I truely enjoyed playing.
But looking on the left I see very few successful games that employed the use of a 3rd party engine technology:
DAoC, Lineage 2...
It brings to light the question of why I enjoyed the above mentioned names... they always got new features beyond the conventional types. The teams that created those titles had deep understanding of all levels of the technology they employed, because the individuals who built it were on hand.
I realize we live in a newer age of MMOs, where company's need to get their product out there now because... well because they need to get their product out there now. Spending years making a quality product they did themselves can be cut back by using 3rd party technology, so they can spend months making a almost quality product.
If you find a problem with Unreal, BigWorld, or Hero... what do you do? Can you fix it yourself?
Believe it or not, there are company's out there using products as such because they're very much "All in One" solutions for their gametype. They don't keep on staff individuals who are capable of manipulating the core code to some of the parts of these Engines. It's a complicated process, and those individuals are expensive in comparison to the required Scripters for making the game function. (This does not apply to all companies, but there are definately a few out there)
As a gamer, how long are you willing to hear a company preach "Well we're waiting for word back from *insert parent engine company here* for that fix." before you realize that the individuals who are breaking the game have become too rampant.
As a Developer, what would you say to your players if a bug arose in the core technology you were incapable of fixing? Would you tell them at all? "I'm sorry, we don't have anybody that good to fix that problem." Really... how would that go over?
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
BigWorld is the server technology used by DnL to render a seamless world.
The graphic engine is called Mafate and was developped internally by Pix, who left the project after a while.
The other devs couldn't understand the algorithms used by Pix and that's why the game had to be "reprogrammed" from scratch around year 2003. They never really could figure out all the aspects of the engine and are now being sued by Pix because they are using part of his algorithms without his consent (he developped the algorithms prior to joining NP3).
So to sum it up: Bigworld is not the engine, mafate is. Mafate was developped internally, and therefore cannot be compared to Vanguard's Unreal 2.5 which was bought from a third party.
The most important thing to do is figure out what your requirements are and then find the best fit. If you have the knowledge, you can adapt any engine any way you want. You will always save an incredible amount of time.
Is that a 'game' engine or a graphics engine because they're very different things. Vanguard used the Unreal Engine which is a graphics engine, they still had to develop the code for the game, they still have to put together all the systems that makes everything work. Its not a simple 'install' and use on the developer's side only on the artists side.
Having real world experience in graphics engine development I can tell you its all well and good to 'buy' a pre written engine to leave more time for other things but it takes time to research and find ones that are going to do what you want it to do or be flexible for you to adjust it without alot of chaotic hassle. Then your developers also have to spend time learning how to use the engine which can lead to complications depending on how good the documentation is for said engine (and i'll be honest most aren't that well documented, even Microsoft's stuff is horribly documented on all levels).
If you dont' understand how to program graphics at all then your ability to use an engine prewritten or not is about 10 times harder. Because something that sounds simple enough to you to do is probably not that simple when it comes to keeping the rendering pipeline choke free. If you lack the knowledge of the math, the pipeline, and the concepts ... well its that much worse but Vanguard hired veterans which to me sounds like someone royally F'd up management wise.
In all honestly sometimes its just cheaper and more cost effective to build your own engine instead of having to pay and shell out thousands of dollars for liscencing to use someone elses and deal with someone else's techincal support sucks too.
Vanguard's biggest problems were mismanagement of time, what resources they did have, and failure to take their heads out of the clouds so they could create a solid plan. Planning is really key in all fields of development of any sort, you let the designers ideas flow till its time to get it on paper and actually plan how to make it happen and whats the absolute date to stop adding on new ideas. I really feel for the programmers and artists that got shafted because of the Sigil's leaders.
My knowledge is somewhat limited. I've only tried to make a simple 2D engine using directx and that is hard enough for me. I still haven't gotten one up and running. So far I can use it to draw triangles on the screen and to place textures on top of the triangles. As you say microsoft has horrible documentation for their methods/functions and how to use them. I'd imagine if you are a game maker it would be a lot easier to buy a game engine then make one yourself even though making one yourself would allow you to make it do the things you want it to do better.
Thats why there are professionals who build engines for professional games. I'm not saying i'm like uber awsome knowledgeable but I've built engine's and worked on engines. Its not any easier if you build one on your own or buy one if your a professional company. You still have to either pay and burn time to learn how to use someone else's engine (or hire new staff that already knows how to use said engine but are going to want more pay because of their increased knowledge) or pay and burn time to build one internally that you can atleast if its a good one turn around and sell it seperately like Epic games does.
Companies dont' really save that much money or that much time buying someone elses. Alot of factors are measured when a company buys one instead of using an in house one.
BTW Flyte writing the engine is something no one wants to do? That right there is clear show of your limited knowledge. Creating and writing game & graphics engines is really HUGE business in the game and simulatios world. Thats why when you look at jobs you see 'game programmer" and 'engine programmer' listed seperately. Its two fields two different specializations in the industry both are loved by the right people.
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
Is that a 'game' engine or a graphics engine because they're very different things. Vanguard used the Unreal Engine which is a graphics engine, they still had to develop the code for the game, they still have to put together all the systems that makes everything work. Its not a simple 'install' and use on the developer's side only on the artists side.
Having real world experience in graphics engine development I can tell you its all well and good to 'buy' a pre written engine to leave more time for other things but it takes time to research and find ones that are going to do what you want it to do or be flexible for you to adjust it without alot of chaotic hassle. Then your developers also have to spend time learning how to use the engine which can lead to complications depending on how good the documentation is for said engine (and i'll be honest most aren't that well documented, even Microsoft's stuff is horribly documented on all levels).
If you dont' understand how to program graphics at all then your ability to use an engine prewritten or not is about 10 times harder. Because something that sounds simple enough to you to do is probably not that simple when it comes to keeping the rendering pipeline choke free. If you lack the knowledge of the math, the pipeline, and the concepts ... well its that much worse but Vanguard hired veterans which to me sounds like someone royally F'd up management wise.
In all honestly sometimes its just cheaper and more cost effective to build your own engine instead of having to pay and shell out thousands of dollars for liscencing to use someone elses and deal with someone else's techincal support sucks too.
Vanguard's biggest problems were mismanagement of time, what resources they did have, and failure to take their heads out of the clouds so they could create a solid plan. Planning is really key in all fields of development of any sort, you let the designers ideas flow till its time to get it on paper and actually plan how to make it happen and whats the absolute date to stop adding on new ideas. I really feel for the programmers and artists that got shafted because of the Sigil's leaders.
My knowledge is somewhat limited. I've only tried to make a simple 2D engine using directx and that is hard enough for me. I still haven't gotten one up and running. So far I can use it to draw triangles on the screen and to place textures on top of the triangles. As you say microsoft has horrible documentation for their methods/functions and how to use them. I'd imagine if you are a game maker it would be a lot easier to buy a game engine then make one yourself even though making one yourself would allow you to make it do the things you want it to do better.
Thats why there are professionals who build engines for professional games. I'm not saying i'm like uber awsome knowledgeable but I've built engine's and worked on engines. Its not any easier if you build one on your own or buy one if your a professional company. You still have to either pay and burn time to learn how to use someone else's engine (or hire new staff that already knows how to use said engine but are going to want more pay because of their increased knowledge) or pay and burn time to build one internally that you can atleast if its a good one turn around and sell it seperately like Epic games does.
Companies dont' really save that much money or that much time buying someone elses. Alot of factors are measured when a company buys one instead of using an in house one.
BTW Flyte writing the engine is something no one wants to do? That right there is clear show of your limited knowledge. Creating and writing game & graphics engines is really HUGE business in the game and simulatios world. Thats why when you look at jobs you see 'game programmer" and 'engine programmer' listed seperately. Its two fields two different specializations in the industry both are loved by the right people.
I guess I should say most people who want to make games aren't interested in the complex mathmatics of programming. They are more interested in storytelling. Thats how I am anyway. Math is somewhat interesting, but I reallly don't want to know all these complex formulas in directx and how to use them. All you have to do is learn to use what was already made by Microsoft, but doing that is still very complicated. I'm sure there are people who love mathmatics and programming, but most of them only go to the game feild for the money. I'd be willing to make a game for free, but the programming is a tuff part to tackle alone even for a simple 2D game.