The major reason for the upgrade is to make the game DX9 compatible. Currently it is DX7 compatible and relys heavily on CPU processing for graphics. DX9 compatibility shifts it over to the GPU. There will be some new textures and effects too.
"I used to think the worst thing in life was to be all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone." Robin Williams
So am I understanding this correctly? They are upgrading the graphics engine to their engine in AoC, but they're not going to change any textures??
So how will this impact the game visually? If at all? What's the point....
If you look at the graphics shown in the movie and screenshots of the new engine when they were using Ogre http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRmk0hZam7A , before they scrapped it to start over with the AoC engine, there were no newer textures used. The entire difference shown ( yes, including the water ) was due to being in dx9 which enabled using full specular lighting and shading, bump mapping, and post processing. The textures already in AO are very highly detailed ( really zoom in and look at armor and weapons you're wearing in the game ), but without all the benefits of dx9 I mentioned, it doesn't show.
I've been reading some of Means posts and he certainly seems less of a company PR man and more "down to earth" than Sil.
If HE has managed to get rid of the long standing stuttering in Bor, then already I'm impressed.
Now, coming back to the graphics update, remember that there are some textures in AOC that could be used in substitution for the AO textures. I'm talking about the grass on the ground and water effects and not to forget the sun and sky effects that are quite stunning in the Directx9 client of AOC. In my opinion, these alone could help to radically change the "outdated" appearance of AO.
Then of course, let's not forget the stone, wood and fire effects too. And of course, the trees on Rubi-Ka could be substituted for the AOC ones where appropriate.
My point is, using the Dreamworld engine, FC wouldn't need to have to design new textures for AO, they just re-use the AOC textures and some models for maximum effect. With appropriate subtle changes if they desire. Thus in a very short space of time AO can be radically transformed with the minimum amount of effort.
With regards to the textures on the players themselves, well, we'll have to wait and see whether the upgrade will automatically improve the appearance of them or whether they are going to need some tweaking over time (if Means decides that they will do it at all).
A slightly offoptic question: When I played AO 5 years ago, there wasn't much in the way of quests (aside from the armour quests and the mission generators). Is AO still centred around grinding the levels in order to progress to the next area? Or did that change and they perhaps put more quests in to take the "edge" off grinding?
A slightly offoptic question: When I played AO 5 years ago, there wasn't much in the way of quests (aside from the armour quests and the mission generators). Is AO still centred around grinding the levels in order to progress to the next area? Or did that change and they perhaps put more quests in to take the "edge" off grinding?
There have beem many quests added, both on RK an in SL. The ones on RK mostly center around the Dust Brigade and start around level 150ish, I believe. But as far as quests from say 1- 220, no. There's still mainly a grind. But figure the original grind through sub, then totw, then foreman's, head to the borgs camps, then start looking for DB quest teams, plus doing AI mishes and such. With a smattering of SL play along the way to add variety, it's not nearly as bad as it was 5 yrears ago. You'll need someone else to really tell you about stuff past 125-130ish, as that's about the highest I've ever gotten toon in all the years I've played. I suffer from extreme alt-itis.lol
Now, coming back to the graphics update, remember that there are some textures in AOC that could be used in substitution for the AO textures.
Well, what you got to think about is there's no guarantee the new graphics will pull in a great amount of people. Many leave because they just can't handle the amount of thought and planning that has to go into some of the mechanics of the game, such as skill, imps, etc. That's not to say these people are "too dumb" but more along the line of people are just used to more modern "simplified" gameplay, especially the casual market.
So with the upgrade also comes the task of making sure the core fanbase doesn't get shoved out in the cold ( many of whom are on lesser hardwareand have stayed with AO not only because they love it, but because they can run it ).
I think the main thing is to get the dx9 in and the fun stuff that comes with it and see where it goes from there. Once they see that there is a large enough interest, then they can start adding in the higher textures and such from AoC or make new ones. At that point, some of he old players may have to upgrade or simply leave. But running them off before having a significant replacement pool to pull from would make this graphic engine upgrade into an NGE-type fiasco.
The major reason for the upgrade is to make the game DX9 compatible. Currently it is DX7 compatible and relys heavily on CPU processing for graphics. DX9 compatibility shifts it over to the GPU. There will be some new textures and effects too.
A slightly offoptic question: When I played AO 5 years ago, there wasn't much in the way of quests (aside from the armour quests and the mission generators). Is AO still centred around grinding the levels in order to progress to the next area? Or did that change and they perhaps put more quests in to take the "edge" off grinding?
There have beem many quests added, both on RK an in SL. The ones on RK mostly center around the Dust Brigade and start around level 150ish, I believe. But as far as quests from say 1- 220, no. There's still mainly a grind. But figure the original grind through sub, then totw, then foreman's, head to the borgs camps, then start looking for DB quest teams, plus doing AI mishes and such. With a smattering of SL play along the way to add variety, it's not nearly as bad as it was 5 yrears ago. You'll need someone else to really tell you about stuff past 125-130ish, as that's about the highest I've ever gotten toon in all the years I've played. I suffer from extreme alt-itis.lol
While the SL quests do give decent XP and reward items, they're more about exposing the Shadowlands storyline.
That's actually much-needed. If you remember before the quests were added in SL, the story was mostly hidden in item descriptions. And with so many rare (and often also useless) items in SL, that meant browsing the item database instead of actually playing the game.
A slightly offoptic question: When I played AO 5 years ago, there wasn't much in the way of quests (aside from the armour quests and the mission generators). Is AO still centred around grinding the levels in order to progress to the next area? Or did that change and they perhaps put more quests in to take the "edge" off grinding?
There have beem many quests added, both on RK an in SL. The ones on RK mostly center around the Dust Brigade and start around level 150ish, I believe. But as far as quests from say 1- 220, no. There's still mainly a grind. But figure the original grind through sub, then totw, then foreman's, head to the borgs camps, then start looking for DB quest teams, plus doing AI mishes and such. With a smattering of SL play along the way to add variety, it's not nearly as bad as it was 5 yrears ago. You'll need someone else to really tell you about stuff past 125-130ish, as that's about the highest I've ever gotten toon in all the years I've played. I suffer from extreme alt-itis.lol
While the SL quests do give decent XP and reward items, they're more about exposing the Shadowlands storyline.
That's actually much-needed. If you remember before the quests were added in SL, the story was mostly hidden in item descriptions. And with so many rare (and often also useless) items in SL, that meant browsing the item database instead of actually playing the game.
SL started the AO downfall. That whole fantasy, wanna-be World of Warcraft disrupted what AO was all about.
Mission running got tedious, but the grind is part of the game. Plus, the AO world is open, full of bosses you can try to tackle with teams. Players came up with their own ways to grind, instead getting pre-written quest lines.
I think another downfall was lack of upgrading former boss's to make them worthwhile. I would love to kill mercs again with 30-40 peeps and gain upgraded azure armor or something. Or tackle random low lives like Babyface or actually do the real old school Mantis Hive again and get upgraded corona MKI + MKII armor... God this brings back memories.. I remember when MKII Armor was the top of the line stuff and my enf had it equiped about 7 years ago and I was flaunting it in Tir Grid as well as the giant support beams. lol
I think another downfall was lack of upgrading former boss's to make them worthwhile. I would love to kill mercs again with 30-40 peeps and gain upgraded azure armor or something. Or tackle random low lives like Babyface or actually do the real old school Mantis Hive again and get upgraded corona MKI + MKII armor... God this brings back memories.. I remember when MKII Armor was the top of the line stuff and my enf had it equiped about 7 years ago and I was flaunting it in Tir Grid as well as the giant support beams. lol
Well i think that is a given. Players flocked to Shadowlands for hecklers, which were basically OP xp & money. I personally hated Shadowlands, my biggest memory of it was that it was a lot of running around, occasional falling, no grid just some idiotic portals for which you needed mob dropped items. And the whole goal was just grinding hecklers and upgraded gear/imps.
Anyway, regarding this new graphics engine, I have been hearing about this since like 2006 when I resubbed to the game. Is there any real progress or release date?
i did read they are shooting for a november launch though. we'll have to see if they hit that or not though.
Where did you read that?
When Means, the Game Director, announced a few months ago that they scrapped all the work on the first new engine they were making ( which was using OGRE ) and were starting over using the AoC engine ( which is a reworked version of the Dreamworld engine which AO currently uses ). As of right now however, they're barely getting stuff into the engine as talked about here: http://forums.anarchy-online.com/showthread.php?t=558658
So although they are intending a November launch, I'd say it's a safe bet it's going to be much later than that. However, there is now confirmation that avatars are getting redone, both heads and bodies. There are screens of one redone Nanomage female head ( complete with glowing eyes which pulsate ) linked at the bottome of Means post. Body pics will be in a few weeks.
With this graphics engine update, are they going to update the animations as well? Normal movement and combat animations, always sorta looked robotronic and stiff to me. I know 8 years ago in 2001 that was OK, but now it just looks really stupid.
When we get back from where we are going, we will return to where we were. I know people there!
As posted here and elsewhere before, they won't be touching animations. It is far more expensive to do that then to put in a whole new graphics engine. They will rework the models some to look nicer but animations work is labor intensive. As is, I think most of the animations look better than those in a lot of more recent games, like WoW. Even AoC animations, while smoother, sometimes are a bit lame in comparison.
I'm just waiting for them to do this upgrade to come back.
I loved the game back in the day, but my guild fell apart due to all the bugs at launch
Heck, I'd almost rather see them to an AO 2 without all this crap they added and go back to the original story arc. Improve the skill system a bit and let it fly!
There has been news about it every few weeks. Current target is November but most suspect it will be right at the end of the year. They've budgetted in a big advertising campaign for the start of the new year.
I was sad when the guys shelved Ogre but I can see how this AoC engine could really improve AO. My problem is wouldnt such a radical jump in graphics kill off alot of players that use older systems? I don;t mind a bump in the requirments but to need an entirely new system is a bit much. I know I would need a new system since AoC runs like half baked dog shit on my Old PC. I hope its optimized and doesn;t require a freaking brand new machine to run. Ogre looked nice but it also looked like it could run on a single core 5+ year old PC.
if you put regular graphic you can get insane looking stuff but when you add those new bloom effect and those new shaders even the best computer are on their hand and knees often they disable those feature because it doesntnt improve visaual because its either wrongly set up for each vcomputer (probably)
There has been news about it every few weeks. Current target is November but most suspect it will be right at the end of the year. They've budgetted in a big advertising campaign for the start of the new year.
All sounds great, just wish Funcom had any real credibility with their word.
Do they plan to use real servers, instead of the cheap knockoffs they use now?
There has been news about it every few weeks. Current target is November but most suspect it will be right at the end of the year. They've budgetted in a big advertising campaign for the start of the new year.
All sounds great, just wish Funcom had any real credibility with their word.
Do they plan to use real servers, instead of the cheap knockoffs they use now?
AO runs now on the same server farm that AoC runs on, and that hardware farm has proven to be fast and stable. If you want to call that cheap knock-off hardware, provide links showing the hardware compared side-by-side with the server farms from some MMO's you consider to be better.
In my opinion, the updates are obviously needed. But they won't bring much to the table to entice people to play. Like the situation or not, the mainstream MMO market in general has certain expectations. And acceptable graphics is only one of them.
Although the current players of AO will enjoy and appreciate the graphics update (and I hope for the sake of the game that everything goes well on the day of the patch), I personally don't think it will be enough to entice a sizeable quantity of customers to play the game for longer than a short term. More will be needed in order to pull that off. Considering that FC prefer to do things THEIR way rather than listen to constructive advice from its playerbase then server populations will most likely, on the whole, stay as they are now. Which in my opinion, is a shame. Because AO deserves so much more than what FC are prepared to give to it right now.
Comments
The major reason for the upgrade is to make the game DX9 compatible. Currently it is DX7 compatible and relys heavily on CPU processing for graphics. DX9 compatibility shifts it over to the GPU. There will be some new textures and effects too.
If you look at the graphics shown in the movie and screenshots of the new engine when they were using Ogre http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRmk0hZam7A , before they scrapped it to start over with the AoC engine, there were no newer textures used. The entire difference shown ( yes, including the water ) was due to being in dx9 which enabled using full specular lighting and shading, bump mapping, and post processing. The textures already in AO are very highly detailed ( really zoom in and look at armor and weapons you're wearing in the game ), but without all the benefits of dx9 I mentioned, it doesn't show.
I've been reading some of Means posts and he certainly seems less of a company PR man and more "down to earth" than Sil.
If HE has managed to get rid of the long standing stuttering in Bor, then already I'm impressed.
Now, coming back to the graphics update, remember that there are some textures in AOC that could be used in substitution for the AO textures. I'm talking about the grass on the ground and water effects and not to forget the sun and sky effects that are quite stunning in the Directx9 client of AOC. In my opinion, these alone could help to radically change the "outdated" appearance of AO.
Then of course, let's not forget the stone, wood and fire effects too. And of course, the trees on Rubi-Ka could be substituted for the AOC ones where appropriate.
My point is, using the Dreamworld engine, FC wouldn't need to have to design new textures for AO, they just re-use the AOC textures and some models for maximum effect. With appropriate subtle changes if they desire. Thus in a very short space of time AO can be radically transformed with the minimum amount of effort.
With regards to the textures on the players themselves, well, we'll have to wait and see whether the upgrade will automatically improve the appearance of them or whether they are going to need some tweaking over time (if Means decides that they will do it at all).
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A slightly offoptic question: When I played AO 5 years ago, there wasn't much in the way of quests (aside from the armour quests and the mission generators). Is AO still centred around grinding the levels in order to progress to the next area? Or did that change and they perhaps put more quests in to take the "edge" off grinding?
Top 10 Most Misused Words in MMO's
There have beem many quests added, both on RK an in SL. The ones on RK mostly center around the Dust Brigade and start around level 150ish, I believe. But as far as quests from say 1- 220, no. There's still mainly a grind. But figure the original grind through sub, then totw, then foreman's, head to the borgs camps, then start looking for DB quest teams, plus doing AI mishes and such. With a smattering of SL play along the way to add variety, it's not nearly as bad as it was 5 yrears ago. You'll need someone else to really tell you about stuff past 125-130ish, as that's about the highest I've ever gotten toon in all the years I've played. I suffer from extreme alt-itis.lol
Well, what you got to think about is there's no guarantee the new graphics will pull in a great amount of people. Many leave because they just can't handle the amount of thought and planning that has to go into some of the mechanics of the game, such as skill, imps, etc. That's not to say these people are "too dumb" but more along the line of people are just used to more modern "simplified" gameplay, especially the casual market.
So with the upgrade also comes the task of making sure the core fanbase doesn't get shoved out in the cold ( many of whom are on lesser hardwareand have stayed with AO not only because they love it, but because they can run it ).
I think the main thing is to get the dx9 in and the fun stuff that comes with it and see where it goes from there. Once they see that there is a large enough interest, then they can start adding in the higher textures and such from AoC or make new ones. At that point, some of he old players may have to upgrade or simply leave. But running them off before having a significant replacement pool to pull from would make this graphic engine upgrade into an NGE-type fiasco.
It's really going to be a tightrope act.
Thank you guys for the information regarding the engine upgrade.
My interest in AO has been renewed, and will be watching for updates.
Thanks again
"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know." William Saroyan
There have beem many quests added, both on RK an in SL. The ones on RK mostly center around the Dust Brigade and start around level 150ish, I believe. But as far as quests from say 1- 220, no. There's still mainly a grind. But figure the original grind through sub, then totw, then foreman's, head to the borgs camps, then start looking for DB quest teams, plus doing AI mishes and such. With a smattering of SL play along the way to add variety, it's not nearly as bad as it was 5 yrears ago. You'll need someone else to really tell you about stuff past 125-130ish, as that's about the highest I've ever gotten toon in all the years I've played. I suffer from extreme alt-itis.lol
While the SL quests do give decent XP and reward items, they're more about exposing the Shadowlands storyline.
That's actually much-needed. If you remember before the quests were added in SL, the story was mostly hidden in item descriptions. And with so many rare (and often also useless) items in SL, that meant browsing the item database instead of actually playing the game.
There have beem many quests added, both on RK an in SL. The ones on RK mostly center around the Dust Brigade and start around level 150ish, I believe. But as far as quests from say 1- 220, no. There's still mainly a grind. But figure the original grind through sub, then totw, then foreman's, head to the borgs camps, then start looking for DB quest teams, plus doing AI mishes and such. With a smattering of SL play along the way to add variety, it's not nearly as bad as it was 5 yrears ago. You'll need someone else to really tell you about stuff past 125-130ish, as that's about the highest I've ever gotten toon in all the years I've played. I suffer from extreme alt-itis.lol
While the SL quests do give decent XP and reward items, they're more about exposing the Shadowlands storyline.
That's actually much-needed. If you remember before the quests were added in SL, the story was mostly hidden in item descriptions. And with so many rare (and often also useless) items in SL, that meant browsing the item database instead of actually playing the game.
SL started the AO downfall. That whole fantasy, wanna-be World of Warcraft disrupted what AO was all about.
Mission running got tedious, but the grind is part of the game. Plus, the AO world is open, full of bosses you can try to tackle with teams. Players came up with their own ways to grind, instead getting pre-written quest lines.
Playing: EvE, Warhammer free unlimited trial, Allods Online
Played: Anarchy Online, WoW, Warhammer, AoC, Ryzom. Aion
Strongly Recommend: Ryzom, EvE, Allods Online
I think another downfall was lack of upgrading former boss's to make them worthwhile. I would love to kill mercs again with 30-40 peeps and gain upgraded azure armor or something. Or tackle random low lives like Babyface or actually do the real old school Mantis Hive again and get upgraded corona MKI + MKII armor... God this brings back memories.. I remember when MKII Armor was the top of the line stuff and my enf had it equiped about 7 years ago and I was flaunting it in Tir Grid as well as the giant support beams. lol
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Well i think that is a given. Players flocked to Shadowlands for hecklers, which were basically OP xp & money. I personally hated Shadowlands, my biggest memory of it was that it was a lot of running around, occasional falling, no grid just some idiotic portals for which you needed mob dropped items. And the whole goal was just grinding hecklers and upgraded gear/imps.
Anyway, regarding this new graphics engine, I have been hearing about this since like 2006 when I resubbed to the game. Is there any real progress or release date?
Playing: EvE, Warhammer free unlimited trial, Allods Online
Played: Anarchy Online, WoW, Warhammer, AoC, Ryzom. Aion
Strongly Recommend: Ryzom, EvE, Allods Online
Where did you read that?
Where did you read that?
When Means, the Game Director, announced a few months ago that they scrapped all the work on the first new engine they were making ( which was using OGRE ) and were starting over using the AoC engine ( which is a reworked version of the Dreamworld engine which AO currently uses ). As of right now however, they're barely getting stuff into the engine as talked about here: http://forums.anarchy-online.com/showthread.php?t=558658
So although they are intending a November launch, I'd say it's a safe bet it's going to be much later than that. However, there is now confirmation that avatars are getting redone, both heads and bodies. There are screens of one redone Nanomage female head ( complete with glowing eyes which pulsate ) linked at the bottome of Means post. Body pics will be in a few weeks.
You can also see the pics here where I posted them for easier viewing: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/163799/page/2
The easiest way is to follow Means every Friday in his "Friday with Means" updates: http://forums.anarchy-online.com/forumdisplay.php?f=204
I think the avatars will look much better in the Dream Engine when implemented. I downloaded the game.
Update: veryyy cool game!
With this graphics engine update, are they going to update the animations as well? Normal movement and combat animations, always sorta looked robotronic and stiff to me. I know 8 years ago in 2001 that was OK, but now it just looks really stupid.
When we get back from where we are going, we will return to where we were. I know people there!
As posted here and elsewhere before, they won't be touching animations. It is far more expensive to do that then to put in a whole new graphics engine. They will rework the models some to look nicer but animations work is labor intensive. As is, I think most of the animations look better than those in a lot of more recent games, like WoW. Even AoC animations, while smoother, sometimes are a bit lame in comparison.
~\_/~\_O
I'm just waiting for them to do this upgrade to come back.
I loved the game back in the day, but my guild fell apart due to all the bugs at launch
Heck, I'd almost rather see them to an AO 2 without all this crap they added and go back to the original story arc. Improve the skill system a bit and let it fly!
But WHEN are they going to upgrade the engine, it should of been released over a year ago and Still no news about it? anyone
That, my friend, I do not know.
There has been news about it every few weeks. Current target is November but most suspect it will be right at the end of the year. They've budgetted in a big advertising campaign for the start of the new year.
~\_/~\_O
if you put regular graphic you can get insane looking stuff but when you add those new bloom effect and those new shaders even the best computer are on their hand and knees often they disable those feature because it doesntnt improve visaual because its either wrongly set up for each vcomputer (probably)
or its meant to look that way beurk!
All sounds great, just wish Funcom had any real credibility with their word.
Do they plan to use real servers, instead of the cheap knockoffs they use now?
Playing: EvE, Warhammer free unlimited trial, Allods Online
Played: Anarchy Online, WoW, Warhammer, AoC, Ryzom. Aion
Strongly Recommend: Ryzom, EvE, Allods Online
All sounds great, just wish Funcom had any real credibility with their word.
Do they plan to use real servers, instead of the cheap knockoffs they use now?
AO runs now on the same server farm that AoC runs on, and that hardware farm has proven to be fast and stable. If you want to call that cheap knock-off hardware, provide links showing the hardware compared side-by-side with the server farms from some MMO's you consider to be better.
~\_/~\_O
4 days ago, Means posted some screenies showing the differences
http://forums.anarchy-online.com/showthread.php?t=561710
In my opinion, the updates are obviously needed. But they won't bring much to the table to entice people to play. Like the situation or not, the mainstream MMO market in general has certain expectations. And acceptable graphics is only one of them.
Although the current players of AO will enjoy and appreciate the graphics update (and I hope for the sake of the game that everything goes well on the day of the patch), I personally don't think it will be enough to entice a sizeable quantity of customers to play the game for longer than a short term. More will be needed in order to pull that off. Considering that FC prefer to do things THEIR way rather than listen to constructive advice from its playerbase then server populations will most likely, on the whole, stay as they are now. Which in my opinion, is a shame. Because AO deserves so much more than what FC are prepared to give to it right now.
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