I agree there is concern but it's the solution to the issue that bothers me as much as the chance for failure. What I notice in the demos of the game is similar to what ESO did to their world. Most of the maps you run around on are built to block line of sight and have particle/weather/fog of war type limitations to viewing distance. Traveling was often chopped up by narrow paths, valleys and cliff faces. It was all very distracting and claustrophobic.
If I continue to see this in this game it will be rather unsettling.
sorry but the vistas shown so far are anything but claustrophobic...
Look again from the character perspective using the player client ... not sky high vistas. You will see the distant fog and the inability to see vast distances from the character's point of view due to hills, trees and effects. There is a reason it exists.
A big factor in this is the number of unique models on display as well isn't it? Meaning, having a lot of Handmade unique locations, requires more blocking as well as fog? Bigger more openly viewable worlds tend to have a lot of pre generated foliage, trees, rocks etc... A good example of that is ESO actually as the more open cyrodil zone, looks a lot different than the PVE areas. There's just a much more bland overall landscape. Which tends to be the case with a lot of games with extremely large worlds. Especially those with the ability to render large player battles.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
At this point if you can't see the writing on the wall for this incoming disaster there's not much going to convince you otherwise. These are not "experienced game developers," imo unless you count the less than five people who worked on legit projects. Best of luck to anyone who spends money on it; I'll leave it at that.
I think you should really remember the limitations and possibilities of using a 3rd party engine. An multiplayer engine does 4 distinct things. A) It calculates gameplay It renders images C) It communicates with other machines D) It maintains a database. Given these distinct elements, it's possible to separate them and adjust them for usability in several different types of genres if you have access to the source code. You could reprogram the engine to do what you want. The main detriment is if you can do it in a sufficient amount of time to be worth it. For an MMO the only aspect you would retain is the rendering of images. Most companies opt for another solution since modifying the Unreal Engine to work for MMOs would be too cumbersome for the costs involved. For instance using a more appropriate engine like Hero or Big World. The big question for a developer today is how would you integrate PBR into your engine. It may be more work to code the render engine than the remainder of the engine making Unreal and Unity more viable.
Blade and Soul is Unreal Engine 3 and does fine in large scale fights. I'd imagine that 4 is to be better than 3, but I also suspect that simply having a foundation from which to work with does not include success in doing so. Ultimately developers will at some point need skilled software engineers capable of creating an efficient server/client structure that can handle their estimated userbase.
As far as Tera is concerned the # of issues I had downloading that bloated mess is probably related to the same reason people seem to have had issue in large scale pvp. "The skilled software engineers" required to pull off an incredible multiplayer experience were probably no where to found.
An multiplayer engine does 4 distinct things. A) It calculates gameplay It renders images C) It communicates with other machines D) It maintains a database. Given these distinct elements, it's possible to separate them and adjust them for usability in several different types of genres if you have access to the source code.
A nut and a bolt are distinct, but once you're using pre-made nuts your ability to design a bolt is severely limited.
I agree there is concern but it's the solution to the issue that bothers me as much as the chance for failure. What I notice in the demos of the game is similar to what ESO did to their world. Most of the maps you run around on are built to block line of sight and have particle/weather/fog of war type limitations to viewing distance. Traveling was often chopped up by narrow paths, valleys and cliff faces. It was all very distracting and claustrophobic.
If I continue to see this in this game it will be rather unsettling.
sorry but the vistas shown so far are anything but claustrophobic...
Look again from the character perspective using the player client ... not sky high vistas. You will see the distant fog and the inability to see vast distances from the character's point of view due to hills, trees and effects. There is a reason it exists.
you mean like these? I still don't see what you are saying...
I agree there is concern but it's the solution to the issue that bothers me as much as the chance for failure. What I notice in the demos of the game is similar to what ESO did to their world. Most of the maps you run around on are built to block line of sight and have particle/weather/fog of war type limitations to viewing distance. Traveling was often chopped up by narrow paths, valleys and cliff faces. It was all very distracting and claustrophobic.
If I continue to see this in this game it will be rather unsettling.
sorry but the vistas shown so far are anything but claustrophobic...
Look again from the character perspective using the player client ... not sky high vistas. You will see the distant fog and the inability to see vast distances from the character's point of view due to hills, trees and effects. There is a reason it exists.
you mean like these?
I still don't see what you are saying...
Look at those two pictures. The first picture is not gameplay, and you can see sharp details of mountain range in the distance.
The second picture is gameplay, and there's a haze preventing you from seeing whether that thing in distance is a hill of some kind, a city, or a giant turtle.
I agree there is concern but it's the solution to the issue that bothers me as much as the chance for failure. What I notice in the demos of the game is similar to what ESO did to their world. Most of the maps you run around on are built to block line of sight and have particle/weather/fog of war type limitations to viewing distance. Traveling was often chopped up by narrow paths, valleys and cliff faces. It was all very distracting and claustrophobic.
If I continue to see this in this game it will be rather unsettling.
sorry but the vistas shown so far are anything but claustrophobic...
Look again from the character perspective using the player client ... not sky high vistas. You will see the distant fog and the inability to see vast distances from the character's point of view due to hills, trees and effects. There is a reason it exists.
you mean like these?
I still don't see what you are saying...
Look at those two pictures. The first picture is not gameplay, and you can see sharp details of mountain range in the distance.
The second picture is gameplay, and there's a haze preventing you from seeing whether that thing in distance is a hill of some kind, a city, or a giant turtle.
looks perfect to me, unless you want crystal-clear environments with no saturation, but those look and feel unnatural when there is motion.
Even in Skyrin, when you max. the view distance you get an abnormal sense of distance, I actually had to turn it down one-two notches to make it look believable.
All of this is highly suspect at this point. I was really disappointed that one of their big game play videos was basically 30 min of a guy doing a kill/loot quest. This has to be one of the most boring things we have been doing in MMO's for 20 years. I get that it's early and not much is in the game, but of all the things to highlight when you are trying to be this answer to the prayers of MMO players they chose that?
It's nice that Sharif has basically personally insured all the kickstarter money with his deep pockets, but he has no legal obligation to do it. That could have easily been just another marketing tool. Sure, his name would be ruined in the industry if he backed out of that, but why would he care when he was never in the gaming industry to start with?
Right now this all just seems like a lot of clever talk and good marketing strategy which is something Sharif knows a lot about. I hope they pull it off because the game they pitched would be great, but there was no chance in hell I was betting any money on this so early on. It's absolutely a project to watch but I'll be sitting in the cheap seats for now waiting to see if it is worth upgrading later on.
No middleware game engine is directly designed to be used with an MMORPG (short of gamebryo and the hero engine). You can plug in entirely different net code, different audio middleware, different physics middleware, and a lot more things. To wit just because you haven't seen an MMORPG release doesn't mean there aren't any in development. Unreal has been used for MMORPGS for quite awhile dating back over 12 years at this point and you could of come out and said the same thing about all the others. Lineage 2 was on unreal, tera, etc. There will be mmorpgs based on UE4 and it will work well for it.
Yeah, latency and performance are always issues. They will always be issues because of physics and variables.
The point being there really isn't a more powerful engine out right now than UE4. Unity is not a better answer. Cry isn't a stable answer anymore. Lumberyard is tied to Amazon which apparently they don't want to leverage. So the answer is "the engine unwritten".
API frameworks and engines depend a lot on the proficiency of the people using them, their experience, and familiarity.
If you've looked at the principle team bios there is a lot of pvp and shooter experience on the team. It could be they're more familiar with or comfortable with UE4 as an environment with it's support and peripheral tool chain.
That can go a lot farther for a team than choosing the engine that seems right on paper. Right now there is nothing else out there better. Suggesting people keep writing engines or just not develop until a better engine is written is not an acceptable solution. It's a huge project software lifecycle design flaw entrenched in the mmo corner of the industry.
Lumberyard is just cryengine with some tie ins to amazon directly.
An multiplayer engine does 4 distinct things. A) It calculates gameplay It renders images C) It communicates with other machines D) It maintains a database. Given these distinct elements, it's possible to separate them and adjust them for usability in several different types of genres if you have access to the source code.
A nut and a bolt are distinct, but once you're using pre-made nuts you're ability to design a bolt is severely limited.
Really? Ever heard of modifying code? This is a silly debate. I don't know one developer that has not modified an engine to tune it for their game. Heck they are using Unity for several other popular games and that is an order of magnitude worse then Unreal.
Let's face it, large numbers of players on the screen is a rare event, unless you are playing something like Eve. So all this whining is all about something that will rarely happen. If you want to worry about something worry about gameplay that actually is important.
An multiplayer engine does 4 distinct things. A) It calculates gameplay It renders images C) It communicates with other machines D) It maintains a database. Given these distinct elements, it's possible to separate them and adjust them for usability in several different types of genres if you have access to the source code.
A nut and a bolt are distinct, but once you're using pre-made nuts you're ability to design a bolt is severely limited.
Really? Ever heard of modifying code? This is a silly debate. I don't know one developer that has not modified an engine to tune it for their game. Heck they are using Unity for several other popular games and that is an order of magnitude worse then Unreal.
I was trying to explain that you can't do everything just by "separating distinct elements" because all those elements interact.
I agree there is concern but it's the solution to the issue that bothers me as much as the chance for failure. What I notice in the demos of the game is similar to what ESO did to their world. Most of the maps you run around on are built to block line of sight and have particle/weather/fog of war type limitations to viewing distance. Traveling was often chopped up by narrow paths, valleys and cliff faces. It was all very distracting and claustrophobic.
If I continue to see this in this game it will be rather unsettling.
sorry but the vistas shown so far are anything but claustrophobic...
Look again from the character perspective using the player client ... not sky high vistas. You will see the distant fog and the inability to see vast distances from the character's point of view due to hills, trees and effects. There is a reason it exists.
you mean like these?
I still don't see what you are saying...
Look at those two pictures. The first picture is not gameplay, and you can see sharp details of mountain range in the distance.
The second picture is gameplay, and there's a haze preventing you from seeing whether that thing in distance is a hill of some kind, a city, or a giant turtle.
Those images are also scaled down quite a bit. Either way nothing I see there makes me say "oh how horrid."
They're not the best graphics I've ever seen of course, they are still pleasing to the eye IMO.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Comments
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
You could reprogram the engine to do what you want. The main detriment is if you can do it in a sufficient amount of time to be worth it. For an MMO the only aspect you would retain is the rendering of images. Most companies opt for another solution since modifying the Unreal Engine to work for MMOs would be too cumbersome for the costs involved. For instance using a more appropriate engine like Hero or Big World.
The big question for a developer today is how would you integrate PBR into your engine. It may be more work to code the render engine than the remainder of the engine making Unreal and Unity more viable.
As far as Tera is concerned the # of issues I had downloading that bloated mess is probably related to the same reason people seem to have had issue in large scale pvp. "The skilled software engineers" required to pull off an incredible multiplayer experience were probably no where to found.
I still don't see what you are saying...
The second picture is gameplay, and there's a haze preventing you from seeing whether that thing in distance is a hill of some kind, a city, or a giant turtle.
looks perfect to me, unless you want crystal-clear environments with no saturation, but those look and feel unnatural when there is motion.
Even in Skyrin, when you max. the view distance you get an abnormal sense of distance, I actually had to turn it down one-two notches to make it look believable.
It's nice that Sharif has basically personally insured all the kickstarter money with his deep pockets, but he has no legal obligation to do it. That could have easily been just another marketing tool. Sure, his name would be ruined in the industry if he backed out of that, but why would he care when he was never in the gaming industry to start with?
Right now this all just seems like a lot of clever talk and good marketing strategy which is something Sharif knows a lot about. I hope they pull it off because the game they pitched would be great, but there was no chance in hell I was betting any money on this so early on. It's absolutely a project to watch but I'll be sitting in the cheap seats for now waiting to see if it is worth upgrading later on.
Let's face it, large numbers of players on the screen is a rare event, unless you are playing something like Eve. So all this whining is all about something that will rarely happen. If you want to worry about something worry about gameplay that actually is important.
They're not the best graphics I've ever seen of course, they are still pleasing to the eye IMO.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson