Why? Did amazon also have a deal with Crytek to only use Crytek for one game and display their logo on splash screens?
Sounds like CIG and Crytek made a deal, then CIG and Amazon made a deal. If CIG didn't fully disclose the terms of the first deal with Amazon then they might be in trouble with Amazon as well. Speculation of course here.
It's not unusual at all for a game to display the logo of more than one product used to develop it - it's routine actually. I don't see the problem with SC having both Crytek and LY on their splash screen.
ESO for example, used the Hero engine just for prototyping and developed their own engine. They used it to a much lesser extent than SC used Crytek but when the game released the splash screen had Hero there as well as Havoc. SC's decision to remove it altogether is actually the weirdest part of all this.
If they had an exclusitivity clause in their contract with Crytek like the complaint alleges, displaying two logos would have broken it.
Only if they didn't renegotiate when they decided to switch to LY. But then of course, Crytek should have received additional consideration for the change.
Shit changes and contracts get renegotiated all the time. Sounds like SC just went with the changing shit part and not the other.
Same with the two games vs. one. SC originally encompassed SC and Sq42 as one game. When they changed that to be two games they could and should have also renegotiated with Crytek.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
If they had an exclusitivity clause in their contract with Crytek like the complaint alleges, displaying two logos would have broken it.
Only if they didn't re-negotiate when they decided to switch to LY. But then of course, Crytek should have received additional consideration for the change.
Shit changes and contracts get re-negotiated all the time. Sounds like SC just went with the changing shit part and not the other.
Yep. Considering that Crytek was sending them notices soon after the switch, it doesn't seem like a re-negotiation took place, so a major question is were they really just that dumb, or did they think Crytek was just going to shut up and take it (possibly due to going bankrupt)? ....the latter falls under the "were they really just that dumb" category too, though.
Hopefully it all goes to discovery so someone can see their interior communications with each other and we might find out their true thoughts behind that. Assuming there were thoughts behind it at all, of course.
If they had an exclusitivity clause in their contract with Crytek like the complaint alleges, displaying two logos would have broken it.
Only if they didn't re-negotiate when they decided to switch to LY. But then of course, Crytek should have received additional consideration for the change.
Shit changes and contracts get re-negotiated all the time. Sounds like SC just went with the changing shit part and not the other.
Yep. Considering that Crytek was sending them notices soon after the switch, it doesn't seem like a re-negotiation took place, so a major question is were they really just that dumb, or did they think Crytek was just going to shut up and take it (possibly due to going bankrupt)? ....the latter falls under the "were they really just that dumb" category too, though.
Hopefully it all goes to discovery so someone can see their interior communications with each other and we might find out their true thoughts behind that. Assuming there were thoughts behind it at all, of course.
Yes, they are that dumb. CIG will probably bend over for Crytek at some point, as they do not ever want to go to discovery. The illusion would suffer under the hard spotlight on mismanagement.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Roberts chose Crytek because it made really pretty demos. Remember that cinematics is Roberts' main focus. He didn't really realize the groundswell of interest in the genre, as shown by his very modest original plans. Crytek engine would have been great for the 2-10 million dollar Squadron 42 that was envisioned. As the grandiose plan swelled larger than his head, Roberts just stuck with the original engine, regardless. Pretty sure he's admitted somewhere that if he had it to do over again, he'd have gone with a scratch build.
Not unprecedented though. I think they went through 3 engines on Strike Commander, were three years late, and wasted over a million man hours of work.
So....par for the course....
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
No it wasn't a good choice in engine. When you have the budget that they had, you should make your own engine. If an engine has gameplay that closely matches what you are envisioning than it is a good starting point. Otherwise you may be putting in more effort modifying the engine than would have been needed to create one from scratch. If you don't know how you are going to do something, than it may be a good starting point in figuring out where all the tricky bits are for when you need to put them into your own engine. Unreal and Cry Engine are not good choices if your goal is an MMO. They were never built with thousands of players on screen at a time. The best mmo engine would be hero engine, but it's scope is more limited to story based gameplay and would not translate well to a space simulation.
No it wasn't a good choice in engine. When you have the budget that they had, you should make your own engine. If an engine has gameplay that closely matches what you are envisioning than it is a good starting point. Otherwise you may be putting in more effort modifying the engine than would have been needed to create one from scratch. If you don't know how you are going to do something, than it may be a good starting point in figuring out where all the tricky bits are for when you need to put them into your own engine. Unreal and Cry Engine are not good choices if your goal is an MMO. They were never built with thousands of players on screen at a time. The best mmo engine would be hero engine, but it's scope is more limited to story based gameplay and would not translate well to a space simulation.
They didn't always have the budget nor the scope they ended up with... just saying.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
No it wasn't a good choice in engine. When you have the budget that they had, you should make your own engine. If an engine has gameplay that closely matches what you are envisioning than it is a good starting point. Otherwise you may be putting in more effort modifying the engine than would have been needed to create one from scratch. If you don't know how you are going to do something, than it may be a good starting point in figuring out where all the tricky bits are for when you need to put them into your own engine. Unreal and Cry Engine are not good choices if your goal is an MMO. They were never built with thousands of players on screen at a time. The best mmo engine would be hero engine, but it's scope is more limited to story based gameplay and would not translate well to a space simulation.
They didn't always have the budget nor the scope they ended up with... just saying.
Exactly.
If they knew at the beginning they would get 173,668,182 $ i am quite sure they would have created their own custom engine from the ground up.
But in the beginning of October 2012 no one knew that. No one expected that. No one dared to dream that.
So... hindsight is often 20/20 .... but back in the beginning they had to make a choice. And they did.
most of the hard problems that are mmo specific are completely orthogonal to the engine.
Rendering lots of stuff on screen is 90% in the art flow. The models, texturing, shaders. Then you have Level of detail which is a way to progressively decrease model complexity the further away you get, which is supported by all engines. Lastly is the rendering engine itself, which does matter it's just overall a small part of the equation.
Outside of rendering pretty much all the hard problems specific to mmo's are things outside of the engine itself. Like dealing with floating point precision (google origin shifting).
8 years ago you could make a much better case for writing your own engine. Now not so much. How engines do core things like rendering is on much more equal footing now days, and it's very difficult for a studio to do a better job themselves, plus more flexible api's to tweak them. You might want source access to tweak things (or more likely fix bugs), but it's highly unlikely that you have a good reason to say completely replace the core rendering.
As others have said no engine would do everything they wanted - and developing their own engine would not have been a good choice and would have been a very different crowd funding requirement.
Over and above the technical pros and cons I assume that the availability of ex-Crytek staff was probably a factor. The difficulties of hiring suitable staff is a topic that e.g. Mark James has written about and outsourcing brings its own issues: hence staff availability may have been a factor.
In hindsight it has also gave them the option of moving to Lumberyard - which is not simply a "fixed up CryEngine" but a host of other features - CryEngine, AWS, Twitch, EMotion FX, and Double Helix - as well as the features Amazon continue to add. That won't have been envisaged back then of course but means there is stuff that RSI don't have to do. Although using Amazon services will come at a price of course.
The Crytek legal documents imply they were the ones that designed the demos for the kickstarter in the first place and the agreement with them could have (and probably did) start as far back as then.
Which, if true, and if the contract really did have an exclusitivity clause like what Crytek says it does, means that CiG was possibly locked into CryEngine before the crowdfunding even started.
But again, it's not like there were many other options and CryEngine could have been fine for what they wanted back then. Go Chris Roberts!
The Crytek legal documents imply they were the ones that designed the demos for the kickstarter in the first place and the agreement with them could have (and probably did) start as far back as then.
Which, if true, and if the contract really did have an exclusitivity clause like what Crytek says it does, means that CiG was possibly locked into CryEngine before the crowdfunding even started.
But again, it's not like there were many other options and CryEngine could have been fine for what they wanted back then. Go Chris Roberts!
It's interesting how the ks video was done by Crytek but Robberts talked as if he somehow managed to quickly make it with a small team.
The Crytek legal documents imply they were the ones that designed the demos for the kickstarter in the first place and the agreement with them could have (and probably did) start as far back as then.
Which, if true, and if the contract really did have an exclusitivity clause like what Crytek says it does, means that CiG was possibly locked into CryEngine before the crowdfunding even started.
But again, it's not like there were many other options and CryEngine could have been fine for what they wanted back then. Go Chris Roberts!
It's interesting how the ks video was done by Crytek but Robberts talked as if he somehow managed to quickly make it with a small team.
The Crytek legal documents imply they were the ones that designed the demos for the kickstarter in the first place and the agreement with them could have (and probably did) start as far back as then.
Which, if true, and if the contract really did have an exclusitivity clause like what Crytek says it does, means that CiG was possibly locked into CryEngine before the crowdfunding even started.
But again, it's not like there were many other options and CryEngine could have been fine for what they wanted back then. Go Chris Roberts!
It's interesting how the ks video was done by Crytek but Robberts talked as if he somehow managed to quickly make it with a small team.
Why could they not be the same thing?
because lawsuit.
just another example of Roberts being fast and loose with the truth or at least giving credit where credit was due. he was sure quick to throw those other guys under the bus (when it was more than likely not their fault now that more things are coming to light)
The Crytek legal documents imply they were the ones that designed the demos for the kickstarter in the first place and the agreement with them could have (and probably did) start as far back as then.
Which, if true, and if the contract really did have an exclusitivity clause like what Crytek says it does, means that CiG was possibly locked into CryEngine before the crowdfunding even started.
But again, it's not like there were many other options and CryEngine could have been fine for what they wanted back then. Go Chris Roberts!
It's interesting how the ks video was done by Crytek but Robberts talked as if he somehow managed to quickly make it with a small team.
Why could they not be the same thing?
because lawsuit.
just another example of Roberts being fast and loose with the truth or at least giving credit where credit was due. he was sure quick to throw those other guys under the bus (when it was more than likely not their fault now that more things are coming to light)
Oh right so you are suggesting they did that without any CR involvement at all. They just guessed what his game would be and Chris wasn't in charge in any way what so ever......
Well its taken a few years but people are finally catching on that a small scale fps area shooter engine isnt suitable for building a virtual universe. Congrats guys for getting there in the end.
It was the perfect engine though for making and monetising very pretty tech demos that hint at a huge world that never really existed.
The demos you saw are SETS like in the movies - none if them were real.
3.0 is the limit of their capabilities right now. This is their A-game. This is what you will get.
Well its taken a few years but people are finally catching on that a small scale fps area shooter engine isnt suitable for building a virtual universe. Congrats guys for getting there in the end.
It was the perfect engine though for making and monetising very pretty tech demos that hint at a huge world that never really existed.
The demos you saw are SETS like in the movies - none if them were real.
3.0 is the limit of their capabilities right now. This is their A-game. This is what you will get.
So Amazon are only producing small scale fps area shooter games ....
The Crytek legal documents imply they were the ones that designed the demos for the kickstarter in the first place and the agreement with them could have (and probably did) start as far back as then.
Which, if true, and if the contract really did have an exclusitivity clause like what Crytek says it does, means that CiG was possibly locked into CryEngine before the crowdfunding even started.
But again, it's not like there were many other options and CryEngine could have been fine for what they wanted back then. Go Chris Roberts!
It's interesting how the ks video was done by Crytek but Robberts talked as if he somehow managed to quickly make it with a small team.
Why could they not be the same thing?
because lawsuit.
just another example of Roberts being fast and loose with the truth or at least giving credit where credit was due. he was sure quick to throw those other guys under the bus (when it was more than likely not their fault now that more things are coming to light)
Oh right so you are suggesting they did that without any CR involvement at all. They just guessed what his game would be and Chris wasn't in charge in any way what so ever......
hahahahahhahahahahaha. Thanks
I suggest that Chris Roberts lies a lot. That Hyperbole is his middle name. That disorganization is his management mode. That he's an asshat.
Some folks think he's a GENIUS! I just hope they didn't invest more money than they could afford to lose.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
The Crytek legal documents imply they were the ones that designed the demos for the kickstarter in the first place and the agreement with them could have (and probably did) start as far back as then.
Which, if true, and if the contract really did have an exclusitivity clause like what Crytek says it does, means that CiG was possibly locked into CryEngine before the crowdfunding even started.
But again, it's not like there were many other options and CryEngine could have been fine for what they wanted back then. Go Chris Roberts!
It's interesting how the ks video was done by Crytek but Robberts talked as if he somehow managed to quickly make it with a small team.
Why could they not be the same thing?
because lawsuit.
just another example of Roberts being fast and loose with the truth or at least giving credit where credit was due. he was sure quick to throw those other guys under the bus (when it was more than likely not their fault now that more things are coming to light)
Oh right so you are suggesting they did that without any CR involvement at all. They just guessed what his game would be and Chris wasn't in charge in any way what so ever......
hahahahahhahahahahaha. Thanks
I suggest that Chris Roberts lies a lot. That Hyperbole is his middle name. That disorganization is his management mode. That he's an asshat.
Some folks think he's a GENIUS! I just hope they didn't invest more money than they could afford to lose.
I suggest listening to your two friends who were CR underlings 20 years ago who got the hump when they felt he took credit for their work even though that's how a team with a hierarchy works, is probably not the best place to get your unbiased news from!
I thought they were on a custom engine now, didn't they cut Cryengine away a couple years ago?
They started with CryEngine 3.7, added a load of stuff to it, rewrote a load of other stuff and then switched. Amazon has a license to distribute CE and their access to it starts with 3.7 (Lumberyard itself is based on 3.8) so what CIG has done is switch to Amazon's version of 3.7 (which is the same as what they originally started with), applied all their changes and are also backporting Lumberyard features if it's something they want.
The Crytek legal documents imply they were the ones that designed the demos for the kickstarter in the first place and the agreement with them could have (and probably did) start as far back as then.
Which, if true, and if the contract really did have an exclusitivity clause like what Crytek says it does, means that CiG was possibly locked into CryEngine before the crowdfunding even started.
But again, it's not like there were many other options and CryEngine could have been fine for what they wanted back then. Go Chris Roberts!
It's interesting how the ks video was done by Crytek but Robberts talked as if he somehow managed to quickly make it with a small team.
Why could they not be the same thing?
because lawsuit.
just another example of Roberts being fast and loose with the truth or at least giving credit where credit was due. he was sure quick to throw those other guys under the bus (when it was more than likely not their fault now that more things are coming to light)
Oh right so you are suggesting they did that without any CR involvement at all. They just guessed what his game would be and Chris wasn't in charge in any way what so ever......
hahahahahhahahahahaha. Thanks
I suggest that Chris Roberts lies a lot. That Hyperbole is his middle name. That disorganization is his management mode. That he's an asshat.
Some folks think he's a GENIUS! I just hope they didn't invest more money than they could afford to lose.
I suggest listening to your two friends who were CR underlings 20 years ago who got the hump when they felt he took credit for their work even though that's how a team with a hierarchy works, is probably not the best place to get your unbiased news from!
Technically, it was 10 people. Some spit on the ground when Roberts name gets mentioned, some just consider him disorganized and immature. No one thought he was a good project manager. And I don't even include the hearsay bits about him that would be pretty damning, if true.
Roberts and Garriott were the two A-list project guys at Origin. They share some similar management characteristics, except that folks who worked for Garriott still like him, by and large. If it makes you happier, Roberts seems to have been the better project manager of the two back then.
But making a bad decision and sticking with it to the bitter end is very characteristic.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Technically, it was 10 people. Some spit on the ground when Roberts name gets mentioned,
10 you say? well now this forum just started to make a lot more sense!
How old were these guys? never mind I heard enough, be careful of that bias filter, your knowledge of events is still only filtered through two disgruntled underlings. Yeah I hated most my past bosses as well, guess what, they were all bad at management, all their decisions sucked and they always took credit for my work! Spooky resemblance. Anyone not have these stories from their youth?
Technically, it was 10 people. Some spit on the ground when Roberts name gets mentioned,
10 you say? well now this forum just started to make a lot more sense!
How old were these guys? never mind I heard enough, be careful of that bias filter, your knowledge of events is still only filtered through two disgruntled underlings. Yeah I hated most my past bosses as well, guess what, they were all bad at management, all their decisions sucked and they always took credit for my work! Spooky resemblance. Anyone not have these stories from their youth?
I think you are projecting....
You know, because even considering this might crash the Grand Illusion.
And again, the CryEngine would have probably have been just fine at Squadron 42, but not the best choice for things as the feature creep ramped up into high gear.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
I love how everyone bashes SC for mismanagement in this thread when they are being sued by a company for half ridiculous claims by a company that goes months on end without paying a single employee. It's so painfully obvious this is a desperate move from Crytek because they literally cannot pay their employees. But yeah SC is horrible for working on a game that people blindly crowdfunded without knowing the precise direction or timeline.
If I want a world in which people can purchase success and power with cash, I'll play Real Life. Keep Virtual Worlds Virtual!
So Amazon are only producing small scale fps area shooter games ....
They don't know what they talk about. Amazon is developing their own MMO, the developing of LY goes on the direction of online games, beyond "small scale fps shooters" lol.
Comments
Shit changes and contracts get renegotiated all the time. Sounds like SC just went with the changing shit part and not the other.
Same with the two games vs. one. SC originally encompassed SC and Sq42 as one game. When they changed that to be two games they could and should have also renegotiated with Crytek.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Hopefully it all goes to discovery so someone can see their interior communications with each other and we might find out their true thoughts behind that. Assuming there were thoughts behind it at all, of course.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Not unprecedented though. I think they went through 3 engines on Strike Commander, were three years late, and wasted over a million man hours of work.
So....par for the course....
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Unreal and Cry Engine are not good choices if your goal is an MMO. They were never built with thousands of players on screen at a time. The best mmo engine would be hero engine, but it's scope is more limited to story based gameplay and would not translate well to a space simulation.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
If they knew at the beginning they would get 173,668,182 $ i am quite sure they would have created their own custom engine from the ground up.
But in the beginning of October 2012 no one knew that. No one expected that. No one dared to dream that.
So... hindsight is often 20/20 .... but back in the beginning they had to make a choice. And they did.
Have fun
Rendering lots of stuff on screen is 90% in the art flow. The models, texturing, shaders. Then you have Level of detail which is a way to progressively decrease model complexity the further away you get, which is supported by all engines. Lastly is the rendering engine itself, which does matter it's just overall a small part of the equation.
Outside of rendering pretty much all the hard problems specific to mmo's are things outside of the engine itself. Like dealing with floating point precision (google origin shifting).
8 years ago you could make a much better case for writing your own engine. Now not so much. How engines do core things like rendering is on much more equal footing now days, and it's very difficult for a studio to do a better job themselves, plus more flexible api's to tweak them. You might want source access to tweak things (or more likely fix bugs), but it's highly unlikely that you have a good reason to say completely replace the core rendering.
Over and above the technical pros and cons I assume that the availability of ex-Crytek staff was probably a factor. The difficulties of hiring suitable staff is a topic that e.g. Mark James has written about and outsourcing brings its own issues: hence staff availability may have been a factor.
In hindsight it has also gave them the option of moving to Lumberyard - which is not simply a "fixed up CryEngine" but a host of other features - CryEngine, AWS, Twitch, EMotion FX, and Double Helix - as well as the features Amazon continue to add. That won't have been envisaged back then of course but means there is stuff that RSI don't have to do. Although using Amazon services will come at a price of course.
Which, if true, and if the contract really did have an exclusitivity clause like what Crytek says it does, means that CiG was possibly locked into CryEngine before the crowdfunding even started.
But again, it's not like there were many other options and CryEngine could have been fine for what they wanted back then. Go Chris Roberts!
just another example of Roberts being fast and loose with the truth or at least giving credit where credit was due. he was sure quick to throw those other guys under the bus (when it was more than likely not their fault now that more things are coming to light)
hahahahahhahahahahaha. Thanks
It was the perfect engine though for making and monetising very pretty tech demos that hint at a huge world that never really existed.
The demos you saw are SETS like in the movies - none if them were real.
3.0 is the limit of their capabilities right now. This is their A-game. This is what you will get.
Some folks think he's a GENIUS! I just hope they didn't invest more money than they could afford to lose.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Amazon has a license to distribute CE and their access to it starts with 3.7 (Lumberyard itself is based on 3.8) so what CIG has done is switch to Amazon's version of 3.7 (which is the same as what they originally started with), applied all their changes and are also backporting Lumberyard features if it's something they want.
Hope that makes sense.
Roberts and Garriott were the two A-list project guys at Origin. They share some similar management characteristics, except that folks who worked for Garriott still like him, by and large. If it makes you happier, Roberts seems to have been the better project manager of the two back then.
But making a bad decision and sticking with it to the bitter end is very characteristic.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
How old were these guys? never mind I heard enough, be careful of that bias filter, your knowledge of events is still only filtered through two disgruntled underlings. Yeah I hated most my past bosses as well, guess what, they were all bad at management, all their decisions sucked and they always took credit for my work! Spooky resemblance. Anyone not have these stories from their youth?
You know, because even considering this might crash the Grand Illusion.
And again, the CryEngine would have probably have been just fine at Squadron 42, but not the best choice for things as the feature creep ramped up into high gear.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
If I want a world in which people can purchase success and power with cash, I'll play Real Life. Keep Virtual Worlds Virtual!