Author Topic: Game engine (Read 1246 times)

Mr. "Snuffy" Snuffleupagus · « **on:** March 13, 2014, 11:24:21 am »

Since I am talking about the future of AW I guess this would be the place to post this question.

We all know that game was started with the Torque game engine. Then devs decided to go and upgrade if you will to Torque 3D (which was almost in a state of not being in existence anymore). Sometime in the future the game will have to be updated to a better game engine especially if they are wanting to be a mainstream game attracting millions of people. As I don't think Torque will honestly be able to hang on.

My question is if the devs have thought about changing game engines to UDK or Unity or some other engine and if so would it be better to make that move lets say in the near future than later after you get to the point where you think the game is ready for the whole world? Or just ride the Torque engine until it cant be ridden no more?

I think it is a very honest question to ask as the future of indie game engines are jumping by leaps and bounds compared to the Torque engine. So it would only be feesable to be thinking of the move and the impact it would have on the development of the game as we seen going from Alpha to Survival. with such moves naturally comes the learning curve of a new engine, coding problems, transfering of data, bugs and of course the main one COST of using a different game engine.

Thoughts?

The "Fifth" Entity · « **Reply #1 on:** March 13, 2014, 11:40:29 am »

Hehe was thinking about the exact same thing yesterday. U were thinking too loud i quess?

There's been a lot of talk about scripting level problems but how's the engine? Any progress in that department?
Yes, the engine can be the key to success, or road to nowhere... if we only knew today which choice will be right tomorrow.

Mr. "Snuffy" Snuffleupagus · « **Reply #2 on:** March 13, 2014, 11:53:10 am »

I always get a little leery when a software goes from being a product to open source. As we have seen many a game has fallen to the open source category just to stay alive. This sometimes is a good thing, but open source usually can't keep up with main stream software. There are exceptions look at Blender for example.

But I don't know if Torque can be as succesfull; and can a game that wants to be as profitable as Devs (I am sure want AW to be) hope it will be, rely on an open source program? Seems to me this can cause a bit of a security issue as well.

dale "dalewj" ofj · « **Reply #3 on:** March 13, 2014, 11:54:13 am »

changing the engine yet again is a complete re-port and what another 2 years? IMHO there is no way in hell this game could survive that.

Mr. "Snuffy" Snuffleupagus · « **Reply #4 on:** March 13, 2014, 11:58:24 am »

I agree Dale to a point. If done right it could be done. But done the way it went from alpha to survival..no. But it still has to be thought about as far as the future of AW where they want to go with it. They may be happy with Torque and ride that boat.

Hugo "Lossehelin" Santos · « **Reply #5 on:** March 13, 2014, 07:23:37 pm »

an engine change is a thing that should be only considered when the game is more mature. Swapping engines is a colossal task! It is like starting all over again.

If the team was good in terms of programmers then yeah, the task would be fairly quick but as it is now..... no way!

Event "Janе" Horizon · « **Reply #6 on:** March 13, 2014, 08:49:36 pm »

I agree with Lossehelin.

Dedicated Logic already stated that the AWS had several hundred scripts.
Assuming that by scripts they mean groups of functions - there could be thousands of functions which need to be analysed and ported.

If function takes up to 1 hour to analyse and rewrite - you are talking about thousands of hours of paid work.

Then there is the level design - I doubt if you could just copy the assets into a new engine and, tah-dah, we have the same eye candy as in Survival.

So you can add in a several hundred more hours of paid work for level design.

Then you have to test all the interactions that have been tested over the last several years before handing it to the players to retest.

While this is going on - players in the current Survival will be requesting assistance etc which will cost time and effort.

And the list of costs goes on and on.

Can Dedicated Logic afford to even contemplate a new engine without A LOT of extra cash? I do not think so.

Could Dedicated Logic get enough KickStarter funds to port Survival into another engine with Survival in it current state? I do not think so.

Could Dedicated Logic get enough KickStarter funds to port Survival into another engine with Survival when it has 1000's of players. Probably.

Will they eventually port the game. Yes - because everyone does it. Even Unity will eventually be superseded.

Mr. "Snuffy" Snuffleupagus · « **Reply #7 on:** March 13, 2014, 09:23:33 pm »

So would you say that the current game engine with finished game be able to stay competitive with others like UDK or Unity? Especially as an open source engine.

which worse case scenario would be that the devs. would have to get the code for Torque and do basically dev work on the game engine also, if interest in keeping it up to date starts to fall. Which in turn can take away from the development of the game. Not saying that is going to happen but can as a lot of open source projects do. People get busy with life or have new ideas and project that takes up their time.

On the other hand they could end up making Torque a better game engine as they go along. Then as I said there is the security concerns especially when a source code is out. I am no hacker so I may be way off base on that assumption as far as online game goes. But concerns none the less.

I am not pushing for a game engine switch by no means but it was done once and can be done again. Would be nice to have an idea about their thoughts on this. Maybe Torque is the best way to go over the others. I know UDK has a lot of legal stuff developers have to go thru to use that engine. And Lawyers aren't cheap that's for sure. Just making conversation.

Yes people don't want to start all over again like we are doing now. I understand that but with that aside what are you thoughts?

Kick starter campaign I forgot about. But even then if it's in the kick starter plan to switch engines it can be done and if people want that they will contribute. Just saying. Yes it would take some work and that is why the question was would it be better now than later after game is finished. I am just taking the devil advocates side for conversation purposes only. Can dedicated logic afford it or have the man power or what have you ? Well I have no idea I don't even have a clue but on the other hand sometimes extremes have to be done to bring in more money. As I think we have seen being done as of late to keep a dream alive.

Event "Janе" Horizon · « **Reply #8 on:** March 13, 2014, 10:32:13 pm »

IMHO, the majority of players do not care what game engine is used.

There are also plenty of downloadable MMOs that do not use Unity, with a huge player base.

Do I know how many of these use the 'state-of-the-art' game engines? No.
Do I care? No.
Is eye-candy important? Yes.
Is eye-candy essential? No.
Is game play essential? Yes.

I might be in the minority and 99% of all players of MMOs open the technical specifications of a game to see what game engine in being used and discard a game irrespective of game reviews if it isn't "my sort of game engine".

Jarod "Brickwit" McBrickerton · « **Reply #9 on:** March 13, 2014, 10:44:31 pm »

My view is that there isn't enough manpower at the current time to even contemplate switching game engines. The current team has their hands full just finishing all of the features that were available in AWA on T3D and I'm sure they're basically "stuck" with T3D until it's as done as they want it to be.

Once the game has the stability and completeness it need to gain the popularity it deserves and has enough supporting players I think it would be best for the game to start working on porting to another engine. As a business you don't want to be running on a base system that could disappear at any moment even if it's the best system in the world, which Torque is not. It was just the best option at the time for the devs when they started making AW and they transitioned to T3D because AW needed much better visuals and was a relatively minor transition compared to moving to Unity, CryEngine, Unreal, or basically any other non-Torque-based engine.

@Jane, I think that your view is probably the majority (though I'm biased because I share that view

), but there are some very vocal people that absolutely must have the latest and greatest visuals to even consider playing something new and I think their vocality makes them seem like a larger group than they really are.

Mr. "Snuffy" Snuffleupagus · « **Reply #10 on:** March 13, 2014, 11:06:26 pm »

Honestly I myself don't care what game engine is used. As long as I am having fun playing. I still like playing atari. I have to agree Brickwit that at a business stand point I think they will have to switch. They may be stuck with Torque unless they get a backer that has the money to back them and support their business plan and idea. At that case or if they exceed their Kickstarter progam they may want to change ahead of time. Obviously with a company and people and funding things can move at a faster pace. Which makes transistion a little bit easier and not so much of a step backwards. In that case I would say most would accept that and go with it knowing that things will be moving at a faster rate than they ever have since 2006.

Yes there are a huge amount of MMO's out there that don't use Unity. But the top MMO's don't use Torque either. Not saying that Afterworld couldn't be the first it possibly could be. But then again.......................................................... ...sorry my open source typing software is out of date and I had to do some programing work on it so i can finish my sentence. The open source community is almost dead on my typing software.

(just a dramatisation)

Jarod "Brickwit" McBrickerton · « **Reply #11 on:** March 13, 2014, 11:49:17 pm »

LOL @ "open source typing software" 8-D

I'd love nothing more than to see AW get a huge influx of Kickstarter cash, but I think that even if they do they would be smart to spend all of it on getting the current game "done" as soon as possible. If they have enough left over after that to help pay for an engine re-porting, well that'd be even better, but that would probably take funding at the multi-millions level.

Anti "Ether" Danilevski · « **Reply #12 on:** March 14, 2014, 07:53:48 am »

I think it's time to make a small announce. I've had a plans to post it as a news, but since you are here already, there we go.

We, as a Dedicated Logic, are part of the official Torque 3D Committee. This means that wea are not only developing AfterWorld, but also we take part in development of Torque 3D, with a good number of other powerful and skilled developers. We believe that together we are able to push Torque 3D to the new level of graphics quality and performance. In the next month, one of our programmers are beginning to work on the engine graphics, occlusion and rendering systems.

Why we are not moving to the other engines, like Cry or UDK? Well, moving there would mean to rewrite 90% of the code. Or maybe more. That would make no sense - instead, we would go for another game completely. But because we believe in AfterWorld, and have a really good experience with Torque, we won't abandon our game and won't give up until it looks truly amazing. And thanks to the open source code of the Torque 3D, it's absolutely possible. I'm pretty sure it won't be long until you see the difference between current rendering and effects and what you'll see in the future.

Event "Janе" Horizon · « **Reply #13 on:** March 14, 2014, 10:39:36 am »

Wow - that is what you call Dedicated

Mr. "Snuffy" Snuffleupagus · « **Reply #14 on:** March 14, 2014, 01:45:46 pm »

Yup thanks Anti for the feed back. Good to hear that your willing to keep something alive just like AW. Looking forward to see how it progress obviously this would probably require additional funding. unless a programmer is giving his/ her time for free. Will this cost be included in any kick starter program or kept seperate as it is basically development of 2 different things? one being AW and one being Torque. Naturally AW won't survive unless Torque is maintained so I can see where this can be an added cost to produce the game but already in the budget. Of course it could be none of my business lol

But thanks for the feed back none the less it has been nice having someone keeping us informed. Thanks

AfterWorld Survival Forum

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Author Topic: Game engine (Read 1246 times)

Mr. "Snuffy" Snuffleupagus

Game engine

The "Fifth" Entity

Re: Game engine

Mr. "Snuffy" Snuffleupagus

Re: Game engine

dale "dalewj" ofj

Re: Game engine

Mr. "Snuffy" Snuffleupagus

Re: Game engine

Hugo "Lossehelin" Santos

Re: Game engine

Event "Janе" Horizon

Re: Game engine

Mr. "Snuffy" Snuffleupagus

Re: Game engine

Event "Janе" Horizon

Re: Game engine

Jarod "Brickwit" McBrickerton

Re: Game engine

Mr. "Snuffy" Snuffleupagus

Re: Game engine

Jarod "Brickwit" McBrickerton

Re: Game engine

Anti "Ether" Danilevski

Re: Game engine

Event "Janе" Horizon

Re: Game engine

Mr. "Snuffy" Snuffleupagus

Re: Game engine