How is the Development Team going to solve...
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The issue that by 2021 when the game has it’s Full Release the Game Engine most likely will be obsolete since the advancement in graphics and PCs are going so fast that in 3 years most likely the game will feel like your playing Old School Everquest. Might have FPS and lagging issues as well, hopefully they have a plan for this.
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I do not agree with your assignment, I think base on game from the past d3 and Poe and such... they still have OK visiblty.
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Isn't chasing the newest engine (and scrapping all game dev there-to-for due to engine incompatibility) what put several games into development hell, dragging out the cycle for years or even decades? Think of Duke Nukem: Forever, among others, along with a raft of never released vaporware?
I am happily able to play PoE, a game released 5 years ago, despite that technical advancement, and I don't see how a game with similar graphical needs, such as this one, will suffer unduly from it.
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I assume the game is being developed and tested on very expensive gaming rigs. By the time the game releases it should be playable on less expensive gaming rigs. Game engines aren't obsolete that fast, all games are years in development. I've seen games that look a lot better a few years before release compared to how they look at release, because the game got toned down to run on more machines.
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People are still playing WoW; a 14 year old game. People are still playing Eve Online another 10+ year old game.
Hardware always moves faster than software. Look at the newest DX version vs what software is using.
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Fractured has an advantage that it will give players "the old school MMORPG feel to it" and players are here because they want that. So Fractured does not need to include "super ultra 16-D multi laser sun translucence support that will come with DirectX 16".
Isometric MMORPG only needs "so much" in graphics department for it to be wonderful. Graphics that we have seen in videos that already exist, are already awesome, and they will be more than good for decades to come, for this type of game.
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@gothix said in How is the Development Team going to solve...:
Fractured has an advantage that it will give players "the old school MMORPG feel to it" and players are here because they want that. So Fractured does not need to include "super ultra 16-D multi laser sun translucence support that will come with DirectX 16".
I like that description!
and you forgot Ray Tracing!
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That is how games have been developed since... well, since Pong was the height of computer games. Games take 5-8 years on average (for the bigger titles) and have since the 90s at least.
There's not a game out there being developed on RTX 3080Ti (a very few might be aiming for 2050) right now... so should that be out and about for development (games will still aim for 1080 at that point, likely, as they love to maximize playerbase) it will be several years before the big graphics hit in development.
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I don't really see this as an issue to be solved. Most of us, myself included, are not going to have tens of thousands of PC equipment to enable us to run whatever super cool gadget tech that just came out. Heck I still play games from years ago just because I like them and I enjoy them.
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About EVE-Online, they did a whole overhaul of the game engine and went from 32 bit to 64 bit.
So it's not the same engine that was running the game 10 years ago.
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@evolgrinz
You don’t need a whole engine overhaul for that.
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Just going to throw in my weight with the others, in that I just don't see this being a massive problem.
I think that any engine upgrades - if DS do in fact do any - will come down to something other than the need to be on the newest, shiniest graphics.
For example, if SpatialOS grandfathered out an whatever version of Unity Fractured winds up being built on? That would be a huge deal... And depending on expectations set between DS and SpatialOS, that alone might be enough of a justification for regular engine upgrades to make sure they gap between the current version and the latest SpatialOS supported version never gets too large.
Because it turns out you can accrue Technical Debt even if you don't touch anything! In the event that the market moves forwards multiple versions you can lose access to formerly viable upgrade pathways, and then when all of a sudden you have to upgrade you're stuck on a smelly waterway without a propulsion device. What fun! (my company has going through dealing with that very problem for the last 18 months and we're still not done...)
So there may still be really good reasons for DS to keep Fractured up to date on current or semi-current builds of Unity. I just don't think that being on the latest version on release simply for the sake of being on the latest version on release is a powerful enough issue that it's worth the time and effort to solve.
If the engine is a year or two out of date on release, I'm not personally going to be too fussed. If anything that might even be a plus given not every system may be able to run the bleeding-edge version or it might still be a bit buggy. But a version that's a few years old should have had time to propagate around the marketplace and should have had most of the most obvious bugs and issues killed off by then.
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@kairosval
we still have software designed for single core cpu's. dual core have been out for 15 years now. many mmos are bottle necked at the cpu and hardly use the gpu so that the client can work on potato systems.
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@warlunhardt said in How is the Development Team going to solve...:
The issue that by 2021 when the game has it’s Full Release the Game Engine most likely will be obsolete since the advancement in graphics and PCs are going so fast that in 3 years most likely the game will feel like your playing Old School Everquest. Might have FPS and lagging issues as well, hopefully they have a plan for this.
Very simple - by putting priority on the game's gameplay features instead of visuals. Visuals must be "ok", not better, nor worse. This way it will be possible to run the game on slow machines, and will lure more players overall.
Talking about graphics, correct me if I'm wrong, but Crysis came out in 2007 and it's still the best game graphics-wise, so if there was any progress in the last 11~ years - it's not noticable, which brings us to the conlusion that gameplay features are more important than high-end visuals, which is anknowledged both by large-AAA-making companies, and small companies alike.
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@dcccxix within a certain range, and aesthetic, yeah. (not arguing, I fully agree - I'm just refining) - I mean, TF2's graphics were middling when they came out, and are seen as semi-primitive now - but no one cares because the entire mess is drawn in a very cartoonish style, which fits the game very well, and it's all good.
The latest Fallout and Skyrim, conversely, have exceptionally better graphics, but were considered sub-par compared to other first person experiences because they were trying to be realistic and that occassionally failed in various ways.
In this case, with this game, graphics aren't anywhere near the top of the list. strictly speaking, you can get away with 8 direction sprites if you have to, initially, and there won't be too much hew and cry unless they stay to the actual release
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Doesn't have to be the best engine to have a good game. Not everything is purely about graphics my man!
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One problem people have is confusing art style and polygon count (graphics).
I’d take cartoon style because it looks better over a longer period of time.
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Good graphics alone doesn't make a good game by itself. If there is crap gameplay, and little content to do, then the game is not going to be a success.
I'd rather play a game that has great story, good gameplay and a lot to do while having less pretty graphics.
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@evolgrinz
i agree, Minecraft is a good example of horrible graphics but near infinite gameplay.
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@jetah
Exactly. There is a reason retro games are getting popular.
They didn't have graphic capabilities like they have now, so it's all based on gameplay.
Best example would be Tetris, what is still a lot of fun to play.
