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Post by PapaCharlie9 on Apr 5, 2019 22:34:50 GMT
Bioware announces, at next E3: We're making DA4 on...Unreal Engine!The crowd roars...Seriously though, why in gods name, did they think this was a good idea. Their games are polar opposite of what this engine was designed for. Its what we call a bean counting decision. On paper it’s a huge cost savings to have one core technology team that makes one engine that all games can use. It’s headcount leveraging. Not to mention the savings on license fees. Plays great on Wall Street.
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Post by PapaCharlie9 on Apr 5, 2019 22:36:52 GMT
Um, isn't that what everyone has been saying? They aren't blaming Frostbite, they're saying it was the wrong engine for the game/studio in question. “Frostbite is full of razors” and comments like Frostbite is shit. So, not everyone is clearly distinguishing their criticism, no.
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Post by PapaCharlie9 on Apr 5, 2019 22:39:28 GMT
That’s true, before they knew better. So the blame for that decision isn’t solely Soderlund’s. But the decision to consolidate all EA games on Frostbite was, so even if MEA wanted to switch, it might have too late.
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Post by linksocarina on Apr 5, 2019 23:27:08 GMT
That’s true, before they knew better. So the blame for that decision isn’t solely Soderlund’s. But the decision to consolidate all EA games on Frostbite was, so even if MEA wanted to switch, it might have too late. Keep in mind it's now using code and more or less, infrastructure already developed from game to game. That will save time while satisfying EA's mandate.
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Post by slimgrin727 on Apr 5, 2019 23:33:06 GMT
That’s true, before they knew better. So the blame for that decision isn’t solely Soderlund’s. But the decision to consolidate all EA games on Frostbite was, so even if MEA wanted to switch, it might have too late. Keep in mind it's now using code and more or less, infrastructure already developed from game to game. That will save time while satisfying EA's mandate. Bull. Shit. CDPR created the tech for this in about 2 years: Flying Wild Hog created the SW series in about 2 years with brand new tech. Obsidian has created Outer worlds with UE4 in about 3 years. This idea that they need to be reliant on Frostbite is complete horseshit.
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Post by alanc9 on Apr 5, 2019 23:36:10 GMT
That response doesn't have anything to do with what linksocarina actually wrote.
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Post by slimgrin727 on Apr 6, 2019 0:27:58 GMT
That response doesn't have anything to do with what linksocarina actually wrote. He's justifying its use. I'm not. State your argument for Frostbite.
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Post by biggydx on Apr 6, 2019 0:39:59 GMT
That response doesn't have anything to do with what linksocarina actually wrote. He's justifying its use. I'm not. State your argument for Frostbite. I don't believe he's justifying its use (based on that comment). I won't assume his opinion, but his comment has more to do with the fact that, if BioWare is to continue using the engine, they'll presumably have an easier time about it by using Anthems codebase. I think most of us here are pretty aware of Frostbite being a rough engine for the studio to work with. And no, I don't support their use for the Frostbite engine; if you wish to ask. I do think that, if this is to become the norm for all future BioWare, then it would be best to continually iterate on the engine; rather than starting from scratch.
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Post by alanc9 on Apr 6, 2019 0:48:19 GMT
That response doesn't have anything to do with what linksocarina actually wrote. He's justifying its use. I'm not. State your argument for Frostbite. And now you're not responding to what I actually posted.
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Post by slimgrin727 on Apr 6, 2019 0:51:46 GMT
He's justifying its use. I'm not. State your argument for Frostbite. I don't believe he's justifying its use (based on that comment). I won't assume his opinion, but his comment has more to do with the fact that, if BioWare is to continue using the engine, they'll presumably have an easier time about it by using Anthems codebase. I think most of us here are pretty aware of Frostbite being a rough engine for the studio to work with. And no, I don't support their use for the Frostbite engine; if you wish to ask. I do think that, if this is to become the norm for all future BioWare, then it would be best to continually iterate on the engine; rather than starting from scratch. Lol. All the time with Inquisition, Andromeda, Anthem and the devs saying it's shit...and you're saying it might just work! Do you work with the engine? Does Allan the seal work with the engine?
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Post by Qui-Gon GlenN7 on Apr 6, 2019 1:45:00 GMT
Little argument with the OP, OP.
I disagree that they should make a special Biowerpls version of FB that is barely recognizably when they're done -- if they have that skill, make a new BioWare engine good enough that some CDPR-type up and comer wants to license it. About the same effort, and a better use of time.
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Post by Qui-Gon GlenN7 on Apr 6, 2019 1:48:23 GMT
That response doesn't have anything to do with what linksocarina actually wrote. Why do you consistently ignore implication that is obvious? You aren't Socrates. Seriously.
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Post by biggydx on Apr 6, 2019 3:38:49 GMT
Little argument with the OP, OP. I disagree that they should make a special Biowerpls version of FB that is barely recognizably when they're done -- if they have that skill, make a new BioWare engine good enough that some CDPR-type up and comer wants to license it. About the same effort, and a better use of time. IIRC, didn't CDPR use the engine BioWare made for Origins for The Witcher?
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Post by tatann on Apr 6, 2019 8:05:43 GMT
Little argument with the OP, OP. I disagree that they should make a special Biowerpls version of FB that is barely recognizably when they're done -- if they have that skill, make a new BioWare engine good enough that some CDPR-type up and comer wants to license it. About the same effort, and a better use of time. IIRC, didn't CDPR use the engine BioWare made for Origins for The Witcher? Yes, and if you watch The Witcher 2 making of, you'll see they prefered to dump it to make their own engine for TW2
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Post by Croatsky on Apr 6, 2019 11:58:45 GMT
Um, isn't that what everyone has been saying? They aren't blaming Frostbite, they're saying it was the wrong engine for the game/studio in question. Problem was that EA did not offer full support to BioWare to develop on Frostbite. If EA did that, then BioWare would have made proper tools for their type of games. However because EA did not do this, as well BioWare made three radically different games( Inquisition, Andromeda and Anthem) they simply had no proper foundations to use Frostbite properly.
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Post by biggydx on Apr 6, 2019 13:11:09 GMT
IIRC, didn't CDPR use the engine BioWare made for Origins for The Witcher? Yes, and if you watch The Witcher 2 making of, you'll see they prefered to dump it to make their own engine for TW2 I wonder how much time it takes to make one.
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Post by Hrungr on Apr 6, 2019 13:28:31 GMT
Yes, and if you watch The Witcher 2 making of, you'll see they prefered to dump it to make their own engine for TW2 I wonder how much time it takes to make one. It depends on what you want to do. From what I've heard, it would take a team a year or two (or more) to build something tailored towards a specific game, depending on what features they wanted, cross-platform support, etc.. And the work never really ends.
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Post by linksocarina on Apr 6, 2019 14:42:33 GMT
That response doesn't have anything to do with what linksocarina actually wrote. He's justifying its use. I'm not. State your argument for Frostbite. Your argument is irrelevent factoids though, and kind of misses the point of a publisher mandate. I am not justifying any use of an engine (it frankly doesn't matter), I'm pointing out the reality of their choice.
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Post by alanc9 on Apr 6, 2019 15:19:22 GMT
FWIW, I didn't take any position about using Frostbite either. I don't think I have the right data to do it.
Also note that "using Frostbite" can mean two different things, and we need to be clearer about which one we're talking about. The decision to use Frostbite a few years back may have been a mistake, yep. But here, now, in 2019, that doesn't matter. The costs of adapting Frostbite to DAI, ME:A, and Anthem have already been paid. That money and time doesn't come back if they switch to another engine for DA4 and onward.
If Frostbite is hard to adapt to new features -- looks like it is -- we still don't know how much of a problem that is until we know exactly which new features are supposed to be in the game.
Come to think of it, anyone wanna bet that griffons are going to show up in DA4 now that the Anthem guys already wrote code for flying?
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Post by tatann on Apr 6, 2019 16:32:38 GMT
Yes, and if you watch The Witcher 2 making of, you'll see they prefered to dump it to make their own engine for TW2 I wonder how much time it takes to make one. Well Bioware took 6 years to put out Andromeda and Anthem, so I'd say... let's cryo ourselves and if they can do it in 600 years ^^
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Post by Kappa Neko on Apr 6, 2019 16:42:36 GMT
As an outsider, I don't quite understand why Bioware isn't getting any better at using Frostbite after they said they've already had to make their own plugins for DAI. Where did all this work go? Shouldn't each new game be based on that code and be easier to program?
Is just Bioware that bad at using Frostbite that six years wasn't enough to come up with gameplay ideas that are feasible?
Are other EA studios struggling this much? Do we know? Bioware can't be the only devs who do third person camera. I don't buy any other EA games so I have no comparison at hand and no experience with what Frostbite done right actually looks like.
As far as I'm concerned DAI was their best Frostbite game. The faces looked good. Facial animations were OK. Creepy smiles have been a thing since forever in their games. But DAI looked good. It looked damn good. Animations were fine. The maps were stunning, even if sterile.
So from a technical point of view one would think they got Frostbite figured out enough to make a good game. How chaotic the figuring out process was is a different matter. But DAI ended up the least buggy of the three Frostbite games.
So please, anybody explain to me how MORE experience with the engine makes their games worse from a technical point of view? I'm aware combat differs from DAI and MEA and Anthem. So naturally they had more figuring out to do. Something doesn't add up here for me...
So my guess is that the engine is actually the least of their problems. They need to get out of the idea phase quicker and then actually devote a lot of time to researching how to make their worlds feel organic.
You don't need to reinvent the wheel to makes great game. Study your goddamn competition and learn from them. Don't work in a bubble of "we'll do SOME kind of super awesome new thing". That's bound to fail.
Not looking at Destiny was insanity. Decide on what type of game you want to do and try do it as well or better. Bioware keeps making open worlds that suck. They haven't learned a thing imo. But then again MEA and Anthem were such a mess that there was no time to improve I guess.
This is why I keep saying go make smaller games again. It's absolutely fine to do small maps and corridor shooters again even in 2019 if this is what you know how to do well.
If you want to branch out, not do an RPG, fine. That's OK. But then please hire people who have experience with that. You can't afford to be bad at coding for Frosbite and also learn how to do a looter shooter from scratch and then also ignore your other office who actually has experience with online stuff because somehow you think you can do it all by yourselves because you have Bioware magic that always saves the day.
So yeah, it's not just the engine.
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Post by alanc9 on Apr 6, 2019 21:13:57 GMT
Remember, DAI hid a lot of facial animations by leaving the conversations zoomed out.
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Post by PapaCharlie9 on Apr 7, 2019 1:18:55 GMT
Little argument with the OP, OP. I disagree that they should make a special Biowerpls version of FB that is barely recognizably when they're done -- if they have that skill, make a new BioWare engine good enough that some CDPR-type up and comer wants to license it. About the same effort, and a better use of time. If the Soderlund mandate that all must use FB is lifted now that he's gone, that would be fine. It takes years to write a new engine from scratch, though.
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Post by andydandymandy on Apr 7, 2019 3:52:58 GMT
Is there a way for EA to create a new version of the Frostbite engine, one that is designed to have all the cool stuff while also being more intuitive, functional, and better documented so the devs could use it easier?
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Post by alanc9 on Apr 7, 2019 5:04:16 GMT
That response doesn't have anything to do with what linksocarina actually wrote. Why do you consistently ignore implication that is obvious? You aren't Socrates. Seriously. *shrugs* Never claimed to be. The problem is that the implication simply didn't work. linksocarina wasn't posting what slimgrin thought he was posting, and didn't believe what slimgrin thought he believed. It's OK to go after someone's unexpressed implicit position -- I do this all the time myself-- but when you get it wrong it's just a stupid non sequitur Edit: was it bad form for me to have not gotten into the details there? I didn't think it was necessary. I was just there to point out that the post didn't work, not to sort its problems out. As for your general question, a lot of the time I really don't get what someone's trying to imply. This used to happen over on the old politics thread a lot. Some people have implicit assumptions that are so crazy I can't really follow them. (Come to think of it, this happened not a few times with slimgrin.) Other times, I do know what the crazy assumptions are, but since they're crazy, I don't pretend to believe that they exist. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that I pretend that I don't believe other people believe such nonsense.
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