Any plans to upgrade the game engine?

[jedip_enguin]

5/10 - Good flammable subject matter, could have used better execution.

 

Must try harder.

[Urael]

01010111 01101111 01110111 00101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01101011 01101001 01100100 01100100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00101100 00100000 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01101010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01100001 01100010 01101100 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01100100 00101111 01110111 01110010 01101001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01101001 01110100

 

LoL. Rise of "the machines".

[phattisimo]

will we ever see multiplayer vehicular combat with THIS engine as is? go search....lemme know when you find something...can it multithread yet?...waiting...can the stuttering be fixed?...wai...you see where i'm going. re-watch ep 117 if you haven't already, the hints about the engine are all there...

[Glorthox]

That's like asking them to fix all the outstanding bugs. It won't ever get done because it truly does fall on deaf ears. Also if the cartel market was to crash they would be all over it and that is how lame they have become...

[Alec_Fortescue]

I don't spek binary

[Marmerus]

Just wait till launch of the GTX 780 and we'll all be playing warzones in 100+, raids in 100+ and the fleet in 180+. The GTX 680 already pulls of 60+, 60+ and 100+ in those areas anyway.

 

Hardware resolves a lot of performance issues.

Only if you play with low resolution. I play with 3 screens at 5760x1080 and 3xGTX680 can't take the heat. Imagine when GTX 780 is out and we have moved on from 1080p to 4k screens. Then the poor game engine is going to kick 3x GTX 780 in the nuts on a single monitor.

 

Besides it is not the graphics cards that is the bottleneck. It is the CPU.

[Dein_Cathair]

I don't spek binary

It's actually not hard. I was writing in assembly in the early 80's, it actually comes easily to me being taught that way in HS.

A good programmer who can affect change needs to know front end,( client) back end (server) and actual hardware. Many of the best coders know a ton about hardware and how to modify it to make things work.

 

 

 

01001000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110011 01101111 01101111 01110000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110011 01110000 01100001 01110010 01101011 01101100 01111001 00100000 01100100 01100001 01111001 00100001 LOL

[AshlaBoga]

Why does the engine lag so much anyway?

 

Is there a specific feature that they could focus on?

Edited December 28, 2012 by AshlaBoga

[Roalmo]

Why does the engine lag so much anyway?

 

Is there a specific feature that they could focus on?

 

Well there is.

 

But, it's my belief/opinion, whatever, that they fired the only coder that knew anything about this bastardized version of the so-called "Hero engine". The low level coders left are shooting in the dark.

[GaiusLivius]

Well there is.

 

But, it's my belief/opinion, whatever, that they fired the only coder that knew anything about this bastardized version of the so-called "Hero engine". The low level coders left are shooting in the dark.

 

Spot on.

[AshlaBoga]

Spot on.

 

That's disturbing if true.

 

They need to rehire that guy ASAP.

[Fornix]

Only if you play with low resolution. I play with 3 screens at 5760x1080 and 3xGTX680 can't take the heat. Imagine when GTX 780 is out and we have moved on from 1080p to 4k screens. Then the poor game engine is going to kick 3x GTX 780 in the nuts on a single monitor.

 

Besides it is not the graphics cards that is the bottleneck. It is the CPU.

 

Triple screens however is as of yet rare, and 4k screens aren't around the corner as of yet. The first 4K TV sets are only just hitting the market at prices of around the 10k or higher mark. For a PC monitor we probably won't see them turn mainstream for another 5 years or so, primarily as it's hardly needed to see a difference. Very few people can still distinguish pixels at 1920x1080 on ~24" screens or less.

 

As for the CPU being the bottleneck, meh. In occurences where my FPS drops it turns red, indicating GPU bound according to previous yellow posts.

 

So well yeh, CPU wise ~100 FPS currently is well possible. Sure the GTX 780 by itself may not directly add a lot to that, but CPU wise people will also upgrade.

 

 

 

Point of the message wasn't so much that a single hardware upgrade will sort it all, but more the fact that as MMO's age performance improves naturally as player hardware simply upgrades. So far just about every MMO I've played launch has been plagued by people complaining about performance, and whilst 3 ~ 4 years later most of those complaints are gone, it's not primarily due to engine upgrades. As when you run it on the same 6 year old system you tried to play it on back then, it still runs terrible.

[Roalmo]

 

Point of the message :.... As when you run it on the same 6 year old system you tried to play it on back then, it still runs terrible.

 

Don't frequent the forum much do you? Lot of the machines with problems aren't 6 years old or even 4.

 

Cool EA cover story tho.. it's the computer, err.. the other programs on the computer, err.. the ISP, er.. ANYTHING BUT THE GAME.

 

But, was a well polished post, even if a tad misleading. "A" for effort old chap.

[Marmerus]

Triple screens however is as of yet rare, and 4k screens aren't around the corner as of yet. The first 4K TV sets are only just hitting the market at prices of around the 10k or higher mark. For a PC monitor we probably won't see them turn mainstream for another 5 years or so, primarily as it's hardly needed to see a difference. Very few people can still distinguish pixels at 1920x1080 on ~24" screens or less.

 

As for the CPU being the bottleneck, meh. In occurences where my FPS drops it turns red, indicating GPU bound according to previous yellow posts.

 

So well yeh, CPU wise ~100 FPS currently is well possible. Sure the GTX 780 by itself may not directly add a lot to that, but CPU wise people will also upgrade.

 

 

 

Point of the message wasn't so much that a single hardware upgrade will sort it all, but more the fact that as MMO's age performance improves naturally as player hardware simply upgrades. So far just about every MMO I've played launch has been plagued by people complaining about performance, and whilst 3 ~ 4 years later most of those complaints are gone, it's not primarily due to engine upgrades. As when you run it on the same 6 year old system you tried to play it on back then, it still runs terrible.

tripple screens is rare.

 

4k is around the corner and will not take 5 years. Resolutions has been standing still the last couple of years but the demand of higher resolutions has started pushing the development really fast. Just look at cellphones having 1080p resolutions now and tablets having better resolutions than TVs.

 

You don't need to be able to count pixels on a screen to see improvement in image quality. When you CAN count pixels it is a big sign you have way to low resolution and that you should increase it a lot.

[Asuka]

Given that they have no interest in fixing the purely cosmetic bugs (people dieing standing up, light sabres through the skull, unify colors, etc....) what are the chances they'll actually fix the real stuff that's broken? One of the many reasons why I cancelled my sub. I really want this game to be good. Really I do.

 

I find the dying standing up amusing however on the other hand the lit lightsaber dangling on the hip is a bit annoying but minor stuff.

[Chiramu]

Now OP you need to ask yourself the question; how hard will it be to change a game engine once the game has already been published?

 

If you can change the game engine once the game is established within this current engine, then send your work over to Bioware and see if they change it.

[Rogoo]

Now OP you need to ask yourself the question; how hard will it be to change a game engine once the game has already been published?

 

If you can change the game engine once the game is established within this current engine, then send your work over to Bioware and see if they change it.

 

What kind of silly response is that ?

[Nemmar]

There are looking at it and have said so not so long ago , but it is way off.

 

Cheers,

 

BadOrb.

 

Not exactly.

 

 

The engine is beeing optimised. It takes time and will be deployed slowly during diverse patches. The patch that should make the most noticeable difference will come with the relaunch of Illum (but there will be more on later patches), cause its needed to run large scale battles.

This was revealed by Dallas Dickensen in a meeting of Devs with the players around the launch of F2P.

Edited December 28, 2012 by Nemmar

[Nemmar]

Well there is.

 

But, it's my belief/opinion, whatever, that they fired the only coder that knew anything about this bastardized version of the so-called "Hero engine". The low level coders left are shooting in the dark.

 

Really, why do you make stuff up? You re literally talking out of your rear end as you have no info to base that upon.

 

Why on earth would they fire the good programmers and leave the bad? Has the game not gotten better? Did you see lots of terrible bugs last patch?

 

Cmon... can people stop blindly hating? It got old many months ago.

 

Really, all this kind of thread does is atract the trolls that will make up some bastardized lies to continue their rampage.

Edited December 28, 2012 by Nemmar

[Rogoo]

Not exactly.

 

 

The engine is beeing optimised. It takes time and will be deployed slowly during diverse patches. The patch that should make the most noticeable different will come with the relaunch of Illum, cause its needed to run large scale battles.

This was revealed by Dallas Dickensen in a meeting with the players around the launch of F2P.

 

So instead of getting 10 frames per second, we will get 15 frames per second.

 

MASSIVE

 

Also, it's being optimized by incompetent people. You know, the same guys that said 1.4 will bring "significant performance increase for gamers with SLI / Crossfire".

 

We all know how it turned out. FOUR months later, I still can't use my second GPU.

 

That's how good they are at "fixing" the engine.

Edited December 28, 2012 by Rogoo

[Dein_Cathair]

Now OP you need to ask yourself the question; how hard will it be to change a game engine once the game has already been published?

 

If you can change the game engine once the game is established within this current engine, then send your work over to Bioware and see if they change it.

 

Surprise! heroengine 2!

 

http://www.heroengine.com/2012/11/heroengine-2-empowers-indie-game-developers%e2%80%99-to-focus-on-creativity/

 

Kinda old news but news to you

 

Let the heroengine 2 intragration / implementation threads begin!

Edited December 28, 2012 by Dein_Cathair

[Divona]

When company plans to create MMO one has to look 3 things to start with:

1. "Borrow" game engine from other company who will aid as much they can to fit for needs

2. "Buy" game engine rights to modify it however MMO company pleases.

3. Build own engine from scratch.

 

Now if you know Bioware went with second option and that ment heavily modified themself game engine that was not built for that massive project back then. Even the detailed documentation wasnt ready. There has been TONS of articles and quotes that Hero engine developers said themself that their engine wasnt ready for that massive project back then when Bioware started. It was easy to make MMO (all the structures and landscape ect.) but in terms of optimization it never got to AAA MMO standard. It could be excusable if the engine was new at year 2011 but it wasnt. Hero engine 1 was as old as 4-5 years when Biwoware got hands on it.

 

So to anser your question OP, yes Bioware has to upgrade game engine at some point or they will be left in dust in upcoming years compared to other MMO's or new ones coming out next year. Can this engine be "optimized" - i doubt it as all the attempts we seen so far have been total let down, thats the easiest way to put it.

There are too many flaws with engine to fully be ready to support MASSIVE scale combat and interactions for time being.

Edited December 29, 2012 by Divona

[Fornix]

Don't frequent the forum much do you? Lot of the machines with problems aren't 6 years old or even 4.

 

Cool EA cover story tho.. it's the computer, err.. the other programs on the computer, err.. the ISP, er.. ANYTHING BUT THE GAME.

 

But, was a well polished post, even if a tad misleading. "A" for effort old chap.

 

If a title is released 4 years ago, and a computer is 4 - 6 years old at that point, it makes it only a 0 - 2 year old system at launch.

 

tripple screens is rare.

 

4k is around the corner and will not take 5 years. Resolutions has been standing still the last couple of years but the demand of higher resolutions has started pushing the development really fast. Just look at cellphones having 1080p resolutions now and tablets having better resolutions than TVs.

 

You don't need to be able to count pixels on a screen to see improvement in image quality. When you CAN count pixels it is a big sign you have way to low resolution and that you should increase it a lot.

 

Development is far from pushing fast, it's only just started. There's as of yet no start of mass production 4k PC monitors, and with that lacking, there's going to be no mass adoption of those monitors as prices are going to remain insane.

 

So you're first going to have to deal with the fact that even if design of a 4K PC monitor for the consumer market starts now, it'll most probably come with a price tag at least 5 times the equivalent of a 1080p monitor. Then you're going to have to go through the issue of people not seeing the need to upgrade as they can't see the difference anyway, and with that, there being no need for them to upgrade. Meaning, little demand, little reason for producers to massively jump on to it and as a result prices remain up.

 

 

In comparisson, SSD drives have been around for decades, initially priceless, however around 2004 the first indications of mass production started popping up. Around 2006 Samsung was one of the first ones to introduce their 32GB flash based SSD drives, for whopping prices of around 600 ~ 800 bucks a piece. Whilst meanwhile 1TB HDD's were hitting the market, going for rock bottom pricing.

 

Now 6 years later, SSD's have become more affordable, however, they're still not quite mainstream yet. Adoption rates have only just started increasing well over the last 2 - 3 years as system builders have started incorporating them in newer model notebooks and lately desktop PC's.

 

And the SSD is actually something which gives a performance benefit.

 

Those 4K screens on the other hand, barely offer any advantage. Simply due to the fact that the human eye cant distinguish the distance between the pixels anymore after a certain threshold. This threshold varies from person to person, meaning for some there's still room for more (in particular younger generations), however for a big portion of people there's nothing to be gained.

 

Cell phones and tablets using the same 1080p resolution is primarily due to there still being a benefit in there, as whilst many users have their desktop monitors at around 40 ~ 60 cm removed from the eyes they keep their cell phones and tablets closer. However, the moments you keep your cell phone at similar distance, the difference between 720p and 1080p is hardly distinguishable.

 

What quickly is forgotten is that with newer screens resolution is often not the only thing improved, but rather contrast has greatly increased, color vibrancy is better, etc. Even with the same resolution, this gives a much more vivid, sharper image.

[Rogoo]

It is time for some famous James Ohlen quotes:

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-01-10-bioware-most-people-arent-having-swtor-performance-issues

 

And then they wonder why their reputation went down the drain.

[sstanks]

I did not mean to give the wrong impression. I agree with you 110%. But the sad truth is that after a year plus and gosh knows how many requests for improvement over that time, nothing has happened.

 

The problems at launch are still there and no number of unsubs as a result seems to make a difference.

 

Perhaps the engine is unfixable without a major rewrite and considering the cost of that we will never see things get better.

 

PS - This post was written during the period spanning when I hit the force leap button and my character actually jumped.

except they have done a lot to optimize the game engine. Its far from truely optimized but look at how much better it runs now compared to a year ago.

 

These things take time. Do you think WoW's engine was perfect when it launched? Hell no it wasn't even close to decent until Burning Crusade came out.

 

We are talking about BILLIONS of lines of code it takes time. If you can do it faster then by all means get to it.