Eric: Will Onslaught bring any Gfx Engine Efficiency Improvements? Vulkan support?

[ZionHalcyon]

Even if not, many people have complained about the efficiency of the Hero Engine for quite some time.

 

I know a pure graphical upgrade like some want is not likely to happen.

 

But can you tell us if there are any plans to add support to some newer technologies to help the game run better?

 

Given the current state of hardware, you should try to integrate 3 key pieces of technology into the engine - DX12 support, Vulkan Support, and multi-core support on processors. There have always been performance issues with the game, and modernizing it may help. Note this is not something I would put on a firm timetable, but just have a team working on it, and then it is ready when it is ready. We already know some improvements to the game have already been worked on thanks to the "Under the Hood" article back in March. Is it possible to do a pass on the engine to get it to at least support modern hardware, and also take advantage of all the multi-core processing that is out there now, especially cheap?

 

Also, is it possible for game cohesiveness to do a pass on cutscenes pre-kotfe? Right now, the Cutscenes from the beginning of the game through Ziost feel disjointed from the cutscenes from KotFE, on. At a bare minimum, Introduce the KotFE style splash chapter titles over the cutscenes to create a better sense of congruity. If possible, I would up the quality of those cutscenes to KOTFE standards, even if it means creating better models. The vanilla game could use that love, and it would help the game feel less disjointed. But I think that Chapter Splash to tie everything together is a must...

[lightSaberAddiCt]

My bet, would be a probably not...to a hell no!

There hasn't been a graphic update since launch I believe, and they have new inexperienced devs on this game now, that barely can make content without it being bug ridden, or glitchy as hell. So I would probably say I doubt it, but we can hope for the best.

[ZionHalcyon]

My bet, would be a probably not...to a hell no!

There hasn't been a graphic update since launch I believe, and they have new inexperienced devs on this game now, that barely can make content without it being bug ridden, or glitchy as hell. So I would probably say I doubt it, but we can hope for the best.

 

That would be incorrect. If you check their March article regarding under the hood, they have made improvements to the engine. It's why I'm asking about this.

[lightSaberAddiCt]

That would be incorrect. If you check their March article regarding under the hood, they have made improvements to the engine. It's why I'm asking about this.

 

Sorry don't usually spend time on their cantina posts, or blog posts, if they are, then that would be nice for a change.

[KoriVash]

That would be incorrect. If you check their March article regarding under the hood, they have made improvements to the engine. It's why I'm asking about this.

 

Improvements?????

 

That's probably why my character seems to be running though water all the time, so slow it stopping me doing a lot of stuff in game. It was a round March I started having the issue.

 

Right some improvement!

 

Not everyone has a top of the line gaming computer. I wonder how many just will no longer be able to play at all with a new engine. I am almost at that point now.

Edited July 9, 2019 by KoriVash

[lightSaberAddiCt]

Improvements?????

 

That's probably why my character seems to be running though water all the time, so slow it stopping me doing a lot of stuff in game. It was a round March I started having the issue.

 

Right some improvement!

 

Not everyone has a top of the line gaming computer. I wonder how many just will no longer be able to play at all with a new engine. I am almost at that point now.

 

I don't think if they did add improvements it would negatively affect people who don't have top of the line boxes. You still have the option to choose the quality of graphics in the preferences. If they did upgrade, people with better PCs could just dial it up, and people with older PCs or video cards could just stay the same.

[MadDutchman]

They make improvements quite regularly actually, they are just typically quite small and incremental.

 

DX12 is an unlikely maybe. Vulkan is near 100% no chance.

[ZionHalcyon]

I don't think if they did add improvements it would negatively affect people who don't have top of the line boxes. You still have the option to choose the quality of graphics in the preferences. If they did upgrade, people with better PCs could just dial it up, and people with older PCs or video cards could just stay the same.

 

Exactly.

[ZionHalcyon]

They make improvements quite regularly actually, they are just typically quite small and incremental.

 

DX12 is an unlikely maybe. Vulkan is near 100% no chance.

 

I would agree in a pre Keith regime.

 

However, I am noticing some interesting things and figure and I would put it out there since Keith seems really receptive to the fans and able to deliver.

[MadDutchman]

I would agree in a pre Keith regime.

 

However, I am noticing some interesting things and figure and I would put it out there since Keith seems really receptive to the fans and able to deliver.

 

Those odds do factor Keith in. Would have been no chance at all otherwise.

 

Onslaught will be really telling I think of just how far they are willing/able to go on the technical front. The new preview window, pseudo-dynamic weather on Ossus and upcoming tacticals are all nice examples of technical upgrades, however they are fairly small in scope. Doing something drastic like swapping out the renderer is another bag of cats entirely.

[Chelan]

Do not trust to hope; it has forsaken these lands.

 

I would be pleasantly surprised if further optimizations would ever to occur. But as of now I believe that what you see with SWTOR is what you're going to get for a very long time. Heck, it's possible they would break more things than fix in the future.

 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Nightblazer]

I would not expect major graphical, engine or support changes with Onslaught. While possible I highly doubt that will happen. Maybe some minor improvements here and there but something like Vulkan I'd say 99% chance of it not happening. Edited July 9, 2019 by Nightblazer

[Telaan]

Improvements?????

 

That's probably why my character seems to be running though water all the time, so slow it stopping me doing a lot of stuff in game. It was a round March I started having the issue.

 

Right some improvement!

 

Not everyone has a top of the line gaming computer. I wonder how many just will no longer be able to play at all with a new engine. I am almost at that point now.

 

I can run this game on max graphics with a mid level gaming PC I built before this game even launched. No joke... It doesn’t take a $5000 rig to run; but it does require more than a Dell laptop designed to run word 97.

[Delani]

Improvements?????

 

That's probably why my character seems to be running though water all the time, so slow it stopping me doing a lot of stuff in game. It was a round March I started having the issue.

 

Right some improvement!

 

Not everyone has a top of the line gaming computer. I wonder how many just will no longer be able to play at all with a new engine. I am almost at that point now.

 

Thats not other peoples fault, its 2019 you can get a 400 gaming PC that can run this game on high settings

[Delani]

Those odds do factor Keith in. Would have been no chance at all otherwise.

 

Onslaught will be really telling I think of just how far they are willing/able to go on the technical front. The new preview window, pseudo-dynamic weather on Ossus and upcoming tacticals are all nice examples of technical upgrades, however they are fairly small in scope. Doing something drastic like swapping out the renderer is another bag of cats entirely.

 

Yea, 6.0 is the first expansion under Keiths reign and I beleive he will deliver as well. I think there is still some info about 6.0 that the players/fans do not know about also.

[Celise]

Even if not, many people have complained about the efficiency of the Hero Engine for quite some time.

 

I know a pure graphical upgrade like some want is not likely to happen.

 

But can you tell us if there are any plans to add support to some newer technologies to help the game run better?

 

Given the current state of hardware, you should try to integrate 3 key pieces of technology into the engine - DX12 support, Vulkan Support, and multi-core support on processors. There have always been performance issues with the game, and modernizing it may help. Note this is not something I would put on a firm timetable, but just have a team working on it, and then it is ready when it is ready. We already know some improvements to the game have already been worked on thanks to the "Under the Hood" article back in March. Is it possible to do a pass on the engine to get it to at least support modern hardware, and also take advantage of all the multi-core processing that is out there now, especially cheap?

 

Also, is it possible for game cohesiveness to do a pass on cutscenes pre-kotfe? Right now, the Cutscenes from the beginning of the game through Ziost feel disjointed from the cutscenes from KotFE, on. At a bare minimum, Introduce the KotFE style splash chapter titles over the cutscenes to create a better sense of congruity. If possible, I would up the quality of those cutscenes to KOTFE standards, even if it means creating better models. The vanilla game could use that love, and it would help the game feel less disjointed. But I think that Chapter Splash to tie everything together is a must...

 

i doubt an engine built in 2004 is capable of running anything significantly advanced like Vulkan let alone dx12 and CPU multi-thread support, that is besides the point, it would mean getting into the engine and recoding it to work with those systems and that would take a lot of man-power, resources and time to do for a game which is essentially not that well supported or looked after by EA.

 

I can't see it ever happening.

[Telaan]

i doubt an engine built in 2004 is capable of running anything significantly advanced like Vulkan let alone dx12 and CPU multi-thread support, that is besides the point, it would mean getting into the engine and recoding it to work with those systems and that would take a lot of man-power, resources and time to do for a game which is essentially not that well supported or looked after by EA.

 

I can't see it ever happening.

 

But it should.

[BlueWanderer]

But it should.

 

Imagine the billions of bugs if they changed out core engine stuff and didn't rewrite all the spaghetti code that they've made to work around issues with the original engine.

 

Just look at the problems they introduced when they decided to make a percentage of exp earned apply to conquest too... There'd be thousands of issues like that with a significant change to underlying graphics/threading/etc.

[Telaan]

Imagine the billions of bugs if they changed out core engine stuff and didn't rewrite all the spaghetti code that they've made to work around issues with the original engine.

 

Just look at the problems they introduced when they decided to make a percentage of exp earned apply to conquest too... There'd be thousands of issues like that with a significant change to underlying graphics/threading/etc.

 

If LOTRO can do it, so can this game with the financial backing of EA.

[Toraak]

If LOTRO can do it, so can this game with the financial backing of EA.

 

You said the one thing which will make sure it doesn't happen. With the financial backing of EA. EA wouldn't spend extra $, so I wouldn't count on that.

Edited July 9, 2019 by Toraak

[ZionHalcyon]

i doubt an engine built in 2004 is capable of running anything significantly advanced like Vulkan let alone dx12 and CPU multi-thread support, that is besides the point, it would mean getting into the engine and recoding it to work with those systems and that would take a lot of man-power, resources and time to do for a game which is essentially not that well supported or looked after by EA.

 

I can't see it ever happening.

 

I don't think you understand what Vulkan is.

 

Thing is, I look and games are doing these kinds of updates more frequently now. Developers who launch games in DX12 add Vulkan support later. Path of Exile last year upgraded from DX9 to DX 11, and confirmed they are working on both Vulkan and DX12 implementation. And its a F2P game.

 

DX12 and Vulkan are just ways for the game as it is to interface with graphics cards. However, because these are more modern APIs, they can leverage different techniques to accomplish how the game processes and renders, which can in turn lead to performance gains. It would take a review of how the game is currently set to interact with graphics cards, and a team to wade through and see about how they can optimize it.

 

The thing is, so long as they have a base laid down, they can also piecemeal it here and there.

 

Granted, the game is more CPU intensive than GPU intensive, but they can tweak that as well.

 

I think the time invested would be well worth the potential performance boost, that would allow players to play a less-stuttering game at higher resolutions.

[Telaan]

You said the one thing which will make sure it doesn't happen. With the financial backing of EA. EA wouldn't spend extra $, so I wouldn't count on that.

 

I know. Tragic. Lol

[JediQuaker]

Will Onslaught bring any Gfx Engine Efficiency Improvements? Vulkan support?.

The Graphics engine is already fairly efficient. You can run this game at quite high graphics settings with even just a mid-range graphics card.

The main problem with the current engine is CPU efficiency, and that's not apt to change without a complete replacement of the game engine. For various reasons, this is not likely to happen with SWTOR - however if SW (in general) should suddenly surge in popularity (it has been waning due to the mess they've made with the latest trilogy) you could see a new SWTOR2 or maybe some sort of SWTNG (the Next Gen) using a new engine. (It might need to be Next Gen because the current SW galaxy only has 2 Sith - but a Next Gen could go back to having Sith versus Jedi by having more Sith.)

The expense and technicalities of adding DX12 or Vulkan support would basically mean it aint gonna happen to SWTOR.

 

And before anyone asks, no, SWTOR's current engine is not going to get more multithreaded. It will always need fast single-core performance. Luckily, Intel CPUs and the new Ryzens are up to the task.

[JediQuaker]

I wonder how many just will no longer be able to play at all with a new engine. I am almost at that point now.

You've got that backwards. A new, more efficient and multi-threaded engine would allow more people to play with lesser hardware.

[ZionHalcyon]

The Graphics engine is already fairly efficient. You can run this game at quite high graphics settings with even just a mid-range graphics card.

The main problem with the current engine is CPU efficiency, and that's not apt to change without a complete replacement of the game engine. For various reasons, this is not likely to happen with SWTOR - however if SW (in general) should suddenly surge in popularity (it has been waning due to the mess they've made with the latest trilogy) you could see a new SWTOR2 or maybe some sort of SWTNG (the Next Gen) using a new engine. (It might need to be Next Gen because the current SW galaxy only has 2 Sith - but a Next Gen could go back to having Sith versus Jedi by having more Sith.)

The expense and technicalities of adding DX12 or Vulkan support would basically mean it aint gonna happen to SWTOR.

 

And before anyone asks, no, SWTOR's current engine is not going to get more multithreaded. It will always need fast single-core performance. Luckily, Intel CPUs and the new Ryzens are up to the task.

 

 

I don't disagree with your sentiment, but from a technical standpoint, they could decide to make some engine tweaks and improve multi-threading, or make the game and engine a little more GPU dependent.

 

I did find something interesting - even though we consider this game to have the hero engine as its base, and has been heavily modified, someone was claiming that the engine only borrowed some code from the beta of hero engine, and that the engine for the most part is a wholly BioWare creation.

 

As such, I think the very real reason we will never see these kinds of improvements if they never come, is because with all the turnover the team has had, they may not want to risk messing with some of the code unless they absolutely have to, as I'd imagine behind the scenes the game is put together with the coding equivalent of scotch tape and bubblegum (which is why it runs like it does), and if they go to do one thing, other weird things end up breaking.