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GDC - James Ohlen - Voiceovers didn't drive the cost up, it was getting the engine to work right tha

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  • TheLizardbonesTheLizardbones Member CommonPosts: 10,910


    Originally posted by Lord.Bachus
    Originally posted by simplius so,,when the patient dies, because the doctor tried to do surgery with a thermometer, we arrest the thermometer? no, the very FIRST rule of any craftsman, is choosing the right tool for the job specially on a big budget project like this  
    Well, thats the problem... there arent any other tools available,,,

    Sure there are tools, but then those are not really fit for the job either, like opening a tincan with a screwdriver it works, but you will spill some of the beans. 

    So either you choose the wrong or the broken tool and try to fix it in such a way that it works, or you create your own tool.

    Actually the problem wasnt choosing the right tool, but choosing the tool with the most possibilities. Which by then was obviously the Hero engine. Sadly during development it worked out the wrong way because the hero development team failed to bring what they promissed.

    So far the only smart ting seems to create your own engine like blizzard and Arenanet did.

     

     

    And you know whats the most foolish thing, companies never seem to learn, as TES might be doomed equally to TSW as Zenimax is using the HERO engine...

     




    How many of the well known MMOs used an existing engine? Building an engine seems like a standard step for building MMOs. At least that's what it looked like to me.

    I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.

  • keithiankeithian Member UncommonPosts: 3,191
     
    Originally  posted by Lord.Bachus 
    Originally posted by simplius

    so,,when the patient dies, because the doctor tried to do surgery with a thermometer,

    we arrest the thermometer?

    no, the very FIRST rule of any craftsman, is choosing the right tool for the job

    specially on a big budget project like this

     

    Well, thats the problem... there arent any other tools available,,,

    Sure there are tools, but then those are not really fit for the job either, like opening a tincan with a screwdriver it works, but you will spill some of the beans. 

    So either you choose the wrong or the broken tool and try to fix it in such a way that it works, or you create your own tool.

    Actually the problem wasnt choosing the right tool, but choosing the tool with the most possibilities. Which by then was obviously the Hero engine. Sadly during development it worked out the wrong way because the hero development team failed to bring what they promissed.

    So far the only smart ting seems to create your own engine like blizzard and Arenanet did.

     

     

    And you know whats the most foolish thing, companies never seem to learn, as TES might be doomed equally to TSW as Zenimax is using the HERO engine...

     

    You need to research more so people aren't misinformed. They used the Hero engine as a 'whiteboard' and are building their own engine on top of it. There's a difference.

    http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/05/25/why-the-elder-scrolls-online-isn-39-t-using-heroengine.aspx

    There Is Always Hope!

  • simpliussimplius Member UncommonPosts: 1,134

    yup, thats what the hero engine is made for

    we players arent supposed to see this,,,ever

    the guy, who made this decision, has NO computer skillz...at all

  • EvolvedMonkyEvolvedMonky Member Posts: 549

    I'm going to have to agree, the blame shouldn't be on the hero engine. The devs making the engine  were trying to work on there game (actually a good demo of it to get investors is how it sounds to me).  

    I don't know the exact timeline but what little I've seen in this thread (didn't read all the posts) Sounds like Bioware needed something fast and cheap to create a very basic demonstration. Now I've heard LucasArts can be a real B with there IP licensing, maybe to keep it or maybe even to get more funding.  They CHOSE to use the Hero Engine. Modifying someone elses code is alot harder than using your own. But in the end it was there decision whether bad or good its all on them. 

    image
  • Lord.BachusLord.Bachus Member RarePosts: 9,686
    Originally posted by EvolvedMonky

    I'm going to have to agree, the blame shouldn't be on the hero engine. The devs making the engine  were trying to work on there game (actually a good demo of it to get investors is how it sounds to me).  

    I don't know the exact timeline but what little I've seen in this thread (didn't read all the posts) Sounds like Bioware needed something fast and cheap to create a very basic demonstration. Now I've heard LucasArts can be a real B with there IP licensing, maybe to keep it or maybe even to get more funding.  They CHOSE to use the Hero Engine. Modifying someone elses code is alot harder than using your own. But in the end it was there decision whether bad or good its all on them. 

    Well, offcourse it was their choiice, and if you look at itthat way it was their fault. Thats also what they admit...  But the statement they made is not about why they made thise terrible dessigen, but about how much it cost them. They made aterrible mistake and both them and the customers payed a lot of tears for that.

     

     

    Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)

  • simpliussimplius Member UncommonPosts: 1,134

    the hero engine may be good for its original purpose,,i dont know

    but its not good in swtor

    im not flaming the hero guys,,im flaming BW, for choosing it

    and im rather stunned, that none of BW tech guys took a stand against that decision

    but i guess, thats the downside of big companies,,they only hire yes-men

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,348
    Originally posted by Dauzqul
    Getting the engine to work right? Sounds like a coder problem. Get new coders? lol   I mean... seriously.

    Fixing low-level engine stuff after a game launches is very risky.  Fixing one bug can easily create ten others, and make a huge mess of stuff on live servers.  That's fine if the start of alpha testing is still a year away, as you can squash the other bugs as you find them.  But after release, you don't go there unless it's a single glitch that is really game-breaking and absolutely has to be fixed.

    And if you don't have someone on hand who understands exactly what the relevant portion of the game engine does and why it was set up to do it that way, it's much riskier yet.  Different parts of a game engine can interact in complex ways, and if you change something that you don't understand, you're probably going to break things.

    One big advantage of developing your own game engine is that, when the need comes to fix bugs in the engine, you have someone on hand who knows exactly what the engine was meant to do and why it was built to do it that way--namely, whoever coded that portion of the engine in the first place.  That makes it much easier to make changes to the game engine without making a huge mess and breaking a bunch of things.  If you license a game engine, you don't have anyone on hand who understands it.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,348
    Originally posted by Lord.Bachus
    Originally posted by simplius

    so,,when the patient dies, because the doctor tried to do surgery with a thermometer,

    we arrest the thermometer?

    no, the very FIRST rule of any craftsman, is choosing the right tool for the job

    specially on a big budget project like this

     

    Well, thats the problem... there arent any other tools available,,,

    Sure there are tools, but then those are not really fit for the job either, like opening a tincan with a screwdriver it works, but you will spill some of the beans. 

    So either you choose the wrong or the broken tool and try to fix it in such a way that it works, or you create your own tool.

    If the tools that you can license can't do what you need, then maybe you shouldn't license them.  A major advantage of building your own game engine is that it will be designed right from the start to do exactly what you need.

  • ElRenmazuoElRenmazuo Member RarePosts: 5,361
    the gamebreaker for me was that i had to go to each planet only to pick up the same exact quest i did in the last planet and at the same time stare at bland ugly environments with crappy graphics.
  • sado2020sado2020 Member Posts: 112

    BW expected players 3 to 4 months to get through 180 hours of content?

     

    Wow whenever the devs underestimates its playerbase like that always boggles my mind

    Playing: TSW, D&D NW, Defiance (more the tv show than game >.> ) LotRO, DCUO

    image
  • simpliussimplius Member UncommonPosts: 1,134

    the problem isnt 180 hours, or 3-4 months

    it is keeping the players for so long, and keeping them happy enough , to pay for it

    what good is the Worlds largest birthday cake, if it doesnt taste good?

  • CalerxesCalerxes Member UncommonPosts: 1,641
    Originally posted by sado2020

    BW expected players 3 to 4 months to get through 180 hours of content?

     

    Wow whenever the devs underestimates its playerbase like that always boggles my mind

     

    No, the game was built around alts and the legacy system, they expected longevity to come from multiple characters so 200 hours x 8 class stories 1600 hours of gameplay. That didn't work out so well as many players played one toon to max and quit moaning about no endgame, you know the regular bitching done by MMO players, nothings ever enough is it? 

    This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up™ the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.

  • simpliussimplius Member UncommonPosts: 1,134

    most players left BEFORE reaching max level

    and, the ones, complaining about "lack of end game", right after launch? yes ,thats the hardcore crowd,

    no game will ever make them happy for long

  • ElikalElikal Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
    Originally posted by Calerxes
    Originally posted by sado2020

    BW expected players 3 to 4 months to get through 180 hours of content?

     

    Wow whenever the devs underestimates its playerbase like that always boggles my mind

     

    No, the game was built around alts and the legacy system, they expected longevity to come from multiple characters so 200 hours x 8 class stories 1600 hours of gameplay. That didn't work out so well as many players played one toon to max and quit moaning about no endgame, you know the regular bitching done by MMO players, nothings ever enough is it? 

    I am not sure where you get that idea. Did they really SAY that, or did YOU just conclude that?

    I am suspicious here, because I KNOW how naive MMO developers are. The DCU team blurted out, they expected the average gamer to play 2-3 hours every 2-3 days, so their content with hold much longer.

    FACT is beta testers, like me, told Bioware OVER and OVER again and a MMO reduced to a mere themepark would not hold. Period. I told them until I had a 2 meter beard that people would SPACEBAR through stories and they didn't want to hear it. We told them over and over that a modern MMO NEEDS some sandbox element additionally. The reality is, you can never make enough content with a pure themepark. Period. EVERY MMO post-WOW game history proofs that. But still game companies cling to the themeparks. It just won't work. This themepark purist paradigm has failed, and MUST be abandoned.

    But apparently their crap engine could never EVER handle any complex stuff like sandbox elements, anyway.

    What a fucking mess. And their most recent issue with Patch 2.1 proofs even further how totally messy that engine actually is.

    People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert

  • deadmanbelldeadmanbell Member UncommonPosts: 69

    You know, with Wildstar coming out sometime this year and it running the  Hero Engine I believe. its going to be real interesting to see how much BW can get away with blaming the engine for there problems. So far what I have seen of Wildstar they are doing a lot more with the Engine than what swtor is currently doing. Also its a sci-fi MMO so that will have to crunch into the current Sub level for Swtor at some Level. 

    God I hope the new Starwars Movies are good. If not I might have a burning man party and burn a Jar-Jar bings Effigy. Dressed as a Jawa yelling "Wattinnny !!!!"

  • simpliussimplius Member UncommonPosts: 1,134

    i have high hopes for wildstar myself, lets see how it turns out

    i just saw jj abrams on the daily show, he was much younger, than i expected

    for some reason, i thought , he was an old dude

    but hes clearly a nerd, so things should be fine

    the star trek movie is quality Work,,both acting, and specíal effects are better, than any of the star wars movies

    and he isnt scared of the dark side,,look at  kirks face getting smashed in the bar

  • LaterisLateris Member UncommonPosts: 1,831
    I am going to guess that they rewrote the version of that  game engine. For development that's pretty bad arse to accomplish. 
  • SavageHorizonSavageHorizon Member EpicPosts: 3,466
    Originally posted by KaiserPhoenix

    imagine how great swtor would've been if they made it on the Unreal Engine 3...

     

    Or CryEngine3 like ArcheAge.




  • CalerxesCalerxes Member UncommonPosts: 1,641
    Originally posted by Elikal
    Originally posted by Calerxes
    Originally posted by sado2020

    BW expected players 3 to 4 months to get through 180 hours of content?

     

    Wow whenever the devs underestimates its playerbase like that always boggles my mind

     

    No, the game was built around alts and the legacy system, they expected longevity to come from multiple characters so 200 hours x 8 class stories 1600 hours of gameplay. That didn't work out so well as many players played one toon to max and quit moaning about no endgame, you know the regular bitching done by MMO players, nothings ever enough is it? 

    I am not sure where you get that idea. Did they really SAY that, or did YOU just conclude that?

    I am suspicious here, because I KNOW how naive MMO developers are. The DCU team blurted out, they expected the average gamer to play 2-3 hours every 2-3 days, so their content with hold much longer.

    FACT is beta testers, like me, told Bioware OVER and OVER again and a MMO reduced to a mere themepark would not hold. Period. I told them until I had a 2 meter beard that people would SPACEBAR through stories and they didn't want to hear it. We told them over and over that a modern MMO NEEDS some sandbox element additionally. The reality is, you can never make enough content with a pure themepark. Period. EVERY MMO post-WOW game history proofs that. But still game companies cling to the themeparks. It just won't work. This themepark purist paradigm has failed, and MUST be abandoned.

    But apparently their crap engine could never EVER handle any complex stuff like sandbox elements, anyway.

    What a fucking mess. And their most recent issue with Patch 2.1 proofs even further how totally messy that engine actually is.

     

    A game that's focus was on story and there being 8 class stories and 14 planet stories per faction that were overlaid by a Legacy system that encouraged you to level alts and was the centerpiece to the whole game. Adding that Boiware games are story based have been since Balders Gate and they were adding that into the MMO space with the "fourth pillar" Story was talked about throughout the entire pre-release stage and was the main selling point of the game, people play Bioware games for story and character development and if you read the Bioware forums for their single player games players have multiple playthroughs with alts. So common sense tells me thats what they expected players to do.

     

    The themepark paradigm has failed, God people do talk out of their arse really, nearly 500k subs and many f2p players making the game profitable is failure these days is it? Sandbox will not ever be as successful because and this is its main downfall... The players themselves cannot agree what a bloody Sandbox MMO is in the first place how the hell can a developer build something they haven't got a clue what the player base wants? At the end of the day this is all bleating by disheartened Star Wars fans, SWG Galaxies fans, Sandbox MMO fans as they cannot deal with their feelings and just make up shit to justify those feelings.

     

    I have never met a more entitled, miserable and downright vindictive population of people in my life, topped by ex-star Wars Galaxies vets please for the love of God let is lie.

     

     

     

    This doom and gloom thread was brought to you by Chin Up™ the new ultra high caffeine soft drink for gamers who just need that boost of happiness after a long forum session.

  • SilverbarrSilverbarr Member Posts: 306
    Originally posted by deadmanbell

    You know, with Wildstar coming out sometime this year and it running the  Hero Engine I believe. its going to be real interesting to see how much BW can get away with blaming the engine for there problems. So far what I have seen of Wildstar they are doing a lot more with the Engine than what swtor is currently doing. Also its a sci-fi MMO so that will have to crunch into the current Sub level for Swtor at some Level. 

    God I hope the new Starwars Movies are good. If not I might have a burning man party and burn a Jar-Jar bings Effigy. Dressed as a Jawa yelling "Wattinnny !!!!"

    I can't find anything that states that WildStar uses the Hero Engine, are you able to post a link that states as much? - otherwise I believe that is untrue to be perfectly frank.

     

     

    "Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys. Look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death!"
    - Sun Tzu, the Art of War

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  • FusionFusion Member UncommonPosts: 1,398

    So all of this boils down to Hero Engine being crap from the get-go?

    Wildstar definitely isn't runnig the HE.

    TESO made their 'prototyping' using the hero engine, but they've simultaneously been building their own engine, so even TESO will run on their own engine.

    http://neocron-game.com/ - now totally F2P no cash-shops or micro transactions at all.
  • HulluckHulluck Member UncommonPosts: 839
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    Originally posted by Dauzqul
    Getting the engine to work right? Sounds like a coder problem. Get new coders? lol   I mean... seriously.

    Fixing low-level engine stuff after a game launches is very risky.  Fixing one bug can easily create ten others, and make a huge mess of stuff on live servers.  That's fine if the start of alpha testing is still a year away, as you can squash the other bugs as you find them.  But after release, you don't go there unless it's a single glitch that is really game-breaking and absolutely has to be fixed.

    And if you don't have someone on hand who understands exactly what the relevant portion of the game engine does and why it was set up to do it that way, it's much riskier yet.  Different parts of a game engine can interact in complex ways, and if you change something that you don't understand, you're probably going to break things.

    One big advantage of developing your own game engine is that, when the need comes to fix bugs in the engine, you have someone on hand who knows exactly what the engine was meant to do and why it was built to do it that way--namely, whoever coded that portion of the engine in the first place.  That makes it much easier to make changes to the game engine without making a huge mess and breaking a bunch of things.  If you license a game engine, you don't have anyone on hand who understands it.

    That's so true, I know that just from observation.  No coder, though having played a game like Anarchy Online all sorts of crazy stuff would happen when big patches rolled out. It's been years since I have played, loved the game despite it's issue. Just the team working on it at the time when Craig was the CM, they would fix one thing and patch the game and 10 different things would break which seemed completely unrelated.  Why some of the stuff made it through testing. No one thought to test those area's.

    Rumor was code was just so fubar'ed from having so many different people butchering it over the years and doing it "their" way.  When ever a patch hit know one knew what to expect on launch day. 

  • tintilinictintilinic Member Posts: 283
    Originally posted by Calerxes

     

    A game that's focus was on story and there being 8 class stories and 14 planet stories per faction that were overlaid by a Legacy system that encouraged you to level alts and was the centerpiece to the whole game. Adding that Boiware games are story based have been since Balders Gate and they were adding that into the MMO space with the "fourth pillar" Story was talked about throughout the entire pre-release stage and was the main selling point of the game, people play Bioware games for story and character development and if you read the Bioware forums for their single player games players have multiple playthroughs with alts. So common sense tells me thats what they expected players to do.

     

    The themepark paradigm has failed, God people do talk out of their arse really, nearly 500k subs and many f2p players making the game profitable is failure these days is it? Sandbox will not ever be as successful because and this is its main downfall... The players themselves cannot agree what a bloody Sandbox MMO is in the first place how the hell can a developer build something they haven't got a clue what the player base wants? At the end of the day this is all bleating by disheartened Star Wars fans, SWG Galaxies fans, Sandbox MMO fans as they cannot deal with their feelings and just make up shit to justify those feelings.

     

    I have never met a more entitled, miserable and downright vindictive population of people in my life, topped by ex-star Wars Galaxies vets please for the love of God let is lie.

    1. Quite a few problems with that.

    95% content is same for all characters and consists mostly of generic "kill 10 rats" quests. Certainly doesnt feel epic

    They didnt mesh single player story good, in fact, while story is better than other MMOs, its very poor compared to single player games. They certainly took away a lot while trying to make game idiot proof.

    The conflict betweem Republic and Empire is lacking, i mean, is there a better theme for some epic pvp. And what did SWTOR offer? Hutball and malfunctioning Ilum. And some awfully non related raids/FPs (really EV, KP....no mention of conflict just overgrown Rakata, and overgrown droids...)

    2. Game can  have 10 million subs and still be a failure. Ill let you work out that one out.

    When you set out to have 10+million subs but end well below 500k , yeah, its an epic failure.

    OTOH, EvE, with its 500+k subs is a huge success for 10 years now.

  • AldersAlders Member RarePosts: 2,207
    Originally posted by Silverbarr
    Originally posted by deadmanbell

    You know, with Wildstar coming out sometime this year and it running the  Hero Engine I believe. its going to be real interesting to see how much BW can get away with blaming the engine for there problems. So far what I have seen of Wildstar they are doing a lot more with the Engine than what swtor is currently doing. Also its a sci-fi MMO so that will have to crunch into the current Sub level for Swtor at some Level. 

    God I hope the new Starwars Movies are good. If not I might have a burning man party and burn a Jar-Jar bings Effigy. Dressed as a Jawa yelling "Wattinnny !!!!"

    I can't find anything that states that WildStar uses the Hero Engine, are you able to post a link that states as much? - otherwise I believe that is untrue to be perfectly frank.

     

     

    It doesn't.  Everyone can relax!

    http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=32245&storypage=1

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