513 réponses à ce sujet

[Allan Schumacher]

axl99 wrote...

Fast Jimmy: You owe horrayforicecream an apology.

Apologize.

This isn't necessary.  It's the internet and as I've stated by liberal use of the word engine can easily lead to confusion as well.

[Fast Jimmy]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Another big advantage of Frostbite (as opposed to some other engine) is also tech sharing.

The likelihood of us backporting changes to the Unreal Engine for Epic to license off to other people is pretty much zero. Backporting changes back to DICE happens regularly. The engine and tools is becoming more full featured because we collaborate directly with DICE as well as EA Canada.

Is there an inherent risk to this resource sharing of everyone having a similar interface/mechanics further down the road?

[hoorayforicecream]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Another big advantage of Frostbite (as opposed to some other engine) is also tech sharing.

The likelihood of us backporting changes to the Unreal Engine for Epic to license off to other people is pretty much zero. Backporting changes back to DICE happens regularly. The engine and tools is becoming more full featured because we collaborate directly with DICE as well as EA Canada.

Is there an inherent risk to this resource sharing of everyone having a similar interface/mechanics further down the road?

Unlikely. That stuff is handled by UI and gameplay.

Edit: For the sake of clarity... UI is crafted by UI artists and UI programmers, and serves to meet the need of a specific game. Mechanics are crafted by designers and gameplay programmers.

The sort of tech sharing that Allan is talking about tends to be things like support for per-pixel lighting, better shader support, more efficient particle effect management, more efficient memory management, etc. The good stuff that the Bioware engine programmers come up with gets sent back to DICE and propagated out to other studios using the frostbite engine, and the good stuff those other studios come up with likewise gets propagated out and comes to Bioware in the form of code drops and integrations too.

Modifié par hoorayforicecream, 05 novembre 2012 - 08:15 .

[Fast Jimmy]

Would trouble shooting said portable codes not become a headache? If a portion of good code gets moved to another developer's usage of the FB2 engine, but causes problems, would that be up to the original engine programmer to try and fix, or would that be on the new team to tackle?

[hoorayforicecream]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Would trouble shooting said portable codes not become a headache? If a portion of good code gets moved to another developer's usage of the FB2 engine, but causes problems, would that be up to the original engine programmer to try and fix, or would that be on the new team to tackle?

Think about it as a central distribution point. Anything that comes in has to be approved before it gets sent out to other places. It doesn't just get shipped out willy-nilly, the stability of the engine is paramount.

That said, yes, things do slip through the cracks. Then it comes down to sharing knowledge as well. The guys at DICE are really smart, and can probably answer a lot of questions. They also know who made the changes in specific, and can contact them if need be. EA has all of its studios on a big internal IM network as well, so instant communication between studios is actually pretty easy.

[Fast Jimmy]

Hmmmm. This sounds like it has a lot of merit, then.

Framing the conversation in increasing efficiency, stronger support and reducing redundancies in work makes for a much more convincing line of thought for me than talking about how good Battlefield 3 looked, but I guess that's the corporate warrior in me.

[Allan Schumacher]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Another big advantage of Frostbite (as opposed to some other engine) is also tech sharing.

The likelihood of us backporting changes to the Unreal Engine for Epic to license off to other people is pretty much zero. Backporting changes back to DICE happens regularly. The engine and tools is becoming more full featured because we collaborate directly with DICE as well as EA Canada.

Is there an inherent risk to this resource sharing of everyone having a similar interface/mechanics further down the road?

Not really.  The types of things we push back are decidedly generic and the low level types of improvements.  If something is Dragon Age specific, it doesn't get pushed back.  As such, things like our Conversation Wheel are data driven, while the meat and potatoes of the dialogue system are more generic and can be used in different ways by different teams (or not used at all).

[SpEcIaLRyAn]

If DA3 looks as good as ME3, and has a good gameplay and story to support it, I will buy it for sure.

[Cain Corvin]

It's good to try out a new engine, somthing had to be done to improve DA from DA2. even though DA2 was quite a good game... just not at very good Dragon age game..

[Statulos]

The way I´d label the change in engine a success would be considering the interaction with writers.

I am sure the guys in the graphic design section had a fair share of "what you (writer) propose sounds great but with the tools I have, I cannot make it happen". If you get a smaller share of that, I think that is a huge success by itself.

[Andronic0s]

As a Windows XP user (who considers the possibility of upgrading in the coming year unlikely), should I abandon all hope of playing DA3? or is windows XP compatibility something that can be modded into the engine?

[upsettingshorts]

Andronic0s wrote...

As a Windows XP user should I abandon all hope of playing DA3?

Yes.

[Savber100]

Andronic0s wrote...

As a Windows XP user (who considers the possibility of upgrading in the coming year unlikely), should I abandon all hope of playing DA3? or is windows XP compatibility something that can be modded into the engine?

Use it as an excuse to finally upgrade to Window 7...

No seriously Window XP is almost a decade old. This is like hoping someone would make a PS3 game playable on a PS1... This happens even with the flexibility of the PC. 

[ChandlerL]

Andronic0s wrote...

As a Windows XP user (who considers the possibility of upgrading in the coming year unlikely), should I abandon all hope of playing DA3? or is windows XP compatibility something that can be modded into the engine?

For what it's worth, Windows 8 Pro upgrade from any version of XP costs as low as $40 until January 2013- less than 1/2 the price of upgrading to Windows 7 Home Premium, never mind Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate. 

You may have implied that you don't have a DX11 graphics card so upgrading Windows versions won't help or, at least, is only partially what you'd need to do. You didn't say, though.

Either way, I sympathize. The world economy is rough these days. Here's to better days for us all.

Chan

Modifié par ChandlerL, 21 novembre 2012 - 12:57 .

[Andronic0s]

Oh well, I guess I will have to stick to all the other newly released games that are compatible with windows XP, I already uprgaded once to Vista some years ago and it was a complete debacle for me personally so I had to go back to XP, sooner or later when I see a need outside of entertainment to upgrade I will do it, but since I'm not big on consumerism as long as this old operative system "gets the job done" I will be keeping it.

So apologies for derailing the thread and thanks to all that answered my question.

[Redbelle]

Reminds me of the first time Dragon Quest came to PS2. The world was completely open. If you saw a mountain in the background, you could run towards it and climb up it. Then look out from the mountain, see something else in the distance and run towards that too.

Will DA3 operate a similar open world mechanic? Or will it host larger more detailed environments that will take a load screen to generate?

@Andronic

I can't suggest you get Win7 since I don't know your system. But it's never given me any trouble.

I do suggest going 64 bit. However if you do, know you'll probably need to upgrade all your old 32 bit programs and hardware. 64 bit however looks to become the standard, so saving for that upgrade would no doubt be the safe long term play. Again though. Without knowing your system or circumstances I can't recommend staying with 32 or going 64.

Modifié par Redbelle, 24 novembre 2012 - 03:48 .

[TUHD]

Personally, I'd rather have seen that Bioware took a license upon the RED engine (The Witcher 2's engine). But Frostbite 2 with heavily modified parts is fine too, although less optimal in my opinion then an specific (Action-)RPG-tailored engine.
Edit: Only possible problem I see is the mod-support - FB2 isn't known for its modding support.

Modifié par TUHD, 26 novembre 2012 - 10:49 .

[TUHD]

@Andronicos: Vista was an SoB. While I'm not bad at tweaking my PC, I had to tweak over 30 Windows-related processes and services to get it to work without too much hassle without damaging the safety of the OS. The in-built safeties of Vista were neat, but it gave more trouble then it was worth - since Windows Defender+UAC even blocked Windows Update from running correctly, making my PC crash since WU installed necessary updates in the wrong way thanks to that. *ugh*
W7 is way better - although W8 seems to be a step backwards in PC-user friendliness. I've tried a demo of Windows 8, but my god, getting to tweak your PC is due to the unnecessary extra browsing a disaster.

[hoorayforicecream]

TUHD wrote...

Personally, I'd rather have seen that Bioware took a license upon the RED engine (The Witcher 2's engine). But Frostbite 2 with heavily modified parts is fine too, although less optimal in my opinion then an specific (Action-)RPG-tailored engine.
Edit: Only possible problem I see is the mod-support - FB2 isn't known for its modding support.

The biggest problem with the RED engine is that it doesn't work on the PS3.

[Maria Caliban]

What is a 'specific (Action-)RPG-tailored engine?'

What about the RED engine is specifically RPGish?

[Fast Jimmy]

hoorayforicecream wrote...

TUHD wrote...

Personally, I'd rather have seen that Bioware took a license upon the RED engine (The Witcher 2's engine). But Frostbite 2 with heavily modified parts is fine too, although less optimal in my opinion then an specific (Action-)RPG-tailored engine.
Edit: Only possible problem I see is the mod-support - FB2 isn't known for its modding support.

The biggest problem with the RED engine is that it doesn't work on the PS3.

Really? That is rather surprising. Would you be able to explain in further detail why that is?

[Chromie]

hoorayforicecream wrote...

TUHD wrote...

Personally, I'd rather have seen that Bioware took a license upon the RED engine (The Witcher 2's engine). But Frostbite 2 with heavily modified parts is fine too, although less optimal in my opinion then an specific (Action-)RPG-tailored engine.
Edit: Only possible problem I see is the mod-support - FB2 isn't known for its modding support.

The biggest problem with the RED engine is that it doesn't work on the PS3.

Is that true? I don't remember ever hearing CDPR saying something like that. 

[hoorayforicecream]

Skelter192 wrote...

hoorayforicecream wrote...

The biggest problem with the RED engine is that it doesn't work on the PS3.

Is that true? I don't remember ever hearing CDPR saying something like that. 

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Really? That is rather surprising. Would you be able to explain in further detail why that is?

It shouldn't be surprising any more than the fact that the RED engine also does not run on Wii, WiiU, iOS, UNIX, or Android. If it ran on the PS3, they would have a PS3 version of the Witcher 2 as well, in addition to the X360 and Windows versions. Making an engine work on a new platform (especially one as notoriously difficult to work with as PS3) is not a trivial task. They wouldn't spend that much time and effort to make it work on that platform without actually releasing on the platform, just like all the others.

[Chromie]

hoorayforicecream wrote...
It shouldn't be surprising any more than the fact that the RED engine also does not run on Wii, WiiU, iOS, UNIX, or Android. If it ran on the PS3, they would have a PS3 version of the Witcher 2 as well,

Well Skyrim doesn't like the PS3 much and yet it's on there and look at how that runs. CDPR only said they don't have the resources to port it over since there ports are built from the ground up not just simply thrown together. They also don't have too many people on their staff. CDPR also said it  would require them to make new content which isn't something they are just going to throw in.

Modifié par Skelter192, 29 novembre 2012 - 08:58 .