17 réponses à ce sujet

[Lieber]

I'm really sceptical about how they are going to use the Frostbite 2 engine. What's even scarier is that EA seems to be slapping it on every game possible. What are your thoughts of DA3 using Frostbite 2?

[Jarrett Lee]

Think of it in terms of "beautiful graphics and physics", not as an FPS engine per se. I've seen what they are doing with it for DA3 and I think you guys are in for a treat. When the time comes that is!

[John Epler]

Engines don't really have a lot to do with the kind of game that's being made. Engines handle a lot of things behind the scenes - the example of visuals was already used, but it's more than that. Engines can handle how animations are handled, how data is stored and accessed, how assets are treated. Certainly, Frostbite 2 has, thus far, been primarily used for FPSes, but there's a lot of stuff it does that is simply going to give us the ability to do a lot more than we have previously - not just graphically.

The thing is, though - this is not a sign that we're shoving everything into overdrive action mode. We're working with the creators of this engine, and we've been building our changes from the ground up. This means that we don't have limitations in terms of things like customization that are imposed on us by the way the engine was originally created. Gameplay demands can drive changes to the engine, versus the engine limiting what we can do in terms of gameplay.

Hope that's a bit better of an explanation.

[John Epler]

Cstaf wrote...

John Epler wrote...

Engines don't really have a lot to do with the kind of game that's being made. Engines handle a lot of things behind the scenes - the example of visuals was already used, but it's more than that. Engines can handle how animations are handled, how data is stored and accessed, how assets are treated. Certainly, Frostbite 2 has, thus far, been primarily used for FPSes, but there's a lot of stuff it does that is simply going to give us the ability to do a lot more than we have previously - not just graphically.

The thing is, though - this is not a sign that we're shoving everything into overdrive action mode. We're working with the creators of this engine, and we've been building our changes from the ground up. This means that we don't have limitations in terms of things like customization that are imposed on us by the way the engine was originally created. Gameplay demands can drive changes to the engine, versus the engine limiting what we can do in terms of gameplay.

Hope that's a bit better of an explanation.

No John, we got that sign a long time ago.

If you'd like to participate in a constructive fashion, you are more than welcome to do so. You don't have to be positive, just polite and attempting to engage in actual discussion.

If you'd like to try and win 'points' in some bizarre game in which you are the only participant, I suggest you go elsewhere. Thanks.

[John Epler]

Cstaf wrote...

John Epler wrote...

Cstaf wrote...

John Epler wrote...

Engines don't really have a lot to do with the kind of game that's being made. Engines handle a lot of things behind the scenes - the example of visuals was already used, but it's more than that. Engines can handle how animations are handled, how data is stored and accessed, how assets are treated. Certainly, Frostbite 2 has, thus far, been primarily used for FPSes, but there's a lot of stuff it does that is simply going to give us the ability to do a lot more than we have previously - not just graphically.

The thing is, though - this is not a sign that we're shoving everything into overdrive action mode. We're working with the creators of this engine, and we've been building our changes from the ground up. This means that we don't have limitations in terms of things like customization that are imposed on us by the way the engine was originally created. Gameplay demands can drive changes to the engine, versus the engine limiting what we can do in terms of gameplay.

Hope that's a bit better of an explanation.

No John, we got that sign a long time ago.

If you'd like to participate in a constructive fashion, you are more than welcome to do so. You don't have to be positive, just polite and attempting to engage in actual discussion.

If you'd like to try and win 'points' in some bizarre game in which you are the only participant, I suggest you go elsewhere. Thanks.

I am sorry for being rude. On my third day without cigarettes so im not on my best behaviour. Be grateful you are not my wife !

Quite alright! I'm trying to cut back on caffeine so I am not at my most polite either, for which I apologize.

[Allan Schumacher]

So does this mean you're going to be preserving the capabilities of your dialogue and script systems? Please don't tell me they're going to end up with something like Story Manager.

I don't even know what "Story Manager" is, so take that for what it's worth.

One of the first orders of business my team was on was providing the writers with writing tools that matched or exceeded the abilities that they had with the DA Toolset.

[Allan Schumacher]

And the designers?

Scripting comes with significant overhead, but it puts so much at the fingertips of the people who can best use it, and it's been a hallmark of every true BioWare engine, starting with Mark's work on BG (as if you needed to introduce yourself, sir).

"Designers" is a vague term. If you're referring to level designers, I'm less versed on what specifically they were wanting (I actually worked with Writing and the Programmers on my team). You'll still need to be more specific, however.

Frostbite does have a scripting system.

As for designers running back to the programmers with feature requests, this happened a lot on DAO and DA2 as well. Part of working with something new is they come back with "So, this thing we couldn't do in Eclipse, we still want to do it. Lets see if we can do it now."

[Allan Schumacher]

devSin wrote...

Level and systems designers (and whatever other titles the future has spawned). Possibly cinematic designers as well, depending on what it is they actually do (I'm still not sure how far their influence extends).

I'd look at how much was possible in Eclipse and ask if that same level of flexibility is exposed to the people who most need it. (We'll just assume there's no chance of any toolset or aftermarket mod support.)

I can only speak for Digital Acting, but the goal has been to make sure everything we can do in Eclipse we can do in Frostbite.

All modern engines have a scripting system, I'm sure. But I wouldn't really hold them up against the BioWare standard of scripting systems, the systems that helped you build your best and most dynamic games. (And then when you tapped into UE3, you ended up with something depressingly static.)

How familiar are you with both?  What functionality didn't exist in UE3 that did exist in the other game engines?  (I'm mostly just curious myself).

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 17 septembre 2012 - 10:51 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Allan, may i ask you one thing please? How hard is to make something like suicide mission(me2) in terms of time, resourses, etc. on frostbite2. To tell the truth i'm exited to hear about DA3 will use it as engine.

Based on just the logic for making sure the conditions are set up (i.e. the plot states), not very difficult.

Most of the effort would go into designing the actual content (I don't know how much more difficult this is compared to the other engines we've worked with though).

From a QA standpoint it can be time consuming since we have to test the permutations, but this cost is required regardless of the details of how it needs to be implemented.

[Allan Schumacher]

Realmzmaster wrote...

@Alan Schumacher,

How much modification will have to be done to the Frostbite 2 engine in comparison to the Eclipse engine (used for Origins) that was modified to make the Lycium engine for DA2? 
I know that the Frostbite 2 engine is flexible, but does it have enough flexibility for DA3?

Compared to DA2's changes, a lot more modification.  Some systems that we need will have to be created fresh.

[Allan Schumacher]

Renmiri1 wrote...

Interesting... I looked at Frostbite's site and they don't seem to have sword and sorcery games yet. Is that one of the things you guys will have to build from scratch ?

Well, "sword and sorcery" type games is a bit vague.  There are elements that we use in our game (i.e. a more full featured conversation editor) that, for example, DICE wouldn't have really needed to do for BF3.  For us, though, it's essential for fast workflows and iteration.

It's not built entirely from scratch (there's a foundation that we can build upon and other systems that we can leverage), but there was no concept of a tree based conversation editor that let you quickly hook up speakers and whatnot.  There is now, and it can even do some stuff that the one in Eclipse couldn't do to boot!

The big issue is that they lack the level of stability that the Eclipse tools would have (since those tools existed for years), but that's where I come in!

[Allan Schumacher]

deuce985 wrote...

I'm just curious to know if the "technical" aspect of DA3 had been in development for two years too. The article I read said DA3 has been in development for two years. Does this mean in that time Bioware has been designing this new engine? Or was it mostly just conceptual ideas? I'd be curious to know if somebody could answer this.

A lot of prototyping, assessing what the engine is like, how it works, how it deals with a lot of tech details and so forth.  Though much of the team was on DA2's expansion pack too, if you recall.  I myself joined the DA3 project at that point too.

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm going to be very curious how characters and the art style translates into Frostbite 2. Things like the DA2 elves and some of the more stylized designs just don't seem like they'd work if they're adopting the realism that's been the trademark of Frostbite 2.

That an engine has only been used for more realistic portrayals has no actual bearing on the assets that can be used in game, aside from the upper bound that if you want to make very realistic models you can.

[Allan Schumacher]

The work that needs to be put into retooling the engine to suit BioWare's purposes as well as work needed to re-create existing content ... takes away directly from resources available for production of new content and/or new abilities for existing engine.

Content doesn't need to be recreated. DA2's assets can be imported over into Frostbite.

[Allan Schumacher]

Just for reference sake, Morrowind and Oblivion were made on the Gamebryo engine.

So was Sid Meier's Pirates and Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 18 septembre 2012 - 05:16 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Atakuma wrote...
I believe he's referring to actual gameplay content and not just assets.

According to this post I'm discinlined to agree.

[John Epler]

BF3 being more realism-focused does not necessarily mean that DA3 (or any other games that use the engine, for that matter) have to also look more realistic. Really, the only thing you're going to see as a 'BF3 feature' in terms of visual style is that the lighting engine is significantly better than what we had previously and allow for more nuanced lighting, like in BF3.

Visual style will be derived far more heavily from texture and model choices rather than the engine being used. As much as I've argued for it, you will likely never fight a dragon from the cockpit of an F-35.

[Allan Schumacher]

I disagree. Every generation, people have said that the cutting edge is super duper realistic, and that they'll never look outdated.

It used to be an annual thing for me to say "Graphics can't get any better than this" as I was continuously blown away.