31 réponses à ce sujet

[duckley]

What is it? Why has Bioware used it? Which other games use it? What are the pros and cons - specifically how has this engine added to or detracted from the game? Just curious.

[Sondermann]

What is it?

Check wikipedia - it even has an illustrating picture. Then go to the entry for the game engine and curse me

[bEVEsthda]

Frostbite is ridiculously advanced. They've really thrown in both arms and a leg. From what I understand, the rendering is so advanced that a good deal of it has to be prepared in advance. Meaning the objects are changed as they are compiled together into the game. This is probably what throws a major wrench into attempts to mod environments and objects in the game, without specialized modding tools for Frostbite.

Dice and EA likes the engine. Because it's at the leading edge. Because it's their own, they can add to and tweak the engine and the tools for it, as they need, to suit different games. Hopefully this work will continue, to better suit future rpgs.

Another advantage is that it produces output to five different platforms, XB360, PS3, XB1, PS4 and the variable of PC-hardware, including DX11 and Mantle.

 

It started as a FPS engine. It supports open 3D environments. There are, as of yet, not any modding tools released for it.

Wildly guessing, it's probably poor at doing changing light conditions, the way Bethesda's engine can.

 

Disclaimer: All misunderstandings and wrong guesses are mine. I'm writing this on a wing.

[Cyonan]

EA likes the engine because DICE made it, which are another company under EA so they want all their studios using it.

 

Other than that I can't say much other than that due to being created by the Battlefield developers, it's probably pretty heavily tailored to shooters which means BioWare likely had to implement a few "creative solutions" to get things working for a RPG. I seem to recall them mentioning something about quadrupeds(horses and the like) not being very easy to add.

 

That said, since it is a EA owned engine then they can get DICE to tweak and modify the engine to better suit their needs.

 

It's also more of a pain to mod for than most other engines, but people are working on cracking that.

[DemGeth]

FB is pretty amazing all in all to be honest.  DA:I looks great acourse but some of the stuff that it does in BF is just amazing.

[Sanunes]

The first question, Frostbite a game engine that was created by Dice and now I think almost all of the EA studios use (if my memory serves EA Sports are the only games that currently use a different engine).

 

 

The benefits for BioWare to use Frostbite is that the development team is part of EA and they can work closely to figure out issues in the hardware much easier in the past for they don't have to create all the modules and systems they need for the game itself.  If I remember correctly they had employees travel between Dice and BioWare to work on developing the tools and fixing problems together, which might not have happened as closely or quickly if they were using a licensed engine.

 

Now one of the more interesting benefits for Frostbite is you are going to have different studios developing different modules, so if another EA studio might want to have access to a module that BioWare created for their games they can exchange information.  For with Mass Effect 1 the driving the Mako wasn't very fun for me, but they might be able to use some of the driving modules from the next Need for Speed game when designing how the Mako will work in the next Mass Effect game.

[Decepticon Leader Sully]

icant wate to see more stuff.

but i am dissapointed by the lack of frozen refferances here.

[wrdnshprd]

its a great engine graphically, but terrible if you want games with mod support.. supposedly the engine makes modding pretty difficult.

[CptFalconPunch]

Take everything I say with a grain of salt.

 

I've been following the games this engine made since 2011. From there on, I've heard a lot of things about this engine.

 

Supposedly, its ridiculously advanced and complex, so much that its stored on multiple computers and servers, its impossible to use like an SDK.

It accepts extentions, so if a studio works on algoryth A, then can inject that into Frostbite itself. So any studio working on the ending, actually contributes to advancing it.

Then, other studios can use those assets already in the engine for their own.

 

Therefore modding is extremely hard and would take a lot of money and time from the devs to develop.

 

Modding is achievable though, but its very restrictive. You're better off doing something else with that time.

[lynroy]

icant wate to see more stuff.

but i am dissapointed by the lack of frozen refferances here.

 

Let it go.

[Jaron Oberyn]

its a great engine graphically, but terrible if you want games with mod support.. supposedly the engine makes modding pretty difficult.

The engine itself does not make modding difficult. It's simply that the editor integrates various 3rd party applications that require licensing, this was the same case with Bioware's version of the Unreal Engine in ME. 

[Sanunes]

The engine itself does not make modding difficult. It's simply that the editor integrates various 3rd party applications that require licensing, this was the same case with Bioware's version of the Unreal Engine in ME. 

 

Yes and no.  They have been working to make Frostbite secure from certain levels of mods such as just having an "override folder", but when it comes to having a toolkit that is probably held back by the external tools they use.  I am just surprised they were able to place the acknowledgement of those tool into the closing credits and not a splash screen on startup like a lot of other games.

[Jaron Oberyn]

Yes and no.  They have been working to make Frostbite secure from certain levels of mods such as just having an "override folder", but when it comes to having a toolkit that is probably held back by the external tools they use.  I am just surprised they were able to place the acknowledgement of those tool into the closing credits and not a splash screen on startup like a lot of other games.

An override folder's function is derived from the engine itself. It's dependent on how the engine compresses and reads it's resources. It isn't as simple as you may think. 

[VahnXIII]

Let it go.

Beat me to it...

[Swordfishtrombone]

The only negative that I see is the difficulty of modding. If only there were good tools for modders for the engine, it would be great.

 

The longevity and replay value of DA:O (and DA2 as well) depended quite a bit on modders. There were mods to improve many things, and to provide variety to new playthroughs. It's too bad that we can't really expect the same to happen with Inquisition; were modding as easy as it was for the previous titles, we could rely on modders to fix things we don't like about the game - a "more quickslots" mod would be very welcome, for example, and since it appears that this limitation was a design choice, it would take a lot to convince Bioware to change it in a patch instead. 

[Cornughon]

Also my point of 'critisism': the lack of modding support.
I usually don't care about mods at all, even in mod-friendly games (I never installed one in Skyrim, and still clocked 300 hours of playing time on that one), but because the femquisitor's hair- and eyebrowstyles and are so atrocious, it seems like the community would be the only solution of fixing that, since I don't suppose Bioware would add more anytime soon, since they still have their hands full at bugfixing and adding a 'walk' button.

But then again: anything is better than Id Tech 5 (which would be my single complaint about Wolfenstein).

[LexXxich]

No mod support, no dynamic weather/lighting, no indoors/outdoors separation for environmental conditions (which leads to rain inside roofed buildings). Not sure if terrain clipping, camera movement and pathfinding issues are from engine itself or from how BW uses it.

On the other hand, it can display wast, complex and nice looking vistas, supports destructive environments.

[duckley]

Thanks all - too bad about the modding. If decent modding was available I would buy the pc version of the game as well. That's what I did with origins.

[Sondermann]

No mod support, no dynamic weather/lighting, no indoors/outdoors separation for environmental conditions (which leads to rain inside roofed buildings). Not sure if terrain clipping, camera movement and pathfinding issues are from engine itself or from how BW uses it.

On the other hand, it can display wast, complex and nice looking vistas, supports destructive environments.

Is the lack of dynamic weather/lighting and the wet indoors confirmed as being engine caused or is it just informed speculation on your part. I'm genuinely curious and mean no disrespect by that question .

[SpiritWolf448]

Let's be honest here, folks. The main reason for EA to order most of their studios to use Frostbite is simply based on economics, not on the merits of the engine.

It's just cheaper to use an in-house engine than a licensed one.

[Maverick827]

I will always be perplexed at DICE's pride when it comes to how "unmoddable" their engine is.

That's not a feature. It's a limitation.

[Cyonan]

Let's be honest here, folks. The main reason for EA to order most of their studios to use Frostbite is simply based on economics, not on the merits of the engine.

It's just cheaper to use an in-house engine than a licensed one.

 

That may be the main reason for EA using it, but that doesn't mean that there aren't actual benefits to using an in-house engine over a licensed one.

[SSV Enterprise]

If I had to guess at the advantages of the Frostbite engine over the engine used in DAO/DA2:

 

Well on the development side, BioWare already had a lot of work done for them on the technical side with the graphical features on PC/next gen consoles.  Tessellation, dynamic lighting, physics, water effects, etc.  Their attempts at doing such with Dragon Age II were pretty miserable, and performed terribly too.

 

Second, level design is more open and flexible.  I noticed in DAO and DAII that you could never walk under somewhere you walk.  Seriously.  There was never any bridge, cliff, balcony, etc., directly over an area you could walk in.  That would have been incredibly limiting for the open world gameplay zones in DAI.  In general, the DAO/DA2 engine was never made for the open world style gameplay that DAI has.  You can't even jump, and there were invisible walls everywhere.  You can argue that Frostbite has its downsides, but it likely played an intstrumental role in opening up the world design like BioWare wanted.  It's made for large, open spaces, such as the large maps in the Battlefield games.  In particular, the way a lot of buildings, caves, etc can be entered without any loading screen is really nice, helps make the gameplay experience more seamless.

[Chaos17]

Thanks all - too bad about the modding. If decent modding was available I would buy the pc version of the game as well. That's what I did with origins.

Modders are making their own toolkit : http://forum.bioware...9048-dai-tools/

It's still work in progress, you can see its features over there : http://daitools.free...updates-f3.html

 

The toolkit allow only for now texture swap, some modders are already changing some stuff like the Skyhold outfit for example :

Source : http://www.nexusmods...&preview=&pUp=1

 

Modders are preparing some aesthetic mods too and wait that the toolkit will allow mesh import :

Source : http://daitools.free...so-far-t64.html

 

Source : http://daitools.free...rsions-t10.html

 

Please give them some support and hugs

[Dherelv]

Let's be honest here, folks. The main reason for EA to order most of their studios to use Frostbite is simply based on economics, not on the merits of the engine.

It's just cheaper to use an in-house engine than a licensed one.

 

That's one thing that bugs me, hopefully someone can answer.

 

Frostbite being owned by DICE means Bioware doesn't pay licensing at all, or do they pay for it anyway with the project's budget?

Because if they don't,  what about DICE's revenue? I mean for their annual balance report or something?