Personal opinion about the current game engine

[MouadSaqui]

So this is just something I wanted to share, after playing around with some of the Unity engine features, I'm convinced DE needs a serious upgrade for the current game engine, I mean not bcs of graphics, but mainly bcs of quality of code, as a programmer who is into making games, I know for a fact that most of the bugs happens when the code if poorly written, or bcs of some old outdated technology you are using that is not compatible with the current hardware in the market, so what to do when you have a live service game that is designed to be played for years ? most companies upgrade their engines or update it frequently with newer technologies.

We all know DE is no longer a small studio, we also all know DE is being sold to tencent, and if you google it, you will know how big is tencent, there is literally no excuse for DE to use an outdated engine from early 2000s in 2020, If we are expecting something like the duviri paradox to be this mind blowing experience, I would prefer it to be something less buggy, and well optimized, when I talk about engine upgrade i'm not asking for 8k textures and photo-realistic graphics, I only want to play the game with less bugs and fps drops, and the recent content added to the game is making it harder to be well optimized, it seems like whenever they update the game they break it even more.

I've come to the conclusion that for a better game experience, the core game engine needs upgrades, We know for a fact that this game is not designed for "open world", now they started calling it "landscapes" bcs its clearly not an open world, an open world game is something like Zelda BOTW or red dead redemption 2, and if we are going take that path, the duviri paradox needs to feel like playing a real open world or just make it a classic cinematic quest like the second dream. 

Say whatever you want, I'm expecting this game to break at some point. 

[Felsagger]

The evolution engine sucks hard to be honest. DE must renew it or somehow improve over what they have. 

 

Once the PS5 releases and the other consoles and video cards War Frame needs to to keep up with the graphic department. In few years this game will look like a generic portable phone game. 

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

4 minutes ago, Felsagger said:

The evolution engine sucks hard to be honest. DE must renew it or somehow improve over what they have. 

 

Once the PS5 releases and the other consoles and video cards War Frame needs to to keep up with the graphic department. In few years this game will look like a generic portable phone game. 

And minecraft is still a popular game. You'll be fine.

[Ogger]

6 minutes ago, MouadSaqui said:

 most companies upgrade their engines or update it frequently with newer technologies.

 

who says they don't do that with their own engine?

 Did you reverse engineer it or did you just look into their repo and saw the last commit was from 

8 minutes ago, MouadSaqui said:

early 2000s

?

[EmberStar]

5 minutes ago, MouadSaqui said:

Say whatever you want, I'm expecting this game to break at some point. 

Warframe uses the Evolution engine.  That isn't Unity, and isn't Unreal.  Converting from one version of the *same* engine to another is apparently a potential nightmare that can grind developement on some games to a halt for half a year or more.  Think of it like trying to shove a diesel engine into a VW Beetle.  It's NOT going to be easy, it might not even be efficient, but it's probably *possible* if you're willing to throw time and resources at it.

Converting from one game engine to another is like trying to convert a WWI Biplane into a double-decker bus.  It's so much work that it's almost *always* more cost effective to just trash everything and start over from scratch.  So... are you willing to wait another seven years for "Warframe:  Unreal Edition" to get back to where it is now?

[Felsagger]

Just now, (PS4)Madurai-Prime said:

And minecraft is still a popular game. You'll be fine.

 

Minecraft is not Warframe. 

[MouadSaqui]

6 minutes ago, Felsagger said:

The evolution engine sucks hard to be honest. DE must renew it or somehow improve over what they have. 

its actually not that bad, this game is looks gorgeous, but whenever they push the engine to its limits problems happens

[Oggyswe]

5 minutes ago, Felsagger said:

 

Minecraft is not Warframe. 

i think the person is arguing that gameplay is more important than graphics. so just because it dosent look the best dont mean it wont get eyeballs on it

[MouadSaqui]

5 minutes ago, EmberStar said:

Converting from one game engine to another is like trying to convert a WWI Biplane into a double-decker bus.  It's so much work that it's almost *always* more cost effective to just trash everything and start over from scratch.  So... are you willing to wait another seven years for "Warframe:  Unreal Edition" to get back to where it is now?

I never said that actually, all I'm saying is that the evolution engine is limited when it comes to open world games, trying to fit an "open world" in a dungeon looter shooter game require engine upgrades and changes to it can render more objects without losing performance

[Loza03]

Apex Legends which, whilst not necessarily a god-tier game popularity wise, is still a mainstream big name, runs on an engine older than even Dark Sector.

 

I think we'll be fine.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

13 minutes ago, Felsagger said:

 

Minecraft is not Warframe. 

And it doesn't take a genius to recognize "just switching engines" isn't an easy task.

[Vahenir]

Not to mention the evolution engine is constantly evolving. Stuff is being added and improved engine wise all the time. Just because it was originally created 20 years ago doesn't mean its dated. Or you could look at stuff like the unreal 5 engine and say its dated because parts were started in the later 90's

[Galuf]

It is probably impossible to switch wf engine because the deliverable is too big. But they still can rework some of the scripted things. There are lots of good things in WF code as well. It is definitely a mixed bag.

There is no secret, when doing an ARPG game(wf is one kind of), either you work with your own engine and it starts small and clunky and bonify with age or you use a framework and you are limited by your framework. Gaming frameworks are all clunky as f, it is why I never started developping games full time. Maybe DE has the resource to start something from scratch, maybe not fully, they can use graphical libraries and not necessarily go full C++ but hey, I bet their devs are disgusted using LUA as well ^^.

Another fact is that I think some of the content is outsourced and/or extremly poorly reviewed. I'm a strong believer in optimistic releases, I find it pretty cool that a company accept to release asap, it's brave and kind of fun, sometimes it's blunderfest however.

[DrivaMain]

DE owns the engine. Owning your own game engine has it’s benefits.

1. You don’t need a license to acquire it.

2. You don’t have to wait for the engine maker to update the engine. You can do it yourself.

3. Because you made it, you have a better understanding of the engine than anyone.

28 minutes ago, Felsagger said:

Once the PS5 releases and the other consoles and video cards War Frame needs to to keep up with the graphic department. In few years this game will look like a generic portable phone game. 

Gameplay > Graphics. There is no counter to that. I’ve seen many AAA games that has extremely good graphics but mediocre gameplay.

21 minutes ago, MouadSaqui said:

its actually not that bad, this game is looks gorgeous, but whenever they push the engine to its limits problems happens

If problem happens within the engine. They fix it or update it, simple. If DE still uses the same evolution engine back at Warframe’s launch we wouldn’t have Open Worlds and Railjack.

[IIDMOII]

Visual fidelity isn't really an issue. I find the game to be aging well in that department. 

Bugs are bugs. It doesn't matter what engine it is. The same sloppy code isn't going to miraculously work due to an engine change.

My biggest issue, and the culprit for a lot of larger issues, is the obsession with an archaic peer to peer networking solution.

Game runs and plays like butter when you're alone. Its when you join a group that things go sideways.

[Galuf]

à l’instant, IIDMOII a dit :

Visual fidelity isn't really an issue. I find the game to be aging well in that department. 

Bugs are bugs. It doesn't matter what engine it is. The same sloppy code isn't going to miraculously work due to an engine change.

My biggest issue, and the culprit for a lot of larger issues, is the obsession with an archaic peer to peer networking solution.

Game runs and plays like butter when you're alone. Its when you join a group that things go sideways.

They don't have the proper skills for network. I really think they should work with some devops teams. The guys at Kojima's company did amazing things with death stranding wich work on every platform, one of the best asynchronous netcode I've ever seen in a video game. If DE has this kind of skills, we would have the op link working since rj release. For multiplayer, it feels it works miraculously since game release, the affinity "bugs" are from the release as well xd.

[MouadSaqui]

2 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

DE owns the engine. Owning your own game engine has it’s benefits.

1. You don’t need a license to acquire it.

2. You don’t have to wait for the engine maker to update the engine. You can do it yourself.

3. Because you made it, you have a better understanding of the engine than anyone.

I agree, this seems logic

2 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

If problem happens within the engine. They fix it or update it, simple. If DE still uses the same evolution engine back at Warframe’s launch we wouldn’t have Open Worlds and Railjack.

I think we have to define whats a warframe open world, cuz talking about open worlds the closest one we have is Orb vallis, why ? bcs its big enough to use vehicles in it, I literally preferred using my mech in orb vallis more than cambion drift, idk ... 

[General-Pacman]

7 minutes ago, IIDMOII said:

My biggest issue, and the culprit for a lot of larger issues, is the obsession with an archaic peer to peer networking solution.

Game runs and plays like butter when you're alone. Its when you join a group that things go sideways.

I think this particular problem is less related to engine limitations and more related to maintenance costs. To remove peer to peer, DE would need to set up a server-side hosting of it's own, big enough to provide match instances to as much players as possible, and distributed across several regions to reduce latency issues; setting up and maintaining an infraestructure like that is not cheap.

[DoomFruit]

22 minutes ago, MouadSaqui said:

Say whatever you want, I'm expecting this game to break at some point. 

Oh, it already has. Several times.

If you've got a high refresh rate monitor (120/144 Hz), take a polearm with a decent base speed (Orthos Prime for instance), give it one of the stances that isn't twirling spire (I forget their names), primed fury and swing it a few times. It'll work fine. Then give yourself a decent attack speed buff. Volt Speed (at 199% power strength, done easily with transient fortitude and umbral intensify) does the job, valkyr and wisp also suffice. The attack animations will completely break. They're mostly OK if you're running at 60 Hz.

This was immediately apparent when they made some change to the melee command input queue very shortly after melee 3.0 released. I reported it back then, it was ignored. I kept bumping the thread for half a year. It's still going on. I consider allied wisps and valkyrs to be the most dangerous threat on the field because they basically disable my main weapon.

It's been a year now. If they wanted to fix it, they would have done so already. The only other conclusion is that their engine is creaking apart at the seams and they can't fix it. Tying game logic code to display refresh code is utterly ridiculous. It's the kind of hack you did in the 80s-90s on game consoles.

Another flaw would be the rendering changes detailed in this thread:

The rendering engine now has some kind of bipolar disorder. There used to be an option to stop the brightness from going up and down and up and down on its own (autoexposure). That's now gone. Now not only does the game look like arse because it can't find a reasonable brightness and contrast level, but it doesn't have any kind of grasp as to what sensible limits are and you end up getting ridiculously blown out bright areas and equally ridiculously pitch black fields of darkness. The icing on the cake would be the headaches and eye strain which I (and several others) get from having stupid insane bright lights shoved right into my face.

13 minutes ago, Felsagger said:

Minecraft is not Warframe. 

Indeed. It's much better. I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of Minecraft's longevity was due to the fact that you can get into, change and add on to every single piece of the code. Minecraft has its limitations, but it is supremely moddable. That's why I've stuck around - it wouldn't have anywhere near as much appeal for me without things like Thaumcraft, Ars Magica or Rotarycraft (incidentally, all of which are best off in an older version of Minecraft - which you can still use).

Most of the problems I have with Warframe are things that I could fix quite easily on my own if it were as moddable and had as much freedom to choose versions as Minecraft does. For instance, I'd have just kept melee 2.0 (the version shortly after release before glaives and gunblades got the nerfbat), the old rendering code and would quite happily mod out some of the more obnoxious additions like the inexplicable 10^-3 damage multiplier on corpus treasurers, the exploding machineguns on corpus fodder swarm enemies and the status immunity/nullicancer plague which enemies seem to suffer from.

[Wyrmius_Prime]

29 minutes ago, Oggyswe said:

i think the person is arguing that gameplay is more important than graphics. so just because it dosent look the best dont mean it wont get eyeballs on it

What Minecraft has going for it is the game's timeless art style. Warframe doesn't have that, and you can see it by comparing old tilesets such as the grineer asteroid base and the derelict tileset to the most recent ones (Corpus ships and Cambion Drift for example). You can already see how bad some areas of the game that haven't received any facelifts have aged. Minecraft is also fully customizable.

8 minutes ago, IIDMOII said:

My biggest issue, and the culprit for a lot of larger issues, is the obsession with an archaic peer to peer networking solution.

Game runs and plays like butter when you're alone. Its when you join a group that things go sideways.

*cough* Deck 12 *cough* Exploiter orb *cough*

[MouadSaqui]

6 minutes ago, IIDMOII said:

My biggest issue, and the culprit for a lot of larger issues, is the obsession with an archaic peer to peer networking solution.

Game runs and plays like butter when you're alone. Its when you join a group that things go sideways.

This is actually so true, Playing in a squad is really cpu draining, I have no clue why but, Servers is something DE can invest in 

[Felsagger]

42 minutes ago, (PS4)Madurai-Prime said:

And it doesn't take a genius to recognize "just switching engines" isn't an easy task.

Who talked about switching engines? 

 

[Felsagger]

56 minutes ago, MouadSaqui said:

its actually not that bad, this game is looks gorgeous, but whenever they push the engine to its limits problems happens

 

You want to know how old it looks? Try a first person point of view with the game. 

 

[RazerXPrime]

The engine is constantluy evovling (pun intended) and is one of the best I've ever come accross. I don't think you've got anything to worry about.

[Felsagger]

40 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

 

Gameplay > Graphics. There is no counter to that. I’ve seen many AAA games that has extremely good graphics but mediocre gameplay.

 

 

Like Horizon Zero Dawn? 

Like Spiderman?