Warframe And Unreal Engine 4

[(PSN)CaulusOuranos]

Any chance the DE team will experiment with Warframe, or even port it, using Unreal Engine 4?

 

(It is basically free to use now. They're asking for 5% royalties off of creations using it, though.)

[CaveCricket48]

I doubt DE would switch over to another engine after all the work they've put into their own.

[KidMemphis]

For what reason would they change engines this far in?

[TheErebus.]

Switching engines isn't like switching over to another console, it's literally taking apart everything worked on one thing and then rebuilding it anew on another engine. There's also limitations on how much you can do on a engine made by others as opposed to the engine that your team had created from scratch.

[immolator1001]

I doubt DE would switch over to another engine after all the work they've put into their own.

It's not as clear on PS4, but Warframe runs on the Evolution Engine which created by DE. It's literally their baby.

(PS it's not the engine that makes it look good, the engine might make it easier, but really it's how much detail is put in the models and textures.)

Edited March 4, 2015 by immolator1001

[blasron]

Switching engine mean re-doing all the code of a game to a new programing grammar.

 

In a easier to explain this. Imaging yourself writhing a book in english but latter on said to yourself: You know what i will restart my book but this time in german. That's what happend when you switch engine

[Kestral9999]

*Regurgitates points stated above*

[Genoscythe]

It would surely take lots of effort, but I think UE4 is way superior to Evolution.

[Dioxety]

There own engine has amazing graphics. And tbh UE is hard to optimize.

[rockscl]

xD

[TwiceDead]

No, that's a bad idea. That's like removing the foundation of a sky-scraper, Warframe would crumble to dust.

 

I'd love to see it happen, I just don't see it ever happening. 

Edited March 4, 2015 by TwiceDead

[Gelkor]

Why in particular do you feel this is needed OP?

 

I rather like the Evolution Engine, it's been the basis of WF and has served well this whole time.

[Monolake]

Maybe you dont understand, but porting a full game to another engine is like moving a building into another city.

[SIDESTRE4M]

That would basically mean Warframe 2.

 

But, honestly...

 

 

Warframe isn't that ugliest game out there and the lighting in the unreal engine is static, as far as I know.

Edited March 4, 2015 by SIDESTRE4M

[RorschachRev]

If Warframe was ported to Unreal Engine 4, they would have to remove all of the worst parts like Flash, Internet Explorer and Lua. By contrast, UE4 is pure C++ code.

 

UE4 has *a lot* of realistic lighting options. Static lighting is nice because it precompiles and no run time effort is needed. (e.g. less CPU/ GPU work while playing, more time spent recalculating when the level is built and cooked.)

 

While UE4 and Warframe have a similar networking model, DE has spent a lot of effort into getting through NAT using several technologies with mixed success. UE4's codebase assumes that the game developer does this work, but don't include any code to do it. I'm doing some initial work on getting NAT punching into UE4 as a module for sale on the UE4 marketplace, using packet relays, STUN and ICE. 

 

Apparently WF release 16 will have up to 8 players, my system can barely handle 4 and I can't host. (Laptops have their advantages, and disadvantages.) UE4 doesn't have a hard limit on simultaneous players, the main limitation is the number of replicated blueprints (objects that sync between clients <-> host <-> clients.)

 

Since UE4 source code is open source on github to developers, perhaps WF will adopt some of the lighting models. UE does material interactions, the demo has objects of different materials that burn, freeze, shatter, etc using damage types. In UE4, the world can be composed of destructible materials that destroy in different ways. 

 

With the Perfect World investment in DE, I bet that the "next title" that DE works on will use EE as well, in order to rape pocketbooks of players. The last game that Perfect World released, the movement was atrocious. I couldn't stand trying to move around, it was clunky, buggy, involved random teleporting while moving around a level, etc. 

 

One of the the things that Epic has going for them is that they can focus on just the engine development, while DE needs to make a playable game that is fun. In a year or two the UE4 games will hit the marketplace, and they will be insanely good. (I'm trying to put together some art assets and stuff, rough going for independent developer!) DE is experimenting a bit (see this webm movie) https://warframe.com/sanctuary/? and still hiring Flash developers http://www.digitalextremes.com/careers/postings/programming/ui-programmer (I refuse to do Flash development, ever since I made a callback interface in AS3 and Adobe screwed up the whole "equal text is equal code" thing completely. I can't imagine anybody who knows C++ doing Flash!)

Edited March 18, 2015 by RorschachRev

[TheJagji]

Um...

 

1. Movement in a game has nothing to do with the engine. Its to do with bad game design.

 

2. UE4 dose not have the same aesthetics as EE dose, so I think WF would losses some of its soul if it did that.

3. Moving a game from one engine to another at this point in development would just be stupid for DE to do. Plus, it means any money they make of WF would go to Epic, and I am pretty sure DE wants max profits.

 

4. Money.

 

5. If there going to moive to a differnt engin, I would rather it go in to the CryEngin. It would suite Warframe better.

[Lightsmith]

Any chance the DE team will experiment with Warframe, or even port it, using Unreal Engine 4?

 

(It is basically free to use now. They're asking for 5% royalties off of creations using it, though.)

yeah, I don't know why they would do that.  5% royalties isn't "basically free" that's quite substantial, especially if its off of Revenue and not Profit.

 

I would think it rare for a company to switch engines mid game. I don't even know if any big titles have done it. I know I've seen Graphics updates Everquest and WOW did that, but I'm not sure if that was a whole new engine or just updating. Even those only did it after 5-6 years in existence, which Warframe isn't at (technically they're at 0 since its still beta)

 

I would think there would be a whole lot of work involved moving it over, updating code, I don't know that level of programing so I can't say for sure.

 

I don't think that Warframe is really a stop and look at the pretty environments type of game anyways.

Edited March 18, 2015 by Lightsmith

[RorschachRev]

Jagi: a game engine involves a Scene Graph and Collision Detection. I've only "written my own engine" in javascript for HTML5, but using Panda and playing with UE4 the engine and movement are directly related. UE4 demos have various movement styles. 

 

My complaint about "Swordsman" I'll break down into various engine components. "clunky, buggy, random teleporting"

 

The "clunky" behavior was actually needing very small "hit zones" to activate events. The hit zone detection (same as hitting X to use an object in WF) is a function of the Scene Graph. That is as "core engine" as you can get. In the case of "Swordsman" the activation zone for a chariot was nowhere near the graphical display, there was a zone several feet away that my friend used as a trigger. I had to jump up above the chariot, and then find the activation zone somewhere above the luggage area in order to "ride" it. That's scene graph, and "clunky" was the best way I could describe the annoyance without details. 

 

Random teleporting was likely a desychronization between client and server out of synchronization, most likely networking related. With the client thinking I am in one location and the server not receiving updates, the server decides to reconcile the two issues by telling the client where it last remembers me, so I ended up teleporting back to a previous location, or to a location that the server hypothesized because it missed the turn, but kept the data about me moving forward. It projected me to locations I never stood. This is a combination of Scene Graph and network event synchronization, and very much "core engine" related.

 

The "buggy" movement I observed was getting stuck moving up and down stairs, on objects that were smooth, etc. Now I've written code to do this in python and in javascript, where you compare the location of two objects. Python was 3D, Javascript was 2.5D. If the objects are touching, movement isn't allowed to continue in that direction because a collision has occurred. Simple enough concept, but it can be botched in interesting ways. Rubbing against a smooth surface preventing movement in other directions is a bug I had in my Javascript code, I fixed it by changing the bounds checking. "Swordsman" has not polished their code to the same degree, and you can get stuck while rubbing against smooth surfaces. The 3D code is more complicated, because there are height differences you need to prevent movement, and height differences that you need to permit it - in order to gradually climb stairs. (Instead of making players bunny hop the stairs.) "Swordsman" failed this comparison, and I could only sometimes climb stairs, other times I had to bunny hop them. 

 

Please demonstrate how these items are not "engine related" and also please describe to me your issues with movement in "Swordsman" since you claim the problems are not engine related.

[TheJagji]

Jagi: a game engine involves a Scene Graph and Collision Detection. I've only "written my own engine" in javascript for HTML5, but using Panda and playing with UE4 the engine and movement are directly related. UE4 demos have various movement styles.

 

Yes and no. Some engines are very flexable with how its done, some are strict, and others let you do what ever you want.

[RorschachRev]

What game engines let movement be "what ever you want" besides UE4?

[Sziklamester]

I would like to see this game on that engine but their works in the evolution engine is so much so this is far from the reality to implement this game into unreal engine 4. Only if you know those engines what's their strongest and weakest points then you can make a choice which could serve the game better. 

 

Their engine is an old engine and sometimes up to dated with new codes but the ue4 is a strong and newest engine maybe could serve this game better but the devs choice to use their hard work or change it to a better.

Edited March 18, 2015 by Sziklamester

[TheJagji]

I would like to see this game on that engine but their works in the evolution engine is so much so this is far from the reality to implement this game into unreal engine 4. Only if you know those engines what's their strongest and weakest points then you can make a choice which could serve the game better. 

 

Their engine is an old engine and sometimes up to dated with new codes but the ue4 is a strong and newest engine maybe could serve this game better but the devs choice to use their hard work or change it to a better.

There is no such thing as the 'best' engin. It comes down to personal prefrence of the devs, or what the publisher wants it to be in.

[(NSW)GameV8]

I'm really starting to wonder if people know what a game engine actually is.

 

Oh look! Wikipedia knows: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine

"A game engine is a software framework designed for the creation and development of video games."

The key word here is "framework", put simply game engines are toolkits.

 

UE4 has nothing to offer that DE can't implement in EE with considerably less effort than re-coding the entire freaking game.

 

 

 

[AdunSaveMe]

Why switch over to an engine that they would have to pay royalties for when they've already got their own engine which works amazingly, looks decent and runs on calculators?

[(PSN)DanteVincent]

There own engine has amazing graphics. And tbh UE is hard to optimize.

Looks superb but gameplay wise it feels really clunkly and a tad irresponsive. I'm really used to it by now and i love the game, but if i picked up a game i was hyped for and controls felt that way it would be a complete turn down.