[Questions & Conjecture] Evolution Engine Evolving?

[(PSN)MoRockaPDX]

The Evolution Engine is Digital Extreme's(DE) proprietary inhouse game engine. Originally, I believe, called the Sector Engine, the name changed when DE adopted the evolution theme. Said theme is hidden throughout the game in the Tenno writing, by the way.

Despite a similar look and feel to the Unreal Engine, the Evolution engine is a unique and original intellectual property of DE. In a Gamasutra interview, Steve Sinclair([DE]Steve) said that the similarities could boil down to the similar work aesthetic to the Ureal Engine developers, Epic, a developer DE has a long history of co-development with.

Despite concerns that the engine would become dated, DE has maintained and advanced the Evolution Engine. Responding to development trends and incorporating new technologies. Dad's partnership with nVidia is an example. Though, not the most advanced engine of course, it has proven adaptable and serves across multiple platforms.

I am not familiar with how long running games, like WOW, has dealt with advancing technologies and standards, or if they had to overhaul or transition their game to a new platform. I can imagine that at some point Warframe will push the envelope too far for the Evolution Engine. Already the console team has delayed the release of the new raid in Update 16 to re-architect the console optimizations, so 8 player raids are even possible.

One can imagine that DE will have to go back and overhaul the engine to a significant degree to meet the next 5 to 10 years of development needs if it continues to plan on utilizing their own engine. When this will be necessary is an open question, but the strain can already be felt. Perhaps the needed advances can continue to be incorporated into the existing engine without conflicting with the assets or platforms they run on, indefinitely. Maybe someone more knowledgable can comment.

Other considerations. Given the changing landscape for DE, what makes the most sense. Is it practical to keep pushing their more than a decade old game engine, or should they start from scratch on a new one? Should they I stead move to a third party Engin, like Unreal Engine 4? Does UE4 even offer a royalty free licencing option anymore? Could, DE fork the Evolution engine into an open source version to leverage crowd sourced development?

tl; dr: what do you think the future of the Evolution Engine is? Can is keep up with the industry and meet the needs of Warframe?

Edited October 25, 2015 by (PS4)MoRockaPDX

[Latiac]

TF2 runs on an old engine and that seems to be doing well.

Other games also run on old engines aswell. Call of Duty for example has been running on the same engine for almost all it's games.

While Warframe might need an engine overhaul. I don't think it would be anytime soon.

[Kasumi-]

TF2 runs on an old engine and that seems to be doing well.

Well I mean, Source is amazing.

[(PSN)MoRockaPDX]

TF2 runs on an old engine and that seems to be doing well.

Other games also run on old engines aswell. Call of Duty for example has been running on the same engine for almost all it's games.

While Warframe might need an engine overhaul. I don't think it would be anytime soon.

Your right in that many popular titles are running on older or aging game engines. And advanced game engines have been out for awhile now and have not been fully exploited yet. This could be a sign of a shift in the game industry. There has been a lot of momentum in existing IP on existing engines. Plus concern over the future of consoles and the game industry, as a whole, that has more recently been rebounding.