Monthly Development Update: February 2012

[Hardcore]

Besides that, If i remember correctly, they will still offer the old engine for those that cannot play with decent graphics (lol).

[Psikie]

I wanna say something that might come hard to belive to some people, but most people that play AO dont use a Pentium II to run it so i wish people would stop repeating the same silly (to put it lightly) question.

Perhaps subtlety is a skill you lack. But for those that can read between the lines, my question was meant to be a sneaky way of gettin an actual answer about game engine. If a developer came on and answered and said, "Min req will be XYZ" then guess what? That means that it's been tested on a live computer and they are really working on "something" and not just stringing folks along as some have suggested. So don't try to be cute with snarky answers when you don't really understand the meaning of the question.

FYI- I actually play through an hdmi connected 52 inch wall mounted HD plasma screen, so i'm sure my system can handle anything FC wants to produce.

[Mordo]

Seriously If your using a pc that has vacuum tubes to play ao, maybe its time to upgrade??? I would hate to see the cars some of you drive. I hear good things about the 1936 Packard. Stop living in the past man the Mr.Burns from the simpsons lifestyle.

[drainbamage]

When I see these type of posts I wonder why do you still play AO or even read forums if you are so unhappy? Kinda reminds me of a friend who complains about a cheating spouse but won't get a divorce hahaha. (Or maybe those guys work for Blizzard and are just bombing on the competition?)

I'm sure Blizzard would waste money paying someone to trash a game that has less players than their lowest-pop server on a slow night.

[Mastablasta]

Perhaps subtlety is a skill you lack. But for those that can read between the lines, my question was meant to be a sneaky way of gettin an actual answer about game engine. If a developer came on and answered and said, "Min req will be XYZ" then guess what? That means that it's been tested on a live computer and they are really working on "something" and not just stringing folks along as some have suggested. So don't try to be cute with snarky answers when you don't really understand the meaning of the question.

FYI- I actually play through an hdmi connected 52 inch wall mounted HD plasma screen, so i'm sure my system can handle anything FC wants to produce.

I can connect this nonsense PC to a 100" plasma if I wanted to, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a crummy old Radeon 4250 integrated GPU

[Ilaliya]

Just curious if my current systems will need upgrades for optimal performance.

I am assuming this is the question you care about the most. The front-end graphics engine we are using is the same that Conan and TSW uses. Obviously, it's had additional work & features done in between Conan launch and now, and we actually branched a version somewhere between Conan and TSW that was the right combination of feature set & stability for our needs in order to most efficiently adapt it to the particulars of the AO project.

In terms of visual quality and really performance (these things tend to have an inverse relationship), a lot of what you see in a game is not the engine itself but how the assets use the features of the engine. So for example, your graphics card doesn't necessarily care about how many polys the engine *can* handle, but it does care about how many polys that *are* being pushed to the card. Even though we're refreshing / upgrading / replacing assets, we're not going to be as heavy as Conan. We're probably also going to have settings that they don't have (stuff you can turn off) in order to increase performance at the cost of visual quality, because we do have to be considerate of the existing player-base and the current machine profiles which are out there. At this stage, it's looking like the absolute cutoff is that you need a card which can at least run DX9 / Shader Model 2.0. So we're talking about video cards made in 2003 or later. However I am adding this as a caveat: if someone has the lowest end card possible from 2003 that strictly meets these requirements, we can't really promise anything about performance or visual quality; just that the client will run.

[Dagget]

FYI, massively is doing one of their 'Choose my Game' things and AO is up for votes. At last check we were 2nd behind Dark Age of Camelot.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/03...ert-cartridge/

The winner will get several weeks coverage in Massively, including some live streaming videos by the columnist.

current voting (12 games contending, including AoC; just showing #1 and #2 here)

Dark Age of Camelot 293 (41.3%)
Anarchy Online 178 (25.1%)

Voting continues until Sunday

Just imagine how much more votes, and excitement we might be generating now had that engine video reached the public by now!

[Chrisax]

FYI, massively is doing one of their 'Choose my Game' things and AO is up for votes. At last check we were 2nd behind Dark Age of Camelot.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/03...ert-cartridge/
The winner will get several weeks coverage in Massively, including some live streaming videos by the columnist.
current voting (12 games contending, including AoC; just showing #1 and #2 here)
Dark Age of Camelot 293 (41.3%)
Anarchy Online 178 (25.1%)
Voting continues until Sunday

Already voted and asking people to vote.

It's like a DAoC fan hidden in his secret laboratory is hacking the vote! AO's citizen, to your browsers! Vote!

[Dagget]

It'll be a tortoise and hare thing, I think. The DaoC Proxy geeks will shoot their load prematurely, and we'll just keep easing up and overtake them the rest of the week.

[Ilaliya]

Just imagine how much more votes, and excitement we might be generating now had that engine video reached the public by now!

Well, as I explained in a previous post... the whole point of waiting until the right time and finding a good venue was so the engine does reach the public. Just speaking from personal experience here, I highly doubt if the audience for the engine video was strictly the subset of the AO community which posts on these forums (and that was reflected by either going with an AO fansite or something low-key) that the poll would be much higher.

[MajorOutage]

In terms of visual quality and really performance (these things tend to have an inverse relationship), a lot of what you see in a game is not the engine itself but how the assets use the features of the engine. So for example, your graphics card doesn't necessarily care about how many polys the engine *can* handle, but it does care about how many polys that *are* being pushed to the card. Even though we're refreshing / upgrading / replacing assets, we're not going to be as heavy as Conan. We're probably also going to have settings that they don't have (stuff you can turn off) in order to increase performance at the cost of visual quality, because we do have to be considerate of the existing player-base and the current machine profiles which are out there.

I think another point worth making here is that, given the way hardware has advanced since AO's launch. the new engine will not only be making things look better, but will be doing so much more efficiently.

The main cause for how AO's performance on newer machines basically stonewalls is because the CPU is still handling alot of the functions that newer games just chuck right to the GPU.

[Gorathon]

Didn't they pick AO about a year ago? Think they'd pick it again so quickly, with no real changes to report? Voted, btw.

[Dagget]

Didn't they pick AO about a year ago? Think they'd pick it again so quickly, with no real changes to report? Voted, btw.

No, AO lost last year to Wizard 101 in Beau Hindmans's Rise and Shiny competition.

But as we were 2nd in that competition, Beau did set up camp in AO and do a weeks' reporting. The big winner gets many more weeks coverage.

[Psikie]

I am assuming this is the question you care about the most. The front-end graphics engine we are using is the same that Conan and TSW uses.
At this stage, it's looking like the absolute cutoff is that you need a card which can at least run DX9 / Shader Model 2.0. So we're talking about video cards made in 2003 or later. However I am adding this as a caveat: if someone has the lowest end card possible from 2003 that strictly meets these requirements, we can't really promise anything about performance or visual quality; just that the client will run.

Fair enough tyvm

[Dagget]

In any case, Funcom could certainly promote awareness of the Massively contect/vote. They do it for AoC and TSW and BC whenever some popularity contest springs up on a gaming web site and one of those games is in the running. Simple Tweet and Facebook blurb would suffice.

[MrMojoRisin]

I voted and even though we're at 25% I'm quite happy to see AO at second place, and most of the comments saying AO.

Spam forums for votes! :P
Spam OOC for votes!
Spam Spam with Spam for votes!

[Xanderxavier]

erm simple question, I see talk of a video quit allot of talk really... in February, it's now march... still no video, dont announce videos that aren't released along with the announcement, it's bad PR and whoever came up with the idea shouldn't be in their position, and pony up the one you owe us, and once you announce you've made a video you have no excuses allowed waiting for the right venue, dont announce a video and you take all the time you need choosing, announce a video then RELEASE IT, isnt this kinda basic stuff like PR 101, and release on massively or something, just do it yesterday, jeez and I thought Aventurine had a bad PR dept, but they still dont announce videos they dont release along with the announcement, and for note I rarely check the forums, I really only came on now to complain that you announced a video and never released it, I do however check the AO website... which mentioned a video with no link, most people especially those unfamilar with the game do not give second chances with such things, if you lie to them once weather intentional or not they'll never give you a second oppertunity, AO was the 2nd 3d mmo out there, I played it right after UO myself, (my old account disappeared), however there are not hundreds of MMO's and quite a few good ones, the days when such bad comms with your customers were something they'd be forced to put up with are long since gone, its highly offensive I had to waste my time wading through a forum posts, which lets face it forums tend to be full of lots of nothing, just to find out that there is no video and you lied about their being one in February, its quite annoying specially considering your companies general lack of media on the new engine, which I might point out we've been waiting YEARS for, and still havent even seen a single lousy video of your latest version of the engine, only a failed ogre project from years ago!!!!, take a page out of aventurine's book well the only thing they do right pr wise, make a blog, just for the engine, RELEASE MEDIA regularly and dont announce anything that you cant pony up evidence for, or piss of customers who've already been waiting for more than long enough.

[Deviance]

So looks like those votes are catching up to that Camelot game. Also I patiently await the new video.

My vote will always remain with Anarchy even through all the hate and frustration I have with this game, I still love it. =D

[Kavius0110]

I love this game...period. However, month over month, the player base is fed promises and vague innuendos about "engine updates" and profession "changes". If I may speak for many of us, we are tired of the talk. We understand the bureaucracy of making changes to a well established game, but, either make it happen or shut it down. Enough is enough. My org buddies and I continually talk about the future of the game. No-one knows whether they should start a new account for that "last profession that they do not have, or a PVP only account, or whatever", because they hate to invest the time and money in a dead game. It is difficult thing to convince new friends to invest in a game that seems to be ever-dying. I wholeheartedly understand the difficulty in making the "purse string holders" understand the levity of their decision in a potentially lucrative investment, but, someone needs to convey the potential ramifications of this truly unique project that has and can be immensely profitable. Bottom line. 1.) FC wants to make a profit. 2.) This game has a unique offering 3.) The aggressive marketing and re-release of said game could lead to immense profits, see #1, for FC, if properly managed and released. Bottom line #2...give the playerbase what they want and desire, within means...no pun intended...then the game will flourish. Stop with the promises and make with the action!

[Veev]

Ilaliya, are you bold enough to give us a new ETA for the video?