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Thread: Anarchy Online, Funcom and the Potential Future of the IP

  1. #1

    Anarchy Online, Funcom and the Potential Future of the IP

    Years ago, when the "new graphics engine" was more a joke than a reality I wrote a little doc titled "Anarchy Online, Funcom and the Potential Future of the IP". Over the years other AO players have contributed by adding helpful edits and grammar corrections. Today I was surprised to see some helpful edits to the doc with new ideas. Last time I shared the link was in 2015, I think. It's time to share it again.
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  2. #2
    Hey Windguard,

    Going through the document...might have more feedback later, but wanted to comment on one early statement:

    "In other words, the Dreamworld engine must be put aside and move past it. The best chance, in my humble opinion as a gamer, would be to use the Unity game engine."

    I'm curious...how do you conclude that Unity is their best chance for a massive scale modern MMORPG?

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by BangleTiger View Post
    Hey Windguard,

    Going through the document...might have more feedback later, but wanted to comment on one early statement:

    "In other words, the Dreamworld engine must be put aside and move past it. The best chance, in my humble opinion as a gamer, would be to use the Unity game engine."

    I'm curious...how do you conclude that Unity is their best chance for a massive scale modern MMORPG?
    Secret World Legends moved to Unreal Engine Conan Exiles use UE4 so I would bet on that one since Funcom has some experience with it.

    Licensing either Unity, UE or Source is that you get a maintained tech to use. All you need to do is to extend it so it work with your pipeline and optimize it. Seeing the issues we have on the 'new' engine, that would be a good move (I kinda regret the original plan to use Ogre).

    But the client issues are the tip of the Iceberg. The AO work pipeline need a rework too, because I doubt training a dev to use Tide would do any good.

    What really bother me is: What do FC want to do with the IP? Is Rubi Ka good for the sock drawer?
    Last edited by Boltgun; Jul 27th, 2017 at 10:23:09.
    Server first !!! Neutral Solitus Male Soldier named Boltgun to wear a short with pink spots on RK1 !!!
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  4. #4
    "In other words, the Dreamworld engine must be put aside and move past it. The best chance, in my humble opinion as a gamer, would be to use the Unity game engine."
    Unity3D is a toy and shouldn't be used for any project intending to be maintained after release.

    Quote Originally Posted by Boltgun View Post
    Secret World Legends moved to Unreal Engine
    Wat. No it didn't.
    Formerly Vhab.
    Once upon a time ruled a server. And then sold out. Sorry.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    Unity3D is a toy and shouldn't be used for any project intending to be maintained after release.
    BOOOOH! My job as of now is literally Unity3D and this engine is a time saver.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    Wat. No it didn't.
    Really? Sorry then. I kept reading about it but I guess that it is mixing up with the UE4 for Conan Exiles.
    Last edited by Boltgun; Jul 27th, 2017 at 10:55:11.
    Server first !!! Neutral Solitus Male Soldier named Boltgun to wear a short with pink spots on RK1 !!!
    N E U T R A L I Z E R S

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by BangleTiger View Post
    Hey Windguard,

    Going through the document...might have more feedback later, but wanted to comment on one early statement:

    "In other words, the Dreamworld engine must be put aside and move past it. The best chance, in my humble opinion as a gamer, would be to use the Unity game engine."

    I'm curious...how do you conclude that Unity is their best chance for a massive scale modern MMORPG?
    Keep in mind that I wrote that years ago, and that there may be better choices these days.
    Twitch Channel - Youtube Channel - Twitter - Facebook - Pinterest
    AO Universe - By Players, For Players! The #1 AO Fansite Worldwide - Site Founder (Retired). | AOSpeak - Unofficial AO Teamspeak 3 Server - Founder (Retired). | AO Recipebook - In-Game Recipe/Tradeskill Bot - Founder (Retired).
    Founding member of the Council of Truth Clerical Staff.
    Keep in mind: My posts are my own personal views and thoughts.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    Unity3D is a toy and shouldn't be used for any project intending to be maintained after release.

    .
    Then i realize you have no idea what your talking about. Unity is easily maintainable, and doesn't use visual scripting like Unreal as standard.
    Maybe you still prefer Ogre ? hehe.
    Last edited by ByLogic; Jul 29th, 2017 at 07:03:03.

  8. #8
    Alright I just approved a few grammatical suggestions... and a TON of new ideas and thoughts which I totally did not expect. Some I don't quite agree with, but to be fair, it'd more of a personal choice than them being unacceptable. I'm glad to see this doc is evolving.
    Twitch Channel - Youtube Channel - Twitter - Facebook - Pinterest
    AO Universe - By Players, For Players! The #1 AO Fansite Worldwide - Site Founder (Retired). | AOSpeak - Unofficial AO Teamspeak 3 Server - Founder (Retired). | AO Recipebook - In-Game Recipe/Tradeskill Bot - Founder (Retired).
    Founding member of the Council of Truth Clerical Staff.
    Keep in mind: My posts are my own personal views and thoughts.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Boltgun View Post
    BOOOOH! My job as of now is literally Unity3D and this engine is a time saver.
    I'm sorry to hear that.

    Unity3D's approach to assets, prefabs, scenes, (honestly, the general setup of it) makes it hard to make a maintainable project that scales to a larger team.
    Their release schedules are rushed, often regressing/breaking existing functionality, while pushing forward much needed critical fixes to major releases rather than maintenance releases.
    IL2CPP is a wonderful gift of corner cases that keeps on giving. Cloud build is flaky enough to just throw down the money/time and get homegrown CI/CD going.

    And for truly nitpicking, we had to ban managers from looking at the asset store .
    It gives them the impression ready made bits and bobs are widely available.
    But unfortunately the bulk of em are of very questionable quality.

    For us it has been a major pain point. But at the same time, the initial time investment needed for UE or other alternatives isn't quite feasible either.
    At least Microsoft's involvement is pushing forward .NET 4.6 integration and hopefully that stabilizes before a next project rolls along.
    Then at least I can make our frontend developers write slightly more sane code.

    Either way, at the scale FC operates, Unity3D makes no sense.

    Quote Originally Posted by Boltgun View Post
    Really? Sorry then. I kept reading about it but I guess that it is mixing up with the UE4 for Conan Exiles.
    Yeah, even FC realized in-house engines are beyond what they can manage
    But switching over existing games is insanity. Oh wait..
    Last edited by Vhax; Aug 1st, 2017 at 18:17:50.
    Formerly Vhab.
    Once upon a time ruled a server. And then sold out. Sorry.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    I'm sorry to hear that.

    Unity3D's approach to assets, prefabs, scenes, (honestly, the general setup of it) makes it hard to make a maintainable project that scales to a larger team.
    Their release schedules are rushed, often regressing/breaking existing functionality, while pushing forward much needed critical fixes to major releases rather than maintenance releases.
    IL2CPP is a wonderful gift of corner cases that keeps on giving. Cloud build is flaky enough to just throw down the money/time and get homegrown CI/CD going.
    I do agree with all of this, but I can only repeat all I said when I was working on PHP projects: Yes, it sucks. Yes, the internals are hostile. And yes, a lot of crap is being made using the engine. I can write books about how much this tech is a mess of random bits. But it feed me and do not get in my way.

    We needed something that can handle a sharp turn at any time because of concerns emitted by the hierarchy. The irony is that Unity 3D ended up pretty well smaller scale projects from big companies.

    We avoided corner cases with documented guidelines. We could do without but that was not a major issue.

    I agree that the Unity team should stop trying to sell these cloud services. It was much more efficient to let me integrate Unity into our internal tools anyway.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    And for truly nitpicking, we had to ban managers from looking at the asset store .
    It gives them the impression ready made bits and bobs are widely available.
    But unfortunately the bulk of em are of very questionable quality.
    The asset store is better forgotten about. It gave me Wordpress plugins flashbacks.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    For us it has been a major pain point. But at the same time, the initial time investment needed for UE or other alternatives isn't quite feasible either.
    At least Microsoft's involvement is pushing forward .NET 4.6 integration and hopefully that stabilizes before a next project rolls along.
    Then at least I can make our frontend developers write slightly more sane code.

    Either way, at the scale FC operates, Unity3D makes no sense.

    Yeah, even FC realized in-house engines are beyond what they can manage
    But switching over existing games is insanity. Oh wait..
    Of course FC started using UE4 and is better off going with this. We all need various standards to accommodate our projects, even if the standard is written with crayons.

    My only major issue is that Unity's documentation is horrible. Like all hell horrible. Comparing this to PHP docs gave me a shock. And GUI too, oh boy I use that every day and I hate it.
    Last edited by Boltgun; Aug 2nd, 2017 at 10:51:14.
    Server first !!! Neutral Solitus Male Soldier named Boltgun to wear a short with pink spots on RK1 !!!
    N E U T R A L I Z E R S

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    I'm sorry to hear that.

    Unity3D's approach to assets, prefabs, scenes, (honestly, the general setup of it) makes it hard to make a maintainable project that scales to a larger team.
    Their release schedules are rushed, often regressing/breaking existing functionality, while pushing forward much needed critical fixes to major releases rather than maintenance releases.
    IL2CPP is a wonderful gift of corner cases that keeps on giving. Cloud build is flaky enough to just throw down the money/time and get homegrown CI/CD going.
    Don't confuse assets with prefabs, they are not the same thing. If your assets structure is a mess to maintain, then its only the developers fault, not the engines fault. You manage this by your own logic. I have no problem dealing with 1000 of objects in a logic asset structure. IL2CPP is mainly for mobile platform.But improvements are on the horizon with better collector with .NET 6.0 support. (dev should learn to allocate currently anyways, its a no issue with Unity thought). Scencemanagement and prefabs are the best things with Unity compered to other Engine i worked with. People who fail on structure have a long way to go on understanding Unity fully, and it takes more than 1 year to do this.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    And for truly nitpicking, we had to ban managers from looking at the asset store .
    It gives them the impression ready made bits and bobs are widely available.
    But unfortunately the bulk of em are of very questionable quality.
    True only noob developers use asset store, but its good for placeholder concept testing.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    Either way, at the scale FC operates, Unity3D makes no sense.
    But Ogre makes sense? Unity engine is allot better than DreamEngine/Cheta with fully shader functionality.
    If you didn't recommend Ogre to Means, back in does days, we would have new engine done long time ago.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    Yeah, even FC realized in-house engines are beyond what they can manage
    But switching over existing games is insanity. Oh wait..
    Well you already done that right?..
    Last edited by ByLogic; Aug 2nd, 2017 at 20:10:51.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Boltgun View Post
    I do agree with all of this, but I can only repeat all I said when I was working on PHP projects: Yes, it sucks. Yes, the internals are hostile. And yes, a lot of crap is being made using the engine. I can write books about how much this tech is a mess of random bits. But it feed me and do not get in my way.

    We needed something that can handle a sharp turn at any time because of concerns emitted by the hierarchy. The irony is that Unity 3D ended up pretty well smaller scale projects from big companies.

    We avoided corner cases with documented guidelines. We could do without but that was not a major issue.

    I agree that the Unity team should stop trying to sell these cloud services. It was much more efficient to let me integrate Unity into our internal tools anyway.



    The asset store is better forgotten about. It gave me Wordpress plugins flashbacks.



    Of course FC started using UE4 and is better off going with this. We all need various standards to accommodate our projects, even if the standard is written with crayons.

    My only major issue is that Unity's documentation is horrible. Like all hell horrible. Comparing this to PHP docs gave me a shock. And GUI too, oh boy I use that every day and I hate it.
    I get you. Something about the devil you know.

    And I will admit, I only get to see the worst of Unity3D.
    It's not part of my day-to-day, I only get involved when either the frontend devs can't figure it or stuff really broke.

    Every once in a while I do get a shimmer of hope they're improving things.
    The years to come will stay interesting at least as Unity tries to scale up to larger projects and UE tries to scale down to smaller projects.

    And thank you for sharing your perspective on this.

    Quote Originally Posted by ByLogic View Post
    But improvements are on the horizon with better collector with .NET 6.0 support.
    Ironmax, Please just stop posting.
    Formerly Vhab.
    Once upon a time ruled a server. And then sold out. Sorry.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post

    Ironmax, Please just stop posting.
    This is your argument? "stop posting" hehe. Remember your not the boss of any thing any more.. . Why don't you join the Unity forum? Ohh wait your a Unity noob, you said it so your self.(nothing wrong with that thought). but its me who spent over 10 years with the engine and is well respected on the Unity community that should "stop posting", i get it you have like 3-4 months experience? What do you have to offer the community with knowledge? Large projects have been made with Unity engine and rendering is getting closer and closer to UE. What your saying is just not true.. you can fool others, but not me. Thought I understand you don't like it.

    I think you should learn Unity better before you make any type of statement on a forum. Allot of people use Unity now days. And yes Unity has plans for mono .Net 6.0 support (not 4.6 like you first stated, (and it is mono 3.5 ) If you infact follow whats going on they have 6.0 on the roadmap, removing there own scripting tools and focusing on .net framework. Not sure if this was a argument or not, hard to tell, maybe it was just a random quote followed by "stop posting" just to look "cool" . Try that on the Unity forum.. Please tel me to stop post there.

    With Unity 2017 you have C#6 & .NET 4.6. Even so its on experimental stage, it still works. You have to understand that we talking about Mono
    scripting API, not all features will work.

    My tip to you, don't talk about Unity unless you have some real experience to talk about. It will only make you look "less intelligent" for people who knows the engine better than you. Not sure what things you think is broken? or what things you hope should be fixed. Dealing with large project
    is just not a issue, at least not for me. There are more things broken in dreamegine /cheta than in Unity Engine thats for sure..raytracing that renders on billboards etc.

    I have a little gift for you here = https://unity3d.com/learn (maybe you can see more than the worst of Unity)
    Last edited by ByLogic; Aug 5th, 2017 at 10:02:46.

  14. #14
    What this thread has become, is why we can't have nice things...

    Satire
    Caloss2 LVL 220 melee VANGUARD (semi retired).....Llewlyn 220/30/70 meepmeep.....Boooocal 220../30/70 Soldier.......Knack 220/30/70 Keeper.....Hiesenberg 215/xx/xx NT NERFED Neytiri1 220/30/70 Shade Knacker220/30/70Meat shield
    https://www.youtube.com/user/caloss2 for guides/walkthroughs/letsplays and all your other AO needs
    Quote Originally Posted by Mastablasta
    In my special design documents that I feed to the FC devs, who are my willing slaves.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Caloss2 View Post
    What this thread has become, is why we can't have nice things...

    Satire
    Well we have nice videos ++ on the job there. Also Windguaerd for all the great work he done over the years.. Its really the community that kept AO alive.. (i also contributed 5 years with both faction raids to keep it alive, even Means was kind of enough to tell me this.. ) And Vhab for the job he done with raidbots and job on the engine (even thought i still hate his trolling attitude, this goes both ways i am sure) i guess we are all just a great mix of wicked people, lets see what the future of this IP will bring.

    Quote Originally Posted by Boltgun View Post
    Conan Exiles use UE4 so I would bet on that one since Funcom has some experience with it.
    They clearly have no experience with it, since the whole game is taken from a template and added some assets to it, look at the UI, its horrible, gameplay is basic. No unique features there.

    Quote Originally Posted by Boltgun View Post
    Licensing either Unity, UE or Source is that you get a maintained tech to use. All you need to do is to extend it so it work with your pipeline and optimize it. Seeing the issues we have on the 'new' engine, that would be a good move (I kinda regret the original plan to use Ogre).
    Exactly my point to..you can even extend the editor your self, or use reflection to get some workarounds. Limitation is in the developer not the engine.
    Last edited by ByLogic; Aug 4th, 2017 at 10:20:46.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by ByLogic View Post
    And yes Unity has plans for mono .Net 6.0 support (not 4.6 like you first stated, (and it is mono 3.5 ) If you infact follow whats going on they have 6.0 on the roadmap, removing there own scripting tools and focusing on .net framework.
    I'd applaud you for your effort to be part of different communities and your years of dabbling in gamedev.
    I'd always encourage people to seek out what they think is fun and gain knowledge in the process.
    However, every single time you post you go ahead and ruin it with your inane ramblings.
    It's not enjoyable for me. It's not enjoyable for you. We're just all losing out on these exchanges, and honestly I need to stop biting your bait.

    It's exhausting deciphering the posts of someone who's played around just enough to know where to probe, but never went deep enough to know what he's been talking about.
    We've been at this for years. Every single time you'd jump up with some sort of vendetta to **** over what clearly is a subject you care about, but honestly refuse to take a lesson in all these years.

    As for the current subject at hand. No, there's no such thing as .NET 6.0.
    Unity3D's partnership with Microsoft is upping the class library support to .NET 4.6 (I can't remember if it's 4.6.1 or 4.6.2 off hand, one of them) and language support to C# 6.0.
    Yes, swap some numbers and names around and you'll eventually get there, but the details matter.

    Quote Originally Posted by Caloss2 View Post
    What this thread has become, is why we can't have nice things...

    Satire
    One of these years I'll learn to stop biting bait.

    I'm sorry for derailing.
    Formerly Vhab.
    Once upon a time ruled a server. And then sold out. Sorry.

  17. #17
    Getting back on some kind of rails..

    Quote Originally Posted by Boltgun View Post
    Licensing either Unity, UE or Source is that you get a maintained tech to use. All you need to do is to extend it so it work with your pipeline and optimize it. Seeing the issues we have on the 'new' engine, that would be a good move (I kinda regret the original plan to use Ogre).
    Back when the Ogre3D decision was made, the landscape was quite different.
    The decision kinda made sense considering the requirement was just "render this stuff in a DX9 kind of way".
    It made a lot of assumptions about the internals of AO and assumed Ogre3D won't have to do a lot of heavy lifting.

    It also didn't help nobody had done a deep dive into AO's rendering internals in half a decade at that point.
    The original AO devs are a wonderful mix of brilliant and insane. They pulled off amazing feats with the resources they had.
    Unfortunately many of these amazing feats made porting a ton more difficult.

    And it wouldn't be FC if it wasn't over promised and optimistically estimated.
    Of course, we know things didn't go as planned and the people starting that project were no longer around at the time the decision was made to use Cheetah instead.
    Taking the rendering portion out of Dreamworld as used in Age of Conan actually made a lot of sense on the surface.
    Age of Conan was build out of the Anarchy Online codebase and Cheetah at a global view still shared similarities with the rendering engine inside AO.
    This might be the reason something ended up being released in the end at all.

    But ultimately the project was unreasonable. And I imagine deep down most players knew this as well.
    The only reason we ended up having a "beta" was Macrosun and I dropping everything and hacked for ~4 months to turn the pile of "it doesn't work at all" into "I guess it kinda works".
    Sanity was not something we expected to keep towards the end. But I guess it sorta worked.

    It was a very drawn out and long lesson, but eventually everyone involved learned you can't swap out the rendering engine on a project already in maintenance mode.

    As for what should have been done, hindsight being easy and all that.
    But given what we know now, the easiest would have been a straight up in place DX7 to DX9 conversion.
    Some insane bits would have still given us trouble, but at least we wouldn't have been held back trying to remold a decade of assumptions into the shape a different engine wants it.
    With the goal to increase compatibility, not visual quality for the first pass.
    No existing engine is flexible enough to mold around an (at the time) decade old game.

    Quote Originally Posted by Boltgun View Post
    But the client issues are the tip of the Iceberg. The AO work pipeline need a rework too, because I doubt training a dev to use Tide would do any good.
    It's actually not too bad. Tide isn't that hard to learn as long as someone is still left to teach it (also, Tide is only the world building tool, and a data bridge for the other tools).
    The content creation pipelines is one of the few things I'd say that was reasonably functional.
    Especially for it's time and given this is an MMO, game designers were able to create, test and iterate quite effectively.
    Last edited by Vhax; Aug 4th, 2017 at 14:03:45.
    Formerly Vhab.
    Once upon a time ruled a server. And then sold out. Sorry.

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    I'd applaud you for your effort to be part of different communities and your years of dabbling in gamedev.
    I'd always encourage people to seek out what they think is fun and gain knowledge in the process.
    However, every single time you post you go ahead and ruin it with your inane ramblings.
    It's not enjoyable for me. It's not enjoyable for you. We're just all losing out on these exchanges, and honestly I need to stop biting your bait.
    I agree knowledge is goal, but we both know i am not rambling. There was no bait, i just want to point out that
    there is no issue with large projects with unity or structure scaling. I see your point of view and thats ok, i just think you would find
    it different if you spent 10 years on it like i did and not like 2-3 months. If i where rambling i wouldn't be where i am to day I also teach others. How many games did you do publish in this years? How many years have you experience with Unity dev? Your where talking about dept so i was wondering. Big words (as always), but once again you the lack of spine to back it up (at least most of it). I am not sure if that day ever come, If that day come, our dialog would be very different and your pain with me goes away at the same time. Your a great developer both C++ and C# you have clearly better c++ experience than me no doubts, but going on with Unity clearly puts you on deep water. Monobehaviour is more than just some base class. All i am saying is that, get some more knowledge before judging Unity as a engine or try to patronize things i say, that never leads to any thing good, i assure you.


    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    As for the current subject at hand. No, there's no such thing as .NET 6.0.
    Unity3D's partnership with Microsoft is upping the class library support to .NET 4.6 (I can't remember if it's 4.6.1 or 4.6.2 off hand, one of them) and language support to C# 6.0. Yes, swap some numbers and names around and you'll eventually get there, but the details matter.
    I mean ofc C sharp / C# 6.0 scripting language I thought you where smart enough to understand what i said, who is bating now huh? :P Unity at current version benefit from 3.5 framework 2.0 at script mono execution level( dot.Net doh.) Correct, they have partnership with Microsoft and this is evolving, they also working closely to improve the c++/C# functionally and CG improvements. The framework is really not that important here because not all function works (mono) and scripting will support 2.0 up to 4.6 framework anyways. You should really go to some of the Unite shows with Jonas Echterhoff , i am sure you will enjoy his rambling (as you like to call it) and you see some of the roadmaps ahead.
    Last edited by ByLogic; Aug 5th, 2017 at 09:31:49.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    Getting back on some kind of rails..

    Back when the Ogre3D decision was made, the landscape was quite different.
    The decision kinda made sense considering the requirement was just "render this stuff in a DX9 kind of way".
    It made a lot of assumptions about the internals of AO and assumed Ogre3D won't have to do a lot of heavy lifting.
    .
    Well you know i was joking with you? Going with Ogre wasn't such a smart move was it? At least thats what means told us with "Friday with Means. It was like 1-2 years wasted?, since you started on it.. " But your right, things where different back then. Unity back then was also lacking, i still remember all the shaders i had to code again.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    It also didn't help nobody had done a deep dive into AO's rendering internals in half a decade at that point.
    The original AO devs are a wonderful mix of brilliant and insane. They pulled off amazing feats with the resources they had.
    Unfortunately many of these amazing feats made porting a ton more difficult.
    .
    I see.. I still wonder what types of code patterns where used..This things can
    make structure life allot better. I bet there are still some spaghetti leftovers in there.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    But ultimately the project was unreasonable. And I imagine deep down most players knew this as well.
    The only reason we ended up having a "beta" was Macrosun and I dropping everything and hacked for ~4 months to turn the pile of "it doesn't work at all" into "I guess it kinda works".
    Sanity was not something we expected to keep towards the end. But I guess it sorta worked.

    It was a very drawn out and long lesson, but eventually everyone involved learned you can't swap out the rendering engine on a project already in maintenance mode.
    .
    Interesting reading.. it did work .Thought stats stacking is lal..Some reflection shortcurts maybe? :P or you coded everything in binery?

    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    As for what should have been done, hindsight being easy and all that.
    But given what we know now, the easiest would have been a straight up in place DX7 to DX9 conversion.
    Some insane bits would have still given us trouble, but at least we wouldn't have been held back trying to remold a decade of assumptions into the shape a different engine wants it.
    With the goal to increase compatibility, not visual quality for the first pass.
    No existing engine is flexible enough to mold around an (at the time) decade old game.
    Its funny, now Microsoft have dished Dx9 allready.. ohh all the years and struggle. I can feel the pain for does who worked on AO. But i still i think some better use of design patterns would have changed there lifes. I can't imagine my own games without Interfaces,factory instantion, abstract classes or manager singletones. Its my toolbox, i can't work well without it. C++ is a mess anyways and pretty much dead in the water for most game dev now days, even the c++ dev at Unity prefer managed code..

    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    As for the current subject at hand. No, there's no such thing as .NET 6.0.
    Unity3D's partnership with Microsoft is upping the class library support to .NET 4.6 (I can't remember if it's 4.6.1 or 4.6.2 off hand, one of them) and language support to C# 6.0. Yes, swap some numbers and names around and you'll eventually get there, but the details matter.
    Hehe and you say i am rambling? Funny Unity and Microsoft have full .Net and windows platform and other products like HoloLens partnership support. Your on deep water mate, deep water.
    Last edited by ByLogic; Aug 5th, 2017 at 09:54:41.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by Vhax View Post
    It was a very drawn out and long lesson, but eventually everyone involved learned you can't swap out the rendering engine on a project already in maintenance mode.
    Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean here, but wasn't the engine change first announced in 2007, shortly after Lost Eden? While certainly not AO's heyday, it wasn't exactly in maintenance mode either. There were still semi-regular patches, more than 2 people working on the game, and Legacy of the Xan was around the corner. While true now, at the time of the initial plans it was still reasonable, there just seems to have been some mismanaging of either resources or expectations that pushed everything back much too far.

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