Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Ngruk said:

What does this mean? What capabilities do either of these engines NOT have that would allow us to create this monster?

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I think what is being referred to is VG"s usage of the unreal engine (albeit an earier version) and how they could never get a open seamless world to work properly with it. I think he is implying that if it happens as such again you would need a world with clear zone lines. But I could be wrong.

Ngruk said:

Oh and the fact that in doing this we now have a world you can actually log into, and run around in!!
(And I may be biased but it"s stunningly gorgeous!)

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*shakes fists*

Like he said above. What a tease.

I think people are tried of gorgeous worlds that have very little substance behind them and can"t be run adequately on a good portion of people"s computers.

And OEE? does the world really need another buzz word?

Ngruk said:

(And I may be biased but it"s stunningly gorgeous!)

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So was VG:SoH, DnL, EQ2. Unfortunately when you have a few people running around on high power machines it all looks good with no hitching / lag. Now throw in a few hundred - thousand and lets see what happens.

Of course as the above games proved good looks does NOT make a good game. Wishing you luck if you are already starting to hype the graphics before the game play.

i believe ngruk is a firm believer of gameplay over graphics,, now if we can get gameplay With Graphics, then we might get something.

unreal3, i believe, runs pretty good on most mainstream computers with a decent video card...

now make sure it runs pretty good with 40+ characters on screen..

Didn"t VG run entirely on the Unreal engine with not backbone support? Also didn"t it use v2.5 and 38S is using 3.0?

Faille said:

I think people are tried of gorgeous worlds that have very little substance behind them and can"t be run adequately on a good portion of people"s computers.

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Just because an engine has features doesn"t mean they all must be used, and just because some games using an engine have high system requirements doesn"t mean all games using that engine have to.

An engine is a starting point. What a company does with that engine beyond the point of acquisition (add features, remove features, optimize, etc.) is up to them.

Just as long as when I jump it doesn"t look like my character is simultaneously trying to take a shit at the same time I"m ok. Seriously. There"s no good reason why my left arm should go Bob Dole on my ass for catching some air.

Keep in mind, I jump a LOT. In fact, if you guys make it to where jumping is even better than it is in WoW, I"m sure you"ll have a #1 game on your hands.

I know Ngruk knows this but I will say it anyway. Gameplay >>>>>>Graphics

Not saying you cant have both but at the very least, make this game fun.

You guys should also keep in mind that Sigil heavily modified the Unreal engine they were using. Almost none of it was left after they tinkered with it is what they said.

With more competent developers, I doubt it would be such a major issue.

Ngruk,

I hope that there is a color coordination plan in the works, for the environment, objects, armor, weapons, etc. that have "evolved" in each environment... I think that"s one big thing (though subtle) that WoW exceptionally well throughout their game. (it"s low-tech, just requires good design planning & coordination imo.)

...

Draegan said:

Didn"t VG run entirely on the Unreal engine with not backbone support? Also didn"t it use v2.5 and 38S is using 3.0?

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Definitely looks like using v3 will help 38S avoid at least one of the major client issues VG had with UE.

Blackguard said:

Just because an engine has features doesn"t mean they all must be used, and just because some games using an engine have high system requirements doesn"t mean all games using that engine have to.

An engine is a starting point. What a company does with that engine beyond the point of acquisition (add features, remove features, optimize, etc.) is up to them.

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Granted, but just looking at the minimum and recommended specs of Unreal Tournament compared to WoW shows there"s going to be a serious difference is what computers will be able to run the game, and run it well, especially in an MMO environment. Granted, it"s possible you could scale back on the graphics so it requires less power then UT3, but I really wouldn"t believe that was happening until I saw it for myself.

Speaking for myself, all I"ve heard is that the game is going to use Unreal 3 and it looks gorgeous. Unfortuntely, not only have we heard that before, we"ve heard it enough that we no longer think it has anything baring on how good the game is going to be to play. Good looking is nice, but not if we have to turn off most of the stuff just to play so it ends up looking ugly anyway, or runs so bad its not playable where it really matters.

A couple years ago, I bought a top-end system. It is still very good to this day, thought not really cutting edge anymore and could definitely be upgraded for less than what I payed for it in 2006. I can run any MMO with no problem basically.

I am getting less and less into computer games, and so I"m not really sure if I"ll be updating my system in the next several years.

When your game comes out, it should be able to run on systems like mine, *and* even worse systems, with no hitching, no lag, no FPS issues at all with 50+ people on the screen and during large scale combat. Period. That"s the real challenge I think.

And I"m not saying that so that I"ll have the luxury to play it, I can afford a new computer, if I wanted to get one, but there are millions of gamers who can"t, or more importantly, WONT.

That is what WoW was like, and if everything else in your game is great, that will be a major shortcoming if it doesn"t run like that. WoW *does* have good graphics, though not great, and it runs well on very old, very bad computers. This game must be able to do that, ignore the next 4 years of technology, ignore the last 4 years of technology, build something that a 4 year old system could run, today, without too many issues.

That"s probably really amazingly hard to do, but if you can"t do that you are limiting your playerbase signifigantly right off the bat without any regards to what your game is even like, and then limiting it further by people who just don"t feel the game is fluid enough.

What he said.. forget about high end computers, if you want true success the game MUST play well on the Average Computer as of Today. do not "futureproof" the game"s graphics (we"ve seen how THAT turns out at release..)

make the game run a SOLID 20+fps(bare minimum) with ~30 char models on screen moving around with a current computer with say an nvidia 8500class/ati x1950 class video card & 1 gig of ram (again what most computers Currently have...)

Lenardo said:

What he said.. forget about high end computers, if you want true success the game MUST play well on the Average Computer as of Today. do not "futureproof" the game"s graphics (we"ve seen how THAT turns out at release..)

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Along these same lines, developers shouldn"t even be spending much time at all on the future. The reality in the post-WoW age is that the game has to be great NOW or there will be no future. Gamers in the MMO industry are jaded to the point now that they don"t want to hear any more promises.

Also, your game will be summarily judged by what it is like in Beta... not launch, not 3 months after launch, not a month before launch. Beta is the new "release". Regardless of NDA, if the game is not 99% polished with 99% of "features" present and brimming with fun game play it will be dismissed by the MMO gamer.

Dev cycles are already stupendously long for MMOs (4-5 years at least). And, since the game needs to be ready for "launch" by beta, if your workforce is not already pulling 60-70+ hour work weeks then its too late. The longer the game takes to come out, the less people will anticipate it (see WAR, AoC, etc.), also. I hope 38 Studios has more done in a year than picking the engine and backend, drawing some concept art, and creating some lore.

Zhakran said:

A couple years ago, I bought a top-end system. It is still very good to this day, thought not really cutting edge anymore and could definitely be upgraded for less than what I payed for it in 2006. I can run any MMO with no problem basically.

I am getting less and less into computer games, and so I"m not really sure if I"ll be updating my system in the next several years.

When your game comes out, it should be able to run on systems like mine, *and* even worse systems, with no hitching, no lag, no FPS issues at all with 50+ people on the screen and during large scale combat. Period. That"s the real challenge I think.

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You bought a system 2 years ago (early 2006) that you want to be able to play a brand new game out in late 2010? That is pretty much a 5 year old system, sorry but that is simply unrealistic. By the time this game comes out you are going to have processors with 16 cores as the high end, and your 2 your old once awesome processor might have 2 if lucky. 2 years ago 2 gigs of ram good for anything, now there is a operating system that pretty much requires 4 gigs for smooth running. What will it be in 3 years when this game comes out? Your run of the mill $1000 dell is going to have at least a quad core running at 3.0+, 4 gigs of ram, and a 512mb video card akin to a 8800 in 3 years time.

Sorry, but blowing top dollar on a system still leaves you with a pretty out of date computer 5 years down the road and to ask that such a 5 year old computer, and even worse be able to run the game just fine is unrealistic.

Also, I am sure NGruk knows of the gameplay>graphics thing. I don"t need graphics any better then EQ1 had to be honest as long as the game is immerisve and fun to play. I have never quit a game due to crappy graphics, only crappy gameplay. Just make it look decent, don"t go overboard to make it look stunning at the expense of other areas. Alot of stunning looking games have crashed and burned, WOW went a different direction with graphics then EQ2 did and while most people said EQ2 looked better the game that dominated was the one with less realistic graphics and far better gameplay.

It"s one thing to want it to be accessible to midrange hardware, but some of you are being a bit unrealistic.

GMG won"t be out until 2010 at the earliest. An old machine of today will be 5+ years old.

For comparison"s sake that would be like trying to run WoW on a machine from 1999-2000 that you first played EQ on. Think stuff like P3 400Mhz.

At some point technology moves on.. the trick is balancing the move forward with backwards scaling to meet part of the market, but you"ll never get all of it.

Then they should probably work around whatever specs the next gen of consoles would be using, since they will form the benchmark of comparison. Though arguably even this generation of consoles might be a usable frame of reference.