Proposal for a new Game Engine

[ShotgunSheamuS 1]

Proposal for a new Game Engine

I just want to kick this off to say to the devs, that this post is in no way intended as a message that I am dissapointed in ARMA3 at all, I still love it! and it is a huge step forward from what ARMA2 was which is great! However it is not a leap forward like what OFP was back in the day. And also I am rather sad that some of the below mentioned things werent added or similarly worked on, but ARMA3 is in BETA, I suppose some things can maybe still happen. However this is targeted at future development, in a positive way.

Right, so moving on, I havent found anything on the subject really, but have noticed some people complaining about the dated engine, and how every iteration of it still presents the same limitations and more sloppy cheap work arounds. So maybe it is time to consider developing a new engine from scratch?

Why?

Browsing through the tickets and requests from the ARMA3 tracker, it has become apparant that quite a bit of things are limited or not possible due to the current engine limitations, and also does leave the product feeling somewhat incomplete and outdated, especially since it is essentially a reused/recycled engine spanning as far back as OFP and has only been receiving upgrades and addons over the years.

Perhpas it is time for a fresh start on a new engine that is designed to better take advantage of new and current tech without limitations and even be able to do more to push ARMA and the engine to new limits into the next generation! This is semi motivation and highlights of things to take into consideration when developing a new engine.

For the most part, this should be obvious to the devs since they work with the engine, and know it's weaknesses, but from the community side, perhaps we can highlight the most important bits and pieces to consider when developing a new engine, after all, we the consumer know what bugs us, we know what we want to see improved and we know what we want to see ARMA do in future itterations?

First things first, The new engine should be ale to better use our CPU's and it's features, properly utilize more cores, and also, for a real ultra layout, use more than just a limited 4gb of ram, so I guess an optional 64bit version? If this is possible, dont think I have ever seen or heard of a game running 64bit, but theres a first time for everything? Overall, we want a hardware friendly Engine that will use every bit of power and resources we have.

Current tech to improve.

Animations

Animations dont seem to always blend well and look natural, not to mention you always feel like you are limited and restricted, and not really even there. Things such as sliding when you halt after running, and you slide forward a little, or when you run, it looks like your feet sometimes are confused, and not in sync with your motion, walking into water, the transition from walking to swimming is pretty iffy, and then objects in motion can sometimes look verry choppy.

Also natural things such as lack of a falling animation from low or high altitudes, no door animations on cars, and the ghostly building doors opening by the power of the mind etc can leave much to be desired and feel like arma is incomplete.

Here is a little something to look at perhaps? This is probably could also aid with making AI seem and act more realistic, as well as improve the current bland ragdolls.

(Here is something user generated.)

This, THIS will make ARMA awesome beyond any other shooter, and this will make it look and feel even more realistic. and I would even pay extra to cover the licensing of this technology and I am sure everyone else would.

Point is these little details really break immersion and make it feel unnatural at times. Guys, you need to make a plan.

Physics

Physics have been introduced in ARMA3, however it still feels very limited, and hopefully will be improved, however I doubt even at full release, we will see all objects being subjected to physics properly.

Some nice touches would be vegetation reacting to physical bodies, wether effects like rain affected by wind, better physics simulation of particles, etc. Basically the whole environment should feel interactive.

PIP (Picture in Picture)

Nice addition to ARMA3, but quality is severely limited due to performance issues! Pretty self explained.

AI

Yes, AI... Been a long time issue, especially in terms of immersion, we want and need better, smarter, more naturally enhanced AI blessed with things such as common sense, also considering AI should not be so resource intensive. I'm thinking maybe a learning neural network kind of implimentation, where the game learns from the player??

Terrain

Big deal this, because ARMA is pretty much the ONLY game that provides huge vast terrain without borders and limitations, but, there are a few horrific limitations.

For one, view distance, and this brings up issues like LOD and texture morphing (popping) that can be distracting as hell! Seriously needs to be taken care of.

Also limited viewdistance for most since it is heavy on resources, so better optimization for the lower end machines. Essentially, 2km of clutter should be the minimum for infantry (taking sniping into account) without major performance issues, and that is just for infantry. Aircraft should have a view distance of around three times that depending on hight. Helicopters can do with up to 4km and planes perhaps 6km since they generally go higher than a chopper. Perhaps something like a trigger based on altitude that would alter the view distance, and at the same time scale down model detail to balance out the performance? See tesselation for this further down.

The horrid warping/sinking ground effect from parralax mapping. Needs to be better performing and optimized. If parralax mapping continues to be used, then an option to adjust the distance of the effect so that we dont have to have the warping effect if we can afford it. Also apply it on other surfaces other than just the groud. And then also allow us to be able to disable it without lowering overall terrain detail and complexity, and rather have decent high quality normal maps instead. Other than that, see the new tech section below that covers tesselation as an alternative to this method.

Being able to handle terrain complexity better, better optimized I guess. Dont like the hovering objects in the distance.

Better textures on terrain, most notably the mid range terrain texture. This is VERY IMPORTANT because alot of the action happens at mid range! There has been some pretty neat suggestions to improve this, but now is a great time to design an engine with this in mind! Make it scale better over distance.

Water (Ocean)

This has had some pretty cool improvements, but some issues like the shoreline... looks horrid, and can be improved! like a broader shoreline, and perhaps also some waves. and also visual effects on water, just really looks unnaturally layered over the water, and doesnt feel like part of the water. make the water interactive in a way, make splashes look like it's part of the water, and ripples around objects in the water, and make it look like it is a part of the water texture itself, and not just a particle hovering above the water etc.

Destructive environments

This doesnt have to be fancy, but the current method of having an object thats destroyed sink into the ground and replaced by another "damaged version" model. It's a sloppy way of doing it. admittedly not bad either, you probably could get away with it still, just add more particle effects to not make the sinking and replacing NOT so obvious. But also, some propper destruction would be nice with some physics, like a wall being weakened and chipped off by repeated gunfire, a door blown off to chunks of wood, propper ditches in the ground from grenades or bombs instead of that horrid layered texture hovering over the ground. This does not have to be "everything can be destroyed piece by piece", just some level of destruction can be a nice touch with some added game play functionality... Also this can also be carried over to vehicles, some propper damage models, and not just damaged textures.

Lighting and shodows

Another one of those things. The new dynamic lighting is pretty nice, but also needs to be fixed, effects such as light being cast through objects, when objects should be blocking light, and casting shadows respectively. Currently it is doable since Sun light and Moonlight already do this, but again, limitations of the engine and performance, this needs to be in mind when building the new engine!

The new soft shadows still arent satisfying, shadows seem to have an LOD system as well which does kind of looks crappy at short distance when having the setting anywhere below ultra, and the self shadowing on objects have a horrible jaggy'ness on them.

Also what would be a nice added effect of shadows is sharpness based on hight, the closer an object is to the ground, the sharper the edge of the shadows, and then the further away from the ground, the softer the edge of the shadow.

Sound

In a game like arma, sound is probably more important than graphics, visually the game is presented very well enough as is, however sound just can never be good enough, so better sound is always welcome!

New tech to consider.

Tesselation

Tesselation can be used well for so many things! For example smoother transitions of LOD which would be almost unnoticable to the eye! Also could replace POM (Parralax mapping) on the terrains which would eliminate the warping sinking effect on the ground and details can come to life! And it could add some pretty nice details to models to make it look even more detailed than it currently is! Read more about it here http://www.nvidia.com/object/tessellation.html or watch a video about it

This is pretty much a must, I am shocked that ARMA3 did not have this feature, but by the time ARMA4 releases, I think everyone will be running a DirectX11 or OpenGL4 and up capable graphic card at least to support this, so no excuses. But also must be an option to adjust, as well as disable if necessary.

3D support

It seems quite a lot of people want this, not surprised since screens and TV's are all going 3D and surely it will become a standard feature in the near future, so this should be an optional kept in mind, also great for the immersion!

Cloud Computing

This is a long shot, but I would guess embracing cloud computing could do a world of good since cloud computing is becoming a big thing for next gen.

It can be used to aid with AI perhaps? , so perhaps allow us to setup dedicated AI servers to offload the work to the server? whether it is locally on a LAN at home to make use of our old scrapped rigs, or a shared server on the net for those running a server like domination etc.

And even more of a long shot this, but create something like adaptive AI, the learning neaural network of unique personalised AI, essentially learning how a player plays, and adopting our play "style", mimicing how we move, how we cover, how go between objects/cover, how we engage our targets, how we return fire, how likely are we to engage if we are spotted, or not spotted, and so amny other variables etc, and basically it just adapts by learning how you play, and generates a profile, (like a virtual you??) which can be uploaded and shared among other AI servers, and then even further can be mixed with other profiles to create more unique profiles (personalities). This mixed with the basic core scripted AI, can create AI which be mistaken for real players perhaps?

Yes, I know, very far fetched, but I am sure it is do-able with ARMA, I have heard of other next gen games doing something similar like http://gamingbolt.com/forza-5-developer-best-explains-cloud-technology-create-ai-agents-to-win-for-you, so keep this in mind when developing a new engine, might not need cloud computing right away but can show some promise in the near future.

Crossplatform compatability

This isn't necessarily a request to bring ARMA to Linux and consoles (but yes I would love ARMA on Linux), but the engine itself, which can then probably be used to license to other developers, much like Unreal Engine, CryEngine, Fox Engine etc. Mixed with your other self developed tech and probably more other tech to come, it could easily be used for other simulator games, indie games and other AAA games. This will benefit both us the consumer and community and the developers, the dev can cash in more money to work on better quality products and hire more awesome talent, and we get better quality products, and a better engine capable of pushing ARMA into the next gen.

As for the engine being licensed out to other devs. I would imagine any improvements/enhancements and optimizations made on the engine itself (excluding their own self designed technology) by other devs could save BI devs a lot of work as well.

Well I'm done for now, I can't really seem to think of anything else revolving around the Game Engine itself, so perhaps if anyone else has anything to add, go for it, and leave a comment. If it is related to the engine, I will add it here and keep this updated, if something can be described in a better way than I did, or I am wrong about something, please correct me!

And while we at this, perhaps lets treat this as a petition as well maybe? So even if you dont have a comment, you can text your +1 vote to this. Unless you guys have an alternative way of doing a survey/petition/vote.

[exikutioner 10]

It's a long shot but I do agree. Headless client does some of the AI offloading you discussed. Would also be nice to have underground structures.

[JdB 151]

There have been sooooo many threads about this already every single year since 2001. It's all been said before so to sum it up: Starting all over again would cost BIS more than it can afford.

[ShotgunSheamuS 1]

My bad, did a quick search, and didn't find anything.

But i understand it will cost them, but as mentioned with the cross platform decision and licensing the engine out. Could make up for it, and make it worth while. Could see much more games utilizing the engine, and their own added tech. It is being done with engines such as unreal engine and cry engine and the frost bite, so it could really lead to success, especially in terms of an engine purely designed for absolute realism and simulation. Could see loads more simulators use the engine, not to mention other serious games, because it would be THEEE game engine to use for such produCts.

Imagine surgeon simulator 2020 running in virtual reality lol -joke-

[gossamersolid 155]

It's one thing to list all the things you want to put in an engine versus actually writing it yourself.

There's a reason a majority of games we see these days are on some sort of already written engine (which is most likely an iteration of another engine). It's too much work and too expensive to justify the pay out.

[dm 9]

Awww yiss, another one of these threads.

especially since it is essentially a reused/recycled engine spanning as far back as OFP and has only been receiving upgrades

You know thats exactly what everyone else does, right?

The CryEngine can be traced back to 2005, IW Engine to 2004, iD Tech to 1999, etc etc

Re-writing from scratch is not something they can ever hope to do...

Physics have been introduced in ARMA3

So you're saying OFP, Arma1, Arma 2 and Take On Helicopters never had any Physics at all. Wow, I wonder how I ever drove a vehicle and collided with objects before now!

also considering AI should not be so resource intensive.

Wow, just wow...

horrific limitations. For one, view distance

Tell me again, aside from flight sims what other games have a 20km+ view distance.

You would get an E for effort, but actually get an F for failwhale...

[gossamersolid 155]

DM, your posts help me sleep at night.

[metalcraze 290]

CryEngine is traced back to 2001 actually - when they released a techdemo of an island filled with dinosaurs. It had water reflections too which back in 2001 was pretty cool.

People seem to think that engine = shader effects.

[Sandy* 10]

"Cloud computing" is a big marketing buzzword and, in gaming, is pretty much limited to syncronizing data like that Forza AI behaviour model. Game companies setting up servers to give CPU time for players is quite unlikely thing to happen, especially since a lot of people these days have extra CPU-cores that are unutilized by games.

Edited June 28, 2013 by SandyBandy

[HKFlash 9]

Oh look its another one of these threads...

Nothing to see here moving along...

[gossamersolid 155]

"Cloud computing" is a big marketing buzzword and, in gaming, is pretty much limited to syncronizing data like that Forza AI behaviour model. Game companies setting up servers to give CPU time for players is quite unlikely thing to happen, especially since a lot of people these days have extra CPU-cores that are unutilized by games.

Not to mention those games are quite literally unplayable if the company shuts down the servers (which will happen).

[Ezcoo 47]

The one thing that I don't understand with game engines is that nowadays pretty much almost every big company in the gaming industry (I assume BIS is one of them :)) tells that they don't have money to start to write new engine from scratch. But how did they have money before then, when they were much smaller companies? Just like BIS, founded in 1999, had a game out with brand new RV1 engine 2001, and it became world-wide success right away.

Has the engine developing become much more complex and demanding nowadays? If it is, is it caused by higher expectations and/or technical issues? Or where's the problem? I'm just curious, would like to know what is the problem because to me it doesn't make sense.

[fraczek 4]

Some moderator please close this "AnotherUselessEngineThreadLikeThatSince2005"...

[ric 1]

It's one thing to list all the things you want to put in an engine versus actually writing it yourself.

There's a reason a majority of games we see these days are on some sort of already written engine (which is most likely an iteration of another engine). It's too much work and too expensive to justify the pay out.

remind me again how much BF3 made.....over 600 million was it? of which %5 would be...30 million? your going to tell me that BIS could not come up with people willing to invest 10 million in 2008 to hire 50 programmers to spend almost half a million hours in 4 years to rewrite the core of RV to fully utilize modern hardware knowing the returns could be far greater that %5 with a new and very robust engine?!?! not to mention all the future possibilities not to mention licensing out the engine to other company's.....

---------- Post added at 13:56 ---------- Previous post was at 13:55 ----------

There have been sooooo many threads about this already every single year since 2001. It's all been said before so to sum it up: Starting all over again would cost BIS more than it can afford.

and what do you think it is going to cost them now if ARMA 3 tanks because of performance issues?

[Bee8190 10]

Some moderator please close this "AnotherUselessEngineThreadLikeThatSince2005". ..

You are free to choose to be not part of the thread; simple

Tell me again, aside from flight sims what other games have a 20km+ view distance

Which is great and impressive at the same time BUT, current PC's are barely running the game on 5000 VD as it is and is pretty much only any good for flying.

Therefore for me personally useless not attractive enough

remind me again how much BF3 made.....over 600 million was it? of which %5 would be...30 million? your going to tell me that BIS could not come up with people willing to invest 10 million in 2008 to hire 50 programmers to spend almost half a million hours in 4 years to rewrite the core of RV to fully utilize modern hardware knowing the returns could be far greater that %5 with a new and very robust engine?!?! not to mention all the future possibilities not to mention licensing out the engine to other company's.....

Makes sense to me but, and I only assume, Arma is simply not big enough market to justify pouring millions into all new engine in BIS eyes?

[ric 1]

Makes sense to me but, and I only assume, Arma is simply not big enough market to justify pouring millions into all new engine in BIS eyes?

a robust engine would generate millions and bring in a new customers along with all the other possibilities....as it sits right now I am afraid A3 will only be popular with the "enthusiast" who is willing to put up with the performance issues, people with "super" rigs are not going to want to play the tweak and tune game when they have rigs than can play anything...this will cost BIS business as it will drive people away directly and via word of mouth.

[dm 9]

Which is great and impressive at the same time BUT, current PC's are barely running the game on 5000 VD as it is and is pretty much only any good for flying.

Yes, this was kindof my point.

He was saying the view distance is limiting, but really the limit is there is no hardware out there capable of rendering it - the engine is capable, the hardware not.

[ShotgunSheamuS 1]

Awww yiss, another one of these threads.

Yeah I guess so... Seems like it is a much wanted request.

You know thats exactly what everyone else does, right?

The CryEngine can be traced back to 2005, IW Engine to 2004, iD Tech to 1999, etc etc

Re-writing from scratch is not something they can ever hope to do...

I never used the term "from scratch", however I can understand that you would assume I meant that. Throw away everything they worked on and start all over with nothing.

Actually CryEngine 2 was a complete overhaul from the original, which technically makes it a new engine kinda. Likewise with Call of Duty using the quake 3 engine, but it has had so much removed from it and replaced with new tech that technically it is a brand new engine known as the IW engine. Thing is I am not saying throw away what there is all at once, Im just implying phasing out the current things that limit the engine, and replace it with new code that does it better and more efficient. Because currently, it is still the same code, for the most part, just getting more and more complex with it's upgrades, and outdated, when you can use new clean and more efficient code to do the same things.

I dont write game engines, but I am sure that makes enough sense to have merit.

So you're saying OFP, Arma1, Arma 2 and Take On Helicopters never had any Physics at all. Wow, I wonder how I ever drove a vehicle and collided with objects before now!

This one perhaps is on me, I meant Physix, prior it was a more limiting way that physics were pretty limited and basic. If I am not mistaken, they had their own physics code to do all of those in previous versions, and now using nvidia Physix to expand on it? Besides I never said physix should be added, just taken further.

Tell me again, aside from flight sims what other games have a 20km+ view distance.

You would get an E for effort, but actually get an F for failwhale...

None, of course, not even arma has 20km+ view distance, max in arma3 is 12km, arma2 was 10km i think. Still, not many people actually set view distance to 12km because most of it is unnecessary since you play infantry 60% or more of the time and wont really see much beyond 1.5km except if you sniping. Still though, not an excuse to not rework it or replace the code for it, which I am sure CAN be done.

Anyways, nice signiture =)

---------- Post added at 17:17 ---------- Previous post was at 17:12 ----------

Not to mention those games are quite literally unplayable if the company shuts down the servers (which will happen).

Never said it had to depend solely on the company, private servers set up for private use or public use by community or ISP for cloud? So it will die off like anything would when it gets replaced and updates for it stop.

---------- Post added at 17:23 ---------- Previous post was at 17:17 ----------

Well I think back then BI had the relevent funding for it, however of course the reason why completely rewriting from scratch is time, and time = money. But that said, as I mentioned to DM, I never used the term "from scratch", they just have to rewrite portions of the engine, and replace it with the current, gradually phasing out the outdated code which would keep it up to date. Hence all my examples I have.

Much like the example of Call of Duty, based on quake3 engine, however it has been so overhauled, that none of the quake 3 code actually exists, technically making it a brand new engine, and even the new ghosts "next gen" engine, is based on the very same engine, though also not really the same engine. And they managed to do a complete new engine, technically without killing their business and still releasing CoD games yearly.

[dm 9]

I never used the term "from scratch", however I can understand that you would assume I meant that.

So the thread title is a bit of a misnomer then?

Actually CryEngine 2 was a complete overhaul from the original, which technically makes it a new engine kinda. Likewise with Call of Duty using the quake 3 engine, but it has had so much removed from it and replaced with new tech that technically it is a brand new engine known as the IW engine. Thing is I am not saying throw away what there is all at once, Im just implying phasing out the current things that limit the engine, and replace it with new code that does it better and more efficient. Because currently, it is still the same code, for the most part, just getting more and more complex with it's upgrades, and outdated, when you can use new clean and more efficient code to do the same things.

I dont write game engines, but I am sure that makes enough sense to have merit.

The latter part is quite evident :)

As to the former part, well thats exactly what BI has been doing. The problem is they have a ~10 man programmer team, compared to the ~600 man team at Crytek or the however many 100s worked on the IW engine for CoD 234231. So any changes they make are much smaller on scale and slower on time.

On one hand you willingly excuse the age of the IW engine and CryEngines' core with the excuse "its been significantly rewritten", yet the same kind of rewrites (RV4 now uses directx 11, rv3 using dx 9, etc) on the RV engine dont count? Yes, the re-writes to RV have not been as significant, but see the reasoning above - 10 vs 100's.

This one perhaps is on me, I meant Physix, prior it was a more limiting way that physics were pretty limited and basic. If I am not mistaken, they had their own physics code to do all of those in previous versions, and now using nvidia Physix to expand on it? Besides I never said physix should be added, just taken further.

Oh, I guess you mean physX...

None, of course, not even arma has 20km+ view distance, max in arma3 is 12km, arma2 was 10km i think. Still, not many people actually set view distance to 12km because most of it is unnecessary since you play infantry 60% or more of the time and wont really see much beyond 1.5km except if you sniping. Still though, not an excuse to not rework it or replace the code for it, which I am sure CAN be done.

Oh, thats my bad, I'm too used to VBS (where 20k is certainly possible, and used regularly)

I'm sure you could edit the arma 3 cfg file in your user folder and have 20km view distance.

My original point is/was that all the other engines you've listed render a few hundred meters out to maybe a couple of km. The RV engine is quite capable of going even further.

Anyways, nice signiture =)

I know, right. :)

[ShotgunSheamuS 1]

a robust engine would generate millions and bring in a new customers along with all the other possibilities....as it sits right now I am afraid A3 will only be popular with the "enthusiast" who is willing to put up with the performance issues, people with "super" rigs are not going to want to play the tweak and tune game when they have rigs than can play anything...this will cost BIS business as it will drive people away directly and via word of mouth.

Very true that, and the thing is it is not just ARMA, it now is DayZ as well, and it could be more, much much more! Other devs could begin to use the engine, fuck the next Elder scrolls could be on Virtual Reality Engine, seriously... ARMA will just be the poster child of the VR Engine. The more platforms it supports, the more appealing it will be too because pretty much all devs want to target as many platforms as possible, which WILL accompany a bigger audience, and if it is up to date and can offer almost accurate realistic God Like simulated elements along with utilizing the latest technology, it could easily compete with CryEngine and Unreal Engine, and Frostbite and the new Fox Engine etc. So why not do it??? This really will benefit the devs as much as it would their customers???

But thanks for the optimistic response.

[NoRailgunner 0]

How many devs are capable of writing a engine or proper tools for game development? If a gamestudio don't have the ressources (devs, money, time) they can just fumble around and try to improve/fix stuff. Of course there will be a time when one can't upgrade the old game engine anymore.... question then would be what kind of a game engine can be used to continue a profitable serie/franchise without changing its own and perhaps unique character? ;)

[ShotgunSheamuS 1]

"compared to the ~600 man team at Crytek"

Actually they have small amounts, check it out, 45 at Crytek Budapest =)

Plus, seriously most triple A companies dont really hire more than 100, except when they miss a deadline, and the publisher forks out the additional funding. But ARMA, we dont see an new iteration of ARMA for years, just new content and some updates. Surely if they decide to really go for making the engine the centre of their attention which can only benefit their future, they could easily step into the world of AAA companies??? I mean really after all these years with an awesome franchise like ARMA, why are they still making AAA games with outdated B-grade quality? Sure they do improve with every iteration, but really it seems like they hold themselves back... They could litterally dominate the FPS milsim market with ARMA as opposed to CoD and BF... The difference is obvious, better looking games that arent as resource intensive as ARMA, and yeah arma does 200km levels with no loading time, and that is their selling point (ONE OF THEM), but not good enough honestly when you can barely see past 2km with a fairly decent rig, and on top of that you have shitty distractions like LOD popping etc, and the sad part is there is technology like tesselation that would fix that! made for problems like that! and there is also shoddy animations, or lack of animations etc.

Quality mate, thats what we all want. ARMA needs those details.

[dm 9]

Actually they have small amounts, check it out, 45 at Crytek Budapest

Yes, one office. Of a company that has 2 products: the cryEngine and crysis game series.

Their overall staff (which works on the engine) measures in the 100's.

Plus, seriously most triple A companies dont really hire more than 100

I guess you've never watched the credits at the end of any triple A title...

They typically have more people in their UI design departments than all of BI Studio has staff...

[JdB 151]

Very true that, and the thing is it is not just ARMA, it now is DayZ as well, and it could be more, much much more! Other devs could begin to use the engine, fuck the next Elder scrolls could be on Virtual Reality Engine, seriously... ARMA will just be the poster child of the VR Engine. The more platforms it supports, the more appealing it will be too because pretty much all devs want to target as many platforms as possible, which WILL accompany a bigger audience, and if it is up to date and can offer almost accurate realistic God Like simulated elements along with utilizing the latest technology, it could easily compete with CryEngine and Unreal Engine, and Frostbite and the new Fox Engine etc. So why not do it??? This really will benefit the devs as much as it would their customers???

But thanks for the optimistic response.

Making an engine that can compete with the engines you mentioned will ruin BIS since their entire business model evolves around making games that those companies aren't already making as they would never be able to compete in terms of manpower, release cycles and marketing(hype). The RV engine was made with large worlds and freedom of choice in mind, Chernarus for example is 225km2 which can all be used only limited to what the mission designer can imagine where as BF3's largest map is around 5km2 (triumphantly hailed to be the largest map ever in BF history where as in some ArmA missions you travel more than 5km just to get to the mission area XD) and you had to pay extra for that since it's DLC. This calls for an entirely different approach to engine design.

Edited June 28, 2013 by JdB

[vilas 477]

requests topics ends like trash usually,

"me want this, me want that, me want super-uber everything made tommorow" , making super engine would cost 100 milion dollars , 10 years, NASA computer, pointless topic

the only thing that Arma need is :

- halftruck for WW2 mods,

- melee weapons for medival mods,

- support custom skeleton to make different size species like it was in OFP

- multiple turret on plane (ww2 mod again)

- better cqb

- easier tool for map making (roads especially)

- more realistic dammage , another LOD like Materials_LOD etc. for simulate steel armor sheets or rework of FireGeoLOD and it's use in engine

Edited June 28, 2013 by vilas