How Long And How Much Work To Build Future New Engine?

[chrisb 196]

 

 

Our new Enfusion engine has better multi-platform support, so it will be more feasible for potential future Arma games

 

The way that line reads to me is.

 

There maybe another Arma, but chances are it will be cross platform. That's if there is another Arma of course.

 

Now I'm not saying that's the end of the world for the series. I played OFPE on the original xbox for a while, the editor, although restricted, was pretty good and easy to use. I didn't play the campaign, but I think it was basically what they had done already for pc. The real problem is the restrictive nature of the console (that may change of course). The game was very different on console, to the way I could play it on pc. But being cross platform would be a problem for those that really like to stick to pc gaming, because we all know, it will be geared around the one game, being able to play across all platforms, I would imagine its cheaper that way. That would mean a downturn for the pc game, imo.

 

Its not really a surprise as such, it was plain that the series changed with A3, it moved itself from the niche game to a more mainstream game. That for BI was a good thing. For the pc centric, old series players however, not so good. The old has gone, the new is the shape of things to come. It will appeal to the more casual player, that is what was intended, it sell's more. I don't blame BI at all, if they took it cross platform, business wise it would be a good move I'm sure. I could even see a nice partnership between one of the 'big two', to have it as an exclusive, using the previous history of the series to sell it to new players, as 'ultra hardcore real mil-sim gaming' (which a new cross platform game, wouldn't be, of course).

But I think it could well be a very good seller across platforms.

 

But for me it wouldn't be something I would play, I don't play A3 now, so A4 as cross platform wouldn't be my choice. But that is not to say for gamers it isn't good. It would be good, it will get more players using the game (mainstream), but it would lose many of the players that played it previously (already has), as a mil-sim 'ish game. It has moved from that anyway, so why would that be a surprise to anyone.

 

BI are simply aligning themselves, where the money is. Can't blame a business for doing that. Plus you have to think.. Why build a new engine that can only be used for pc, its not where the money is, is it.

 

As a player, that loved the old Arma, it's disappointing. But as is life. They gave us the previous games to keep building on, that's a good thing.

[semiconductor 309]

There is an other side of the "Arma going mainstream" coin — it will fix the worst thing that had happened to Arma: no competitors on consumer market.

When (if) it will became "mainstream" enough it will attract audience and that fact will force other studies to consider and idea of an infantry open-world sandbox. And because they will need to introduce something new to throw Casualarma from the throne, their games will offer a more complex game mechanics. So the pendulum will basically start a backward swing.

For example, there is a well-known World Of Tanks MMO. Wargaming (the game's developer) was the first to discover the idea of tank-themed session MMO and it was a huge success that brought them tons of money. For several years they enjoyed absolute monopoly and weren't in much hurry in introducing new features. But with time their game started to became outdated graphics and feature-wise, people started to want something new, so the challenger appeared. Gajin's War Thunder used basically WoT's mechanics but provided, among other improvements, way better graphics, simulator mode and combined battles (when tanks and planes fight in the same gaming session). After another year Mail.ru (quite shitty company, but that's not the point) announced their Armored Warfare — a carbon copy of World of Tanks but with modern tanks instead of WWII ones.

Just like Wargaming couple of years ago, Bohemia enjoys absolute monopoly for more than a decade now thanks to being a developer of a niche game. If they go mainstream that status quo will inevitably change and hopefully we will see new military open-world sandboxes with new ideas, more complex simulation and better engines.

 

PS: Or maybe Arma will drastically improve. I still believe in it. :D

[chortles 263]

Out of all languages around Bohemia have decided to emulate the 30-year old one with one of the steepest learning curves and countless possibilities to shoot at own foot, i.e., a complete overkill for average mission maker's purposes.

GJ, that's the Bohemia Interactive I know! <_<

On the other hand, the flip side of "complete overkill for average mission maker's purposes" is "powerful enough for that one niche mission maker", and it sounds from the quotes I included that EnScript is underlying a bunch more than what SQF... makes me wonder if that's the new name for what the Enfusion team got from Take On Mars, which "is written entirely in script, save for a few menu options and closed source parts (renderer, sound engine etc, as well as input controller), so if one wanted to make a completely different game using the absolute base (that is remove all TOM assets and put one's own), then that is also possible. I would warn though that such an option is obviously extremely time consuming (essentially making a game from scratch), nevertheless, it is possible."

(The project lead of TKOM also also previously stated that "CCGM was entirely in C++, while TKOM is entirely in the engine's script language, which has a faster workflow, and also (most importantly) allows modders to completely change anything in the game" and gave an example of the projectile class definition here. While of course Enfusion is shaking out differently due to what it's keeping from Real Virtuality... this is pretty illustrative of what TKOM's own C++ resembling scripting language had going for it.)

There is an other side of the "Arma going mainstream" coin — it will fix the worst thing that had happened to Arma: no competitors on consumer market.

When (if) it will became "mainstream" enough it will attract audience and that fact will force other studies to consider and idea of an infantry open-world sandbox. And because they will need to introduce something new to throw Casualarma from the throne, their games will offer a more complex game mechanics. So the pendulum will basically start a backward swing.

I don't entirely agree; I believe that the competition potential is not about whether Arma becomes mainstream but rather whether the genre becomes popular enough for other studios/publishers to see money in the genre. As it stands we've already seen games such as DCS, Steel Armor: Blaze of War/Steel Beasts, Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations, and so on with deeper but narrower, more specific simulation, hence why DCS and SB get so talked up here every now and then, and both Battlefield and as you stated War Thunder allow simultaneous air/armor battles for those who don't care as much how realistic the simulation is, but of course I recall people wanting Arma's air/armor sim depth to be raised to DCS/SB levels instead of actually thinking them (or DCS: Combined Arms) an "Arma killer"... and heck, the argument above about the very idea of AI co-op versus TvT should tell you about the limitations inherent to Squad as far as the infantry side of things.

Thing is, especially with Bohemia's (presumably intentional) emphasis on sandbox over milsim these days, I'm not sure how you define 'the genre' widely enough to fit what Arma is meant to support yet narrowly enough to be a specific single genre that a competitor can target/tailor towards.

Our new Enfusion engine has better multi-platform support, so it will be more feasible for potential future Arma games

 

The way that line reads to me is.

 

There maybe another Arma, but chances are it will be cross platform. That's if there is another Arma of course.

Now I'm not saying that's the end of the world for the series. I played OFPE on the original xbox for a while, the editor, although restricted, was pretty good and easy to use. I didn't play the campaign, but I think it was basically what they had done already for pc. The real problem is the restrictive nature of the console (that may change of course). The game was very different on console, to the way I could play it on pc. But being cross platform would be a problem for those that really like to stick to pc gaming, because we all know, it will be geared around the one game, being able to play across all platforms, I would imagine its cheaper that way. That would mean a downturn for the pc game, imo.

I read it not as "chances are" and more "it's more doable than before"; the idea isn't alien to Bohemia (no pun intended) and in fact Arma 2 "was also originally intended to be an Xbox 360 game, but the console turned out to be far less powerful than Bohemia realised - "we had no clue... we did not expect it to be that much slower [than a PC]" - so the team refocused on PC." Make of that what you will...

I imagine that you read the @Arma3official tweet before the one you quoted ("#Arma3 was designed for PC and a port would not do it justice. It would need to have been considered from the start") which parallels prior tweets on the topic? I'll add that Arma 3 is much more 'locked in' -- complete with engine limitations deterring the devs from making certain changes even for the PC exclusive -- while "DayZ is still an alpha, so there is more space for tailoring the experience for consoles". As such, I wonder if the 'feasibility' is about greater flexibility; obviously having a multiplatform engine doesn't solve porting issues like preserving scale and depth of simulation, remapping of controls, or indeed what level of modding would be on consoles*... but it may well be what protects Bohemia from a repeat of OFPE taking so long to make that its console was already obsoleted when it shipped.

 

And heck, if DayZ (as an engine descendant of Real Virtuality) can actually run 'well'/stably on 1.6-1.75 GHz AMD 'octo-core' (two quad-core modules) APUs... well, that has positive implications for a hypothetical Enfusion-powered Arma 4, doesn't it? ;)

* For example, previously Fallout 4 creative director Todd Howard stated that Microsoft/Sony would help port mod tools to PS4/XB1, but about five weeks later Bethesda's PR/marketing VP stated that the tools would be PC-exclusive without attributing responsibility for that reversal.

[roshnak 41]

Thanks for the info Chortles. I don't follow DayZ at all so I had no idea any of this was happening.

 

The why part of my question was more related to why they aren't using an already established language, by the way, but it doesn't seem like they have addressed that topic.

[pulstar 55]

To me for Arma to truly reach nextgen a scenario like this should be possible to happen:

 

 

:lol:

On a more serious note, for COOP and solo players AI will always remain crucial, hopefully with time they'll learn to survive and make better use of cover.