Tribes: Vengeance Revealed ? with Unreal !??

#41 Actually James,

From what everyone is telling me, that I'd like to get more information on as well, is that the Unreal engine's newest terrain is far superior to Torque's. Now, I havn't taken the time to look into it but some are saying it supports folding, and multilayers as well making it possible for things such as true 'cliffs' and caves and so forth. Of course again I say this is what I've been spoon fed by some of the people in Tribes community and I never took the time to verify this.

#42 I just want to know why one of the bases is sponsored by Peugeot.

#43 mm...mmmmWAAHHAHAHAHAH.. oh god I almost spit my pop out.

sometimes I wonder if the torque sdk subscription came with some kind of crack pipe and brainwashing session I missed out on.

you guys need to stop, really, it's scary.

#44

Quote:sometimes I wonder if the torque sdk subscription came with some kind of crack pipe and brainwashing session I missed out on.

ROFL! My sentiments exactly. :)

#45 I wish web forums had USENET-style kill files, so I could plonk Mr. Haug and Mr. McCrary. Really.

If you're not going to contribute anything to a thread but useless invective, I wish you 'd simply keep it to yourselves. No one's putting a gun to your head and demanding you use TGE for your next game.

#46 I wish people would understand that just because Torque isn't the best engine out there... doesn't make it a bad one.

I don't believe that Torque is anywhere near the level that Unreal or any other current AAA engine is.

Am I using Torque still? Sure. I can't afford a current AAA engine and Torque can still do the things I need it to do.

Although, I imagine explaining this to people like you is about as useful as explaining to a brick wall.

If you want to ignore us.. fine. You're halfway to fantasy land anyway... you better start packing. :)

#47

Quote:The point I think Chris and Anthony are missing is that when gameplay and originality take a back seat to the engine's graphical bells and whistles, it will suck.

I don't think you can grasp at how things work.

If someone competent licenses a game engine, and the game they make sucks.. you'll never hear them say "Damn it! My game sucked because the engine's graphics are too impressive!"

No. Games suck because the gameplay is poorly made.

Torque is not the best game engine on the market, yet it is quite possible to make an extremely fun game with it.

Does that make it better than a current generation engine? NO!

#48 Actually I have an aquaintance who works with a mod team in the UT2K3 engine.

According to him *yes this is second hand, but he's a reliable source and has used this functionality himself) the statements about UT's improved terrain handling are true.

In fact, they've added real-time deformable functionality, so that shells and such (it's a WWII mod they're working on, don't rememebr the title though =/) will not only leave a temporary scorch mark, but actually create a crater in real-time!

Not too shabby if you ask me.

As for the UT2K3 vs. Torque thing, I really think it's kind of a moot debate. People like what they like, for specific reasons, and you're not very likely to change their minds, not by trumping one engines' feature set with another, nor by insulting other community members by calling them delusional.

Torque was a big step up for me, but I like it. I like the ability to keep throwing clients on the network, and maintaining a tight coinnection. Torque excells at that! It's also still no slouch when it comes to graphics. Sure there's better out there. Better engines that require more "horsewpower" to run them efficiently, that therefore require more expensive hardware to run them, and thus appeal to a smaller market demographic.

If you like UT2K3 over Torque, that's fine, you're not alone. If you like Torque over UT2K3, you're not alone either.

You could point out strengths and weaknesses in ANY engine you like, so what's the point? Pick the one you like, and that suits your needs and move one. Insulting each other incessantly like this just makes the whole community look bad.

As a parting thought, regarding the ORIGINAL point of this thread, it makes sense that Sierra is using a different engine for Tribes 3, simply because the fatherrs of Torque have been pretty well disbanded with the end of Dynamix. Why would you pay a binch of programmers to sit around and learn a new (to them)engine when you can have them start working from day one on an engine they allready know?!

It is a purely financial decision IMO, and one that makes a fair amount of sense, monetarily speaking of course. Whether or not they produce a good gamne from it will remain to be seen until they actually produce a game! Let's just wait and see.

One more thing... to amake a "parting thought" a little longer. A MOD team just landed a big franchise! I know that Tribes is near and dear to some of the staff here... after all it was your baby, but let's not forget that a group of relative indies just made good. If we are the premier indy community we claim to be, then how can we do anything but rejoice in the success of a few of our brethren?

My 2 cents.

#49 Well put Kirby. I would also add, once more, let's wait until the game comes out before you judge them. Who knows, you may be pleasantly surprised.

#50 Irrational Games is not a MOD team. They made System Shock 2 and Freedom Force.

#51 Somehow this thread keeps getting bent into a straight comparison of Unreal versus Torque, which is not what I ever meant it to be. I'm not suggesting developing T:V on UNMODIFIED Torque, and yet many of the replies are a counterpoint to that ficitious argument.

Let me reiterate the argument that IS being made, point-by-point:

- The Unreal engine is very difficult to develop on.
- The reason for this difficulty is the poor design of the engine.
- The advantages provided by the Unreal engine don't justify the extra development burden.
- Torque is a better designed engine that lacks some graphics features.
- It would probably take less effort to update Torque's graphics than deal with the idiosyncracies of the Unreal engine.
- The difficulty of developing for the Unreal engine forces developers to compromise their title to simplify development -- especially small studios, that do not have the resources to perform major rewrites of parts of the Unreal engine, and then merge them into engine updates.
- Those development compromises end up being visible parts of the retail game.
- Most Unreal-powered games therefore don't stray far from the engine's capabilities, and are hemmed in by some serious limitations, and end up looking like Unreal mods, not original games.
- The Unreal engine is actually a pretty bad fit for Tribes. Many of Tribes strengths are actually weaknesses in the Unreal engine.

Go read reviews for recently released Unreal-powered titles, and then ponder the fate of Tribes. What's funny is how similar the early press was on these titles to what's coming out of VUGames and Irrational now. Go read some of the early Unreal2 material, and compare it to what is being promised for T:V SP. (The Tom Clancy series by Ubisoft seems to be an exception to the mediocrity of the current batch of Unreal-powered games. It would be interesting to find out what they are doing with the engine to overcome its apparent limitations, or whether they can just afford to throw more resources at a title than the average studio, or whether the backstory is just helping reviewers look past other limitations.)

Pat's estimate for updating the graphics pipeline on Torque, including shaders, is about four months. Assuming a team size of three working on the graphics pipeline (just cuz that works out to one person year, so I don't have to do any math :) ), labour-loaded at $150K/a (this is probably more like $75K/a in Australia, just because of similar salary numbers but a weaker currency v. the American dollar). So for 160K or 85K (10K for commercial Torque), the developer could update Torque graphics, rather than fork 600K over to Epic (300 up front, 3% of royalties to 300K). Nearly half a million developer dollars that could be applied elsewhere to improve the gameplay experience.

But what about those 4 months, because this is a schedule driven industry (don't want to miss Christmas retail!) ? I'd estimate that using Torque, once the up front investment was made, would chop at least four months off the schedule, versus using Unreal. The simple arithmetic is that adding some missing graphics functionality is less costly than dealing with a bad design throughout the entire development cycle, and would result in better end product. Then again, I don't believe Tribes will be finished in 18 months unless the content is seriously compromised.

Economically, the choice of engine make no sense. Design wise, the choice of engine makes no sense.

To editorialize, I think Epic got burned trying to integrate a physics engine with their game engine, and found out that RBP and multiplayer/skeletal animation don't play nice together. Graphics and physics were intended to be equally big breakthroughs with the new engine, but the physics never came together. Epic had a hard deadline imposed by the XBox Live release, and so compromised their own title to meet schedule. Otherwise they would have slid the schedule to include vehicles and better physics integration. Epic fell behind in every area but graphics, and they are quickly being surpassed there as well.

Quote:
Why would you pay a binch of programmers to sit around and learn a new (to them)engine when you can have them start working from day one on an engine they allready know?

AFAICT, Irrational does NOT have Unreal engine experience. However, even though your question is rhetorical, it does have an answer: the reason to learn any new tool is that it is a better fit for the job that the current tool, and will eventually result in a superior product and/or a shorter development schedule.

Quote:
let's wait until the game comes out before you judge them. Who knows, you may be pleasantly surprised.

Nobody is judging the game. I am judging the technical decisions being made by the developer and the press tactics being used to announce this title. Also, this thread has in some parts transformed into a technical discussion and comparison of engines, which I think is a worthwhile topic in itself.

VUGames, which their parent company is trying to sell, whisked a gaggle of Internet journalists off to a hilltop Hollywood mansion to announce their next lineup of games, even though all those journalists would likely be attending E3 in a few weeks. Why spend that money, when the a major industry event that usually is the stage for such announcements was only weeks away? I suspect VU was trying to build up VUGames and didn't want to be eclipsed at E3 by announcments from other companies. I suspect the reasons for moving to the Unreal engine were more market-driven than technical, and VUGames actions to date are at least partially motivated by a potential sale.

While I can't say absolutely how this will affect the final game, there is some precedent worth noting, that implies that the Tribes franchise has taken a wrong turn.

As an Indie, the lesson I might take from this is that there potentially will be a lot of disappointed Tribes fans on or about Chistmas 2004, and any indie team ambitious enough to be making an FPS could attract that audience and sway their loyalties away from the nominal Tribes franchise and towards the gameplay that built that franchise.

Quote:
A MOD team just landed a big franchise!

Irrational used to be a mod team?

Quote:
In fact, they've added real-time deformable functionality, so that shells and such (it's a WWII mod they're working on, don't rememebr the title though =/) will not only leave a temporary scorch mark, but actually create a crater in real-time!

Don't you think the Torque terrain editing functionality would function in real time? It's been there for years, while terrain deformation was just recently added in an Unreal patch. However, in both engines, the lighting and other geometry do not respond in real time to terrain deformation, which can result in some rather strange and unrealistic artifacts.

#52 So Irrational isn't a MOD team.

This was what I was referring to from the article you linked:

Quote:
The game will be called Tribes Vengeance and will offer a story-driven single player campaign created by Irrational Games and a multiplayer component created by KineticPoet, best known as the creator of the popular TRBIES 2 multiplayer modification, Team Rabbit 2.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Even at the release of Freedom Force and System Shock2, didn't I read about Irrational in the last issue of PC Gamer under the Indy article? I may be thinking of someone else, but thought it was them.

#53 Irrational Games is working on another Unreal engine powered game called "The Lost"

#54 Brad, you put perfectly into words what I couldn't. Thank you.

And yes, that is the argument, I'd like to add (once again) that it is not difficult to upgrade the graphics pipeline on Torque as it stands now: www.garagegames.com/mg/snapshot/view.php?qid=520.

#55 Good point Brad. I don't know why they would spend the money on the Unreal Engine. I'm hoping this game will be good but something tells me the game is going to be a game based on technology not gameplay. It's almost like the maketing is. Look at all the money we are spending to make Tribes 3 great.

#56 URL, not "link", sir. :D

A lot of people just see the outside case and base that as their source of judgment. That depends on the person though. A lot of people here even will chase after how pretty a game can be while never focusing on the gameplay.

The thing that worries me (as worried as I can be about this sort of thing) is that the people that brought us space orcs are using an engine that might be above their capacity to handle. Thankfully they got rid of a lot of the old dev people from T2 (regardless of whether you thought the gameplay was good, it should be agreed upon that their storyline ideas were nonexistent or cliche to the point of stupidity). Really, everything about the gameplay was already completed in T1; every Tribes since then has been, basically, a half-clone of the original with no huge differences, just enough to estrange some older players.

Hopefully though, they'll make a game that isn't based entirely on a used-up gameplay, and focus on expanding it for once instead of needlessly changing a successful product.

#57 @Kirby

Yeah, it's a good deal for KineticPoet, although I imagine it is going to be quite a leap between Tribes mod and Unreal retail (even though TR2 was sort of retail).

I am disappointed at how few Unreal mod teams ever go anywhere (being as that is the community I came from, and was one of the reasons I left for Torque), even the really talented ones, and did find it ironic that the best way to get work on a major Unreal-powered title was prior experience modding Tribes :) .

@Harold

Didn't know that, so they do have concurrent Unreal engine experience, which helps. Irrational doesn't have the most user friendly web site :) .

@Pat

Well, I am supposed to be using this time to finish up my project's design document, so I'm glad my time-wasting behaviour is appreciated :) . I found the clean design lines of MB, CR and Orbz (I'm waiting for the PC release of TT) refreshing after years of wading through games whose motifs seemed chiefly informed by junkyard chic done in five shades of brown. After seeing those games, I decided I wanted that look for my game -- bright colours, clean lines, elegant geometry. Getting away from the motifs pervading the FPS genre would give my game a distinctive look. It's not that an upgraded graphics pipeline would be incompatible with clean design, it's just that there seems to be a tempation to use graphics capabilities just because they are there, even when it makes no design sense (which was a wide criticism of UT2003, which often seemed to be pushing polys for the sake of pushing polys, even when it interfered with gameplay, and led the title to be called a graphics demo masquerading as a game by some).

There was some lost cachet in the new Tribes making the engine switch (given the info from Harold, it may have been because Irrational didn't want to split the development teams between two technologies, which is a wise move). I'm also disappointed in that each new Unreal licensee seems to vindicate the strategy of hacking eye candy into an aging, decrepit software architecture, even as it produces a series of mediocre, cookie-cutter titles. Not that anything exciting is actually happening in AAA FPS anymore, but do the publishers have to become entirely slavish about grinding out yet another shooter? I shouldn't need to put sticky notes on my monitor to remind me which game I'm playing now.

#58 What the heck are you people thinking? Just because you have this fan-boy "my engine right or wrong" mentality does not mean that Tribes 3 will suck. Its like you guys are scared because they did not choose the torque engine. You are doing the exact same thing that the big publishers do, saying that just because someone doesnt have 50 games under their belt that they are going to suck. They have 2 screenshots in game, and you poeple are so quick to judge, Im almost sick.

#59 The sloppy code that hosed many another T2 mod, and is still largely uncorrected today, the majority of servers that have it disabled, plus the low number of servers that actually run TR2, pretty much add up for me that T3 is gonna blow... I still don't even understand why they re-exported all the "base" models in a different scale, other than just to increase the download size...

#60 Well if you played Tribes 1 at all and then played Tribes 2 you would realize why they re-exported the base models to be larger. It was clearly a perspective problem and the larger models more then made up for it. Of course, this is matter of opinion too, but in fact almost every competitive Tribes player agrees that the larger models in TR2 fix the perspective problems that they thought plagued the game for them.