Could DayZ be done better on a different engine?

[doctorbadsign 645]

Pointless to discuss this. Not like they will simply scrap their work so far and do it again on another engine.

On topic though, no. The arma engine is extremely powerful and given enough time, this game will be gold.

 

Well I wasn't suggesting that. I was asking the question to generate discussion about the engine and its limitations etc.

 

 

Some people tried. WarZ happened.

 

That's all you need to know.

 

I'm not talking about a cash-in that is bungled together quickly by a bunch of con artists. I'm talking about if a big developer with millions to throw around decides to create a game in the survival zombie genre....

[Element47 2481]

Hi.

I know everyone has their own opinion on what a good game is, but have to say IMO the answer is no.

Why? Because if it was made in cryengine or udk or something similar it would probably just be another crappy AAA title, capable of holding my interest for about 5-15 minutes.

I know LOTS of people love those bunnyhopping uber leet snipe people while running and jumping games, and I respect that, but for me ever since I first tried OpF 12 or 13 years ago, just about every other shooter just seems like utter garbage.

Comparing games in the rv engine to most any AAA fad of the month game is kind of like comparing a racesim to some POS need for speed game. Sure the arcade racers tend to look better, but the sim is just way more engrossing.

Regards.

you should realize that none of the things you listed are connected to the type of engine used. as you can use the Unity Engine to create open world games like Rust or a card game like Hearthstone, you could as well use RV to create a bunnyhopping fastpaced actionshooter like Quake, or a car racer for that matter.

Highly questionable. Not too many engines can run the wide open regions like the current one.

with modern streaming tech, there is barely a limit on the region size

<orloks beautiful analogy>

this.

[wearelegion (DayZ) 1]

out of curiosity, does anyone know another engine that could handle the scale of chernarus? i mean sure many of the more recent engines can crush arma 2 on a technological/graphical level, many have would probably be easier to develop with as well, but the map size would likely suffer tremendously, which would blow. 

[Diggydug (DayZ) 331]

I don't know much about engines and their capabilities, but the RV engine seems unique as far as I can tell and is probably our best bet. That's ignoring that the devs making the game are already familiar with RV so it makes things easier for everyone should they stick with what's familiar and proven to work.

 

For me it's more noticeable with the firearms and vehicles than anything else. I don't care if Just Cause 2 had a map 500x larger, the vehicles were ugly, handled poorly, and the gunplay was as arcade as it comes. Does that make it a bad game? No, but it shows that just having one aspect (size) doesn't mean it can compete with the other aspects the RV engine brings.

 

The vehicles in ArmA have, for the most part, working gauges and rendered insides for the entire vehicle and they handle "realistically" as well. It's obviously not dead-on, but it's better than most games and it causes for interesting gameplay. 

 

DayZ has a large map and later on will have vehicles along with more cities and over 90% of the buildings being enterable and persistent zombies and loot. What other game has all that and does it well on a different engine?

 

 

In short: I don't think so.

Edited January 15, 2014 by Diggydug

[Hikurac 115]

There are multiple engines that can easily handle large maps, the issue is handling the thousands of AI and dynamic items lying about such a map. I'll admit the animations for items are a complete joke in DayZ (can't even see a magazine when reloading), although i'm fairly certain they are all placeholders as of now, and will be replaced later on.

 

As for clunky movement, I don't think it's clunky at all. People think it's clunky because it's not "smooth" like other games. DayZ's movement operates through the physics of a skeleton, kind of like people in real life do. However most people are used to the movement of a fps game engine, like source or frostbite, where your basically an extremely mobile floating torso with a gun in your hand. 

 

My biggest fear was that DayZ's movement would become like that of other fps games. Thus resulting in bandits running around, bunny hopping, as they fire upon me with their sniper rifle like it's a match from CS;GO or something...

Edited January 15, 2014 by Hikurac

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

Ah here comes all the armchair developers of the forum.

 

No.

 

Why? Because you use the tools you are the most comfortable with, not the "best", because without Arma, rocket would not have made the mod at all.

I understand Epic, Crytek, Croteam, Valve and the others want to sell licenses to their engines... but the result is that GAMERS pick up the same stupid buzzwords instead of focusing on the end result, the game that will be produced.

 

Engine choice matter for the developers, not for you.

[SAXX0N 28]

It's called Rust  :o

 

Gimme one of those vids of a 1km headshot and I will support you.

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

Hello there

 

Here's an analogy for you.

 

Imagine you are a wooden spoon maker.

 

You make spoons.

 

Out of wood.

 

One day, sadly, a long lost uncle of yours dies and bequeaths you a wooden spoon making factory.

 

In the factory there are many experts who not only make spoons (wood ones) but also hand built the factory and the whole of its wooden spoon making facilities.

 

So, the option is yours now...

 

Do you:

 

A)Make wooden spoons

 

or

 

B)Everything else.

 

R would be mental to use another engine without epic reasons.

 

For the foreseeable future, like it or not it will be a version of the RV engine.

 

Rgds

 

LoK

BUT I like RUSTY SPOONS :(

[doctorbadsign 645]

Ah here comes all the armchair developers of the forum.

 

No.

 

Why? Because you use the tools you are the most comfortable with, not the "best", because without Arma, rocket would not have made the mod at all.

I understand Epic, Crytek, Croteam, Valve and the others want to sell licenses to their engines... but the result is that GAMERS pick up the same stupid buzzwords instead of focusing on the end result, the game that will be produced.

 

Engine choice matter for the developers, not for you.

 

I wasn't saying anyone should change the engine, nor did I imply that the current engine is not up to the task. I simply am aware that many people appear to have a few issues with the engine and was wondering if it could be achieved using a different one. In a hypothetical scenario.

 

Engine choice is not a matter for us in that we cannot decide which engine developers use, but we can form opinions on the results and discuss them. I am merely curious to know what people think, I want to make it emphatically clear that I do not suggest that the development team suddenly switch to a different engine or anything of the sort. I just know that there are problems with the RV engine that have carried through from Arma 2 to Arma 3 and that BI do not seem to be capable or willing to sort out. Namely people with extremely capable PCs getting terrible performance for one. I get pretty poor performance from DayZ with the settings optimized as much as possible for performance on a PC that can handle most things I throw at it. This suggests that it is a matter of the engine being used, which raises the question of whether some other engine could handle it better. I am not saying there is one out there that can, just throwing it out there.

[sess130 50]

I say no. Mostly just because this engine was designed as a mil-sim with realism in mind, which is what this game needs. If they used a AAA developer's engine, there would be a LOT more issues that they may not be able to fix (without incredible expense/time). For example: BF4's Frostbyte engine which has glitched hitboxes, broken projectile mechanics, terrible netcode, clunky player movement, AND was sold as a completed product at full price when it really wasn't.  Keep true to your dream developers and take your time to make an epic game!

Edited January 16, 2014 by sess130

[hells high 676]

Considering DayZ is meant to play and feel like ARMA I can't see any real benefit to recreating the ARMA feel on an engine that isn't the ARMA engine.

[Publik 404]

out of curiosity, does anyone know another engine that could handle the scale of chernarus? i mean sure many of the more recent engines can crush arma 2 on a technological/graphical level, many have would probably be easier to develop with as well, but the map size would likely suffer tremendously, which would blow. 

Here's the map in Unity:

Could be sped up by separating the terrain into 1km^2 chunks and loading the items in as you need em. Also doesn't have buildings or anything, but I haven't got that far yet (working with mecanim to get a nice animation system).

 

The answer is mostly this:

 

Considering DayZ is meant to play and feel like ARMA I can't see any real benefit to recreating the ARMA feel on an engine that isn't the ARMA engine.

But then again Arma is buggy in its own ways and I see no reason to defend it.

Edited January 16, 2014 by Publik

[Publik 404]

Well fuck me, repost

Edited January 16, 2014 by Publik

[Brofessional 9]

It's not so much the scale as it is having a consistent amount of detail within that large scale.

 

In Kerbal Space Program(Unity) for example, the planet Kerbin alone is like 45,000,000 km², but the vast majority of it is just barren terrain.

Edited January 16, 2014 by Brofessional

[caledric 45]

Hello there

 

Here's an analogy for you.

 

Imagine you are a wooden spoon maker.

 

You make spoons.

 

Out of wood.

 

One day, sadly, a long lost uncle of yours dies and bequeaths you a wooden spoon making factory.

 

In the factory there are many experts who not only make spoons (wood ones) but also hand built the factory and the whole of its wooden spoon making facilities.

 

So, the option is yours now...

 

Do you:

 

A)Make wooden spoons

 

or

 

B)Everything else.

 

R would be mental to use another engine without epic reasons.

 

For the foreseeable future, like it or not it will be a version of the RV engine.

 

Rgds

 

LoK

 

In theory you could convert the spoon factory to make wooden sporks... Win win all around there.

[DarkwaveDomina 1099]

Considering how short the draw distance is for high detail objects I suspect the original CryEngine could do this game, look prettier, and require less grunt to run. Of course this game was never going to use anything but the ArmA engine, it's in house, why would they licence other people's work? It would be like saying "our engine is shit and we know it".

[Caboose187 (DayZ) 3036]

Could it?  Most likely yes

Will it?  Most likely not

Magic 8 ball says 

[soulfirez 901]

Could it?  Most likely yes

Will it?  Most likely not

Magic 8 ball says 

yeah this pretty much sums it up in theory yes it could be done better on a different engine ( maybe maybe not an exsiting one) but it is possible to build an engine ground up for just this game BUT do you have millions of dollars and years to do it if you do by all means step up i look forward to playing your game in say what 2020 give or take a year( you have to make engine then make game niether is quick )

[[email protected] 122]

Wouldn't want to see how crappy performance would be if this was done on Battlefields engine. God forbid any of the unreal engines. Those things are cheatbait.

 

Performance isn't bad, though. I have one of the first i7's and a 5870. Constantly at 60 fps or higher when Opera isn't running. My settings are all over the place, some turned max, some low/off.

[Element47 2481]

yeah this pretty much sums it up in theory yes it could be done better on a different engine ( maybe maybe not an exsiting one) but it is possible to build an engine ground up for just this game BUT do you have millions of dollars and years to do it if you do by all means step up i look forward to playing your game in say what 2020 give or take a year( you have to make engine then make game niether is quick )

 

the key is experience. everyone involved has experience with RV and ArmA. A team experienced with Unreal or Unigine could probably implement the basic concept within a year or two in the respective engine. but i think another question resulting from this discussion could be:

 

could the game be done better in RV if it were to abandon its ArmA legacy? i think so. And maybe we will see it in future.

[Solopopo 330]

Highly questionable. Not too many engines can run the wide open regions like the current one.

This. The game world is huge and there are no loading screnes. It doesn't seem like much but that's hard to pull off. Just think, at any point in time there could be a firefight a mile away from your location. You don't see it, you dont hear it, but your computer is still processing that information. You'll find the aftermath laying on the ground when you get there. If you had a scope you might have even been able to witness it. It's pretty crazy when you really think about it.

[hoschelhoff 15]

The Euphoria engine would be better.. but it's expensive as shit.

[gregor (DayZ) 95]

I doubt. Though would be interesting to see DayZ on the WWIIOL engine, with its capability hold thousands of players on a single server and on a large map (iirc  52 000 km2), and with the very decent ballistics. But the engine itself is very old, with the graphics "from the previous era" , and therefore requires huge investment and reworking. I really doubt that it would be a feasible task.
Maybe in the next DayZ we will see the Outerra-scale engine and with many other features, if BIS would come to an opinion, that just DayZ is their the most essential income.

Edited January 16, 2014 by gregor

[doctorbadsign 645]

I agree with everyone about BI not being familiar with a new engine, and it totally not being feasible to switch to a new one etc. This was not my suggestion.

 

I guess what I am asking is, if a company with millions to throw around decides (in a totally hypothetical non "hey they'll never do it cause it isn't profitable enough" kind of way) to use an existing engine or build a new one to create a game with all the elements of DayZ, could they do it better? And if so would you abandon DayZ and play that instead?

 

Its more to do with whether you as a fan of DayZ enjoy it because or inspite of the clunky engine that can't do zombies very well etc. I must admit that there is something about the engine that I like, and it is because of it's clunkiness (if that is not a word, it should be). It creates intense situations, like when you've got a shit load of zombies after you and you can't find that exact position you need to be in to open a gate. I guess it indirectly simulates those moments that most other games would do with a 'mash E to open the gate' except in a much less reliable and formulaic way and because of things like this I have been in many a panic stricken scenario. 

 

I think it would be hard to recreate this in a slicker engine that instantly recognizes and responds when you are near a gate or a door etc. It is important to include the panic stricken fumbling that DayZ so often requires of us, but because this is so often induced by the clunkiness of the engine it would be hard to recreate in something that is mega slick.

 

Having said that I do wish it was better optimized. I shouldn't have to edit the config file to get the maximum fps. I've never had to do that with any other game in order to get it running smoothly and I never expect to have to. Things like that are really going to put people off the game. BI do not seem like they are too bothered about changing that any time soon though.