<!--quoteo(post=1839663:date=Apr 3 2011, 12:56 AM:name=shokk)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (shokk @ Apr 3 2011, 12:56 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1839663"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I didn't know that there are TWO or actually just ONE guy behind it... and it kinda scares me, that it might turn out as an endless story. (Duke Nukem Forever "when it's done" any1?) However, I'm very looking forward to see improvements... if not, waste of money... but let's see.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> It isn't an endless story. The Lua stuff is almost done, and is going to make a difference, just in the fact that it will make the code a lot cleaner and easier to find and fix issues and to make further optimizations more quickly. So, we can't say yet if the performance is going to noticeably increase with this new Lua layer binding, but overall it will be a good thing.
Judging future progress of the game based on past progress is not an accurate assessment. So much of the time is spent putting the framework in place. Initially, just getting the engine built and the game running and playable was what took a long time. Then, going from the engine test, where there was nothing but a rifle and dummy targets to shoot, to having most of the aliens playable and marine weapons and technology, and both commanders, all happened very quickly in comparison. Much the same thing can be said about the game performance. A lot of ripping apart of the game and patching it back together has been going on, which is a time consuming process. But now that the framework for that is being finished up, further performance improvements should theoretically happen at a much more rapid pace.
Rest assured, we will get this game done, and there will be plenty of new features, new maps to play, bug fixes, and performance improvements all coming up in the next little while.
Just a question Flayra. How many forum readers / active players / NS2 buyers gave you positive feedback / played / ordered your master piece the last month? Don't answer me. Just think about it. Even the focusedwolfs are gone. The Constie crew is gone long long looooong ago. You are alone, blind and deaf. Only a few of your close friends / boyfriends posting with pathetic negligence, most of them saying something in the fashion "yeah yeah yeah we know, hurry up, ok? Just ###### fix the lag" while you drool about the indie award for an indie game never released. Something is broken, don't you think?
Do you get it? I told you more than a year ago and I got banned for it. Congratulations, you ruined what you got you up there with your lame changes, idiotic simmetry in both races, and overall worthless pile of crap announced back in 2005, kinda timey uh? I'm not playing this scam even when I fell down with the nigra armor the first week, I got scammed with many others (get over it people). We were many, many consties / real fans / old school playtesters / hardcore gamers begging you for a revamped - stereoscopic capable - NS that would drag thousands of gamers into the competitive and funny NS scene again, in a war of graphic cards as trophys (like in the old tiems, heh), fights between brand sponsors, CPL (lol), international cups and a huge etcetera, but no, you had to mess this crap down to death, even before its birth. How dare you.
I'm not even installing this POS, it doesn't worth the bandwith waste, but hey, not all is bad news: at least you didn't burn your master piece into dvds, so we have less plastic trash to get rid of. Flayra, listen to me. Don't bother with this anymore, this game is bad and a waste of time for all the people involved and a constant grief for us; just get back to your Sen of Sudoku or something else that actually people could enjoy and give you their money in a clean way. You will feel better.
<!--quoteo(post=1840015:date=Apr 6 2011, 10:10 AM:name=Supernorn)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Supernorn @ Apr 6 2011, 10:10 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1840015"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I hope you feel at least a little embarassed for writing that out and posting it. That is a seriously spergy, borderline obsessive rant.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So much of the time is spent putting the framework in place. Initially, just getting the engine built and the game running and playable was what took a long time.
... --Cory<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's really interesting because when NS2 was first announced, in 2005, it was going to be built on the source engine.
Rumor has it that Flayra just didn't want to spend the money to get a legitimate developer license and so it was decided that you guys would "make your own engine".
I also recall when people expressed concerns about the timeline, Flayra poo-pooed them and said that it wouldn't significantly increase the development time.
How many years would you say the game was delayed, "putting the framework in place."?
if they used source engine, this game would of been done already. I believe charlie admitted it was mistake where he said if he knew how long it would take will he doing it again, he said no with a sad face. (he said this in the recent video made public, talking at that conference)
If they used source code, we would of seen 1.0 version years ago. It actually feels like they are making NS3 though since they are building their own engine, everything is done from the ground up. Although at this stage its too late to look back, you have bite down and take it. (go forward ;p)
<!--quoteo(post=1840136:date=Apr 7 2011, 05:10 PM:name=Opprobrious)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Opprobrious @ Apr 7 2011, 05:10 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1840136"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->That's really interesting because when NS2 was first announced, in 2005, it was going to be built on the source engine.
Rumor has it that Flayra just didn't want to spend the money to get a legitimate developer license and so it was decided that you guys would "make your own engine".
I also recall when people expressed concerns about the timeline, Flayra poo-pooed them and said that it wouldn't significantly increase the development time.
How many years would you say the game was delayed, "putting the framework in place."?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Its not that simple really..
Going down the source path would have cost hundreds of thousands probably in license fee's and then there was all the issues of getting it to do what NS needs..
Source isn't really that good either just look at the number of non-valve games around built on source if it was good there would be a lot more then we see currently.
So the decision is kinda of no brainer...
Spend a $xxx,xxx on technology that is not a very good fit and fight with it for 1-2years of development....
or
Spend that money and build your own technology which is hand crafted for the game with the added benefit of having some I.P. you can potentially monetize later.
One good example is a game called <!--coloro:#FF8C00--><span style="color:#FF8C00"><!--/coloro-->Nuclear Dawn<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->, this is a game that is made by a group as small ( maybe a little bigger ) than the UWE group and its allso a FPS & RTS hybrid, the game was promised to be released <b>couple</b> of years back, its allready got "released" three times on steam and got pulled back and now they are talking about stripping a huge chunck from the game just to make it to their next and hopfully final release date wich is somewhere at this years end, so I hope this gives an idea to people around here how source isn't as good as they think this is a group who have a fully functional engine and tools and still yet to release BETA. anyone with brains and reads alot about game dev ( dosnt have to be an expert ) will tell you that what UW have achived in few years specially what Max did with the engine and tools is purly AMAZING.
Pretty sure they already had licensed Source, but found it took too long to get anything to done since they had to hack code they didn't really know how it worked in the first place. So sticking with Source might not have saved much time at all, especially if they were always going to have dynamic lighting like Spark does. And supposedly Max had already written a lot of the engine in his spare time, so it was a tough choice but they didn't outright start from scratch.
<!--quoteo(post=1840136:date=Apr 7 2011, 06:10 AM:name=Opprobrious)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Opprobrious @ Apr 7 2011, 06:10 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1840136"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Rumor has it that Flayra just didn't want to spend the money to get a legitimate developer license and so it was decided that you guys would "make your own engine".
I also recall when people expressed concerns about the timeline, Flayra poo-pooed them and said that it wouldn't significantly increase the development time.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Rumors are just that, rumors. There were many different reasons we went with our own engine, cost being only part of it.
Dealing with the Source engine was proving extremely time consuming, just to do some of the simplest tasks. There were many things that we wanted to do for NS2 that Source does not handle very well, and trying to work with another companies code base, especially the Source engine which has years and years of code layers that can get pretty messy, is not ideal. Add to that the development time just to compile maps on Source or even just the lengthy and frustrating process to get a model set up properly to see it in game. As a small company with so few employees we needed a way to streamline that development time, and having an engine which allows us to make changes in real time to maps, models, etc. is invaluable.
Spark was not just some thing we conjured out of thin air because Flayra said we needed to make our own engine. Max had already been working on his own engine on the side for some time before NS2, so he already had something promising. So, at one point Flayra and Max sat down and discussed all the pros and cons of sticking with Source or going with our own engine. Max went ahead and did a test, and got the game up and running on his own engine in 2 weeks, which helped convince us that it was the right way to go.
We had hoped that we'd be able to still perhaps use some of Valves tools, like the level editor, but we were informed that since we weren't licensing Source we couldn't use the tools. So, creating our own level editor from scratch was one of the biggest costs to development time that we had been hoping to avoid.
In hindsight its easy to look back and see how much time has gone into developing our own engine, but at the time when making the decision there were so many unknown variables that couldn't be planned for. And, having our own engine and tools makes us much more valuable as a company, allows us much more freedom and flexibility with both the development of NS2 and future plans that we have. I can't say for sure how long the release of NS2 has been delayed because we decided to use out own engine, and admittedly it hasn't been the smoothest development, but if we had to do it over again, I'm pretty sure we'd make the same choice.
<!--quoteo(post=1840184:date=Apr 7 2011, 02:47 PM:name=PersianImm0rtal)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (PersianImm0rtal @ Apr 7 2011, 02:47 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1840184"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Why has Valve decided to stick with such a sucky engine then?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
nothing half life 2 did was truely revolutionary outside of object interaction and maybe the character's face design, so the need for a great engine wasn't really needed i suppose.
Completely agree. Source engine is so very time consuming to work with and quite frankly it would make this game look like ######. Limited amount of lightsources on each surface... absurd build-times of the level... limited dynamic lighting... a model-import process freshly delivered from hell... and you wouldn't be able to do things exactly the way you want to. Haters gonna hate, but the decision you made was indeed wise.
Also to answer you Persian... if they made the engine, wouldn't they be quite comfortable working with it?
I think Unknown Worlds made the right decision to build their own engine. I am already seeing things that are easily done in Spark but would require much more effort to emulate in Source. The entire crew there is brilliant.
I can't wait to see the engine shine with the upcoming refinery levels.
Honestly, aside from UWE getting payback for all their hard work, I do not care when NS2 gets finished. I am having a blast playing beta. With every patch the game keeps improving. I think the final product will easily complete with any AAA title out there.
<!--quoteo(post=1840184:date=Apr 7 2011, 01:47 PM:name=PersianImm0rtal)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (PersianImm0rtal @ Apr 7 2011, 01:47 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1840184"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Why has Valve decided to stick with such a sucky engine then?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't think it's a matter of the engine sucking, but it's specifically designed to work with the types of games they make. Apparently their tools are not well documented either. It's a lot easier to work with an engine if the people who made it work in the same building as you (and maybe working on the game too). If you look around, the Source engine hasn't been widely licensed. I can think of Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, Zeno Clash, Vindictus, and the second Vampire Masquerade game. For an engine released 7 years ago, that doesn't sound very impressive. I don't think any of those games did all that well either.
<!--quoteo(post=1840184:date=Apr 7 2011, 02:47 PM:name=PersianImm0rtal)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (PersianImm0rtal @ Apr 7 2011, 02:47 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1840184"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Why has Valve decided to stick with such a sucky engine then?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's not a sucky engine at all IF you're Valve. They know how to modify it and make it suit their needs however they want. As for everybody else who wants to use the engine, they can bascially only take what they can get out of it at any given time based on the tools and documentation available.
<!--quoteo(post=1840184:date=Apr 7 2011, 06:47 PM:name=PersianImm0rtal)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (PersianImm0rtal @ Apr 7 2011, 06:47 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1840184"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Why has Valve decided to stick with such a sucky engine then?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's 6/7 year old engine now. They've had to add some simple dynamic lighting to it to keep it up to date among other things.
Editing it is a pain in the ass. Hammer is one of the buggiest level editors ever, simple, yet ugly and clunky. BSP Tech is all but becoming dated now which is the main problem Valve will encounter, there's only so much it seems to be able to do, it's one of the many list of reasons people are moving away from Source.
As far as modding goes though, it's got good support, although the Unreal scene has really kicked off and as it's a more modern engine is getting more drive and more support, particularly monthly updates.
Source is getting old IT IS and ALLWAYS have been hard to work with everything from modding to mapping is a pain in the ass, even in a recent interview with Gabe Newell he said that once portal 2 is out the door the next thing they will be working on is the tools to make them easier. why valve stick with source? it costs allot to license another engine it might cost even more to build a new one not sure but it could take couple of years allso counting all the years they have spend working with source even if its hard they got used to it and know it inside out. I hope they drop it as fast as possible and build a new engine that is easy to mod and map for.
For all the people who still think UWE should have went with source try this, open spark editor make a small room place objects and lights to make it look nice try to do the same thing in source and come back here and post about how smooth it went with each one.
<!--quoteo(post=1840231:date=Apr 7 2011, 08:01 PM:name=Thaldarin)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Thaldarin @ Apr 7 2011, 08:01 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1840231"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It's 6/7 year old engine now. They've had to add some simple dynamic lighting to it to keep it up to date among other things.
Editing it is a pain in the ass. Hammer is one of the buggiest level editors ever, simple, yet ugly and clunky. BSP Tech is all but becoming dated now which is the main problem Valve will encounter, there's only so much it seems to be able to do, it's one of the many list of reasons people are moving away from Source.
As far as modding goes though, it's got good support, although the Unreal scene has really kicked off and as it's a more modern engine is getting more drive and more support, particularly monthly updates.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's funny to see everyone defending the decision, even as Flayra admits it was a mistake.
I especially enjoy everyone ripping on source from the perspective of a 2011 gamer. NS2 was announced in 2005 folks.
It still isn't complete and the engine isn't close to being finished.
The main problem with the, "crowd-sourcing the hard work and take the profit they do for free" model of development that Flayra abuses is the simple fact that one actually needs a <i>crowd</i> to do the work for you.
Since NS2 has managed to sap all possible goodwill that it initially generated, I don't see that working out anytime soon.
InsaneAnomalyJoin Date: 2002-05-13Member: 605Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Subnautica Developer, Pistachionauts, Future Perfect Developer
<!--quoteo(post=1840503:date=Apr 11 2011, 05:42 AM:name=Opprobrious)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Opprobrious @ Apr 11 2011, 05:42 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1840503"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The main problem with the, "crowd-sourcing the hard work and take the profit they do for free" model of development that Flayra abuses is the simple fact that one actually needs a <i>crowd</i> to do the work for you.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You certainly are a fan of making things up about NS2 and attacking the result, aren't you?
Common guys, the guys at UWE are doing good work. Sure, it ain't done yet but hey; good work takes time. Be glad they seem to have everything under control.
When I invested in my SE, I did it in the hope of getting some great PC shooter from it from an independent studio. I was fully aware of the risks involved (Never going to receive the game or getting some shoddy product in return). The game seems to be getting along just fine so why the complaining? If you really thought they would have been done by 2009, well I don't want to be rude, but let's just say that wouldn't be very realistic of you.
<!--quoteo(post=1840503:date=Apr 11 2011, 12:42 AM:name=Opprobrious)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Opprobrious @ Apr 11 2011, 12:42 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1840503"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It's funny to see everyone defending the decision, even as Flayra admits it was a mistake.
I especially enjoy everyone ripping on source from the perspective of a 2011 gamer. NS2 was announced in 2005 folks.
It still isn't complete and the engine isn't close to being finished.
The main problem with the, "crowd-sourcing the hard work and take the profit they do for free" model of development that Flayra abuses is the simple fact that one actually needs a <i>crowd</i> to do the work for you.
Since NS2 has managed to sap all possible goodwill that it initially generated, I don't see that working out anytime soon.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It still isn't complete and the engine isn't close to being finished.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well... I just played five or six games tonight on this engine that isn't close to being finished. Had you not told me, I'd never know that it was in such a rudimentary state. Thanks for informing me!
Honestly, i'm as excited about spark as NS2. I believe it was a good decision, even if I had some mixed feelings about it when they announced the switch.
Source is fun to mess around in, but it's pretty limited. It's very good for an engine as old as it is, but it's still an old engine, and it shows. The tools are really outdated, you have to write a job file and run a batch script with it in order to compile models. I'm surprised it doesn't require you to use tape reels.
Having played around with the spark editor, it's way better than source for this kind of job.
<!--quoteo(post=1840503:date=Apr 11 2011, 01:42 AM:name=Opprobrious)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Opprobrious @ Apr 11 2011, 01:42 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1840503"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Since NS2 has managed to sap all possible goodwill that it initially generated, I don't see that working out anytime soon.
Fall 2009.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Even if they sapped my goodwill, I'm not done yet, not by a long shot.
Source is a good engine, if not the best, but it's time for some new people to hit the stage.
Comments
(Duke Nukem Forever "when it's done" any1?)
However, I'm very looking forward to see improvements... if not, waste of money... but let's see.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It isn't an endless story. The Lua stuff is almost done, and is going to make a difference, just in the fact that it will make the code a lot cleaner and easier to find and fix issues and to make further optimizations more quickly. So, we can't say yet if the performance is going to noticeably increase with this new Lua layer binding, but overall it will be a good thing.
Judging future progress of the game based on past progress is not an accurate assessment. So much of the time is spent putting the framework in place. Initially, just getting the engine built and the game running and playable was what took a long time. Then, going from the engine test, where there was nothing but a rifle and dummy targets to shoot, to having most of the aliens playable and marine weapons and technology, and both commanders, all happened very quickly in comparison. Much the same thing can be said about the game performance. A lot of ripping apart of the game and patching it back together has been going on, which is a time consuming process. But now that the framework for that is being finished up, further performance improvements should theoretically happen at a much more rapid pace.
Rest assured, we will get this game done, and there will be plenty of new features, new maps to play, bug fixes, and performance improvements all coming up in the next little while.
--Cory
Just sayin'
But for the rest, the Game looks absolutely awesome, and the Graphics remind me on games like UT3(except for the above part).
Also, I'm wondering, when the Game get sold via Steam, wanna buy it with PaySafeCards there.
EDIT: Agreeing to Petzi, showing the website is quite useless, since everyones visiting the page already, and eager to see ingame-footage
Do you get it? I told you more than a year ago and I got banned for it. Congratulations, you ruined what you got you up there with your lame changes, idiotic simmetry in both races, and overall worthless pile of crap announced back in 2005, kinda timey uh? I'm not playing this scam even when I fell down with the nigra armor the first week, I got scammed with many others (get over it people). We were many, many consties / real fans / old school playtesters / hardcore gamers begging you for a revamped - stereoscopic capable - NS that would drag thousands of gamers into the competitive and funny NS scene again, in a war of graphic cards as trophys (like in the old tiems, heh), fights between brand sponsors, CPL (lol), international cups and a huge etcetera, but no, you had to mess this crap down to death, even before its birth. How dare you.
I'm not even installing this POS, it doesn't worth the bandwith waste, but hey, not all is bad news: at least you didn't burn your master piece into dvds, so we have less plastic trash to get rid of. Flayra, listen to me. Don't bother with this anymore, this game is bad and a waste of time for all the people involved and a constant grief for us; just get back to your Sen of Sudoku or something else that actually people could enjoy and give you their money in a clean way. You will feel better.
+1
So much of the time is spent putting the framework in place. Initially, just getting the engine built and the game running and playable was what took a long time.
...
--Cory<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's really interesting because when NS2 was first announced, in 2005, it was going to be built on the source engine.
Rumor has it that Flayra just didn't want to spend the money to get a legitimate developer license and so it was decided that you guys would "make your own engine".
I also recall when people expressed concerns about the timeline, Flayra poo-pooed them and said that it wouldn't significantly increase the development time.
How many years would you say the game was delayed, "putting the framework in place."?
If they used source code, we would of seen 1.0 version years ago. It actually feels like they are making NS3 though since they are building their own engine, everything is done from the ground up. Although at this stage its too late to look back, you have bite down and take it. (go forward ;p)
Rumor has it that Flayra just didn't want to spend the money to get a legitimate developer license and so it was decided that you guys would "make your own engine".
I also recall when people expressed concerns about the timeline, Flayra poo-pooed them and said that it wouldn't significantly increase the development time.
How many years would you say the game was delayed, "putting the framework in place."?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Its not that simple really..
Going down the source path would have cost hundreds of thousands probably in license fee's and then there was all the issues of getting it to do what NS needs..
Source isn't really that good either just look at the number of non-valve games around built on source if it was good there would be a lot more then we see currently.
So the decision is kinda of no brainer...
Spend a $xxx,xxx on technology that is not a very good fit and fight with it for 1-2years of development....
or
Spend that money and build your own technology which is hand crafted for the game with the added benefit of having some I.P. you can potentially monetize later.
The spark engine might be taking longer to polish but in the end it will be a lot move valuable.
And supposedly Max had already written a lot of the engine in his spare time, so it was a tough choice but they didn't outright start from scratch.
I also recall when people expressed concerns about the timeline, Flayra poo-pooed them and said that it wouldn't significantly increase the development time.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Rumors are just that, rumors. There were many different reasons we went with our own engine, cost being only part of it.
Dealing with the Source engine was proving extremely time consuming, just to do some of the simplest tasks. There were many things that we wanted to do for NS2 that Source does not handle very well, and trying to work with another companies code base, especially the Source engine which has years and years of code layers that can get pretty messy, is not ideal. Add to that the development time just to compile maps on Source or even just the lengthy and frustrating process to get a model set up properly to see it in game. As a small company with so few employees we needed a way to streamline that development time, and having an engine which allows us to make changes in real time to maps, models, etc. is invaluable.
Spark was not just some thing we conjured out of thin air because Flayra said we needed to make our own engine. Max had already been working on his own engine on the side for some time before NS2, so he already had something promising. So, at one point Flayra and Max sat down and discussed all the pros and cons of sticking with Source or going with our own engine. Max went ahead and did a test, and got the game up and running on his own engine in 2 weeks, which helped convince us that it was the right way to go.
We had hoped that we'd be able to still perhaps use some of Valves tools, like the level editor, but we were informed that since we weren't licensing Source we couldn't use the tools. So, creating our own level editor from scratch was one of the biggest costs to development time that we had been hoping to avoid.
In hindsight its easy to look back and see how much time has gone into developing our own engine, but at the time when making the decision there were so many unknown variables that couldn't be planned for. And, having our own engine and tools makes us much more valuable as a company, allows us much more freedom and flexibility with both the development of NS2 and future plans that we have. I can't say for sure how long the release of NS2 has been delayed because we decided to use out own engine, and admittedly it hasn't been the smoothest development, but if we had to do it over again, I'm pretty sure we'd make the same choice.
--Cory
nothing half life 2 did was truely revolutionary outside of object interaction and maybe the character's face design, so the need for a great engine wasn't really needed i suppose.
Also to answer you Persian... if they made the engine, wouldn't they be quite comfortable working with it?
I am already seeing things that are easily done in Spark but would require much more effort to emulate in Source.
The entire crew there is brilliant.
I can't wait to see the engine shine with the upcoming refinery levels.
Honestly, aside from UWE getting payback for all their hard work, I do not care when NS2 gets finished. I am having a blast playing beta. With every patch the game keeps improving. I think the final product will easily complete with any AAA title out there.
I don't think it's a matter of the engine sucking, but it's specifically designed to work with the types of games they make. Apparently their tools are not well documented either. It's a lot easier to work with an engine if the people who made it work in the same building as you (and maybe working on the game too). If you look around, the Source engine hasn't been widely licensed. I can think of Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, Zeno Clash, Vindictus, and the second Vampire Masquerade game. For an engine released 7 years ago, that doesn't sound very impressive. I don't think any of those games did all that well either.
It's not a sucky engine at all IF you're Valve. They know how to modify it and make it suit their needs however they want. As for everybody else who wants to use the engine, they can bascially only take what they can get out of it at any given time based on the tools and documentation available.
It's 6/7 year old engine now. They've had to add some simple dynamic lighting to it to keep it up to date among other things.
Editing it is a pain in the ass. Hammer is one of the buggiest level editors ever, simple, yet ugly and clunky. BSP Tech is all but becoming dated now which is the main problem Valve will encounter, there's only so much it seems to be able to do, it's one of the many list of reasons people are moving away from Source.
As far as modding goes though, it's got good support, although the Unreal scene has really kicked off and as it's a more modern engine is getting more drive and more support, particularly monthly updates.
why valve stick with source? it costs allot to license another engine it might cost even more to build a new one not sure but it could take couple of years allso counting all the years they have spend working with source even if its hard they got used to it and know it inside out.
I hope they drop it as fast as possible and build a new engine that is easy to mod and map for.
For all the people who still think UWE should have went with source try this, open spark editor make a small room place objects and lights to make it look nice try to do the same thing in source and come back here and post about how smooth it went with each one.
Editing it is a pain in the ass. Hammer is one of the buggiest level editors ever, simple, yet ugly and clunky. BSP Tech is all but becoming dated now which is the main problem Valve will encounter, there's only so much it seems to be able to do, it's one of the many list of reasons people are moving away from Source.
As far as modding goes though, it's got good support, although the Unreal scene has really kicked off and as it's a more modern engine is getting more drive and more support, particularly monthly updates.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's funny to see everyone defending the decision, even as Flayra admits it was a mistake.
I especially enjoy everyone ripping on source from the perspective of a 2011 gamer. NS2 was announced in 2005 folks.
It still isn't complete and the engine isn't close to being finished.
The main problem with the, "crowd-sourcing the hard work and take the profit they do for free" model of development that Flayra abuses is the simple fact that one actually needs a <i>crowd</i> to do the work for you.
Since NS2 has managed to sap all possible goodwill that it initially generated, I don't see that working out anytime soon.
Fall 2009.
You certainly are a fan of making things up about NS2 and attacking the result, aren't you?
When I invested in my SE, I did it in the hope of getting some great PC shooter from it from an independent studio. I was fully aware of the risks involved (Never going to receive the game or getting some shoddy product in return). The game seems to be getting along just fine so why the complaining? If you really thought they would have been done by 2009, well I don't want to be rude, but let's just say that wouldn't be very realistic of you.
I especially enjoy everyone ripping on source from the perspective of a 2011 gamer. NS2 was announced in 2005 folks.
It still isn't complete and the engine isn't close to being finished.
The main problem with the, "crowd-sourcing the hard work and take the profit they do for free" model of development that Flayra abuses is the simple fact that one actually needs a <i>crowd</i> to do the work for you.
Since NS2 has managed to sap all possible goodwill that it initially generated, I don't see that working out anytime soon.
Fall 2009.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
my goodwill hasn't been sapped yet.
Well... I just played five or six games tonight on this engine that isn't close to being finished. Had you not told me, I'd never know that it was in such a rudimentary state. Thanks for informing me!
Honestly, i'm as excited about spark as NS2. I believe it was a good decision, even if I had some mixed feelings about it when they announced the switch.
Having played around with the spark editor, it's way better than source for this kind of job.
Fall 2009.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Even if they sapped my goodwill, I'm not done yet, not by a long shot.
Source is a good engine, if not the best, but it's time for some new people to hit the stage.