Was the proprietary engine worth it in the end?

swansongswansong mk Join Date: 2013-11-04 Member: 188985Members
It seems like a lot of work went into it, the game seemed to take forever to be developed and I have to question if it was worth it. Surely it would have just been more efficient to take an existing engine, modded it or just worked within it's limitations and gotten the game out sooner and with fewer issues? I still think the engine is the biggest downfall with this game and it just doesn't look to be improving. Reminds me of the ARMA engine in a way, there is this great game but the poorly optimized engine just gets in the way. I don't understand it either as this game isn't doing anything special, NS the mod did it on the HL engine which I think was Quake 2?

I know Source and UE3 weren't probably all that great when you first started developing this game, Steam wasn't that big and you probably needed to develop this stuff yourself. I think that is fair enough, but I just think planning into the future, is it worth carrying on with this engine or using an off the shelf one? Source is really good now, there are a lot of amazing features built in, Steamworks is fantastic and there is an amazing infrastructure there that makes TF2, CS:GO and DOTA 2 so much fun.

For me the low framerate, long loading times, the lag... I mean you can have great pings and you'll still have the micro warping.... it just isn't worth it. Then you have stuff like the shooting doesn't feel that good, everything is ultra floaty, it is so hard to find a good game, no server queue etc etc.


I sit there trying to like this game, I've tried over and over and the engine just gets in the way of the fun, I just think "If only it was on Source". I like the mod, the concept of the game is great, I think the art work is amazing, the music and the sound effects are all really cool and it is all there to make this amazing and very popular online shooter. Then I play it and all these annoying aspects crop up and I just stop having fun very quickly, usually I just cannot be bothered because I know I'll have to keep clicking on a full server to join my friends, I'll have to wait 10 mins to load and it'll probably be a one sided game any ways with lots of lag and only like 40fps which looks terrible, especially as it fluctuates so much.

I speak to other people, I look at the declining player base and they all say the same things, "it took too long to load" or "it runs poorly" or "the shooting feels weak" or "you die too fast" and they're usually the things that come up again and again when I ask. The dying too fast thing is simply what I'll call Max Payne 3 syndrome, you aren't given enough feedback when you're being shot, NS mod never suffered from this, it's just things other engines probably do as standard that you haven't tweaked yet.
«13456

Comments

  • aeroripperaeroripper Join Date: 2005-02-25 Member: 42471NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
    edited March 2014
    WAS THE PROPRIETARY ENGINE WORTH IT IN THE END?

    Yes. There were many reasons they dropped work on the Source engine version early, as indicated in the dev blogs/video updates back around 2008. Not sure why this argument keeps popping up over and over again.
  • lwflwf Join Date: 2006-11-03 Member: 58311Members, Constellation
    edited March 2014
    "In the end" I think it worked out great but at the same time I feel (without any merit or real insight, I only said feel) NS2 could have been out so much earlier had they sticked to one engine, even if NS2 wouldn't have been the NS2 it is today, we could have been looking at NS3 now. But again, "in the end", NS2 is out and UWE more than survived so whether or not past decisions were optimal, which we will never know, they were all but wrong.

    It's concerning however that UWE couldn't use their own engine for the next game. I heard why, but it still makes it less valuable as an asset.
  • Soul_RiderSoul_Rider Mod Bean Join Date: 2004-06-19 Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
    edited March 2014
    As a programmer who strips the code out a lot in my mods I have to say the Spark Engine is very good.

    Unfortunately, just as NS pushed the boundaries of the Half-Life engine, NS2 pushes the boundaries of the Spark engine. They made a great choice, and as Subnautica is being made on Unity, further work can be done to improve the Spark engine before their next release on it. Improving the model pipeline, improving the renderer, and perhaps even making it properly multi-threaded. The options are there, Spark is a great engine, there is 2 games worth of code tucked in here, FPS and RTS, so of course it's going to push an engines boundaries. That is the reality of the game..

    I have to admit, IMHO, I think the Spark engine feels a lot smoother and is more agile than the source engine, which is heavy and boggy. When you play a mod which clears out a lot of the code, making a simple source type game, you will see how much enjoyable the Spark engine is than the Source engine. From a modders perspective, I really believe the engine to be smoother and better. I think the LAN hit-reg for marines also showed how good the engine itself is.
  • Dictator93Dictator93 Join Date: 2008-12-21 Member: 65833Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    100% worth it.

    NS2 is quite a demanding game for many reasons some more justified than others, but I would take this engine any day over the dinosaur/ugly duckling that is souce or UE3.

    Seriously, those engines are so undynamic and archaic it is not funny.
  • Raza.Raza. Join Date: 2004-01-24 Member: 25663Members, Constellation
    In hindsight I think everything that was required for NS2 could have been achieved with the Source engine with better performance and in less time. Not to mention all the nice-to-have features that would come with a mature engine (like demo recording).
    But at the time of the decision it might have made sense. There were the licensing costs, UWE thought they could just use the Source tools with Spark and so on... And now they have an engine they can build upon.

    Soul_Rider wrote: »
    Unfortunately, just as NS pushed the boundaries of the Half-Life engine, NS2 pushes the boundaries of the Spark engine. [...] The options are there, Spark is a great engine, there is 2 games worth of code tucked in here, FPS and RTS, so of course it's going to push an engines boundaries. That is the reality of the game..
    I don't follow that logic. The HL engine was already past its prime when NS was released. It was designed for a different kind of game, so NS pushed it to its limit. Spark on the other hand was designed specifically for NS2. It was designed for FPS/RTS!
  • DC_DarklingDC_Darkling Join Date: 2003-07-10 Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
    If I understood various posts by devs and modders ok, then the engine itself is a utmost masterpiece.
    Its the game (ns2) itself which is a lagfest.
  • cooliticcoolitic Right behind you Join Date: 2013-04-02 Member: 184609Members
    edited March 2014
    It was kind of worth it, but it caused many problems since uwe didn't have experience with building engines. That's one of the biggest reasons why ns2 development was messy.

    However, there's always a first time for everything and hopefully they will have the experience with future development.
  • NordicNordic Long term camping in Kodiak Join Date: 2012-05-13 Member: 151995Members, NS2 Playtester, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited March 2014
    I was under the impression that a dev, I think Max, was working on this engine long before ns2 was even being developed.
    If I understood various posts by devs and modders ok, then the engine itself is a utmost masterpiece.
    Its the game (ns2) itself which is a lagfest.
    This is my understanding too.
  • orbitalshapeorbitalshape gameland Join Date: 2014-02-03 Member: 193754Members
    Maybe most of u will hate me for this but i was fan of Quake engine, like it o some CODs, sourse engine is ok, but overrated, any1 who played tf2 scout main or comp will confirm this more or less. Frostbite 2 and 3 especialy was joke, worst of all imao, google bf4 netcode ,and u will know. Loadout engine is also ok.I as lone wulf suport companies who have balls for wing of change. Some times u get boner, but sometimes revolution. Now for ns2 engine, it is hard to say, it is hard to build house without or with small amount of money, but on the other hand u need to have awesome mod kits out in order for comunity to help, and i mean something like Skyrim creation kit,easy and fast to use.

    As for hardware requirements im not sure, cuz they are high and that is done in deal with hardware manufacturer most of time like Bf4 +Amd, and mani more, but ns2 have not done that as i know of.
    So it was mistake not to :
    Make deals and have heavy hardware game
    No deals but have low hardware req game

    As for loading times,i have SSD but ther time just comeing, so they rushed out with that imao.
    Over all,i think that NS2 hoped of world be more generous on atention and money, but they made mistake, for atention u need marketing.

    With marketing u can sell used pants as new fashion
  • OnosFactoryOnosFactory New Zealand Join Date: 2008-07-16 Member: 64637Members
    edited March 2014
    Just guessing, but on a personal level (and I know there is a lot more to life than coding miracles, such as family) I'd say being able to say "I made a game engine and it sold a millions worth at release" would be pretty self satisfying.

    PS: Remember, those who don't realize, that NS2 is coded in LuaScript, which is VM'ed on-the-fly into C++; This code is then inputted into the Spark Game Engine. It is the real time code conversion which apparently causes the high system requirements.

    Maybe Matso could advise, but are there any other languages used in Spark? Any little bits specifically written in Pearl etc for specific tasks?
  • KamamuraKamamura Join Date: 2013-03-06 Member: 183736Members, Reinforced - Gold
    My vote from the player's perspective - huge problems that never went away, latest version included, layers and layers of laminated micro lag. "Worth it" is a broad question, worth compared to what? But surely a better optimized engine could bring a glitchy experience.
  • Soylent_greenSoylent_green Join Date: 2002-12-20 Member: 11220Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited March 2014
    Some of the very best decisions and outcomes of NS1 were not decisions at all; they were weaknesses and baggage in the quake engine and HL mod code.

    The levels HAD to be simple and kind of abstract. They simply couldn't be the cluttered messes we have today, and that was a good thing. They had to use diffuse surfaces, there were no shaders to play with. You couldn't make every surface out of gray metallic crap; you had to actually use different colours. The look and feel was just better than the gray cluttered metallic messes most maps are today (with the exception perhaps of biodome, which is merely cluttered and metallic, not so much gray), and it didn't obstruct movement.

    The movement system was just ridiculously smooth and precise. You were a box, not an ovoid, capsule, sphere or anything with a rounded base; you had a nice base to stand on, which made jumping ontop of things a lot less random and finicky.

    The HL engine protected UWE from a lot of poor design decisions and poor artistic decisions they have made in NS2, and likely would have made on the HL engine if they were technically possible.

    I find it likely NS2 would have been done in half the time, looked prettier and played smoother on source.
  • NarfwakNarfwak Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 5258Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica PT Lead, NS2 Community Developer
  • Dictator93Dictator93 Join Date: 2008-12-21 Member: 65833Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited March 2014
    I find it likely NS2 would have been done in half the time, looked prettier and played smoother on source.

    This is a technical impossibility given the fact that source at the time was a forward rendered game that lacked dynamic lighting and whole host of modern features. Heck... source just went deferred about a year ago...

    A source NS2 would have been horribly ugly. Cory's beautiful art and all of the wonderful assets would look like ass under source's quake II lighting and material system.
  • IronsoulIronsoul Join Date: 2011-03-12 Member: 86048Members
    That's such an annoying question. Worth it for what? Was the proprietary spark engine worth it in the end for NS2? I would say it isn't the end yet. So far? I would say it hasn't been worth it.

    But was it worth it from an experience point of view? Hells yeah.
    Was it worth it from a technological base point of view? F&^% yeah!
    Was it worth it in terms of maximising profit? Probably not
    Was it worth it in the sense of creating the best possible NS2 game? that's arguable, I argue that it was not worth it. Because time was spent putting effort into certain parts of the tech and taken away from other areas that could have helped the game a lot more (like match making).

    But the point still comes back to this one fact: it's not the end. It's not the end until NS2 has less than 100 players peak at one time playing on average(that's a mouthful). It's not the end until UWE stops putting out patches and stamps the game with the big done stamp IT IS DONE KERCHUNK. It's not the end.

    So I guess a more appropriate question would be: Is the proprietary engine good for any games that are not NS2? Could they build an NS3 using spark, or would it end up just being NS2 with 100 more patches? I can't answer that question, but I damn well can ask it.
  • Blarney_StoneBlarney_Stone Join Date: 2013-03-08 Member: 183808Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited March 2014
    I think this game is great and I really wonder how many more players it could have brought in if performance had been better from day 1.
  • Omega_K2Omega_K2 Join Date: 2011-12-25 Member: 139013Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    Source isn't that good honestly. It's an old patchwork of an engine and it shows. UE would have been better I guess.
    Though it looks it boils down to how the lua part is written, not so much the c++ engine.

    Ultimately, regardless it ended up as poor performance, not as "easily" moddable as they'd wanted, and with other numerous issues. And in the end, the end result matters.
  • matsomatso Master of Patches Join Date: 2002-11-05 Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
    Maybe Matso could advise, but are there any other languages used in Spark? Any little bits specifically written in Pearl etc for specific tasks?

    There are a lot of small tools used for tasks around the edges of the engine - two that I came in contanct with was the autogenerated lua/C++ binding done in php, and of course the PerfAnalyser.py used to analyse performance logs, which I wrote (pyton64; and yea, it needs to be the 64bit version if you want to do any serious work. Don't bother if you have less than 6Gigs).

    Probably plenty of other languages used for the build system and other things in the outer fringe... there usually is.

    But runtime, its pretty much only C++ and Lua involved. Used to be some Flash around (its last use was to display ammo counter for marines, IIRC) but it was finally purged (and ritually burned/sacrificed to the dark gods/nuked from orbit - I'm not a Flash fan) when the lua-based UI was introduced ...

  • orbitalshapeorbitalshape gameland Join Date: 2014-02-03 Member: 193754Members
    Sup with all love for source engine, i can tell for fact that u will not have that shotguning fun with that in ns2, and game will not look like next gen. Only upside will be ,lower hardware requirements that may produse more players, but again that is just may. As for loading times on non SSD, yeah that sucks in ns2 on this engine, but may be solved with diferent map format files. I mean if u have biger maps that are easy to compile, and instaled game to be biger overall. I hope some of u will undestand me, cuz i have hard time explaying this.And yes moding may be more popular on source engine, but that is may again. I have one question for dev, or any who knows. Is rendering, loading maps dependet of format file, if yes how much? Cuz i think, not sure that tf2 changed map format in some point.
  • Soylent_greenSoylent_green Join Date: 2002-12-20 Member: 11220Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    edited March 2014
    Dictator93 wrote: »
    I find it likely NS2 would have been done in half the time, looked prettier and played smoother on source.

    This is a technical impossibility given the fact that source at the time was a forward rendered game that lacked dynamic lighting and whole host of modern features. Heck... source just went deferred about a year ago...

    A source NS2 would have been horribly ugly. Cory's beautiful art and all of the wonderful assets would look like ass under source's quake II lighting and material system.

    NS1 had no shaders and max 256x256 textures and 500 polygons at a time and still looks better than NS2. Most source engine games look better than NS2.

    There's a difference between artistic merit and technical merit. Deferred rendering is what allows the unique and ugly art style of NS2 levels, with bland metallic everything; NS2 did not have to look like that on the spark engine, but it was easy to do. NS2 is completely devoid of ceramic, concrete, cloth, matte paint and similar surfaces. It is too visually cluttered, too shiny, too colourless apart from the garish lighting used to cover up for the lack of colour. All the aliens and all the marine buildings have been chibi-ized. Rounded, blobby shapes, not their lean and mean NS1 counterparts.

  • BensonBenson Join Date: 2012-03-07 Member: 148303Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
    aeroripper wrote: »
    WAS THE PROPRIETARY ENGINE WORTH IT IN THE END?

    Yes. There were many reasons they dropped work on the Source engine version early, as indicated in the dev blogs/video updates back around 2008. Not sure why this argument keeps popping up over and over again.

    Because most people don't lurk on the forums enough to understand that the ENGINE is fast and very good, its the LUA is slow and causes the game to be CPU heavy. (this is my understanding from reading these forums for the last year or so)

    If the LUA were to be removed and the game rewritten in a compiled language, most performance issues would disappear (so I hear, anyway)
  • RegnarebRegnareb Join Date: 2007-08-26 Member: 62008Members, NS2 Playtester
    I am searching for the troll flag, damn.
    Dictator93 wrote: »
    I find it likely NS2 would have been done in half the time, looked prettier and played smoother on source.

    This is a technical impossibility given the fact that source at the time was a forward rendered game that lacked dynamic lighting and whole host of modern features. Heck... source just went deferred about a year ago...

    A source NS2 would have been horribly ugly. Cory's beautiful art and all of the wonderful assets would look like ass under source's quake II lighting and material system.

    NS1 had no shaders and max 256x256 textures and 500 polygons at a time and still looks better than NS2. Most source engine games look better than NS2.

    There's a difference between artistic merit and technical merit. Deferred rendering is what allows the unique and ugly art style of NS2 levels, with bland metallic everything; NS2 did not have to look like that on the spark engine, but it was easy to do. NS2 is completely devoid of ceramic, concrete, cloth, matte paint and similar surfaces. It is too visually cluttered, too shiny, too colourless apart from the garish lighting used to cover up for the lack of colour. All the aliens and all the marine buildings have been chibi-ized. Rounded, blobby shapes, not their lean and mean NS1 counterparts.

  • Kouji_SanKouji_San Sr. Hινε Uρкεερεг - EUPT Deputy The Netherlands Join Date: 2003-05-13 Member: 16271Members, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue
    edited March 2014
    Regnareb wrote: »
    I am searching for the troll flag, damn.
    Dictator93 wrote: »
    I find it likely NS2 would have been done in half the time, looked prettier and played smoother on source.

    This is a technical impossibility given the fact that source at the time was a forward rendered game that lacked dynamic lighting and whole host of modern features. Heck... source just went deferred about a year ago...

    A source NS2 would have been horribly ugly. Cory's beautiful art and all of the wonderful assets would look like ass under source's quake II lighting and material system.

    NS1 had no shaders and max 256x256 textures and 500 polygons at a time and still looks better than NS2. Most source engine games look better than NS2.

    There's a difference between artistic merit and technical merit. Deferred rendering is what allows the unique and ugly art style of NS2 levels, with bland metallic everything; NS2 did not have to look like that on the spark engine, but it was easy to do. NS2 is completely devoid of ceramic, concrete, cloth, matte paint and similar surfaces. It is too visually cluttered, too shiny, too colourless apart from the garish lighting used to cover up for the lack of colour. All the aliens and all the marine buildings have been chibi-ized. Rounded, blobby shapes, not their lean and mean NS1 counterparts.
    It's his opinion so just use disagree if ya don't agree. Also NS did look awesome for it's day and technically it did have more variety in terms of atmosphere, colours and contrast than NS2, especially with default fog settings. Must be that baked and bounced lighting vs fully dynamic lighting, I know I have much more trouble getting the lighting in NS2 to my liking compared to NS :-?
  • RicezRicez Join Date: 2013-04-13 Member: 184784Members
    edited March 2014
    Kouji_San wrote: »
    I know I have much more trouble getting the lighting in NS2 to my liking compared to NS :-?

    It's because NS1 had gamma adjustment and was a relatively bright game compared to NS2. Actually seeing skulks in NS2 is almost impossible unless you adjust gamma or burn your eyes with 100% monitor brightness, let alone hit them.
  • RockyMarcRockyMarc Join Date: 2009-11-24 Member: 69519Members, Reinforced - Shadow
    I think the game has done good, not great but just good. It's a damn fun game.
    The performance is the let down. My 2 cents is it's just too hard for ISPs (and people) to host good servers for NS2. Plenty of sh!t servers out there that would run many other FPS games fine.
  • TheriusTherius Join Date: 2009-03-06 Member: 66642Members, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Supporter
    This has to be the first time a historically obvious forum troll posts a thread with actual content and relevance. 5/5, would read again.
  • VetinariVetinari Join Date: 2013-07-23 Member: 186325Members, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver
    I don't understand why everyone loves source so much. I'm not a specialist regarding engines, but personally I think the source engine is horrible.
  • MuckyMcFlyMuckyMcFly Join Date: 2012-03-19 Member: 148982Members, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Shadow
    This is such a boring old argument, if you dislike the game that much why bother posting here?

    If you don't have anything nice or constructive to say don't post. :-@
Sign In or Register to comment.