Only if there were a financial benefit to a complete overhaul.
Right now, that doesn't exist.
If the game were to bottom out, however...
If the game were to bottom out, then there is little chance of another MMO in the universe that we love. It will be a MMO in the <shudder>JJ Universe</shudder>. Star Trek would have to be revitalized with new TV series and/or movies set after Nemesis for there to be another MMO set after Nemesis and there is little chance of that happening.
If as some have said it is a matter of moving existing information over to the new engine is a large and time consuming, but not difficult job. Then the solution is to coincide such a migration with another expansion similar to LoR. Gates of Andromeda or something to get people hyped. Release several LoR style purchases to coincide with the launch to offset the cost. With the cost as close to zero (and with hope showing a profit) the new engine enhances shelf time for the game that it can last a few more years bringing steady income to Cryptic/PWE for longer and allowing them room to offer more future monetization.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
I'm not terribly familiar with computer programming but I am aware that STO runs on a somewhat old engine compared to most MMO's these days. One issue is that it's rather limited to what they can add to the game in terms of mechanics and they will hit a wall on development eventually. People seem to think the engine is also being pushed beyond its limits and that's causing problems (lag etc.)
Again I'm not sure if any of this is true I'm just repeating what others have said. In any case, I realize it would be a truly massive undertaking to rebuild STO from scratch with a new engine, but I personally would be more than willing to forego new content for quite some time so they could do this. In the long run it would be better for the game and help prolong its life for a good long time. I think sooner or later they'll be forced to do this and I think they might as well just get it out of the way!
Just think of all the new toys the DEV's will get to play with when they're done! Not to mention the amazing graphics and smoother performance! I am behind Cryptic 100% in whatever they need to do and I'll continue to support them as they work through these issues to improve everyone's experience in the game...
Long live Star Trek!
Even if they were to invest all that time and money to build a new engine, it would probably end up with the same myriads of bugs, problems, design mistakes, imbalances and abandoned features the current version has. IF they were to start fresh and build a new engine from the ground up, it would make much more sense to do it on a blank slate and give the whole thing to another studio.
LOL. I love how far part of the playerbase is really disconnected from reality. Talking about moving to another game engine as if it is a no-brainer is really hilarious.
It is good to do some reading into subject before writing something like that.
I know for one that the head of development of another MMO estimated that moving their game to another engine would have taken 1-1.5 years. And mind it - it is in case of buying out-of-the-box solution and adapting it to the game's needs - not developing a new engine.
And the now the MOST important part - it would mean stopping the development process completely for all this time. NO new features, NO bug fixes, NO new gaming assets - NOTHING. Only working on porting the game to another engine.
And this MMO has a considerably bigger development team and more financial resources than Cryptic ever had or will have.
Now answer yourself will STO survive more than year stagnation - without any new content AT ALL ?
I'm not terribly familiar with computer programming but I am aware that STO runs on a somewhat old engine compared to most MMO's these days. One issue is that it's rather limited to what they can add to the game in terms of mechanics and they will hit a wall on development eventually. People seem to think the engine is also being pushed beyond its limits and that's causing problems (lag etc.)
Again I'm not sure if any of this is true I'm just repeating what others have said. In any case, I realize it would be a truly massive undertaking to rebuild STO from scratch with a new engine, but I personally would be more than willing to forego new content for quite some time so they could do this. In the long run it would be better for the game and help prolong its life for a good long time. I think sooner or later they'll be forced to do this and I think they might as well just get it out of the way!
Just think of all the new toys the DEV's will get to play with when they're done! Not to mention the amazing graphics and smoother performance! I am behind Cryptic 100% in whatever they need to do and I'll continue to support them as they work through these issues to improve everyone's experience in the game...
Long live Star Trek!
I really wish Computer Science was a required course starting as early as middle school.
For comparison you can compare a new game engine with the time investment of creating a new operating system. More than likely if STO ever were to replace their current engine it would be done by using an already existing game engine and modified for its own use. Unless STO was trying to introduce a new engine for sale or a statement on some new technology there really isn't any ROI for taking on such a project.
Either way the engine itself would be about a 1 to 2 year undertaking at the least (No Man's Sky engine took several years to develop and we don't know if it was entirely built by the them or only parts of it). Remember a game engine is what helps you build the game: rendering, network and memory management, physics and collision, 3d graphics, AI, etc, etc, etc...these aren't jobs for your everyday developer (is your mechanic skilled enough to build your car?).
Next is the content. If they decided to replicate the content already in STO (FE, Art, Mechanics) all of that data will need to be retouched. All of it. You can add another 1 to 2 years. If the content is created from scratch in a new direction - same amount of time.
All in all you are talking about a 3-5 year project. Doubling their server farm, acquiring some top talent software engineers (not developers, engineers) and spending probably double what they are currently spending (after just suffering layoffs for cost savings) in the hopes the engine they just created is better than the one they are using or one they could buy.
Think about it logically. You can't just replace the engine in a honda with a porche engine. Not without some serious tweaking. Conversely no one would consider building a new engine for their honda if they wanted it to perform better.
"Can Cryptic just build a new game engine" is simply not a well informed idea.
ADDED: I think the bigger issue is whether Cryptic is using the current engine in the best way. I get the feeling a lot of the issues with the current engine are self inflicted and probably why we won't see another Dyson Sphere adventure zone type environment for a while.
Man, these "can't you just switch out the game engine" threads are always entertaining.
That depends, I was looking for responses from better informed individuals and I got those. With a hefty dose of Snyde, arrogant, "I'm smarter than you" remarks... But then again it's my own fault for expecting civilized behavior from online gamers. :rolleyes:
I'm aware it's no simple task to do what I'm suggesting, but I feel that if STO survives long enough it will be neccesary.
For those of you who wrote kind, intelligent comments that actually contributed to this thread in a constructive way, thank you.
That depends, I was looking for responses from better informed individuals and I got those. With a hefty dose of Snyde, arrogant, "I'm smarter than you" remarks... But then again it's my own fault for expecting civilized behavior from online gamers. :rolleyes:
To be clear, I'm not dissing you. This is a topic that people post on pretty much every game forum I've ever read. And like I said, it's always entertaining.
I'm aware it's no simple task to do what I'm suggesting, but I feel that if STO survives long enough it will be neccesary.
No, not "necessary". Something *some* people may want? Sure. But something *most* people would be willing to sacrifice a huge amount of normal content development to get? Not really. Plus, look at WoW. Look at it's graphics. Sure, they have made some improvements, but not even remotely "rebuilt" it's engine. That really doesn't happen to existing games, it happens to their sequels; ala GW2 in comparison with GW1.
That depends, I was looking for responses from better informed individuals and I got those. With a hefty dose of Snyde, arrogant, "I'm smarter than you" remarks... But then again it's my own fault for expecting civilized behavior from online gamers. :rolleyes:
I'm aware it's no simple task to do what I'm suggesting, but I feel that if STO survives long enough it will be neccesary.
For those of you who wrote kind, intelligent comments that actually contributed to this thread in a constructive way, thank you.
There is a misguided assumption in your discussion though. That they NEED to rebuild the engine to make major changes. They've done some rather impressive changes that didn't require them to rebuild the engine from scratch.
indeed graphics, sound, maps/overall game structure could be quite easy to port, what they actually might have problems with is user data, the characters you have, what ships they have , what doffs and boffs you have and what equipment you have.
also fleet starbases and other holdings could also be lost.
also things like accolades currency`s and even any unspent zen might also be lost.
they might also take the opportunity to clear out any data from lapsed players this might even involve wiping out all lifetime and monthly subscribers benefits and starting afresh.
you see we have all been playing sto (star trek online) they need only rename the new model game to something else like stco (star trek conflicts online) and its a complete new game with no ties to old players even if it might have some aspects from the old game copied over.
ever heard the saying "be careful what you wish for".
o.k im thinking worse case scenario here but as the above saying implies, If you get things that you desire, there may be unforeseen and unpleasant consequences.
In an engine overhaul, the player data would be basically unaffected because it's really just another asset for the engine to interpret. Unless the coding is terrible and begging to be exploited by cheaters, all of the player data is handled by the game server. The engine (game client) merely renders it in a way understandable by players and presents them with a means of telling the game server what they want to do--jump, shoot, loot an item, sell junk to a vendor, etc. Game engines can be thought of as a more complex version of a video playback device--whether you watch a movie through media player classic or a friend's blu-ray player, the actual movie data doesn't change. What changes is the interface that presents it to you.
I'm not terribly familiar with computer programming but I am aware that STO runs on a somewhat old engine compared to most MMO's these days. One issue is that it's rather limited to what they can add to the game in terms of mechanics and they will hit a wall on development eventually. People seem to think the engine is also being pushed beyond its limits and that's causing problems (lag etc.)
Long live Star Trek!
As your not a programmer, a new engine might not help the problems the game is having. A new engine means a total reset of the processor needed to play and the graphics card to run the game. It also means having the employee's learn a new system that they may not be fimiliar with and can cause more problems for players.
Lag can be caused by the over abundance of variables that need to be processed by the server. Your captain is not just one little variable in the game. Your captain now has several hundred(probably thousands actually) variables on it. Even your titles and accolades are variables. Not to mention you also have many objects stored on your captain as well.
With the DR expansion the amount of variables has quadrupled or more maybe.
So before DR lets say your average lvl 50 captain had 500 variables on them. Now they carry 2000+....and that is each captain or ship. Now when you do a PVE que your with 4 other captains....and before DR that would be only 2000 variables the game has to deal with. But now in DR just for your team it has 10,000 variables!! It is very easy to lag, or slow up the processor of the server with this many.
Servers cost a lot more to upgrade and to do upkeep on. So this has nothing to do with the game engine at all.
As your not a programmer, a new engine might not help the problems the game is having. A new engine means a total reset of the processor needed to play and the graphics card to run the game. It also means having the employee's learn a new system that they may not be fimiliar with and can cause more problems for players.
Lag can be caused by the over abundance of variables that need to be processed by the server. Your captain is not just one little variable in the game. Your captain now has several hundred(probably thousands actually) variables on it. Even your titles and accolades are variables. Not to mention you also have many objects stored on your captain as well.
With the DR expansion the amount of variables has quadrupled or more maybe.
So before DR lets say your average lvl 50 captain had 500 variables on them. Now they carry 2000+....and that is each captain or ship. Now when you do a PVE que your with 4 other captains....and before DR that would be only 2000 variables the game has to deal with. But now in DR just for your team it has 10,000 variables!! It is very easy to lag, or slow up the processor of the server with this many.
Servers cost a lot more to upgrade and to do upkeep on. So this has nothing to do with the game engine at all.
This assessment really isn't the most accurate. In today's modern object-oriented programming model, the number of properties (variables) each object (an object can be a character, a ship, an item, etc) contains is relatively trivial and isn't going to be a significant drain on system resources. On the other hand, the number of events (programming-level events, not events players participate in) firing and associated function calls resulting is a more likely suspect.
Let's say each time one of your beams hits a target, it fires a server-side event which, in turn, causes every trait, set bonus, or whatever associated with beams firing (disruptor breach, tetryon shield drain, omega weapon amplifier, etc) to fire off its own event, effect, etc whatever. That's a lot of TRIBBLE happening each time you shoot, and over the years, STO has only piled on more and more things like this:
Base weapon effects
Set bonuses
Traits
Specializations (especially these, they add a lot)
...blah blah etc
(Note that this can apply to enemies too)
Now estimate the number of people who play this game and might be engaged in combat at any given time and...there you go. I'm not saying that is the problem, however from my own personal experiences with programming, it'd be a likely suspect.
You don't need to recreate all of the assets (graphics, sound, maps/overall game structure, etc) to build a new engine. All the engine does is interpret the game assets and present them to you in an interactive fashion.
Having said that, making a new engine would be a complete waste of resources.
I do however think that, within our existing engine, ground could use a fair amount of work given how clumsy it plays. Rubberbanding, the implementation of autofire, and the sometimes-unresponsive nature of abilities are all just a few examples. Other parts of the interface could use a tune-up too, such as having to try a few times to drag/drop an item in your inventory.
Other than that, the game is good enough. I'd rather see new content.
"We totally do not need to redo the assets! We totally need to redo the Assets!"
Said every game dev ever at some point in his carreer.
"We totally do not need to redo the assets! We totally need to redo the Assets!"
Said every game dev ever at some point in his carreer.
Naw, it's more like, "these older assets are outdated, let's improve them to meet modern standards." An example of this can be seen in the ESD revamp and the upcoming Klingon model updates.
Client/engine mechanics and functionality aren't the same things as game assets.
I want ground to be a proper First Person Shooter. I want explosions, I want to demolish, and I want realistic guns. That means I want finding and using ammo to be a thing.
I'm not terribly familiar with computer programming but I am aware that STO runs on a somewhat old engine compared to most MMO's these days. One issue is that it's rather limited to what they can add to the game in terms of mechanics and they will hit a wall on development eventually. People seem to think the engine is also being pushed beyond its limits and that's causing problems (lag etc.)
Again I'm not sure if any of this is true I'm just repeating what others have said. In any case, I realize it would be a truly massive undertaking to rebuild STO from scratch with a new engine, but I personally would be more than willing to forego new content for quite some time so they could do this. In the long run it would be better for the game and help prolong its life for a good long time. I think sooner or later they'll be forced to do this and I think they might as well just get it out of the way!
Just think of all the new toys the DEV's will get to play with when they're done! Not to mention the amazing graphics and smoother performance! I am behind Cryptic 100% in whatever they need to do and I'll continue to support them as they work through these issues to improve everyone's experience in the game...
Long live Star Trek!
considering your previous replies on another thread that was canned, i most certainly do not trust your motives on this thread. so taking that into account the only thing i will stick to the point on is that this question has come up time and time again and the answer is the same, that it require a lot of resources, alot of time and it will most certainly void any content for a good few years. there is also no gaurantees the new engine will be a success either. so do cryptic stick with what they got and milk it for everything its worth, or do they take a 50%/50% risk and spend a lot of the budget in the process.
the answer is simple for a group like cryptic who dont have a lot of resources .
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
No thanks, I'm pretty happy and have nothing to cry about. But to be clear, was that a "yes I do know this person IRL, and know they are "little" or a "fella"(guy)", or "no I have no idea who this person is and was just trying to talk down to them"?
As mentioned a number of times, rebuilding a new engine is worth it. The fact that Cryptic has it's current in house game engine is not a good idea in on itself as there is glairing issues with what's happening now with it.
One of the more common feedback I've seen around with previous Cryptic employees is the in house game engine and its step learning curve.
Moving forward, expect to see more and more development companies move away from having their own engine and instead using game engines that are readily available with a fee (e.g. Unreal engine). It provides many benefits and overall the pros trump the cons when compared to using an in house game engine.
If(and it's pretty much a not going to happen if) Cryptic was to make a fresh new STO game, it would be more in their best interest to move on from what they currently use, to a more industry regonized game engine instead of making a new one for themselves.
Retired. I'm now in search for that perfect space anomaly.
Have to chime in here and agree STO doesn't need a new engine right now, or ever likely.
Mainly because there are several other (much older) MMO's online right now, and still receiving updates/content that run on engines considered obsolete in today's terms. (PWI is an example)
I believe the main issues with STO aren't so much the fault of the engine, but rather little coding hiccups that crop up with major updates... If Cryptic assigned a couple of more coders to stomp bugs we'd likely have little to complain about.
Though I will admit, I am slightly irked that I'm running a quad core i7 and STO only uses a couple of cores and maxes them out while leaving others relatively idle. And it would be nice if STO offloaded more of the graphics work to the GPU instead of taxing the CPU as much as it does.
I'm not aware of any MMO being completely recoded on a new game engine.
Eve Online released an entirely new client supporting DirectX 9, switching from previous DX8. For some time, the 2 clients even coexisted (the older one was eventually dumped later), showing the game data was engine-agnostic. All of their assets were recoded for the new engine (Trinity 2.0).
They are currently implementing (or planning on doing so) an engine supporting DX11.
Anarchy Online was also in the process of being updated (I know there was the new engine beta, but I don't know if they pushed it to release)
Aside from that unusual example, games that might show signs of old age keep updating their engines adding new features (not just new assets, but features like HDR, normal mapping, tessellation etc.) built on new graphic cards expanded capabilities, even without rebuilding everything from scratch.
Comments
If the game were to bottom out, then there is little chance of another MMO in the universe that we love. It will be a MMO in the <shudder>JJ Universe</shudder>. Star Trek would have to be revitalized with new TV series and/or movies set after Nemesis for there to be another MMO set after Nemesis and there is little chance of that happening.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
Even if they were to invest all that time and money to build a new engine, it would probably end up with the same myriads of bugs, problems, design mistakes, imbalances and abandoned features the current version has. IF they were to start fresh and build a new engine from the ground up, it would make much more sense to do it on a blank slate and give the whole thing to another studio.
It is good to do some reading into subject before writing something like that.
I know for one that the head of development of another MMO estimated that moving their game to another engine would have taken 1-1.5 years. And mind it - it is in case of buying out-of-the-box solution and adapting it to the game's needs - not developing a new engine.
And the now the MOST important part - it would mean stopping the development process completely for all this time. NO new features, NO bug fixes, NO new gaming assets - NOTHING. Only working on porting the game to another engine.
And this MMO has a considerably bigger development team and more financial resources than Cryptic ever had or will have.
Now answer yourself will STO survive more than year stagnation - without any new content AT ALL ?
I really wish Computer Science was a required course starting as early as middle school.
For comparison you can compare a new game engine with the time investment of creating a new operating system. More than likely if STO ever were to replace their current engine it would be done by using an already existing game engine and modified for its own use. Unless STO was trying to introduce a new engine for sale or a statement on some new technology there really isn't any ROI for taking on such a project.
Either way the engine itself would be about a 1 to 2 year undertaking at the least (No Man's Sky engine took several years to develop and we don't know if it was entirely built by the them or only parts of it). Remember a game engine is what helps you build the game: rendering, network and memory management, physics and collision, 3d graphics, AI, etc, etc, etc...these aren't jobs for your everyday developer (is your mechanic skilled enough to build your car?).
Next is the content. If they decided to replicate the content already in STO (FE, Art, Mechanics) all of that data will need to be retouched. All of it. You can add another 1 to 2 years. If the content is created from scratch in a new direction - same amount of time.
All in all you are talking about a 3-5 year project. Doubling their server farm, acquiring some top talent software engineers (not developers, engineers) and spending probably double what they are currently spending (after just suffering layoffs for cost savings) in the hopes the engine they just created is better than the one they are using or one they could buy.
Think about it logically. You can't just replace the engine in a honda with a porche engine. Not without some serious tweaking. Conversely no one would consider building a new engine for their honda if they wanted it to perform better.
"Can Cryptic just build a new game engine" is simply not a well informed idea.
ADDED: I think the bigger issue is whether Cryptic is using the current engine in the best way. I get the feeling a lot of the issues with the current engine are self inflicted and probably why we won't see another Dyson Sphere adventure zone type environment for a while.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
That depends, I was looking for responses from better informed individuals and I got those. With a hefty dose of Snyde, arrogant, "I'm smarter than you" remarks... But then again it's my own fault for expecting civilized behavior from online gamers. :rolleyes:
I'm aware it's no simple task to do what I'm suggesting, but I feel that if STO survives long enough it will be neccesary.
For those of you who wrote kind, intelligent comments that actually contributed to this thread in a constructive way, thank you.
To be clear, I'm not dissing you. This is a topic that people post on pretty much every game forum I've ever read. And like I said, it's always entertaining.
No, not "necessary". Something *some* people may want? Sure. But something *most* people would be willing to sacrifice a huge amount of normal content development to get? Not really. Plus, look at WoW. Look at it's graphics. Sure, they have made some improvements, but not even remotely "rebuilt" it's engine. That really doesn't happen to existing games, it happens to their sequels; ala GW2 in comparison with GW1.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
My character Tsin'xing
As your not a programmer, a new engine might not help the problems the game is having. A new engine means a total reset of the processor needed to play and the graphics card to run the game. It also means having the employee's learn a new system that they may not be fimiliar with and can cause more problems for players.
Lag can be caused by the over abundance of variables that need to be processed by the server. Your captain is not just one little variable in the game. Your captain now has several hundred(probably thousands actually) variables on it. Even your titles and accolades are variables. Not to mention you also have many objects stored on your captain as well.
With the DR expansion the amount of variables has quadrupled or more maybe.
So before DR lets say your average lvl 50 captain had 500 variables on them. Now they carry 2000+....and that is each captain or ship. Now when you do a PVE que your with 4 other captains....and before DR that would be only 2000 variables the game has to deal with. But now in DR just for your team it has 10,000 variables!! It is very easy to lag, or slow up the processor of the server with this many.
Servers cost a lot more to upgrade and to do upkeep on. So this has nothing to do with the game engine at all.
Let's say each time one of your beams hits a target, it fires a server-side event which, in turn, causes every trait, set bonus, or whatever associated with beams firing (disruptor breach, tetryon shield drain, omega weapon amplifier, etc) to fire off its own event, effect, etc whatever. That's a lot of TRIBBLE happening each time you shoot, and over the years, STO has only piled on more and more things like this:
Base weapon effects
Set bonuses
Traits
Specializations (especially these, they add a lot)
...blah blah etc
(Note that this can apply to enemies too)
Now estimate the number of people who play this game and might be engaged in combat at any given time and...there you go. I'm not saying that is the problem, however from my own personal experiences with programming, it'd be a likely suspect.
"We totally do not need to redo the assets! We totally need to redo the Assets!"
Said every game dev ever at some point in his carreer.
Atleast you got the lexintons reg.numbers right NCC 1709 and yes The Warrior is 1720.Nice sig.
USS WARRIOR NCC 1720 Commanding Officer
Star Trek Gamers
Client/engine mechanics and functionality aren't the same things as game assets.
Do you know this person IRL? Are they "little" or a "fella"(guy)? Or do you just think saying something like that makes your post sound better?
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Go play battlefield then
considering your previous replies on another thread that was canned, i most certainly do not trust your motives on this thread. so taking that into account the only thing i will stick to the point on is that this question has come up time and time again and the answer is the same, that it require a lot of resources, alot of time and it will most certainly void any content for a good few years. there is also no gaurantees the new engine will be a success either. so do cryptic stick with what they got and milk it for everything its worth, or do they take a 50%/50% risk and spend a lot of the budget in the process.
the answer is simple for a group like cryptic who dont have a lot of resources .
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
No thanks, I'm pretty happy and have nothing to cry about. But to be clear, was that a "yes I do know this person IRL, and know they are "little" or a "fella"(guy)", or "no I have no idea who this person is and was just trying to talk down to them"?
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Ah, so you were calling them a small animal. Insulting them. Thanks for clarifying!
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
One of the more common feedback I've seen around with previous Cryptic employees is the in house game engine and its step learning curve.
Moving forward, expect to see more and more development companies move away from having their own engine and instead using game engines that are readily available with a fee (e.g. Unreal engine). It provides many benefits and overall the pros trump the cons when compared to using an in house game engine.
If(and it's pretty much a not going to happen if) Cryptic was to make a fresh new STO game, it would be more in their best interest to move on from what they currently use, to a more industry regonized game engine instead of making a new one for themselves.
Mainly because there are several other (much older) MMO's online right now, and still receiving updates/content that run on engines considered obsolete in today's terms. (PWI is an example)
I believe the main issues with STO aren't so much the fault of the engine, but rather little coding hiccups that crop up with major updates... If Cryptic assigned a couple of more coders to stomp bugs we'd likely have little to complain about.
Though I will admit, I am slightly irked that I'm running a quad core i7 and STO only uses a couple of cores and maxes them out while leaving others relatively idle. And it would be nice if STO offloaded more of the graphics work to the GPU instead of taxing the CPU as much as it does.
Eve Online released an entirely new client supporting DirectX 9, switching from previous DX8. For some time, the 2 clients even coexisted (the older one was eventually dumped later), showing the game data was engine-agnostic. All of their assets were recoded for the new engine (Trinity 2.0).
They are currently implementing (or planning on doing so) an engine supporting DX11.
Anarchy Online was also in the process of being updated (I know there was the new engine beta, but I don't know if they pushed it to release)
Aside from that unusual example, games that might show signs of old age keep updating their engines adding new features (not just new assets, but features like HDR, normal mapping, tessellation etc.) built on new graphic cards expanded capabilities, even without rebuilding everything from scratch.