The engine is the engine - it is so heavily script-based and limited, all they can do is make things more shiny. That's why shooter mode sucks, that's why we don't have destructible environments worth a damn, thats why we don't have exploration, etc etc.
Improving the current ST:O engine is like Taco Bell adding new menu items - in the end it's just a re-jiggering and re-mixing of the current ingredients. If we want to see anything substantial, the game needs a new engine. Period.
Have you been reading anything in this thread? Read Tacofangs posts especially. They will explain to you why you're wrong.
It is said the best weapon is one that is never fired. I disagree. The best weapon is one you only have to fire... once.
The engine is the engine - it is so heavily script-based and limited, all they can do is make things more shiny. That's why shooter mode sucks, that's why we don't have destructible environments worth a damn, thats why we don't have exploration, etc etc.
Improving the current ST:O engine is like Taco Bell adding new menu items - in the end it's just a re-jiggering and re-mixing of the current ingredients. If we want to see anything substantial, the game needs a new engine. Period.
Have you been reading anything in this thread? Read Tacofangs posts especially. They will explain to you why you're wrong.
In all fairness, Taco's posts came after that post you quoted.
To be perfectly honest, I have rewritten an entire codebase from scratch before, at work, but it was only about 400 lines. I had written the original with requirements that changed literally every day, from multiple people, and there ended up being lines that I would comment and uncomment to turn various features off and on. It was very bad. I had one comment on a particular line that read "# this is soooooooo bad." I literally could not add requested features. The new version made it a ton easier to get the data analysis we wanted.
However, my little program was an infinitesimal part of the company's total output, was only used internally, was developed 100% by myself, and wasn't even the bulk of my responsibilities. And I was a technical writing intern. To my knowledge, though, they're still using that program. (I know because of the occasional "how do I do this" emails from the guy I handed it off to, who is "too busy" to read the beautiful Word doc I left him, the crystal-clear docstrings in the source code, or even his own notes. And he eventually lost his notes.)
I am not a coder (chasing bugs just ain't for me) but I am an engineer, and all this game engine and re-coding talk, while impressive, still leaves behind a crucial factor: HARDWARE.
Cryptic's engine is actually very impressive; playing STO in 1080p, the game is lush. But that's actually not the engine, the engine(s) is located in the processor banks of servers it takes just to spit everything out, and all of it has to be stored, which involves hard storage, and that's not even getting into the TB's of data which has to be moved along at ultra-high speed, and THEN there's the added upgrading that has to be constantly done, security- and programmatic-wise... all of these things (and more) are what's running the game. The "game engine" is like the starter in your car: the engine is already there, but until it's told to run it won't, it's just a machine.
Another thing to point out is that code is not a tangible thing, it's a series of electrical impulses which are converted by your CPU into viable blocks of information. Electricity runs everything (including us). And our own bio-electricity has to run in kilojoules just to keep us going. The power which would be required to run the type of data centre where all this stuff went would mean some small country somewhere wouldn't have any at all.
I get the distinct impression that you have no idea what you're talking about. The game engine does indeed run on client PCs. I don't know what kind of data center you think requires enough electricity to run a small country, but maybe you're thinking of a hypothetical country that is almost all rural except for one office building that contains a server farm.
Thank you Taco for that great explanation! I also want to thank Nagus for that article which explained the various components to me.
So, if I am understanding correctly game engines are in a constant state of development and upgrade just like the games that use them so there is no such thing as obsolete because you can always upgrade it with new tools and features? Assuming you have the time and money. That eases my mind greatly about the future of STO. Is there any part of an engine that couldn't be upgraded or modified? I'm guessing there is also a descrepancy between the engine's capabilities and the developer's capabilities.
Out of curiosity, which component will be next on y'alls list to upgrade? Personally i'd go for the Physics or AI engines because it sounds like that could lead to some cool new stuff. (but what do I know?) LOL
So, if I am understanding correctly game engines are in a constant state of development and upgrade just like the games that use them so there is no such thing as obsolete because you can always upgrade it with new tools and features? Assuming you have the time and money. That eases my mind greatly about the future of STO. Is there any part of an engine that couldn't be upgraded or modified?
Obsolete is kind of a relative term. I think an engine can reach obsolescence, but it's all dependent on the work put into maintaining it. You can still make a game using a 20 year old engine if you want, but it's going to look like a 20 year old game.
There are 200+ year old houses that people still live in, because they've been maintained that whole time. There are 30 year old houses that get torn down because they became neglected and were rotting at the foundation.
But yes, essentially it's all just code, so as long as you're willing to throw enough people and money and time at a given engine, there's nothing it CAN'T do. I don't think there's any part of an engine that couldn't be upgraded, but some parts are probably trickier or more complicated than others. Not being a programmer, I wouldn't venture a guess about which those would be.
So, if I am understanding correctly game engines are in a constant state of development and upgrade just like the games that use them so there is no such thing as obsolete because you can always upgrade it with new tools and features? Assuming you have the time and money. That eases my mind greatly about the future of STO. Is there any part of an engine that couldn't be upgraded or modified?
Obsolete is kind of a relative term. I think an engine can reach obsolescence, but it's all dependent on the work put into maintaining it. You can still make a game using a 20 year old engine if you want, but it's going to look like a 20 year old game.
There are 200+ year old houses that people still live in, because they've been maintained that whole time. There are 30 year old houses that get torn down because they became neglected and were rotting at the foundation.
But yes, essentially it's all just code, so as long as you're willing to throw enough people and money and time at a given engine, there's nothing it CAN'T do. I don't think there's any part of an engine that couldn't be upgraded, but some parts are probably trickier or more complicated than others. Not being a programmer, I wouldn't venture a guess about which those would be.
That's it! TACO is OFFICIALLY ON RECORD supporting the assertion that a 200 year old starship can still be viable in the year 2410! Welcome to the Pro-T6-Connie crowd Taco!
(for those that don't get the smiley, I'm just kidding)
So, if I am understanding correctly game engines are in a constant state of development and upgrade just like the games that use them so there is no such thing as obsolete because you can always upgrade it with new tools and features? Assuming you have the time and money. That eases my mind greatly about the future of STO. Is there any part of an engine that couldn't be upgraded or modified?
Obsolete is kind of a relative term. I think an engine can reach obsolescence, but it's all dependent on the work put into maintaining it. You can still make a game using a 20 year old engine if you want, but it's going to look like a 20 year old game.
There are 200+ year old houses that people still live in, because they've been maintained that whole time. There are 30 year old houses that get torn down because they became neglected and were rotting at the foundation.
But yes, essentially it's all just code, so as long as you're willing to throw enough people and money and time at a given engine, there's nothing it CAN'T do. I don't think there's any part of an engine that couldn't be upgraded, but some parts are probably trickier or more complicated than others. Not being a programmer, I wouldn't venture a guess about which those would be.
That's it! TACO is OFFICIALLY ON RECORD supporting the assertion that a 200 year old starship can still be viable in the year 2410! Welcome to the Pro-T6-Connie crowd Taco!
(for those that don't get the smiley, I'm just kidding)
I get the distinct impression that you have no idea what you're talking about. The game engine does indeed run on client PCs. I don't know what kind of data center you think requires enough electricity to run a small country, but maybe you're thinking of a hypothetical country that is almost all rural except for one office building that contains a server farm.
That was called a joke, sir. A joke contains something called humor, which is oftentimes a brief story punctuated by an unconventional, usually ironic, ending.
I get the distinct impression that you have no idea what I'm talking about.
So, if I am understanding correctly game engines are in a constant state of development and upgrade just like the games that use them so there is no such thing as obsolete because you can always upgrade it with new tools and features? Assuming you have the time and money. That eases my mind greatly about the future of STO. Is there any part of an engine that couldn't be upgraded or modified? I'm guessing there is also a descrepancy between the engine's capabilities and the developer's capabilities.
Most code related stuff today are loosely connected or not hard-linked, so to say. You could call it component based. Think of it as a large object (vehicle) that consists of many different key parts (engine, gearbox etc.) that further exists of their own parts (bolts and screws etc.). With a loosely connected construction you can take one part, replace it or alter it, upgrade it and so forth.
As with a car you need to maintain it. In fancy words maintenance here means bug fixing and adding (and changing) features to meet the customer's current needs & goals, and possibly also the customer's future visions. With coding things don't really stagnate because you constantly take one of those parts and do something with it whenever it is needed. Sometimes you even add a new part if you can. If you want a sport exhaust or more fancy tires and rims on your car you can implement that.
There is no limit to your own imagination and realization (and implementation) as long as you are willing to put time, effort, knowledge, learning and money into it. If you want an F1 engine inside your grandmother's Toyota Yaris then by all means.
If you want your graphics engine to use DX12 then implement the component(s) that allow this if possible.
However, sometimes things are just unreasonable and not so easily compatible. You cannot take an engine from a 400 meter container/cargo ship or the exact propulsion system installed in trains and hope your magic fingers will do wonders for that Toyota Yaris. The car is not compatible with those things even if you were to extensively modify it to accommodate that part/component. That would be like pushing your graphics engine to do things it was not originally made for... or wish for parts to be readily available that may not currently exist or be available in that form. It would be like pushing your graphics engine to act like an OS for your smartphone, hoping it to have all the functionalities, software and hardware support for WIFI, Bluetooth, 4G and so forth. The component for let's say 4G may not exist in any form that would allow it to be used in the graphics engine framework. It is kinda like hoping to install an add-on to encode H.265 videos (HEVC) or Dolby codecs directly in Microsoft's Word and hope for such content to be run.
I don't understand none of this technicial nerd talk but i will say that as this game gets older, players will be less inclined to spend money on it which then the game becomes unprofitable to run.
All that money spent over the years buying Cryptic points/Zen for goodies would all be for nothing when they flip the switch
I get the distinct impression that you have no idea what you're talking about. The game engine does indeed run on client PCs. I don't know what kind of data center you think requires enough electricity to run a small country, but maybe you're thinking of a hypothetical country that is almost all rural except for one office building that contains a server farm.
That was called a joke, sir. A joke contains something called humor, which is oftentimes a brief story punctuated by an unconventional, usually ironic, ending.
I get the distinct impression that you have no idea what I'm talking about.
Most code related stuff today are loosely connected or not hard-linked, so to say. You could call it component based. Think of it as a large object (vehicle) that consists of many different key parts (engine, gearbox etc.) that further exists of their own parts (bolts and screws etc.). With a loosely connected construction you can take one part, replace it or alter it, upgrade it and so forth.
I'm not sure how loosely connected most game engines are these days. Typically, you'll have separate sound and graphics subsystems. You need something synchronizing them so explosions and speech are synchronized. If you're also doing positional audio, then the audio code will need to know where in space the audio source is. Hopefully, that's part of the underlying model also feeding the graphics engine. You end up with a lot of interconnectedness. With discipline, you can make it so you can change things internal to a system without breaking things, but it requires discipline, and there are a lot of limitations.
I get the distinct impression that you have no idea what you're talking about. The game engine does indeed run on client PCs. I don't know what kind of data center you think requires enough electricity to run a small country, but maybe you're thinking of a hypothetical country that is almost all rural except for one office building that contains a server farm.
That was called a joke, sir. A joke contains something called humor, which is oftentimes a brief story punctuated by an unconventional, usually ironic, ending.
I get the distinct impression that you have no idea what I'm talking about.
Ah, a troll, then. Gotcha. Troll on, my good sir.
A personal insult, breaking the forum rules. Gotcha.
I get the distinct impression that you have no idea what you're talking about. The game engine does indeed run on client PCs. I don't know what kind of data center you think requires enough electricity to run a small country, but maybe you're thinking of a hypothetical country that is almost all rural except for one office building that contains a server farm.
That was called a joke, sir. A joke contains something called humor, which is oftentimes a brief story punctuated by an unconventional, usually ironic, ending.
I get the distinct impression that you have no idea what I'm talking about.
So, if I am understanding correctly game engines are in a constant state of development and upgrade just like the games that use them so there is no such thing as obsolete because you can always upgrade it with new tools and features? Assuming you have the time and money. That eases my mind greatly about the future of STO. Is there any part of an engine that couldn't be upgraded or modified?
Obsolete is kind of a relative term. I think an engine can reach obsolescence, but it's all dependent on the work put into maintaining it. You can still make a game using a 20 year old engine if you want, but it's going to look like a 20 year old game.
There are 200+ year old houses that people still live in, because they've been maintained that whole time. There are 30 year old houses that get torn down because they became neglected and were rotting at the foundation.
But yes, essentially it's all just code, so as long as you're willing to throw enough people and money and time at a given engine, there's nothing it CAN'T do. I don't think there's any part of an engine that couldn't be upgraded, but some parts are probably trickier or more complicated than others. Not being a programmer, I wouldn't venture a guess about which those would be.
Imo, a game engine and obsolescence is like a rifle and obsolescence. It's never obsolete until people just can't run it anymore!
:P
You just have to find what it can be used for!
Here's what Cryptic is gonna do: They are going to make a new Star Trek Online Virtual Reality for the second gen VR systems.
We will each be able to walk around our ships, man them as a 2-5 person crew, and beam to planets having phaser fights and the adventure continues.... + we'll all get more physical activity to lose our gamer fat!
but it doesn't change the fact this game is very much ancient in its engine, I mean....it's from 2006, modified heavily a few years ago, but not enough. This game, even with very good hardware, struggles at times, especially in the new "counterpoint" where it seems a lot of people are having problems with framerate, even with good hardware.
The biggest problem here is that the engine STO runs on was never, ever intended to run STO. Cryptic had an engine already developed at the time they got the STO license, and that is the Champions engine, created for Champions Online.
In order to push the game out in 18 months, Cryptic went the fast-and-dirty way by modding an existing game and dumping a terrible, buggy mess skinned on an engine that was totally inadequate to what it really needs to do, and which is frankly a disgraceful way to handle the biggest and most-beloved science fiction franchise on the face of the planet (before anyone starts, "Star Wars" isn't science fiction, it's space fantasy, so calm down).
I remember seeing STO for the first time in beta years ago and thinking, "Oh, my god. They effed it up completely." Absolutely nothing has changed my opinion of the game since then. In fact, it's only gotten worse (especially after PWE, the cancer of the MMO industry, got their hands on it).
I and 99.9% of my fleet finally gave up on STO and Cryptic when "Delta Rising" launched because we saw that there was simply no way anything was ever going to change, and that neither Cryptic nor PWE care at all about "Star Trek" and really only care about milking the players who are willing to pay to grind in a garbage game.
If we want a better "Star Trek Online," everyone needs to stop playing so that the game can die and a competent developer and publisher can build it from scratch. That's not going to happen while it's under Cryptic's inept hands.
So no, there will never be a new engine or real improvements to the game (because of the limitations of the Champions engine) until another developer gets their hands on the license and starts over.
And I've been saying this since Beta (altered, of course, when PWE took over).
So my advice to everyone yearning for a better engine in STO, indeed a better STO in general, is simple: put up with the bad game, bad engine, bad developer and bad publisher or find yourself another game. This one isn't going to change in the deeply fundamental ways it needs to - ever.
There is a disconnect somewhere. If the engine is from 06, it should run FASTER on newer machines, even with the 64-32 bit issues it should scream right along. It ran just fine, after all, on those older, weaker machines.
The lag sources are not the engine. Either some new graphical effect is poorly coded (seems that way, post last update) or something like that is the culprit, not whether the engine is 64 bit or when it was written.
The endless history this game has of bug "fixes" causing more damage than they fix tells me that your latter statement is where the problem lies.
They're writing code to fix things without understanding what the code does to the rest of the game. They're patching in pieces without thinking (or knowing) what the patches are going to do elsewhere.
That tells me that there's one of three things going on:
1) They don't understand the code to begin with, so patch where they can on a sporadic and slow timeline, with no ability to discern what else will happen.
2) They understand that their code is going to break other things and just don't care.
3) Because the engine was never intended to support what STO requires of it they can't fix anything without breaking other things.
Frankly, I think they just don't know or understand the game code.
Actually, your point 1 is inevitable in a software project that is being developed by people who aren't the original code authors. It's not realistically possible to know exactly how everything everyone else coded works. Also, after several iterations of tweaking by multiple individuals, you end up with things in the code that were never intended to exist by anyone.
One of the recent lag issues they fixed was due to excessive use of code modules that called other code modules. The programmer that coded the effect knew that the code module he was calling did a certain thing, but he didn't realize that it called several other code modules to accomplish that. Which meant that this effect was using several times as much processing power as it should have.
Anybody who thinks that another Trek MMO is going to magically pop up when STO finally closes is deluding themselves.
This is all we're going to have for at least the next three years and it'll probably be another five years after that before another Trek online game comes along.
<shrug>
STO Member since February 2009. I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born! Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
I always find these threads very amusing. Some of the posts are good information. Which is written by people who really do know what they are speaking of. Others are not. And those are the funny ones. Over the years I have hurt myself laughing at some of them. Makes me sorry I let my membership in the Flat Earth Society lapse. And me bein' a proper Luddite an' all, lol.
To paraphrase someone I admire greatly, "Creatin' a new game engine ain't like dustin' crops, boy!"
A six year old boy and his starship. Living the dream.
Anybody who thinks that another Trek MMO is going to magically pop up when STO finally closes is deluding themselves.
This is all we're going to have for at least the next three years and it'll probably be another five years after that before another Trek online game comes along.
<shrug>
I would happily wait three to five more years if it meant a new Star Trek MMO was in the hands of a developer who was going to give it the time, attention and detail to do the franchise justice.
Eighteen months to develop any MMO to encompass the scope of "Star Trek" is ridiculously short (which is why they went the way they did). The result is what the game was at launch and what it is now.
That's why I've been railing against STO since Beta, despite having been a fan of "Star Trek" since the original series aired in its original run. It's also why I'd rather see there be NO Trek MMO than the insulting schlock that is STO.
Wow, I just thought I'd seen some pathetic people...
For the record, Cryptic was forced to fulfill Perpetual's old contract which required a finished product 18 months after the date they took over. They have however done their best to go back and overhaul things when they get a chance. So not their fault like at all, CBS fault.
There is a disconnect somewhere. If the engine is from 06, it should run FASTER on newer machines, even with the 64-32 bit issues it should scream right along. It ran just fine, after all, on those older, weaker machines.
The lag sources are not the engine. Either some new graphical effect is poorly coded (seems that way, post last update) or something like that is the culprit, not whether the engine is 64 bit or when it was written.
The endless history this game has of bug "fixes" causing more damage than they fix tells me that your latter statement is where the problem lies.
They're writing code to fix things without understanding what the code does to the rest of the game. They're patching in pieces without thinking (or knowing) what the patches are going to do elsewhere.
That tells me that there's one of three things going on:
1) They don't understand the code to begin with, so patch where they can on a sporadic and slow timeline, with no ability to discern what else will happen.
2) They understand that their code is going to break other things and just don't care.
3) Because the engine was never intended to support what STO requires of it they can't fix anything without breaking other things.
Frankly, I think they just don't know or understand the game code.
It happens with any coding and it is inevitable. This will never change and if it did we would not be humans anymore. You also have to understand that the maintenance team may not be the same as the development team. With any development, the original team always wants to move on to the next project. You do not want to stagnate or get stuck with projects you are done with and this is true for any sort of developer. Fact is, many game developers barely play their own games after the development is done. They move on directly to the next game and that is why we see progress with the technologies created.
It takes time and effort to take over a finished project, but the maintenance phase is also the most costly one and the longest phase. They have time. If a game development takes 5 years, then the initial year may be the pre-analysis stage, the 2nd year may be the post-analysis stage, the 3rd and 4th years may be the shaping and design stage. The first half of the 5th year may be the actual programming stage and the last half is the implementation phase where you test and put the game live. The next 10 years is maintenance and then the very last phase is to decommission.
*Maintenance = fixing bugs but also implementing changes to meet the evolving needs and requirements of the customer(s).
Actually, your point 1 is inevitable in a software project that is being developed by people who aren't the original code authors. It's not realistically possible to know exactly how everything everyone else coded works. Also, after several iterations of tweaking by multiple individuals, you end up with things in the code that were never intended to exist by anyone.
One of the recent lag issues they fixed was due to excessive use of code modules that called other code modules. The programmer that coded the effect knew that the code module he was calling did a certain thing, but he didn't realize that it called several other code modules to accomplish that. Which meant that this effect was using several times as much processing power as it should have.
It takes one small error to create a memory leak, and it takes another small error to make a processor to run at 100% (unintentionally make it calculate as fast as it can that will choke any computer completely).
I always find these threads very amusing. Some of the posts are good information. Which is written by people who really do know what they are speaking of. Others are not. And those are the funny ones. Over the years I have hurt myself laughing at some of them. Makes me sorry I let my membership in the Flat Earth Society lapse. And me bein' a proper Luddite an' all, lol.
To paraphrase someone I admire greatly, "Creatin' a new game engine ain't like dustin' crops, boy!"
Indeed. Most people don't even know what a graphics engine is and even if they did it would not change anything. The graphics engine does not equal the entire game which most people seem to think. There is so much underlying structure and design that would need to be altered if you were to change the game so drastically now and no sane person would undertake that insanity.
Changing the graphics engine is not gonna do the miracles that people are hoping for, and it would be pointless to do so for any MMO, and I have yet to see it be done. People must realize that there is a distinct difference between updating an engine and changing it entirely. What most people seem to be asking for is the latter.
People need to understand that creating an MMO is a massive undertaking. The difficulty isn't really getting the engine or any of the engine parts (modules etc.) to render graphics, audio and physics etcetera. The most difficulty part is to have all of that interact with a strict server-client architecture. You never go back and redesign the back-end structure and if you do it is an even more insane thing to do. It is something you only touch at the start and leave it at that, and you may leave only small openings for minor adjustments. It is why it is so sensitive to touch the functions and features of the Exchange.
> @stelakkh said: > daedalus304 wrote: » > > I know I know, another one of these posts. > > but it doesn't change the fact this game is very much ancient in its engine, I mean....it's from 2006, modified heavily a few years ago, but not enough. This game, even with very good hardware, struggles at times, especially in the new "counterpoint" where it seems a lot of people are having problems with framerate, even with good hardware. > > > > > The biggest problem here is that the engine STO runs on was never, ever intended to run STO. Cryptic had an engine already developed at the time they got the STO license, and that is the Champions engine, created for Champions Online. > > In order to push the game out in 18 months, Cryptic went the fast-and-dirty way by modding an existing game and dumping a terrible, buggy mess skinned on an engine that was totally inadequate to what it really needs to do, and which is frankly a disgraceful way to handle the biggest and most-beloved science fiction franchise on the face of the planet (before anyone starts, "Star Wars" isn't science fiction, it's space fantasy, so calm down). > > I remember seeing STO for the first time in beta years ago and thinking, "Oh, my god. They effed it up completely." Absolutely nothing has changed my opinion of the game since then. In fact, it's only gotten worse (especially after PWE, the cancer of the MMO industry, got their hands on it). > > I and 99.9% of my fleet finally gave up on STO and Cryptic when "Delta Rising" launched because we saw that there was simply no way anything was ever going to change, and that neither Cryptic nor PWE care at all about "Star Trek" and really only care about milking the players who are willing to pay to grind in a garbage game. > > If we want a better "Star Trek Online," everyone needs to stop playing so that the game can die and a competent developer and publisher can build it from scratch. That's not going to happen while it's under Cryptic's inept hands. > > So no, there will never be a new engine or real improvements to the game (because of the limitations of the Champions engine) until another developer gets their hands on the license and starts over. > > And I've been saying this since Beta (altered, of course, when PWE took over). > > So my advice to everyone yearning for a better engine in STO, indeed a better STO in general, is simple: put up with the bad game, bad engine, bad developer and bad publisher or find yourself another game. This one isn't going to change in the deeply fundamental ways it needs to - ever.
<b>yep,agree with you 100 percent.
star trek online should have been a sandbox game from day one similar to what was star wars galaxies back in the day. i always tend to use the lego analogy,when i was a kid you could always buy the bricks and let your imagination dictate what you wanted to build,these days every little box of lego's is atached to an ip,be it star wars,dc universe etc etc,they all come with the exact number of pieces and a set of instructions.
same goes for theme park mmos,you could make the case that the foundry makes it a sandbox game but beh its more of the same,we are left with a mindless grind of a game where the only content we get is just ships to buy for money of course and no EXPLORATION OR DIPLOMACY whatsoever which by the way is one of the main pillars of what star trek really is.
all pew pew pew and thats about it,just came back from a long break and in a day i was already done with the new missions they released lol and i have been gone for long time,so now what ?
im actually looking forward to No Man's Sky,lets see how it pans out because im done with this game...</b>
Comments
Have you been reading anything in this thread? Read Tacofangs posts especially. They will explain to you why you're wrong.
In all fairness, Taco's posts came after that post you quoted.
However, my little program was an infinitesimal part of the company's total output, was only used internally, was developed 100% by myself, and wasn't even the bulk of my responsibilities. And I was a technical writing intern. To my knowledge, though, they're still using that program. (I know because of the occasional "how do I do this" emails from the guy I handed it off to, who is "too busy" to read the beautiful Word doc I left him, the crystal-clear docstrings in the source code, or even his own notes. And he eventually lost his notes.)
I get the distinct impression that you have no idea what you're talking about. The game engine does indeed run on client PCs. I don't know what kind of data center you think requires enough electricity to run a small country, but maybe you're thinking of a hypothetical country that is almost all rural except for one office building that contains a server farm.
So, if I am understanding correctly game engines are in a constant state of development and upgrade just like the games that use them so there is no such thing as obsolete because you can always upgrade it with new tools and features? Assuming you have the time and money. That eases my mind greatly about the future of STO.
Out of curiosity, which component will be next on y'alls list to upgrade? Personally i'd go for the Physics or AI engines because it sounds like that could lead to some cool new stuff. (but what do I know?) LOL
Obsolete is kind of a relative term. I think an engine can reach obsolescence, but it's all dependent on the work put into maintaining it. You can still make a game using a 20 year old engine if you want, but it's going to look like a 20 year old game.
There are 200+ year old houses that people still live in, because they've been maintained that whole time. There are 30 year old houses that get torn down because they became neglected and were rotting at the foundation.
But yes, essentially it's all just code, so as long as you're willing to throw enough people and money and time at a given engine, there's nothing it CAN'T do. I don't think there's any part of an engine that couldn't be upgraded, but some parts are probably trickier or more complicated than others. Not being a programmer, I wouldn't venture a guess about which those would be.
That's it! TACO is OFFICIALLY ON RECORD supporting the assertion that a 200 year old starship can still be viable in the year 2410! Welcome to the Pro-T6-Connie crowd Taco!
(for those that don't get the smiley, I'm just kidding)
I think I just heard that right....
T6 Connie on its way????
Cryptic is on its own for the Dil, though.
That was called a joke, sir. A joke contains something called humor, which is oftentimes a brief story punctuated by an unconventional, usually ironic, ending.
I get the distinct impression that you have no idea what I'm talking about.
As with a car you need to maintain it. In fancy words maintenance here means bug fixing and adding (and changing) features to meet the customer's current needs & goals, and possibly also the customer's future visions. With coding things don't really stagnate because you constantly take one of those parts and do something with it whenever it is needed. Sometimes you even add a new part if you can. If you want a sport exhaust or more fancy tires and rims on your car you can implement that.
There is no limit to your own imagination and realization (and implementation) as long as you are willing to put time, effort, knowledge, learning and money into it. If you want an F1 engine inside your grandmother's Toyota Yaris then by all means.
If you want your graphics engine to use DX12 then implement the component(s) that allow this if possible.
However, sometimes things are just unreasonable and not so easily compatible. You cannot take an engine from a 400 meter container/cargo ship or the exact propulsion system installed in trains and hope your magic fingers will do wonders for that Toyota Yaris. The car is not compatible with those things even if you were to extensively modify it to accommodate that part/component. That would be like pushing your graphics engine to do things it was not originally made for... or wish for parts to be readily available that may not currently exist or be available in that form. It would be like pushing your graphics engine to act like an OS for your smartphone, hoping it to have all the functionalities, software and hardware support for WIFI, Bluetooth, 4G and so forth. The component for let's say 4G may not exist in any form that would allow it to be used in the graphics engine framework. It is kinda like hoping to install an add-on to encode H.265 videos (HEVC) or Dolby codecs directly in Microsoft's Word and hope for such content to be run.
All that money spent over the years buying Cryptic points/Zen for goodies would all be for nothing when they flip the switch
Ah, a troll, then. Gotcha. Troll on, my good sir.
I'm not sure how loosely connected most game engines are these days. Typically, you'll have separate sound and graphics subsystems. You need something synchronizing them so explosions and speech are synchronized. If you're also doing positional audio, then the audio code will need to know where in space the audio source is. Hopefully, that's part of the underlying model also feeding the graphics engine. You end up with a lot of interconnectedness. With discipline, you can make it so you can change things internal to a system without breaking things, but it requires discipline, and there are a lot of limitations.
A personal insult, breaking the forum rules. Gotcha.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
We got trolls....
Imo, a game engine and obsolescence is like a rifle and obsolescence. It's never obsolete until people just can't run it anymore!
:P
You just have to find what it can be used for!
We will each be able to walk around our ships, man them as a 2-5 person crew, and beam to planets having phaser fights and the adventure continues.... + we'll all get more physical activity to lose our gamer fat!
The biggest problem here is that the engine STO runs on was never, ever intended to run STO. Cryptic had an engine already developed at the time they got the STO license, and that is the Champions engine, created for Champions Online.
In order to push the game out in 18 months, Cryptic went the fast-and-dirty way by modding an existing game and dumping a terrible, buggy mess skinned on an engine that was totally inadequate to what it really needs to do, and which is frankly a disgraceful way to handle the biggest and most-beloved science fiction franchise on the face of the planet (before anyone starts, "Star Wars" isn't science fiction, it's space fantasy, so calm down).
I remember seeing STO for the first time in beta years ago and thinking, "Oh, my god. They effed it up completely." Absolutely nothing has changed my opinion of the game since then. In fact, it's only gotten worse (especially after PWE, the cancer of the MMO industry, got their hands on it).
I and 99.9% of my fleet finally gave up on STO and Cryptic when "Delta Rising" launched because we saw that there was simply no way anything was ever going to change, and that neither Cryptic nor PWE care at all about "Star Trek" and really only care about milking the players who are willing to pay to grind in a garbage game.
If we want a better "Star Trek Online," everyone needs to stop playing so that the game can die and a competent developer and publisher can build it from scratch. That's not going to happen while it's under Cryptic's inept hands.
So no, there will never be a new engine or real improvements to the game (because of the limitations of the Champions engine) until another developer gets their hands on the license and starts over.
And I've been saying this since Beta (altered, of course, when PWE took over).
So my advice to everyone yearning for a better engine in STO, indeed a better STO in general, is simple: put up with the bad game, bad engine, bad developer and bad publisher or find yourself another game. This one isn't going to change in the deeply fundamental ways it needs to - ever.
The endless history this game has of bug "fixes" causing more damage than they fix tells me that your latter statement is where the problem lies.
They're writing code to fix things without understanding what the code does to the rest of the game. They're patching in pieces without thinking (or knowing) what the patches are going to do elsewhere.
That tells me that there's one of three things going on:
1) They don't understand the code to begin with, so patch where they can on a sporadic and slow timeline, with no ability to discern what else will happen.
2) They understand that their code is going to break other things and just don't care.
3) Because the engine was never intended to support what STO requires of it they can't fix anything without breaking other things.
Frankly, I think they just don't know or understand the game code.
One of the recent lag issues they fixed was due to excessive use of code modules that called other code modules. The programmer that coded the effect knew that the code module he was calling did a certain thing, but he didn't realize that it called several other code modules to accomplish that. Which meant that this effect was using several times as much processing power as it should have.
My character Tsin'xing
This is all we're going to have for at least the next three years and it'll probably be another five years after that before another Trek online game comes along.
<shrug>
I Was A Trekkie Before It Was Cool ... Sept. 8th, 1966 ... Not To Mention Before Most Folks Around Here Were Born!
Forever a STO Veteran-Minion
To paraphrase someone I admire greatly, "Creatin' a new game engine ain't like dustin' crops, boy!"
I would happily wait three to five more years if it meant a new Star Trek MMO was in the hands of a developer who was going to give it the time, attention and detail to do the franchise justice.
Eighteen months to develop any MMO to encompass the scope of "Star Trek" is ridiculously short (which is why they went the way they did). The result is what the game was at launch and what it is now.
That's why I've been railing against STO since Beta, despite having been a fan of "Star Trek" since the original series aired in its original run. It's also why I'd rather see there be NO Trek MMO than the insulting schlock that is STO.
Wow, I just thought I'd seen some pathetic people...
For the record, Cryptic was forced to fulfill Perpetual's old contract which required a finished product 18 months after the date they took over. They have however done their best to go back and overhaul things when they get a chance. So not their fault like at all, CBS fault.
It takes time and effort to take over a finished project, but the maintenance phase is also the most costly one and the longest phase. They have time. If a game development takes 5 years, then the initial year may be the pre-analysis stage, the 2nd year may be the post-analysis stage, the 3rd and 4th years may be the shaping and design stage. The first half of the 5th year may be the actual programming stage and the last half is the implementation phase where you test and put the game live. The next 10 years is maintenance and then the very last phase is to decommission.
*Maintenance = fixing bugs but also implementing changes to meet the evolving needs and requirements of the customer(s).
It takes one small error to create a memory leak, and it takes another small error to make a processor to run at 100% (unintentionally make it calculate as fast as it can that will choke any computer completely).
Indeed. Most people don't even know what a graphics engine is and even if they did it would not change anything. The graphics engine does not equal the entire game which most people seem to think. There is so much underlying structure and design that would need to be altered if you were to change the game so drastically now and no sane person would undertake that insanity.
Changing the graphics engine is not gonna do the miracles that people are hoping for, and it would be pointless to do so for any MMO, and I have yet to see it be done. People must realize that there is a distinct difference between updating an engine and changing it entirely. What most people seem to be asking for is the latter.
People need to understand that creating an MMO is a massive undertaking. The difficulty isn't really getting the engine or any of the engine parts (modules etc.) to render graphics, audio and physics etcetera. The most difficulty part is to have all of that interact with a strict server-client architecture. You never go back and redesign the back-end structure and if you do it is an even more insane thing to do. It is something you only touch at the start and leave it at that, and you may leave only small openings for minor adjustments. It is why it is so sensitive to touch the functions and features of the Exchange.
> daedalus304 wrote: »
>
> I know I know, another one of these posts.
>
> but it doesn't change the fact this game is very much ancient in its engine, I mean....it's from 2006, modified heavily a few years ago, but not enough. This game, even with very good hardware, struggles at times, especially in the new "counterpoint" where it seems a lot of people are having problems with framerate, even with good hardware.
>
>
>
>
> The biggest problem here is that the engine STO runs on was never, ever intended to run STO. Cryptic had an engine already developed at the time they got the STO license, and that is the Champions engine, created for Champions Online.
>
> In order to push the game out in 18 months, Cryptic went the fast-and-dirty way by modding an existing game and dumping a terrible, buggy mess skinned on an engine that was totally inadequate to what it really needs to do, and which is frankly a disgraceful way to handle the biggest and most-beloved science fiction franchise on the face of the planet (before anyone starts, "Star Wars" isn't science fiction, it's space fantasy, so calm down).
>
> I remember seeing STO for the first time in beta years ago and thinking, "Oh, my god. They effed it up completely." Absolutely nothing has changed my opinion of the game since then. In fact, it's only gotten worse (especially after PWE, the cancer of the MMO industry, got their hands on it).
>
> I and 99.9% of my fleet finally gave up on STO and Cryptic when "Delta Rising" launched because we saw that there was simply no way anything was ever going to change, and that neither Cryptic nor PWE care at all about "Star Trek" and really only care about milking the players who are willing to pay to grind in a garbage game.
>
> If we want a better "Star Trek Online," everyone needs to stop playing so that the game can die and a competent developer and publisher can build it from scratch. That's not going to happen while it's under Cryptic's inept hands.
>
> So no, there will never be a new engine or real improvements to the game (because of the limitations of the Champions engine) until another developer gets their hands on the license and starts over.
>
> And I've been saying this since Beta (altered, of course, when PWE took over).
>
> So my advice to everyone yearning for a better engine in STO, indeed a better STO in general, is simple: put up with the bad game, bad engine, bad developer and bad publisher or find yourself another game. This one isn't going to change in the deeply fundamental ways it needs to - ever.
<b>yep,agree with you 100 percent.
star trek online should have been a sandbox game from day one similar to what was star wars galaxies back in the day.
i always tend to use the lego analogy,when i was a kid you could always buy the bricks and let your imagination dictate what you wanted to build,these days every little box of lego's is atached to an ip,be it star wars,dc universe etc etc,they all come with the exact number of pieces and a set of instructions.
same goes for theme park mmos,you could make the case that the foundry makes it a sandbox game but beh its more of the same,we are left with a mindless grind of a game where the only content we get is just ships to buy for money of course and no EXPLORATION OR DIPLOMACY whatsoever which by the way is one of the main pillars of what star trek really is.
all pew pew pew and thats about it,just came back from a long break and in a day i was already done with the new missions they released lol and i have been gone for long time,so now what ?
im actually looking forward to No Man's Sky,lets see how it pans out because im done with this game...</b>