I didn’t think Skyrim was too outclassed compared to its peers in 2011, given that it was so much larger and doing so much more than a lot of them under the hood. But Fallout 4 came out alongside The Witcher 3, and the difference between the two was night and day. Then of course Baldur’s Gate 3 next to Starfield, and I have to scratch my head wondering what the hell Bethesda is doing still running this tech stack.
Comment on Elder Scrolls 6 Is Powered By New Version Of Creation Engine
lime@feddit.nu 18 hours ago2015? that codebase started in morrowind. and say what you want about that game but it is not a looker. it launched the same year as metroid prime.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Todd Howard doesn’t know how to make games any other way.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 12 hours ago
It’s not entirely out of question that they’ll use Unreal for graphics while retaining Gamebryo for gameplay. That’s kinda how the Oblivion remaster works. And might be best of both worlds if they manage to make Unreal not suck in terms of performance
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I think graphics are pretty low on my list of priorities for how those games need to modernize. Starfield looks pretty alright in sheer fidelity, but the faces don’t animate well, the conversation system is dated even compared to The Outer Worlds doing basically the same thing, and the engine seems (for some reason) incapable of putting together a proper cut-scene.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 12 hours ago
Ah to be fair I haven’t played Starfield or even watched too many videos. I also didn’t like FO4 much so I was pretty much running with the assumption that they hadn’t changed much since 2011
Still, they may not need as many engine programmers if they reduce what their in-house engine needs to do. Could free up finances to hire more people to work on the meat and bones of the game. Or they could just pocket the difference and not give a fuck about making a good game, that seems quite likely too.
mcforest@feddit.org 17 hours ago
Morrowind? Gamebryo is the continuation of the NetImmerse engine. Development started in 1997 with the first game released in 1999.
lime@feddit.nu 17 hours ago
yeah morrowind used netimmerse, first time bethesda used it.
NachBarcelona@piefed.social 17 hours ago
I think Gamebryo (neé NetImmerse) is even a bit older than Morrowind.
lime@feddit.nu 14 hours ago
yeah it’s not bethesda’s engine. but my point was about where the codebase for the creation engine comes from, and that’s the morrowind code.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 hours ago
And Unreal Engine started on 1995. This argument always shows people’s ignorance of software development. When the first pieces of the engine were built is not why it’s shitty. It’s because they haven’t invested money into it where it matters. (Unreal Engine also has some serious issues. It just looks prettier.)
lime@feddit.nu 36 minutes ago
i mean, a 23 year old codebase is bound to have some tech debt.
Benchamoneh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 minutes ago
Very probably yes, but it will also have a lot of mature functions that are stable and work well after 20+ years of development.
A mature codebase is often a double edged sword, it’s not always a good to just throw away all that progress.
lime@feddit.nu 1 minute ago
in bethesdas case though?
a similar thing happened with arma reforger a few years ago, it was supposed to be a tech demonstrator for a new engine but it turned out to still be the same codebase as operation flashpoint from 1995. the engine is solid but it’s super annoying to program for, they have this custom scripting language that’s completely batshit insane because everything is infix by default, and an ui toolkit that is written as c++ classes meaning the actual game has a compiler in it for a subset of c++. so the scripts can be edited at runtime but if there is an error in the ui the game crashes at startup. people were hoping they’d finally switch to something that made sense but no.