Why Odyssey has so many issues? The problem is the game engine

[Ian Doncaster]

We'd also be back at square 1... unless some people here are imagining that FD would suddenly make a game equal to what we have now in just a few years? FD won't magically get better at developing stuff. They'd still take a few years to effectively give us Elite Danerous (redux) 1.0 and then more years to add landable planets, etc.

This is the key bit.

If you've got a need for a game "a bit like Elite" to exist, and are finding Elite Dangerous too flawed to be playable right now, there's better chances of someone else developing it than Frontier doing so, because they don't need to develop it at the same time as continuing to support Elite Dangerous. And also, this hypothetical new developer wouldn't be Frontier, so whatever Frontier has done that you don't like there's a chance they wouldn't.

It's taken Frontier nine years to get this far (plus however long pre-Kickstarter they spent in prototyping). Assume that a perfect games company could do it twice as fast by not taking time to implement the bugs. Still going to be five years away (not an unusual time for development of a large AAA game).

If Frontier starts on that, that's five years of not supporting Elite Dangerous - too short a time for people to forget the problems, too long to be profitable. If another company starts on that ... well, they could have started four years ago, so be about ready to release.

 

[tomimt]

True, but you don't think the lifetime pass holders will feel a bit robbed if FD were to dump Elite 4 and start on Elite 5 at this point?

Not for me to know, as I don't know what extra things lifetime pass holders have received. I don't much pay attention to that, as I don't have one.

That said, there are lifetime passes on non MMO games as well. At times, people net one or two DLC things from them before the studios declare the games complete. So I guess, it all depends on if players who do purchase lifetime passes feel they were adequately compensated. Besides, like with every game, you do have to take into account the fact that a new iteration of the game might come out at some point.

Now, if that happens with a new engine or not greatly depends on what is the actual technical state of the current engine. As I said, we don't really know, as Cobra is FDs in-house engine. They really are the only ones who know how big of a mess it is and if it's something they believe can be brought to the future. Them having added PBR shaders and renderer to it does indicate, that they think it can be brought up to date. If they wouldn't believe that, they wouldn't be trying to add new tech to it. I can only assume, they see Cobra as a core investment.

 

[MacIntoc]

Now, if that happens with a new engine or not greatly depends on what is the actual technical state of the current engine. As I said, we don't really know, as Cobra is FDs in-house engine. They really are the only ones who know how big of a mess it is and if it's something they believe can be brought to the future. Them having added PBR shaders and renderer to it does indicate, that they think it can be brought up to date. If they wouldn't believe that, they wouldn't be trying to add new tech to it. I can only assume, they see Cobra as a core investment.

They also believed that Odyssey was ready for release

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

IMO they should put Elite D on maintenance/bug fixing, and start work on Elite V, using a premade engine and custom plugins. Ideally Unreal Engine.
There's no way in the nine hells this engine is capable of the type of atmospheric planets that we are expecting in the future.

We don't know if unreal engine would be fit for purpose for something like ED. There is an reason why nobody has done something like this game before on off the shelf engines. NMS uses a custom engine. SC uses an off the shelf engine, but have pretty much had to rewrite loads of it, to get it to work.

ED uses a custom engine, and it works, but not without its issues. What those issues are, I really don't know.

 

[Factabulous]

They also believed that Odyssey was ready for release

Which points out why a different engine would have done no good - if they couldn't spot the problems with Odyssey as it was they would also not have spotted them on the new engine.

 

[tomimt]

using off a shelf engine wouldn't have been a solution, you do have to keep in mind that UE or Unity are both geared towards a more general type of games. While both can produce games in a high variety of genres, that still doesn't mean they'd been a good fit for a game like Elite. Keep in mind, like it was stated here previously, Star Citizen started by using Cryengine, but in the end, they have rewritten most of it to suit their needs. (Or Lumberyard, but that was Crytek based and they rewrote huge chunks of it)

There are no silver bullets here to miraculously fix everything. All FD can do is to try to fix what is broken. That either works out or it doesn't. And in some cases, it just makes more sense to cut the losses and start the design all over again.

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

using off a shelf engine wouldn't have been a solution, you do have to keep in mind that UE or Unity are both geared towards a more general type of games. While both can produce games in a high variety of genres, that still doesn't mean they'd been a good fit for a game like Elite. Keep in mind, like it was stated here previously, Star Citizen started by using Cryengine, but in the end, they have rewritten most of it to suit their needs. (Or Lumberyard, but that was Crytek based and they rewrote huge chunks of it)

There are no silver bullets here to miraculously fix everything. All FD can do is to try to fix what is broken. That either works out or it doesn't. And in some cases, it just makes more sense to cut the losses and start the design all over again.

Which, if I am correct, is what they did with the terrain for Odyssey. And we expected them to get it perfectly right in DLC time, not whole new game time.

 

[hunvagy]

Which, if I am correct, is what they did with the terrain for Odyssey. And we expected them to get it perfectly right in DLC time, not whole new game time.

Well, technically we told them to take their time, but they released it anyway.

 

[MacIntoc]

Which points out why a different engine would have done no good - if they couldn't spot the problems with Odyssey as it was they would also not have spotted them on the new engine.

Euh... yes... it one of the point of my post. The main purpose of having your own game engine is :
1°)knowledge: you understand each stage of the engine in detail and can exploit it in the best way possible
2°)updateability: if you need something, you can add it in the exact way you need
FDev seems to have failed in both cases. And i don't really see how a third party engine would help in this.

 

[tomimt]

Which, if I am correct, is what they did with the terrain for Odyssey. And we expected them to get it perfectly right in DLC time, not whole new game time.

And that might indicate that they underestimated the amount of work rewriting existing code can cause. The worst-case scenario really is, that the new code is so badly jerry-rigged to Cobra, that fixing one issue breaks several other things elsewhere in the engine.

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

And that might indicate that they underestimated the amount of work rewriting existing code can cause. The worst-case scenario really is, that the new code is so badly jerry-rigged to Cobra, that fixing one issue breaks several other things elsewhere in the engine.

[Grumbles something about dude having never worked in software development - puts on brave face]

Sure!

 

[CMDR Sheehy]

No - I want to dare you to create a simple (I said simple) piece of code that no-one can do anything to break.

You'll spend ten minutes writing functional code... then spend 10 hours making sure that someone doesn't do something to break it... and the moment you release it, someone comes back to you and says "You forgot to put an s on the end of this word..." or "It doesn't look right on my Palm Pilot, or "If I do this to my phone...[shakes it up and down really quick]...the interface breaks for 5 seconds" - yeah - no hit Sherlock... let me shake you like that and see if you know where you are!

All you non-code monkeys can go take a howl at the moon. Simply put - you haven't a clue!

 

[CMDR ZerØ]

The only other point I want to address in this thread is the nebulous calls to consolidate game development into only a handful of engines (Specifically Crytek and Unreal) which would be the death of videogames.

I feel like a lot of this stems from the recent UE5 announcements. People with absolutely no clue what a game engine is or does watch the presentations, eat up the hyperbole about UE5 completely revolutionising game development (hint: it doesn't. It just makes some of the basic stuff much easier and faster), and are suddenly experts on the subject.

 

[hunvagy]

I feel like a lot of this stems from the recent UE5 announcements. People with absolutely no clue what a game engine is or does watch the presentations, eat up the hyperbole about UE5 completely revolutionising game development (hint: it doesn't. It just makes some of the basic stuff much easier and faster), and are suddenly experts on the subject.

And the PC space seems not even being the worst Like the "expert opinion" floating around ,that the UE5 showcase tech demo which was running on a PS5 could not even run on PC, because Sony is running on magic butterflies and pixie dust.

 

[CMDR ZerØ]

And the PC space seems not even being the worst Like the "expert opinion" floating around ,that the UE5 showcase tech demo which was running on a PS5 could not even run on PC, because Sony is running on magic butterflies and pixie dust.

Didn't you know? PS5 SSD tech is completely revolutionary! In comparison, PC storage is held together by scotch tape and dreams.

/s

 

[MishaTX]

I don't think it's the engine itself for a second.

Even if you have the best engine ever designed, 6 years of iterating, patching, bolting on new bits by 37 different mechanics will mess it up. What it really needs is for somebody to spend Bob knows how much time trying to figure out how the giant pile of spaghetti it's been turned into actually works anymore.

Which may or may not happen.

What will definitely NOT happen is FDev scrapping the whole project and starting over from square one.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Not for me to know, as I don't know what extra things lifetime pass holders have received. I don't much pay attention to that, as I don't have one.

Ok, then i'll say, as lifetime pass holder, that I wouldn't be amused.

If FD quit development of ED, perhaps citing poor sales or some other reason, i wouldn't be happy, but i could accept it.

If FD quite development of ED to effectively remake it, then i would not be happy at all.

 

[hunvagy]

Ok, then i'll say, as lifetime pass holder, that I wouldn't be amused.

If FD quit development of ED, perhaps citing poor sales or some other reason, i wouldn't be happy, but i could accept it.

If FD quite development of ED to effectively remake it, then i would not be happy at all.

Remake in a new engine? No. Maybe try to bring the engine up to snuff? DX12, Vulkan, FSR, DLSS, all these could help alleviate the current problems.

I mean even ETS2 is getting engine upgrades under the hood, but somehow they manage not to break the game

 

[VR Mr Teatime]

I feel like a lot of this stems from the recent UE5 announcements. People with absolutely no clue what a game engine is or does watch the presentations, eat up the hyperbole about UE5 completely revolutionising game development (hint: it doesn't. It just makes some of the basic stuff much easier and faster), and are suddenly experts on the subject.

Spot on.
I half watched the UE5 video and whilst it does look impressive, did I interpret it right they have only 2 levels of detail in their terrain streaming i.e. high and low detail?
Any flight sim worth its salt and certainly Elite Dangerous, will require many more terrain LODs to do what it does with the terrain efficiently.
Its the same thing with CryEngine and Star Citizen - it all looked shiny and fideliticious with the ..cough "totally in game footage kickstarter trailer"..cough (it was a fraudulent machinima) and looked plausible for use in an open world space game, but the reality was that nearly all of CryEngine needed and still needs replacing and nearly 10 years of non-delivery pretty much proves that (that and the russian roulette when stepping through a door/ramp).
Frontier, don't need to replace as much of COBRA as CryEngine needs, to get to a next gen Elite Dangerous, but they do probably need to rewrite some components of it and maybe develop tools that assist in rapid asset creation and environment insertion, which have a level of future proofing built in. Odyssey attempted to do that with the lighting and rendering, but fell short at the time of release. I'm hopeful Frontier can improve it and hopefully nVidia/AMD can help them, which is not always a given...

 

[JonesTheFilm]

Disregarding the Glass Door and 4chan leak stuff in the OP and just sticking with what players are reporting, and what FDev has said or posted via their CMs ... at the moment I'm actually quite willing to imagine FDev engaged in some sort of titanic battle with their own game engine. That may be a little melodramatic of me, but hey, they do appear to be really struggling right now.