I think FD would have faced a Half-Life type conundrum if they had begun with Unreal as a base. Half-Life was based on the original Quake engine (that's 1, not 2) but after restarting work on the entire game again, the finished product was almost a complete rewrite. Elite has very specific engine requirements that haven't been demonstrated by any other game built in Unreal, for example one prominant feature is rendering environments on the scale of solar systems. Using regular precision variables to store position data for an environment that large leads to all sorts of strange artifacts. I once built a large scale terrain renderer as a portfolio project, and found that without any special rendering solution, terrain very far away from the origin would begin to render innacurately. Textures became fuzzy, and eventually the surface itself got corrupted. That's just a singular example, and when you take into account the sort of massive game Elite is, I think designing an engine from the ground up to be precisely what you need is the better approach.
New Era in Unreal Engine or Cobra Engine?
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I think FD would have faced a Half-Life type conundrum if they had begun with Unreal as a base. Half-Life was based on the original Quake engine (that's 1, not 2) but after restarting work on the entire game again, the finished product was almost a complete rewrite. Elite has very specific engine requirements that haven't been demonstrated by any other game built in Unreal, for example one prominant feature is rendering environments on the scale of solar systems. Using regular precision variables to store position data for an environment that large leads to all sorts of strange artifacts. I once built a large scale terrain renderer as a portfolio project, and found that without any special rendering solution, terrain very far away from the origin would begin to render innacurately. Textures became fuzzy, and eventually the surface itself got corrupted. That's just a singular example, and when you take into account the sort of massive game Elite is, I think designing an engine from the ground up to be precisely what you need is the better approach.
I'm interested in playing a simulation game where I can fly a spaceship and control most of its system, explore new worlds (I don't need 400bilion), land on these, take a walk around.. make some trading or passenger transport time to time.I think you still don't quite understand it. A game like ED has very specific requirements you don't find in 'countless games'. That immediately throws out both arguments you gave.
Think about it...
I see Unreal Engine fitting this very well to be honest. But I still don't know if Cobra Engine can do that (it can do a lot of other things indeed but I'm not bothered with those like I'm not bothered with most of extra ED features like BGS, Powerplay, PvP).
Yup - I suspect they either have never done any real-world software development and/or do not really understand how software development works.I think you still don't quite understand it. A game like ED has very specific requirements you don't find in 'countless games'. That immediately throws out both arguments you gave.
Think about it...
The ONLY real reason to use a canned/COTS engine like Unreal, Cry Engine, Unity, or any other engine of it's ilk is to try and reduce initial time to market and/or potentially project technical risk and/or through life cost. Unfortunately, such engines normally tie you down to a specific approach to at least some degree.
FD have their own game engine and have used it on multiple products thus the time to market, technical risk, and through life cost arguments have already been significantly mitigated. Not only that, since they have full rights to the code they can design it and update it to fit their evolving needs without relying on a third party nor paying them royalties and/or support costs.
This essentially means it makes no technical or business sense to use another engine.
Cobra engine is Bryan Mills?
I've seen few videos on YouTube in real time where the Unreal Engine can actually handle what you describe:
Then go play Star Citizen or similar game that has no interest in maintaining any realism in effect.
You still don't get it - you can present show-case videos till you are blue in the face but the reality of the matter is "it aint gonna happen" not for ED and probably not for any future product out of FD's studios.
If you think you could do better in Unreal, go try it and then let us know in a few years time how it went.
I thought we were talking about ED, not some imaginary game in your head. If this discussion is about which engine, none of which you understand, is best suited for an imaginary game existing solely within your head, you might just want to have this discussion with the mirror in your bathroom.
The original discussion was about ED when I said start again from scratch I was taking about another game obviously
No I'm saying something differently. To develop atmospheric planets and legs Fdev needs probably too reinvent the wheel because there are engines that can clearly already do that and with very nice results. Taking about a theoretical ED2 so dissociates from the current game.You still don't get it - you can present show-case videos till you are blue in the face but the reality of the matter is "it aint gonna happen" not for ED and probably not for any future product out of FD's studios.
If you think you could do better in Unreal, go try it and then let us know in a few years time how it went.
That's lazy c'mon...Then go play Star Citizen or similar game that has no interest in maintaining any realism in effect.
Developing the game's largest ever update (still a year away from release) is an odd maintenance mode.
Let us know when you've written it.
I think you're so right. It's so easy. Maybe you can replicate the galaxy simulation with the extra features you desire in unity in your lunch breaks for the next few weeks? I'm sure FDEV would be grateful.
Keep in mind, that demos like that only do that one specific thing, Elite isn't just a planet renderer, there's a fully fledged game on top of it all. Star Citizen certainly is a good example of how one might produce a space sim with planets and fps elements in Unreal, but it's also a great example of why Cobra does most of it better. SC is still very much a collection of game modes mostly disconnected from each other, Elite brings everything together into an almost seamless experience, space legs excepted.
You still don't get it - you can present show-case videos till you are blue in the face but the reality of the matter is "it aint gonna happen" not for ED and probably not for any future product out of FD's studios.
If you think you could do better in Unreal, go try it and then let us know in a few years time how it went.
Well. the poster seems to get it which is that other game engines can do a lot more than the cobra engine, and are also low risk as they're proven as well.
The all so talked about, hyped and touted "cobra" engine has been for sale and available to developers for at least 5+ years but guess what - no one wants to use it aside from FDev. The cobra engine is simply not competitive and that's why it remains only being used by FDev. No one else wants to use it as there's better options out there.
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