What exactly was wrong with my attitude?
Why is the ED code diffrent for Consoles ?
- Thread starter Cmdr dedsi
- Start date
The problem Odyssey has is actually pretty straightforward. At the moment the game is only on last gen and runs on current gen in a compatibility mode. This means Odyssey will have to be released on last gen. I don't see how they do this given where we are now.
The alternative is to create a native version on current gen and release Odyssey only on that version. I don't see where they get the resource to do that given what has been said.
Leaves only one alternative unfortunately.
The alternative is to create a native version on current gen and release Odyssey only on that version. I don't see where they get the resource to do that given what has been said.
Leaves only one alternative unfortunately.
No, they aren't .
There is, by my impression, thirty million different reasons speculated on why FDev decided to cancel development for consoles, ranging from inability or unwillingness to optimize Odyssey for old hardware to software incompatibilities to just giving up on Odyssey altogether. The official explanation only mentioned that they needed to focus on one codebase, which in my opinion was a little confusing and unclear on why consoles couldn't be brought onto the new codebase when PC could. Plus, as I'm not a video game development expert, I'm not entirely certain what a codebase is.
The above, plus the fact that many of the other players' speculations I've seen today are widely varied and in some cases mutually exclusive, led me to think that we're unlikely to understand why they decided to cancel console development unless FDev tells us more on why they made that decision.
My statement wasn't intended to be demanding that FDev explain themselves. More like making an observation that we don't have enough information to understand their decision.
End of the day, we want to know a "why" and it doesn't really serve their company to give a "why" that makes them look bad and there isn't really a "why" where that doesn't happen here. So we'll never get one. So speculations are expected and will dictate this narrative. That's a choice fdev has deemed preferable.
Let's try.
1) You can't endlessly optimize code and end up with a passable result. At some point you will run into a situation where you have to degrade the quality to a point where it's no longer passable, or you run out of things to optimize, or - as the rarest case - the things you've done are so specific to low-performing hardware that they actually cause a performance hit on anything more modern (applies mostly to CPU optimization). Also, getting last 10 % of performance usually takes at least 90 % of the total development time. In an ideal world, this wouldn't be a problem. The world is not ideal.
2) Codebase is basically the huge bunch of source files that gets compiled into an executable, as in, the the thing that runs on your console or PC or whatever. In an ideal world we'd have one codebase that'd produce working executables for your PC, all the consoles, most of the smartphones and probably a smart fridge or two. In the world we've ended up with, you have to have slightly (or vastly) different pieces of code for specific platforms. The more trickery you have to do to support a certain platform, the further the different branches of the codebase diverge. All the branches need to be maintained, tested and finally approved for each release. You know what this means resource-wise.
This is not to defend (or attack) Fdev, just random observations. Now I go pour myself another beer.
Dude we are the consumers if we pay fdev for back flips, the least they can do is tell us how they do a back flip. It's simple, this secret stuff is silly
That's real life, Dude. It's just that simple.
There's really only one answer to this: because manufacturers of gaming consoles want to keep full control over it in order to properly milk it. The system must be closed up, inaccessible, different from PC systems so you can have exclusives and are far enough away to avoid compatibilities and also easy piracy. That way you can also bully developers into accepting any kind of pressure if they want to release on their holy box. Along with paying for updates and the like so the manufacturer keeps a finger on schedules and assures that updates are on time (flawed or not doesn't matter) or cash in some more if the dev wants to delay.
Consoles are deliberately made incompatible with everything else. It's convenient for the manufacturer to have a singled out, cut-off system of their own only they can control, and since they hyped it into popularity with easy access and plug and play convenience and lots of flashy ads and futuristic designs it's the perfect cash machine.
I'd prefer a computer in a box that is actually a compatible computer. Nothing against plug and play convenience, but well. It's not that it's alone the fault of a developer if they decide to not take this crap anymore (which in this case is most likely just a side effect. I guess we'll never know).
Personally I guess it's a combination of several reasons, each on its own wouldn't be a big problem but all things considered it doesn't make sense to continue console development for them.
1. Odyssey performance. Current gen maybe could run it with low details at 30 FPS but nobody would give them an award for that.
2. Maintaining different code bases, again, possible but maybe not worth the effort.
3. Size of the console community isn't as big as the PC community.
4. Poor ratings and reviews of Odyssey. Let's be honest, they wouldn't draw lots of new customers with a 4/10 game. And a few thousand existing, active console players are hardly enough to justify the development costs.
5. Support and maintenance costs.
Odyssey already wasn't a a success on the main platform, why would they risk another failure unless at least some of the problems are fixed? It still runs poorly and it still gets poor reviews. Personally I like it, but I enjoy quirky games.
1. Odyssey performance. Current gen maybe could run it with low details at 30 FPS but nobody would give them an award for that.
2. Maintaining different code bases, again, possible but maybe not worth the effort.
3. Size of the console community isn't as big as the PC community.
4. Poor ratings and reviews of Odyssey. Let's be honest, they wouldn't draw lots of new customers with a 4/10 game. And a few thousand existing, active console players are hardly enough to justify the development costs.
5. Support and maintenance costs.
Odyssey already wasn't a a success on the main platform, why would they risk another failure unless at least some of the problems are fixed? It still runs poorly and it still gets poor reviews. Personally I like it, but I enjoy quirky games.
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This whole topic of consoles being dropped is 90% about funding and commercials, 5% about the technology and 5% about the capability.
In all likely hood Frontier will use some other project to uplift the Cobra engine and then you may see Elite back on consoles one day maybe.... but only if the market is there and I'm going to suggest they may have done themselves a ton of reputation damage in taking this long to make this announcement. So that might not be possible for a long time if ever now.
In all likely hood Frontier will use some other project to uplift the Cobra engine and then you may see Elite back on consoles one day maybe.... but only if the market is there and I'm going to suggest they may have done themselves a ton of reputation damage in taking this long to make this announcement. So that might not be possible for a long time if ever now.
And to add to that in this case, there's also that the Horizons and Odyssey code are divergent (as opposed to the Horizons and Base Game code which were the same code just with a $is_player_allowed_to_do_horizons_stuff check) - so it's not just the platform support but that they're for now running two separate-but-related games on PC.
(I wouldn't be entirely surprised if Update 11 announces the end of that too, though equally if it carries on a bit longer that also wouldn't be surprising)
I would expect the next move after U11 is to phase out the Horizons client for PC and everyone to be forced to use the EDO client
I just hope there will be at least a 1 week heads-up - i'd like to do a last top-up of Raws at the Crystalline Shard fields before those forests disappear.
Yes I agree, and I still don't understand why they didn't just say that ODY wouldn't support old consoles from the start.
My guess would be that they believed they can make it work, but it turned out they couldn't.
You don’t even have to be a game developer to realize that the combination of PBR graphics with new lighting model and (above all) on foot fps gameplay is highly likely to affect performance, on platforms that had very little headroom.
And that is probably one of the main reasons behind the decision to go PC only. Sony and MS would not accept 15 fps vs PC's 30 fps etc.
i thought about that,
and about the "ed on consoles will cost them extra and get shut down soon"
since i only have rudimentary knowlege, everybody feel free to correct me:
the mac thing was a hardware restriction. plain and simple. surely there could have been some sort of solution, but it seems out of reach for frontier.
so this one is on apple.
to the second point:
there is no reason why the console version would use a different backend than the pc version.
the console servers are the pc servers.
once horizons on consoles is in a "finalised state" (i´m so sorry for our console cmdr´s), it will need minimal maintenance.
so the only reason to end ed on consoles is the end of ed on pc.
This is flawed logic, it is far more likely that frontier simply needs to cut costs and has decided that it’s not worth trying to solve the technical difficulties associated with 8 year old consoles, and the newer consoles have much lower player numbers. So from their point of view fdev would be freeing up resources to concentrate on pc.