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

[Chaparral]

I'm grateful that this company put Elite Dangerous and Horizons together. I've had a great time with the game. They just reached into a space that was beyond the capacity of the team and their resources to execute.

I'm running around in Conan Exiles on Unreal Engine 4 right now, there are thousands and thousands of assets in my base and the surrounding terrain, with gobs of environmental and particle effects, interacting with friendly and opposing players without rubberbanding, all running in 4K with ultra settings at 30 FPS on my 1070 ti.

If I tried running around in Odyssey at a station, or at a conflict zone, I'd be looking at sub 20 frames with significant rubberbanding.

FDEV isn't bad or lazy or sinister, they are just doing the Icarus thing.

 

[Drelthar]

So, interesting take back i have from those glassdoor reviews is actually the one that says the Engine is hard to work with... unless you are a programmer.

And here we have a taster that FDev are actually doing programming, not simply scripting everything, there is a difference between actual programming and scripts... one takes a lot more effort than the other, they have advantages and disadvantages too but typically actual programming is a hell of a lot faster and solid than scripting.

What that review says to me is the following "I suck at actual programming because i probably only learnt python, maybe some perl or something and I had to get my hands on some actual C++ (or the like) and found it difficult... because i found it hard, FDev's engine sucks"

See lots of different ways to look at it.

If we want to be a bunch of pedantic ..... its also a true statement that if you know what you are doing, the fastest way to do it is to get as closed to the metal as possible and just go full assembly programming The higher the level of programming, the worse performance you often get.

While this is potentially true, that doesn't mean the engine doesn't have "bad" tools for artists to use, if you can make it easier for your artists and designers to work with the engine, you can make things better, more streamlined, and closer to what the creative team were trying to do.

Swings, roundabouts, all that stuff.

 

[Eros]

That's the way I read it too, as that is sadly my experience of a lot of new "developers" coming into the industry. I'm hoping my experience isn't widespread, but the evidence seems to be against me.

Im not a developer at all... but with all of the self professed experts and developers that are on the forums, iv seen enough of the "Oh i know programming" in my own field of work, that starts to get irritating when it turns out that yep, lots of the new people basically know Python... which yep its a good thing to know, and yep it can be used as a programming language rather than scripting, but it has some serious limitations at times.

Playing around and doing some hello world level examples on Unity or Unreal does not a developer make...

My example is trying to do some analytical solution to a dataset where the only way was to just yep, brute force a 2D integration... python kiddies script... took about 20 mins to run it... my (frankly very poor) c++ compiled... could do it in about 5 seconds.

 

[Gully Foyle]

Agreed on the last thing. I think they should indeed just update the engine.

I think they have done just that and it might be causing some problems.

IMO Cobra is in house only, I don't believe they lease it out.

 

[lemon407]

Not to be that guy, but all of the reviews are artists complaining about tech problems. I mean....yeah....

 

[Stoo]

Le sigh

 

[Bottom Hat]

Do you have a tldr version for people that don't really care?


It makes it much easier to write a sarcastic reply.

 

[MrShinyTorterra]

Do you have a tldr version for people that don't really care?


It makes it much easier to write a sarcastic reply.

TL;DR Look in a leaked roadmap they said they couldn't fix JWE so they are going to make a new game, Glassdoor reviews talk bad about the inhouse COBRA game engine and they can't seem to fix most of the issues so I'm suggesting and have the theory that the issues of Odyssey are because of the game engine.

 

[Zieman]

Tut tut?

 

[Nadreck]

Doesn't really explain why I get lower framerates (halved, or worse) in the same environments when comparing Odyssey to Horizons. Horizons uses Cobra too. So it isn't an inherent limitation of Cobra.

 

[bangermsuk]

can't tut. has i used the cryengine & coppercube 6 & leadwerks

 

[Bottom Hat]

TL;DR Look in a leaked roadmap they said they couldn't fix JWE so they are going to make a new game, Glassdoor reviews talk bad about the inhouse COBRA game engine and they can't seem to fix most of the issues so I'm suggesting and have the theory that the issues of Odyssey are because of the game engine.

Thanks mate, I was only kidding about not caring

You know I have a reputation to uphold! Interesting though.

 

[Konan]

COBRA is the one existing engine which can show 400 bils of stars. It was developed for this purpose.
Sure it could be not so convenient for artists etc just because it is used in 1 project in the world.
Any way, there is no other options and any new will be 7 years behind of this one.
So what the point of all this?

Well, it actually doesn't show 400 billions stars. It only shows the systems that have been seeded when a commander enters an undiscovered system for the first time.

 

[Gorrister]

Wait a sec!
I am also not an expert.
Even better.
I absolutely have no idea.
Ergo, I totally know what the problem is.
It must be, based on this logic.

I give it a try.

It is the steakholders, right?
They don't share them.
So the devs remain too hungry to work.

Damn, I am good.

 

[alexzk]

Well, it actually doesn't show 400 billions stars. It only shows the systems that have been seeded when a commander enters an undiscovered system for the first time.

it shows whole map which means it already "knows" all the distances. And here problem is arise.

Floating-point arithmetic - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Computers cannot good deal floats if those represent too different scales/things. Need special care for that, which slows down in general, so 99% of engines don't have it. Those engine just assume world fits something like +/- 1 million with step 1.

 

[bangermsuk]

not the game engine fought thou, Cryengine went through alot of development changes along with the unreal engine.so it looks like a lack of interest in the new engine not the artists fault if you keep changing parts then you will get bored and fed up with the engine.

 

[Drelthar]

Not to be that guy, but all of the reviews are artists complaining about tech problems. I mean....yeah....

Oh that guy....

To be honest, part of the job of the tech guys is to make the tech useable by none tech guys, it's kinda the point.

 

[GroG79]

 

[Dionizio]

we need crytek or epic games (that owns unreal engine) to buy frontier and start to make the next Elite game, imagine the whole known universe in the game, imagine that u will be able to control Farragut-Class Battle Cruiser just like u do on the corvette, and land in water worlds, fight with those dinossaurs they put in the oder game, all frontier games can be unified in one, with those who play jurassic word building those things for the elite players to land there and apreciate, in CRYENGINE 5!, imagined? yeah it is impossible, but it is free to imagine ...

 

[Vekt Ey'doom]

So I have two big issues with the OP here, first and foremost: Using Glassdoor reviews as any kind of evidence is sketchy at best. You also have to be really careful not just to be skeptical about the authenticity of Glassdoor reviews, but a single user can post multiple reviews, and usually a dead giveaway is similar/identical mannerisms, phrasing habits and typespeech cadence.

The second big issue, is that, assuming the Glassdoor reviews cited are legitimate, the user posting them is, at best, entry level. You can tell immediately again, by the terminology used. Simply saying "Game engine" doesn't tell anyone (And supposedly this user is talking to peers or near peers in the field to warn them of joining FD) anything useful. Someone who truly had experience with the tools would be able to outline the actual issues with them, why they are inadequate and what difficulties they're having.

No, in my opinion, these cited Glassdoor reviews hit both red flags for fake/activist postings. And thus, must be disregarded by anyone of good intellect.