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

[Erei]

Unreal Engine is bad at large scale stuff? That's news to me. I'm not disagreeing... I just find that surprising. I really don't keep up on all the game engine details like I did 20 years ago. I was just under the impression UE was the overall best... but ok.

However, it is curious that Star Citizen is switching from modified Crytek to UE... but then, one should never take anything that game does as "the right way to do things". lol

There is no "overall" best. Just like there is no best car. A ferrarri will probably beat anything in speed in highway, but a land rover will be able to climb a muddy hill, while said ferarri will be unable to move.
They are tools. They are suited to some things, and less for others. Strategy game with their hundreds of units will need something else than a multiplayer FPS, and so on.

 

[Daniel Cloudsifter]

There is no "overall" best. Just like there is no best car. A ferrarri will probably beat anything in speed in highway, but a rover will be able to climb a muddy hill, while said ferarri will be unable to move.
They are tools. They are suited to some things, and less for others. Strategy game with their hundreds of units will need something else than a multiplayer FPS, and so on.

I grant you that. I just thought UE was the best engine for FPS as well as the space portion of Elite. If it isn't, ok. I never said I was an expert and I don't own stock in any of this so... meh.

Well this is what one dude can do in his basement with UE shrug

And that was why I immediately thought of UE.


Now to make something perfectly clear, as I don't want people to misunderstand this part of my point: I am not advocating for a game engine change NOW. If they were going to do something like that, they should've done it at the beginning of the Odyssey coding (when they were supposedly rewriting things from the ground up).

Honestly, I hope the new code is stable and the bugs we're seeing is due to them being rushed. The latest one that irks me - Settlement Restoration missions not completing/progress broken - is an understandable break, since Update 5 changed how those missions get assigned (i.e. now they only come from the base owning faction). In making that change, it's not hard to imagine how that cascaded down to break the completion bar. I'm not excusing it, just saying it fits.

I'm also looking to try physical multicrew - whenever I can find a friend that is both willing to upgrade to Odyssey (or has a Lifetime pass) AND has stable network access. Right now, my cousin is the only one (kickstarter backer/lifetime pass) who has Odyssey, but he only has time to play during his downtime at work (firefighter, 48 hour shifts) - which means he has to use his cellphone as a hotspot; can't do good port forwarding then so... network crap ensues. sigh

 

[ApexAzimuth]

Quite a few armchair "devs" here drawing leaping conclusions from weak or no data.

 

[Erei]

I grant you that. I just thought UE was the best engine for FPS as well as the space portion of Elite. If it isn't, ok. I never said I was an expert and I don't own stock in any of this so... meh.


And that was why I immediately thought of UE.


Now to make something perfectly clear, as I don't want people to misunderstand this part of my point: I am not advocating for a game engine change NOW. If they were going to do something like that, they should've done it at the beginning of the Odyssey coding (when they were supposedly rewriting things from the ground up).

Honestly, I hope the new code is stable and the bugs we're seeing is due to them being rushed. The latest one that irks me - Settlement Restoration missions not completing/progress broken - is an understandable break, since Update 5 changed how those missions get assigned (i.e. now they only come from the base owning faction). In making that change, it's not hard to imagine how that cascaded down to break the completion bar. I'm not excusing it, just saying it fits.

I'm also looking to try physical multicrew - whenever I can find a friend that is both willing to upgrade to Odyssey (or has a Lifetime pass) AND has stable network access. Right now, my cousin is the only one (kickstarter backer/lifetime pass) who has Odyssey, but he only has time to play during his downtime at work (firefighter, 48 hour shifts) - which means he has to use his cellphone as a hotspot; can't do good port forwarding then so... network crap ensues. sigh

I mean technically speaking, UE would be good for the "FPS" part of elite. But you can't change game engine on the fly^^ So you need something that can do everything.

Also, don't think what can be done on a small scale is also true on a large one. It's a trap many indie devs have fallen to. What that guy has done is not indicative of a complete game.

 

[Prof Horatio Hafnaugels]

It was rushed because the fiscal year was ending a few days later. I think that's by far the most plausible explanation. With EDO numbers in the balance, they were able to push a "growth through internal license only" which is very good for shareholders.

Any game that is rushed like that will end up full of issues. And that kind of issues takes a while to fix, not to mention being harder to fix in a live environment. VR being dropped is simply because they focus on the "essential" (IE having the game run, and release it on console).
Also, they probably shifted some team around already, since they are working on JWE 2 and a warhammer game, both big licenses and money making.

I'm frustrated to. I want the game fixed. But throwing everything and anything until something sticks is not the proper way to do it.

100% agree on this.
They went from alpha to release in 2 weeks. This stinks.
And that's more than enough to make any engine look like garbage (if judged merely by the end result).

 

[Daniel Cloudsifter]

100% agree on this.
They went from alpha to release in 2 weeks. This stinks.
And that's more than enough to make any engine look like garbage (if judged merely by the end result).

Yes, we are LITERALLY in the Beta Phase now (just not declared). It's a pretty stable beta unless you're one of the people having major performance issues. Oddly, I haven't had issues UNTIL update 5. Since then, there have been a couple of times where the framerate massively dropped in settlements (briefly). Still playable... since the chugging didn't last but a few seconds... but it was a jarring change for me.

I haven't seen any more issues since I just updated my Nvidia drivers again, though that may me coincidental.

 

[Stikkit]

There is no "overall" best. Just like there is no best car. A ferrarri will probably beat anything in speed in highway, but a land rover will be able to climb a muddy hill, while said ferarri will be unable to move.
They are tools. They are suited to some things, and less for others. Strategy game with their hundreds of units will need something else than a multiplayer FPS, and so on.

and Fdev seem to have put chunky tyres on a Ferrari and shoved in a field and sold it to you and I as a viable ATV.

 

[pelorat]

100% agree on this.
They went from alpha to release in 2 weeks. This stinks.
And that's more than enough to make any engine look like garbage (if judged merely by the end result).

They had to release before the new financial year so they had positive sales numbers to report, no matter the state of the game. Kind of what CDPR did with CP2077. The priority now is to get it running on consoles so they can report positive console sales for the next report which is due early September 2021. So the console port will be release before that, it's the only thing that matters to the board at the moment.

 

[Stikkit]

It was rushed because the fiscal year was ending a few days later. I think that's by far the most plausible explanation....

....I'm frustrated to. I want the game fixed. But throwing everything and anything until something sticks is not the proper way to do it.

I see what you did there

 

[Erei]

I see what you did there

I mean, we can objectively see it was rushed. And we had the financial year a few days later, and they literally mentioned Odyssey as part of the growth. By name.
The whole "engine" nonsense is just random gossips and whatnot.

 

[MacIntoc]

It was rushed because the fiscal year was ending a few days later. I think that's by far the most plausible explanation. With EDO numbers in the balance, they were able to push a "growth through internal license only" which is very good for shareholders.

So you think they lied on Supercruise #36 when they said that the game was runnings as expected, that they were not aware about the bad state of the game and that they would never have launched it if they were aware ?

 

[lefty1117]

I think it's a valid question to ask, if the engine is up for what they're trying to do, especially after 2 years of development and 5 post launch updates, still dealing with major FPS issues and some weird broken gamma thing they don't seem to want to acknowledge. But the evidence the OP presented has no real linkage to the problems we're seeing. 4 glassdoor posters complaining about the engine being poor for artists doesn't equate to bad framerates and weeks of occlusion fixes. Yes, there do seem to be engine problems, but for completely different reasons than were listed; it was a strange post that seems to damage the case for the engine tech being the issue; makes it less believable because of the tin foil nature of the evidence

 

[Erei]

So you think they lied on Supercruise #36 when they said that the game was runnings as expected, that they were not aware about the bad state of the game and that they would never have launched it if they were aware ?

OFC not, they gave the build to DB, and as he said himself, it run on his own computer.
They didn't need QA after that, he is the CEO after all.

 

[JeffRyan]

Btw, I'm currently annoyed with FDEV and watching this fixing of Odyssey with interest. I'm not playing and for the first time since I got it years ago, I've put away my joystick.

That said:

I've noted before, taking glassdoor reviews as your main source here isn't the best proof you can have for your point. I noted this last time this came up that far too many of the glass door negativity seemed to come from multiple posts from a single source within the art department, ie. an employee or ex-employee with an axe to grind.

I have my problems with FDEV and Odyssey, enough to put the game away for a good long while, but that doesn't mean attacks on FDEV should be based on very flawed sources.

 

[tomimt]

So you think they lied on Supercruise #36 when they said that the game was runnings as expected, that they were not aware about the bad state of the game and that they would never have launched it if they were aware ?

If they weren't lying, then something went horribly wrong with their release version. Wrong so badly, that they have no idea what is causing the issue.


Most likely, they knew Odyssey would have some issues on some systems, they just didn't realize the issues were worse than they imagined. They were probably banking on their ability to patch the issues out quickly, but that hope was quickly demolished after the disastrous launch.

 

[MKcirtap]

I see multible issues

 

[MacIntoc]

If they weren't lying, then something went horriböy wrong with their release version. Wrong so badly, that they have no idea what is causing the issue.
Most likely, they knew Odysse would have some issues on some systems, they just didn't realize the issues were worse than they imagined. They were probably banking on their ability to patch the issues out quickly, but that hope was quickly demolished after the disastrous launch.

That was they said in the previous news. They can't give us roadmap precisely because they have not a clear picture of what happen with the game. There was indeed more patches than expected, they work much harder than expected and it's perfectely justified by a rushed product.
But this does not justify that they are unable to have a view of the game beyond 1 month.

 

[Stikkit]

I mean, we can objectively see it was rushed. And we had the financial year a few days later, and they literally mentioned Odyssey as part of the growth. By name.
The whole "engine" nonsense is just random gossips and whatnot.

and we can objectively see that despite '100s of devs' and 'years' of work it runs like utter sh*te, on 10 year old systems, on 5 year old systems and on brand new the best that money can buy systems. Draw your own conclusion - or don't, but I seem to think it at least probable that their game engine is either unfit for the task or so cumbersome that the people who now work with it don't understand it's quirks, time will tell. I do not intend to give Fdev the benefit of the doubt, they hoodwinked me out of £40 and then can only say "no future plans", "not at this time", "pathways".

Ultimately I don't care that much, I'll enjoy reading the forums and leaving the occasional comment. I haven't played since just after EDO launched, if they fix it great and if they don't I won't be surprised. Equally people are entitled to gloss it over and continue enjoying the game but if it's fine to 'objectively see' one aspect of probable cause then it's ok to nominate other plausable ones too.

 

[Erei]

and we can objectively see that despite '100s of devs' and 'years' of work it runs like utter sh*te, on 10 year old systems, on 5 year old systems and on brand new the best that money can buy systems. Draw your own conclusion - or don't, but I seem to think it at least probable that their game engine is either unfit for the task or so cumbersome that the people who now work with it don't understand it's quirks, time will tell. I do not intend to give Fdev the benefit of the doubt, they hoodwinked me out of £40 and then can only say "no future plans", "not at this time", "pathways".

Ultimately I don't care that much, I'll enjoy reading the forums and leaving the occasional comment. I haven't played since just after EDO launched, if they fix it great and if they don't I won't be surprised. Equally people are entitled to gloss it over and continue enjoying the game but if it's fine to 'objectively see' one aspect of probable cause then it's ok to nominate other plausable ones too.

Everything run like s*** when it's rushed through the door. look at cyberpunk
That's true for game or anything, really.

 

[eqinox]

There were some of us who hoped the reason Odyssey was taking so long was that FD were using the time to rework the game engine... it appears that never happened.

Pretty sure that is exactly what happened, they reworked the engine to support FPS and worked on lighting. But it proved to be more difficult than they anticipated.