Behold the mighty Unigine Engine

[Hentai-chan]

On a hunch, I decided to see if there was any news on an Elder Scrolls VI. And I came across this awesome video showing off a new engine that I never heard of before. Not that I know of many game engines in the first place. Enjoy!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw4_9s9fDB8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMVz3oUCagw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F6zSgtRnkE

[Darkwisdom]

That's the unigine benchmark, used for testing gpu horsepower etc. Seems like a fake piece of information. From what i've heard, Bethesda are dedicated to using their own engine. 

[Angrybird]

Lol.

[Vykroft]

First, thats not the new The Elder Scrolls engine, and it will never be... is only a video showing the power of unigine.

 

Basically all the new next-gen engine are capable of deliver high quality games, not only unigine. Personally, I still consider UE4 and  CryEngine, superiors in term of rendering and lighting. 

 

For example, let me show you what CryEngine is capable of.

Of course I could said that is the "new" The Elder Scroll engine, but is only a WIP project from Amir Abdaoui, an excellent level designer (i'm learning CryEngine from his video tutorials actually).

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dJZ-hluiug

 

In any case (and to avoid an useless discussion), as someone told me a few years ago, is not the engine the one that make a game great, is the team behind the game.

Skyrim and Fallout team are using the same pathetic engine since the jurassic era... and even then, those games are among the best every year.

 

Bethesda knows it, and because of that, they don't buy Unigine, UE4, CRYENGINE, or wherever top gen engine appear in the market, because they don't need it.

Having said that, about a new engine for The Elder Scroll VI, is only a dream, probably Bethesda will not update the engine for at least 5 or 6 years...

 

[Brigade]

If they don't update their engine after the mess called Skyrim, they'll lose business pretty fast. Losing all your saves every couple weeks gets old.

[bjornk]

Unigine looks nice, but it's not really a game changer IMO. If you really want to see something amazing, then you should check out Outerra and I-Novae engines. These are 3D planet renderers, which means that they provide you with a planet-sized map, without any invisible walls or borders. Imagine an Elder Scroll game in which you can travel anywhere on the planet Nirn, a Fallout game where you can travel anywhere on Earth. You can even create an entire solar system with multiple planets. Just imagine the potential.

 

Outerra: A seamless planet rendering engine

 

 

I-Novae

 

 

You should check out the other videos on Youtube.

[Captain Cobra]

We're never leaving gamebryo.

[Darkwisdom]

I thought they got rid of the Gamebryo engine since New Vegas and started using the 'creation engine', it looks similar but is capable of a lot more. Plenty of glaring holes with a hilariously outdated DX9 architecture though. 

 

I think they stick to the outdated engine because of the modability. That's really the only reason most of us still play skyrim, nearly 3 years later. If they used a Cryengine or Unreal Engine, that modability goes out of the window and they lose elder scrolls' biggest appeal to the PC, their primary market. 

[prideslayer]

On a hunch, I decided to see if there was any news on an Elder Scrolls VI. And I came across this awesome video showing off a new engine that I never heard of before. Not that I know of many game engines in the first place. Enjoy!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw4_9s9fDB8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMVz3oUCagw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F6zSgtRnkE

The guy in this video is such a massive idiot when it comes to graphics technology, if I didn't already know the engine exists, I'd think he was just trolling and made the whole thing up.

 

I thought they got rid of the Gamebryo engine since New Vegas and started using the 'creation engine', it looks similar but is capable of a lot more.

It's likely that Bethesda purchased the source to gamebryo and used it as the foundation for the CE. I don't think they've got the chops to develop a whole engine from scratch -- few do. The CE uses/supports preexisting Bethesda stuff that isn't related to gamebryo/netimmerse, like the CK and the ESM format.

[Vykroft]

 

 

It's likely that Bethesda purchased the source to gamebryo and used it as the foundation for the CE. I don't think they've got the chops to develop a whole engine from scratch -- few do. The CE uses/supports preexisting Bethesda stuff that isn't related to gamebryo/netimmerse, like the CK and the ESM format.

 

 

Thats exactly what happened, and after all that work I find it very difficult to believe that Bethesda could change the engine now. They will just patch CK over and over again in the next 5 years or more.

[Darkwisdom]

I hope they at least update to DX11 or 12.

 

[joemonco]

 

It's likely that Bethesda purchased the source to gamebryo and used it as the foundation for the CE. I don't think they've got the chops to develop a whole engine from scratch -- few do. The CE uses/supports preexisting Bethesda stuff that isn't related to gamebryo/netimmerse, like the CK and the ESM format.

 

 

They updated their tech so much that they decided to call it something new, like Valve did with their Quake/Quake 2 license they purchased from iD for Halflife which became the Source Engine. 

 

I just hope they stop reinventing the wheel poorly and choose an existing and properly documented language for scripting.

[prideslayer]

I'd like a new language too. Doubtful that it will happen. I'm sure a lot of effort went into papyrus, too much to ditch it after just one game.

 

My gut tells me newer versions of gamebryo were going to be too difficult to backport their formats and toolchain to, so they bought the version they licensed for FO3 (or maybe oblivion -- don't remember what year is on the copyright notice in FO3/FONV). There was no other good reason for them to start hacking on an engine, something they really don't have the skills for.

[Vykroft]

They could at least fix the multi core problem with CK, quad cores CPU are the standard right now and we are limited to 2 cores...

[Kind9]

I think the real issue with the CK is multithreading, or lack thereof.

[prideslayer]

Threading is not an easy thing to do, and even more difficult to do right. It's something I doubt they have the in house skill to pull off properly. That said, what about the CK would benefit from threading? It's a pretty serial workflow.

[Kind9]

Threading isn't that difficult. Not in Windows anyway.

 

Maybe it wouldn't benefit necessarily from multiple threads but they could've at least taken care to not block the message pump, causing the GUI to constantly hang. It would be nice if we could view objects as they load, rather than wait for the entire master file to be loaded, or if we could open the cell view and have objects display as they are loaded rather than wait until the entire scene is loaded, staring meanwhile at an unresponsive window.

[prideslayer]

Threading isn't that difficult. Not in Windows anyway.

To do it correctly using libs that are not meant to be threaded? Yes, yes it is that difficult. Correct threading behavior is probably the most difficult thing to do as a programmer.

 

Maybe it wouldn't benefit necessarily from multiple threads but they could've at least taken care to not block the message pump, causing the GUI to constantly hang. It would be nice if we could view objects as they load, rather than wait for the entire master file to be loaded, or if we could open the cell view and have objects display as they are loaded rather than wait until the entire scene is loaded, staring meanwhile at an unresponsive window.

It's probably smarter to not do that so the application doesn't give the false impression that you can interact with it before it's done loading. They really should show some kind of progress bar/spinner rather than freezing the whole thing though.

[Kind9]

To do it correctly using libs that are not meant to be threaded? Yes, yes it is that difficult.

 

Woah, didn't mean to step on your toes there, big guy. Regardless, it's not an issue for the CK. It's just lazy programming.

[prideslayer]

 

To do it correctly using libs that are not meant to be threaded? Yes, yes it is that difficult.

 

Woah, didn't mean to step on your toes there, big guy. Regardless, it's not an issue for the CK. It's just lazy programming.

 

Stepping on toes? I am just rising to the defense of developers everywhere, even @ beth. Lazy? Politely as possible, you don't know what you're talking about.

 

It's not an easy thing to do right. Especially backporting/retrofitting a large pre-existing codebase like the CK, that's been around for forever. It's who knows how many thousands of lines, much of it probably written by people who don't work there any more, with 10 years of added features, hacks, and bandaids.

 

The lazy thing to do would be to just slap a thread on to show a spinner/progress form and then wrap the entire rest of the codebase in a mutex. Even that is likely to be done wrong the first time or two.

[Kind9]

 

Stepping on toes? I am just rising to the defense of developers everywhere, even @ beth. Lazy? Politely as possible, you don't know what you're talking about.

 

Oh, I just thought you were being a smartass because someone dared to disagree with your undeniable wisdom. Apologies.

[Darkwisdom]

 

 

Stepping on toes? I am just rising to the defense of developers everywhere, even @ beth. Lazy? Politely as possible, you don't know what you're talking about.

 

Oh, I just thought you were being a smartass because someone dared to disagree with your undeniable wisdom. Apologies.

 

 

I'd be careful who you speak to like that on a forum. Especially for an extremely high poster, most of these people either were moderators or know them personally. Banhammers are rare here, but no one likes a smart alec. I'm a frequent high poster on other forums, and sarcasm isn't rewarded nicely.

 

It isn't as easy as you think it is, to update an existing framework takes an undeniable amount of effort. Bethesda should update to a better engine sure, but it's more work than you assume. Also, no matter what they do, someone isn't going to be happy until it looks like fricking crysis 3 with all of the modability. 

[Kind9]

You're right, I am being bitter and out of line. I regret that post already.

 

I agree with what you guys are saying but I was never suggesting this would be a good idea. Just something the CK needs, a bit of modernity.

[Darkwisdom]

You're right, I am being bitter. I regret that post already.

 

I agree with what you guys are saying but I was never suggesting this would be a good idea. Just something the CK needs, a bit of modernity.

 

I think we just have to wait and see with Elder Scrolls VI. 

[prideslayer]

Hah I'm the last person that would get a moderator or someone like that involved, what a waste of their time.

 

I'm honestly trying to figure out what benefit adding threading to the CK would give beyond a bit of "feel good" to know that it's not just hung and never coming back. There's nothing in the CK workflow itself that would actually benefit from it that I can imagine. I'd rather those developers spent their time on useful features than mistake-prone "feelgood fluff".

 

If something needs proper threading, there are actual benefits to be had doing that to the script interpreter in the game engine. I don't know how robust it is in the CE, but in the FONV/FO3 gamebryo engine, turning the script threads up past 1 is the fast track to CTDs. Which is probably why it defaults to 1 in the INI and can't be changed in the UI.

 

My responses are pointed because the idea that threading is somehow "easy" and that not doing it is just "lazy" is absurd. In 20 years as a developer I can count the people that have gotten it right the first time, in a new project, on one hand. Even after they get it right in that project, they usually screw up in the next project, in subtle and hard to diagnose ways.

 

It's NOT easy, and not doing it does NOT mean they are "lazy". There are 1000 things competing for a developers time, especially when you're under a severe time constraint and the project has a budget you have to stay within. Debugging a threading implementation added to a application that didn't need threading in the first place is a waste of resources. PMs get fired over decisions like that.