The Frostbite Engine is apparently such a mess that even DICE were unable to add multi-passenger vehicles into Star Wars: Battlefront 2

[Spartancarver]

Posted by their global community manager and EA/DICE employee on Reddit a little while ago :

It just stood out to me because Frostbite has come under recent scrutiny for being an extremely unfriendly and inefficient engine to work with after that crazy article about the Anthem development crunch. One of the more common sentiments in those threads was along the lines of "Sure, other developers will struggle with it, but DICE are the masters and creators of Frostbite, they can make that engine do whatever it needs to do."

I think people who still regularly play Battlefield V and Battlefront 2 can attest to the fact that even DICE seems to be really struggling with their own engine lately. Both games remain very buggy and inconsistent experiences after numerous patches, but even then it's very surprising to see the developer who actually made the engine AND previously specialized in large scale team warfare games with plenty of multi-passenger vehicles be straight up unable to add the feature into one of their premiere AAA titles.

I really hope that EA and DICE move away from the Frostbite engine for future games. It would be nice to see a Battlefield and Battlefront game actually get the polish that those franchises deserve, and I really don't see it happening on Frostbite, which for me at least has become synonymous with "Super pretty screenshots for insanely buggy games."

 

[Aokiji]

im so curious to see what happens with frostbite next gen

 

[TacomaSCDisaster]

At what point is this thing too fucked to keep working with? It's consistently a huge problem in EA games.

 

[anexanhume]

*Respawn laughs in UE4*

 

[PetohKing]

Technical barriers could easily refer to something else.

 

[Spartancarver]

*Respawn laughs in UE4*

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I was so relieved when they confirmed they were using UE4 for Fallen Order.

 

[Becks']

EA should invest more money into R&D and also get some competent coders.

 

[Deleted member 17676]

It was a mess for Mass Effect according to one developer that worked on it.

It's a mess for Fifa.

When will EA just go back to Unreal.

 

[--R]

How is that possible? Battlefield has multi-passenger vehicles.

 

[DocSeuss]

multi passenger vehicles are crazy hard on the best of engines; networking be nuts

 

[Spartancarver]

It was a mess for Mass Effect according to one developer that worked on it.

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That was super apparent playing the game, those facial animations and hordes of other bugs at launch were ridiculous.


Playing through Dragon Age Inqusition it's very apparent the engine was an issue for devs too

 

[Nome]

Did they specifically say it was a Frostbite issue? Because as someone else pointed out, the Battlefield series has plenty of multi-player vehicles.
Also, according to the SWBF wiki, there are other multi-player vehicles.

"Technical" reasons encompasses a whole lot of stuff, not just the engine.

 

[Deleted member 721]

i dunno if they should move away from frostbite for battlefront the game looks great on it, maybe they have to improve the engine only.

 

[gogosox82]

This doesn't mean its the engine per se. Technical reasons is way too broad to just say its the engine.

 

[ILikeFeet]

*Respawn laughs in UE4*

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watch them move to Frostbite afterwards

 

[Nateo]

Battlefied has multi-passanger vehicles. It likely isn't engine related.

 

[JigglesBunny]

Frostbite looks incredible when DICE is at the helm but it's still the same busted, draconian engine that is halting productions across EA. Take it out back, swallow your pride (and license fees) and start using UE4.

 

[_zoipi]

i dunno if they should move away from frostbite for battlefront the game looks great on it, maybe they have to improve the engine only.

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Improving the engine tools would be a relief for every worker at EA. I mean, yeah, EA, push the frigging Frostbite engine to not pay a dime to Epic or Unity or whatever... But make it usable for their workers so they don¡t have to spend days cosulting the IT department.

 

[SirNinja]

Frostbite needs to be an easier engine to work with if EA are going to insist their studios use it. It's caused no end of trouble for Bioware (though that's far from the only reason they're in their current state), so it's not too surprising to hear of others struggling with it.

 

[hanshen]

How is that possible? Battlefield has multi-passenger vehicles.

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This. It's more likely a game mechanic issue. But let's not let facts stop people from complaining about something they know nothing about.

 

[Welfare]

Uh, Battlefield has a ton of multi seat vehicles so it isn't a Frostbite issue.

 

[VaporSnake]

Dumb thing to infer that the engine itself is incapable seeing as there's been how many battlefields released on the engine with multi seat vehicles?

 

[Barnabas Reynolds]

EA should invest more money into R&D and also get some competent coders.

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Exactly the kind of dogshit know-nothing comment I'd expect to find in a dogshit thread such as this.

 

[Deleted member 36708]

I was so relieved when they confirmed they were using UE4 for Fallen Order.

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One thing that really excites me about that engine....

 

[PanzerKraken]

Dice has multi user verhicles all over the Battlefield games, it's not an engine issue.

 

[Nateo]

Now thinking about it. This may be due to how they have set up the spawning system to work.

 

[Deleted member 18161]

I was so relieved when they confirmed they were using UE4 for Fallen Order.

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Do we know if Fallen Order is targeting 60fps on consoles?

 

[Spartancarver]

Did they specifically say it was a Frostbite issue? Because as someone else pointed out, the Battlefield series has plenty of multi-player vehicles.
Also, according to the SWBF wiki, there are other multi-player vehicles.

"Technical" reasons encompasses a whole lot of stuff, not just the engine.

Click to shrink...

This doesn't mean its the engine per se. Technical reasons is way too broad to just say its the engine.

Click to shrink...

This. It's more likely a game mechanic issue. But let's not let facts stop people from complaining about something they know nothing about.

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Dumb thing to infer that the engine itself is incapable seeing as there's been how many battlefields released on the engine with multi seat vehicles?

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Can you guys give examples of what else "technical barriers" could refer to? Genuinely curious because you're right, I'm not a game developer.

It's just apparent to me that there's *something* causing the game to be extremely buggy and preventing the devs from fixing bugs in a timely or efficient manner.

 

[NutterB]

Doesnt BF5 have multi passenger vehicles? So is it really Frostbite that should get the blame?

 

[Hugare]

A lot of baseless assumptions around here (as usual when dealing with tech talk)

As others have already said, many Battlefield games had multi passenger vehicles. So It's not related to Frostbite.

About Frostbite: the engine is amazing. Or haven't you guys looked at DICE's games running on it? Those graphics while aiming 60 fps is absolutely sublime.
The problem lies in the tools. It's probably a very hard engine to work with.

EA should make DICE teach every studio of them about how to work with it. The engine was used in the past to make shooters, racing games, sport games, so they have the know how, they just need to have better communication

 

[Aaronmac]

Now thinking about it. This may be due to how they have set up the spawning system to work.

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This is more likely. The way Battlefront handles vehicles is completely different from Battlefield, so I imagine the problem starts there, and not Frostbite.

 

[PixelatedDonut]

Op tryna create controversy lol.
EA BAD

 

[Deepwater]

Can you guys give examples of what else "technical barriers" could refer to? Genuinely curious because you're right, I'm not a game developer.

It's just apparent to me that there's *something* causing the game to be extremely buggy and preventing the devs from fixing bugs in a timely or efficient manner.

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This has nothing to do with vehicles? What do bugs have to do with multi player vehicles?

 

[Executive Taxi]

Is Frostbite gonna be the new punching bag for this forum🙄

 

[headspawn]

Seems like a wild leap in logic you took here OP; specifically considering other Frostbite games have multi-passenger vehicles.

 

[Deleted member 51691]

At this point, EA would probably save money by switching to middleware for now and trying a universal internal engine in a few years after putting in the time to make a competent all-purposes engine.

 

[Mahonay]

Every Battlefield game that has been on the Forstbite engine has had multi-person vehicles.

 

[Lant_War]

Nowhere in that comment F8RGE said that it was specifically frostbite, and it'd be weird considering how a bunch of BF games have multipassanger vehicles. I think he has an account here so we could ask him, but I don't remember his @.

 

[Railgun]

Dice has multi player vehicles in Frostbite for close to a decade now, I doubt that's the technical issue they're talking about. It probably just interferes with other system implemented in the game and wouldn't be worth redoing those, nothing to do with the engine.

 

[Spartancarver]

Guys, I'm well aware that BF V and other Battlefield games do multi passenger vehicles. Hence why I find it odd that there are technical reasons for SWBF2 to not have the same feature in a team based large scale warfare game.

And my layman assumption was "technical barrier" = Engine issue, but I would love to know what else that term could mean in that context.

Like they could have said it was a conscious decision based on their goals for game design and player count (ie, "we want a more straightforward and arcade-y type of gameplay), but they specifically said they *wanted to* or at least investigated it and found technical barriers preventing implementation of a commonly requested feature.

This has nothing to do with vehicles? What do bugs have to do with multi player vehicles?

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Second half of my OP post talks about the bugginess of BF V and SWBF2 in general.

I guess I should have said "adding features which have already been in previous Battlefield games to Battlefront."

 

[hanshen]

Can you guys give examples of what else "technical barriers" could refer to? Genuinely curious because you're right, I'm not a game developer.

It's just apparent to me that there's *something* causing the game to be extremely buggy and preventing the devs from fixing bugs in a timely or efficient manner.

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It could be that the respawning system is not designed to spawn multiple players into one vehicle and it would be too much work to rework the entire thing.

Not being able to add new feature is not a bug, it's just technical limitations they didn't foresee.

 

[Spartancarver]

It could be that the respawning system is not designed to spawn multiple players into one vehicle and it would be too much work to rework the entire thing.

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Okay, this makes sense, thank you

They did rework the spawn system to allow spawning directly on squad mates similar to Battlefield, I guess I thought that would help with vehicle spawns too.

 

[Roy]

*Respawn laughs in UE4*

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I thought they use Source lol

 

[Dinobot]

Burn this engine to the ground.

 

[Lant_War]

I thought they use Source lol

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That's for TF, TF2 and Apex, their SW game uses UE4

 

[CypherSignal]

And my layman assumption was "technical barrier" = Engine issue, but I would love to know what else that term could mean in that context.

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It would be more productive in the future to ask that question directly, then, and not use it as an outlandish jumping-off point to say "The engine being used across the entire company is apparently buggy as hell, so I hope the next Battlefront/Battlefield should be made from scratch on some other stack".

Technical barriers could be anything from "The gameplay part of the code has tied together spawning of vehicles and players, and separating that association is costly" or "Having 3rd-person cameras means that animated characters with cloth need to be attached to networked vehicles that do not run on predictable paths without visual glitches due to network interpolation" or a multitude of a lot of other things that adds up to "This feature would be too costly to include in a few weeks of development time relative to other features that can be developed in the timeframe we have allotted for this update".

 

[NervousXtian]

OP is making some giant leaps with this thread.

Technical issues can mean lots of things.. doesn't mean Frostbite is a piece of shit.

This is just a thinly veiled EA sucks thread.

 

[VeePs]

OP, serious question, have you played Battlefield? Or any DICE games this or last gen?

 

[Brazil]

This thread is inflammatory and based on a huge leap of faith into speculation territory. We're closing it.