Jesus christ people . DICE isnt involved in development of this engine anymore and hasnt for 6 years.
In what realm of sanity did EA believe forcing all their devs to work on Frostbite was a good idea?
- Thread starter Twenty5Thousand
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JESUS CHRIST I DIDN'T KNOW THAT.
But thanks for the heads up. Looked into it, and I'm curious if this FB Labs is taking VR into consideration in future projects still. It was mentioned when they first made the announcement, but that was back in 2016.
Hopefully they still do.
Respawns next AAA game is the Star Wars project and runs on Unreal engine 4.
What flaws are explicitly because of the engine? I don't think the things you mentioned are inherently game engine issues. The biggest problem I've seen being cited is loading times, but that's been a problem with Bioware games for a while. SWTOR had awful loading times and it didn't use Frostbite. Earlier Mass Effect games had loading time issues too, except they hid it by using tricks (long elevators, getting endlessly scanned in the Normandy).
Most the issues I've read with Bioware adapting to Frostbite had to do with things like animation, which doesn't seem to be what people are complaining about.
I think San Diego's MLB Engine dates back to Criterion 's Renderware... which EA owns.
Kind of like Call of Duty and ID Tec 3
I'm hoping that the reason MLB 19's player models still looks similar to previous years...is because they will FINALLY have a brand new engine for the PS5 releasing in the next year or two.
But I also hoped that was the case going from PS3 to PS4. >_<
I actually think it's a fantastic idea. Whatever issues exist between EA and their studios, having a great set of shared tools in concept isn't the problem.
Is it possible Frostbite just isn't up to snuff as an engine? Sure, and maybe that's where the issues lie. But the idea of everyone working on a common engine and sharing resources is brilliant. Too bad the engine isn't as flexible as Source 2, Unity, or Unreal Engine. Maybe things would have been different for Bioware and others.
Is it possible Frostbite just isn't up to snuff as an engine? Sure, and maybe that's where the issues lie. But the idea of everyone working on a common engine and sharing resources is brilliant. Too bad the engine isn't as flexible as Source 2, Unity, or Unreal Engine. Maybe things would have been different for Bioware and others.
Exactly.
Also, Bioware worked on 3 games that used the Frostbite engine this gen.
It's very reasonable to say that after 3 games, it's a BioWare issue rather than a Frostbite issue. I feel many people don't want to accept this and need a scapegoat.
Current Frostbit engine is probably not that good for open world games. The next generation Frostbite engine will surely take that into consideration.
This is very good actually. Now EA can freely move devs around different projects and they are always familiar with the development environment. In the long run EA will benefit from it.
This is very good actually. Now EA can freely move devs around different projects and they are always familiar with the development environment. In the long run EA will benefit from it.
Though Dragon Age Inquisiton was well-received, the pain in the ass Frostbite was behind the scenes should've made that the point where they stopped. By committing to it even when unneeded, EA has just dug themselves deeper and deeper into a hole of bad choices.
To add to everything else it put EA in a terrible position to take advantage of the Switch's success in retrospect.
A non Frostbite Madden on Switch would sell tons of copies this holiday season if that didn't mean practically forking an older version of the game.
A non Frostbite Madden on Switch would sell tons of copies this holiday season if that didn't mean practically forking an older version of the game.
BioWare have gone on record saying that frostbite was the biggest problem for them when it came to Inquisition. It's an excellent engine for shooters. Not RPG.
I'm not gonna bother finding a link because I'm lazy and you can google it. There are more problems with Inquisition and Mass Effect Andromeda than technical.
If after 3 AAA games on the same engine, BioWare still haven't gotten its act together, then I can't see how the engine is still to blame.
There are lots of misinformation and biases in threads like this. Just two examples
-DA:I problem was the MMO-like structure and the combat being something in between action and strategy without being any good at any of the two tings. No particular problems with the engine.
-Amy Hennig referred at how they would have to code from scratch some systems in Frostbite... but the same would have happened using for example UE4. She was comparing it in her mind with the engine used in Uncharted (which because it was built for action/adventure games and have been used by several games, it was already built up), she wasn't comparing it with a generic middleware engine.
-DA:I problem was the MMO-like structure and the combat being something in between action and strategy without being any good at any of the two tings. No particular problems with the engine.
-Amy Hennig referred at how they would have to code from scratch some systems in Frostbite... but the same would have happened using for example UE4. She was comparing it in her mind with the engine used in Uncharted (which because it was built for action/adventure games and have been used by several games, it was already built up), she wasn't comparing it with a generic middleware engine.
I don't buy into the premise that Frostbite has any inherent problems when applied to other genres.
It might technically be a "younger" engine, but it's roots go way back to the 90's with Refraction Games.
From what I've played (racing, sports games, RPGs, FPS) the engine was never the problem.
It might technically be a "younger" engine, but it's roots go way back to the 90's with Refraction Games.
From what I've played (racing, sports games, RPGs, FPS) the engine was never the problem.
Andromeda biggest flaws are around its writing and creative decisions. The engine isn't relevant to either one.
This simply isn't true. We know for a fact that the teams had to code things from scratch (unlike using unreal) and that there were terribly issues like the engine not being made to support map sizes of the kind they needed etc. Amy was comparing it to the features and abilities for basic things that they had with Uncharted 1s development (Naughty Dog switched engines in the move to PS3 and had to leave all of their custom engine and coding language on PS2 behind)
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Of course EA never FORCED their studios to use Frostbite. EA accountants would come to the studio heads, explain the financial loss and risk to a studios existence of using a 3rd party engine VS Frostbite when meeting EA financial expectations, basically scaring the shit out of them into using Frostbite. Noone at EA held a literal gun to their head though, that happens a year down the line when the studio closes and someone posts that jpeg.
The engine had a massive impact on overall development, necessitating numerous instances of cut content, reworks, and rewrites. Everything has a domino effect.
Such as the ending to ME3 and it's writting as a whole being a bit crap because of the last minute deadline crunch.
If Anthem had been made on a competent engine for multi modal development, everything would have benifitted.
NBA can barely get a game out every year so it makes sense they would want to stick to whatever they've been using.
ufc, with the grappling requirements, is unlike any other game made by EA and would need a ton of work to port to frostbite. that being said, it's probably built on ANT and ANT is supposedly integrated into FB...
I don't buy that. This happened with ME1 too, for example. You can look at early trailers from that game to see how much it changed in development.
Andromeda's main problems come from a lack of vision at best and talent at worst, probably a little of both. Not the engine. Which is saying something, at it was a major disaster from a technical standpoint.
It probably never grew with the times and instead became ridgidly specialized as it was overhauled and rewritten again and again. There are serious misconceptions about what an engine is. Legacy code doesn't work forever.
Andromeda was supposed to be a No Man's Sky-inspired game where you fly around freely and land on any planet. The game we got instead was cludged together in the wake of crippling technical problems. The extent to which Frostbite was responsible is a little murky, sure.
DICE did have an assload of issues with BFV so they're not immune either. I say "did" because I don't know if they still do; I stopped playing months ago.
As many others opined, the problem is not with the unified engine or even really Frostbite. It would be ridiculous for a company the size of EA to pay large licensing percentages to Unreal, especially given that Frostbite has such an advanced graphics pipeline. The problem is that EA corporate wants to have their cake and eat it too, continuously chasing the hype du jour with open world and looter shooter games that the engine wasn't designed for. If after hacking in the inventory and dialogue system Bioware would just have continued to push out ME2 like games, they would've most likely been okay.
This isn't an either or situation. Your subjective opinion on the main problem (which I agree with!) doesn't mean that the engine didn't pose tremendous difficulties and negatively impact the product. Sure things 'change' in development but how quickly can you iterate when the tool base is poor?
This feels like a roundabout return of the 'lazy devs' arguement
Indeed. But that's not an engine problem. Gaming being overly ambitious and failing to fullfil a vision is nothing new or exclusive to Frostbite. All the terrible characters in that game, terrible scenes, lame conversations, bad creative decisions. That's not on Frostbite.
I rented the PS3-version for one day and it looked very rough. Mass Effect 3 on the other hand looked really nice on PS3.
I would say time is DICE biggest problem, they probably have released most games this gen.
Battlefield 4
Battlefront
Battlefield 1
Mirror's edge Catalyst
Battlefront 2
Battlefield V
Even though they might be similar type, that's a lot of games.
Having just completed the game I have to agree. Even with all the headaches that frostbite introduced, and the rebooting that occurred, a scant third of the overall superfelous content would (so ME1 ish in scope?) would have probably allowed for a much better game.
I didn't mean Frostbyte wasn't a problem. Only that it wasn't the major one. Games can be great, or at least perceived as great, even with crippling technical issues. Look at ME1? Terrible framerate, copy and paste design all over the place, game breaking bugs and so on. Yet people love it (I know I do).
ME1 is my favorite in the series, how I wish Andromeda had been able to carry its spirit forward while also bringing the amazing writting and plotting of the original :)
If anything BioWare should just remake/remaster the original trilogy with minimal changes, to kick their wounds for a time.
The engine excuse can only go so far, and it makes little sense for Bioware's recent troubles
I remember Inquisition taking a bit of time to load its open world environments, but once it did, you weren't interrupted constantly like you are in Anthem. You could even change out equipment and armor all within the game world without having to go to a completely separate section of the game. The multiple pacing killing loading screens in Anthem are a result of poor design decisions.
I remember Inquisition taking a bit of time to load its open world environments, but once it did, you weren't interrupted constantly like you are in Anthem. You could even change out equipment and armor all within the game world without having to go to a completely separate section of the game. The multiple pacing killing loading screens in Anthem are a result of poor design decisions.
If we follow the narrative of EA forcing their in house studios, then Respawn weren't EA owned at the time of development of TF1 and 2. With Apex they just save money moving assets around I bet so it was a non issue for them to keep using Source.
Edit: thinking again that doesn't make sense, you probably have to pay each time you release a game, it's too long ago.
I mean it's honestly a pragmatic idea to build a flexible good looking engine all of your devs use, can share any added features + knowledge, and focusing attention to improvements on only one toolset. The obvious financial savings is there, though diminished by Epic taking smaller cuts because more games are using their tools.
They just shouldn't have started this off with an engine like Frostbite initially designed to run one very specific kind of game, because itwould did require extensive work to make it viable for other kinds of games. Bioware's struggles were noticeable, and I think they would've had less issues getting their recent games to work on something like UE4, barring maybe Anthem because the scope of landscape seems like a challenge for any game engine.
They just shouldn't have started this off with an engine like Frostbite initially designed to run one very specific kind of game, because it
here is a quote from an interview Amy hennig did after her star wars game got cancelled:
"But what that meant is we obviously had to take the Frostbite Engine, because there was the internal initiative to make sure that everybody was on the same technology, but it was an engine that was made to do first-person shooters, not third-person traversal cinematic games."
they were very clearly pressured to use the frostbite engine.
I mean, if you are a huge publisher like EA and have your own in-house technology support team and engine then it makes sense to try and use that as much as possible. The question is whether the individual studios got sufficient support in using/customizing the engine for their games.
Bioware are on their third game now, in frostbite. I get that having to build new tools can be a pain but by now they should know pretty well what's easy to do and what isn't and build their stuff around that.
It's also not like they didn't manage to build sucessful large scale games, DA Infinite did well critically and commercially.
I'm sure the engine problems had it's share of blame for Andromeda and Anthem but it's a bit easy to pin it only on that. At least with Andromeda, we know that there were loads of other issues at play too.
It's also not like they didn't manage to build sucessful large scale games, DA Infinite did well critically and commercially.
I'm sure the engine problems had it's share of blame for Andromeda and Anthem but it's a bit easy to pin it only on that. At least with Andromeda, we know that there were loads of other issues at play too.
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how does it save money when the games turn out bad and the team has to do double the work to even create tools to use the engine
Ok. And here's a quote from Aaryn Flynn, former studio lead at Bioware about the developer's decision to use Frostbite. A developer mind you that has now shipped 3 games using the engine:
That's kind of how I feel, after the third game I kind of role my eyes a little bit at blaming the engine. I mean, sure the engine may have caveats when using it in certain manners, like Bethesda's, but these guys own these engines, at some point the studio has to take some of the blame here. Bethesda, Bioware, they have had enough time to fix any problems they should have or learn their way around them by now. This is just silly.
And I find it hard to believe the engine's the fault of everything, there's tons of shit story, shit direction, am I supposed to believe they had their fucking writers and animators working on the engine too? And their project managers or whoever designs like the structure of the game, those people are working on the engine as well? Come on.
The last Need for speed is using Frotsbite? I remember one of the series (The Run I believe) using it and running not too good...
I don't know if it was an EA decision or a BioWare decision, but after problems with the engine for two games why giving it a third chance? It's beyond my understanding.
I don't know if it was an EA decision or a BioWare decision, but after problems with the engine for two games why giving it a third chance? It's beyond my understanding.