News: MindArk Signs Deal for Unreal Engine 5 - PRNewswire

The game was at its core completely demolished
When servers went back up after implementing CE2, we didn't have teams, taming or many other features we consider standard today.

Also, we still havn't been able to sit or lie down on the ground since. =(

It took many years before taming was introduced again.

My point is.. when the engine was changed there were massive changes in the game. A lot of features wasn't ready when engines was swapped.

I don't think that will happen now though. I think MA will make sure everything works with this move, since there are so many more developers ready to work with UE :)

This!

If you haven't been there at this time, you have no idea what happened.
Basically all advanced mechanics beyond move and fire have been broken after the engine switch.
Nothing worked. For months. Some mechanics are still broken today. We still fall though solid floors at certain places.
Many broken mechanics we already had didn't get fixed, but just removed entirely. Alot of funstuff and charme got lost this way.

CE2: one step forward, two steps back.
UE5: ?
 
This!

If you haven't been there at this time, you have no idea what happened.
Basically all advanced mechanics beyond move and fire have been broken after the engine switch.
Nothing worked. For months. Some mechanics are still broken today. We still fall though solid floors at certain places.
Many broken mechanics we already had didn't get fixed, but just removed entirely. Alot of funstuff and charme got lost this way.

CE2: one step forward, two steps back.
UE5: ?
Imagine how much fun I could have hiding items in random places for a scavenger hunt =(
 
I am just wondering if they could release UE5 for one planet at a time ?
That won't happen as MA and planet partners would have to maintain two separate engines and clients (just because we see "one thing" doesn't mean that the two engines wouldn't have to interact with each other), which don't share much as far as I understood it. It's one overall move/stunt.

My guess is that right now their major priority is the migration to UE (i.e., using most of their workforce) and a separate backup team will keep the CryEngine alive to have a Plan B.

I mean I know it will be a hell of a lot of work. But I have a feeling it could be at minimum 3 years?
It basically depends on where they were with the migration when they announced it. If somebody in a non-tech department said it would be a good idea, it can be quite long until we see it happening. On the other hand if they found their lessons-learned-notes from years ago, have tested stuff beforehand and maybe added employees with experience in such undertaking, it would be much sooner.

I'd say it doesn't make much sense to expect anything before Q2 or Q3 next year. And it will probably be a partial move of functionality (not planets or other forms of regions) as it happened with the switch to CryEngine. Hopefully the functionality will be complete before your three years are over...

I mean the word back then was that CryEngine itself didn't support everything EU required to fully work (no idea if that was true or an attempt to calm everybody down). We'll just have to sit back and see how it's done this time. So let's stand in a huge circle, hold our sanitised hands, sing a little and let MA do their job :)
 
This!

If you haven't been there at this time, you have no idea what happened.
Basically all advanced mechanics beyond move and fire have been broken after the engine switch.
Nothing worked. For months. Some mechanics are still broken today. We still fall though solid floors at certain places.
Many broken mechanics we already had didn't get fixed, but just removed entirely. Alot of funstuff and charme got lost this way.

CE2: one step forward, two steps back.
UE5: ?
Sounds really bad... quite glad I was in the middle of my three year break. I didn't come back till about vu11 iirc
 
I agree that the videos look awesome, but don't forget that EU won't be a show-off game to prove what UE can do. Also things need to run on a lower spec machine (yeah, we had the discussion already) and I guess that certain details come from the graphics card of each player. So it probably doesn't make too much sense to put all focus into achieving the best detail you can have. It makes sense in textures and such, but IMHO not in motion and facial features.
 
Imagine how much fun I could have hiding items in random places for a scavenger hunt =(
I used to love the forum game, find it, add to it, hide it again... but alas MA removed such emergent game play as it was easier to delete game mechanics than deal with whatever performance or exploitation issues they thought they were causing. FUMA
 
I agree that the videos look awesome, but don't forget that EU won't be a show-off game to prove what UE can do. Also things need to run on a lower spec machine (yeah, we had the discussion already) and I guess that certain details come from the graphics card of each player. So it probably doesn't make too much sense to put all focus into achieving the best detail you can have. It makes sense in textures and such, but IMHO not in motion and facial features.

oh yeh world of difference between what is achievable in a stand alone, let alone an MMO game as opposed to a video that can be tweaked to perfection (and in fact the example was post processed in after effects) but still... nice stuff aye?
 
I agree that the videos look awesome, but don't forget that EU won't be a show-off game to prove what UE can do. Also things need to run on a lower spec machine (yeah, we had the discussion already) and I guess that certain details come from the graphics card of each player. So it probably doesn't make too much sense to put all focus into achieving the best detail you can have. It makes sense in textures and such, but IMHO not in motion and facial features.
On the other hand, if they are able to use Meta Humans for all avatars all these things in animation are core
functions. ;)
"Beautiful" animations is really about how good the rigger and the animator are. All joints are there no matter
if the animation is created by a top quality animator or from an obvious hobbyist like me. :D ;)

The process is probably to first migrate all excisting graphics to the new engine, might update all shaders if
excisting causing problems, and at a later date update all graphics to better fit the engines capabilities.
If they gonna use Meta Humans thats probably the only completly new stuff when it comes to graphics.
This is ofc just a guess from me and I hope I'm wrong so we get more new stuff at the release of UE5.
 
and at a later date update all graphics to better fit the engines capabilities.
Hmm, yeah. We did get a CryEngine update not that long ago (or is it a year already?!) that improved the graphics.
 
Hmm, yeah. We did get a CryEngine update not that long ago (or is it a year already?!) that improved the graphics.
Yep but this is about e,g static graphic, i.e objects, that we have today that should be able to use Nanite system.
Even though most should be able to be automated to start to use it they might do it properly and check so
everything related to each object work properly, and update so all LODs (level of details) also are correct. ;)

Same goes for all "ordinary" objects.

If I remember correctly the update we had in CE2 were about activating PBR in EU, but many objects have also
been updated through the last years.
Almost a daunting task to update all graphics related stuff but it have to be done. :p I guess most artist likes it though. ;)
There are some interesting times ahead. :)
 
Came will have slightly better lightning, textures and shadows. Hopefully stuff doesn't clip as much and we won't glitch through the world every 1 in 5 teleports and 1 in 5 landings in a quad.
 
Hmm, yeah. We did get a CryEngine update not that long ago (or is it a year already?!) that improved the graphics.
"improved" ok yes technically, but because a lot of the things in game didn't have the properties set for the light scattering thing to work properly a lot of stuff looks worse lighting wise and will never be fixed. Case in point headlights on the Valk... make the graphics look like CGA
 
Came will have slightly better lightning, textures and shadows. Hopefully stuff doesn't clip as much and we won't glitch through the world every 1 in 5 teleports and 1 in 5 landings in a quad.
wow that bad? Crikey
 

Here's another nice video... of low vegetation and distant mountains. Again, feels kinda Entropia like to me. It's a shame the MA artists don't join in this chat, after all, we are talking about their work and people love to talk about their work. I'm sure they could weigh in with in some insight into the challenges they face or even a few examples of the process of converting stuff or even starting anew. Can't imagine how such involvement would impact the economy either.
 
I'm thinking that this looks too realistic to have your average mob wander through the grass...
 
I'm thinking that this looks too realistic to have your average mob wander through the grass...
Not a problem, much like what happened with being able to place items on the landscape, MA may have to remove mobs for performance reasons and to prevent exploitation ;)
 
Another lovely one... I think this is an advert for an resources/asset pack. Ignoring the sticky animation, some of the long shots are truly stunning!

 
I'm thinking that this looks too realistic to have your average mob wander through the grass...
Yea they must update AV graphics and interaction to match it, same for mobs as well.
 
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Here's another nice video... of low vegetation and distant mountains. Again, feels kinda Entropia like to me. It's a shame the MA artists don't join in this chat, after all, we are talking about their work and people love to talk about their work. I'm sure they could weigh in with in some insight into the challenges they face or even a few examples of the process of converting stuff or even starting anew. Can't imagine how such involvement would impact the economy either.

Well UE5 supports the same coding language as Cryengine, so the coding for the economy will probably just be migrated. It will probably need some tweaks to make it work but I would guess that the economy coding will be easily transferable/migrated without too much issues.

Same could be said for systems too and systems that they never brought back or did not finish. They should also be easily migrated over cos the coding is supported. All that will need to be tweaked is the references to cryengine etc if there is any and then reference it to UE5 etc etc. I mean I am not a game dev as such and I am not a strong coder. I am a web dev and work mainly in PHP so I can not be sure if it will be this easy to migrate the systems but I would say it should be the easiest part for MA.

What will take MA the longest time is re making the entire planets. All the textures they used and props/skins etc etc will all be very outdated. So they will all need to be reskinned with UE5 quality textures etc etc including the props and models, guns, items, ore/enmatter, loot, household items, clothes. Everything for that matter will all need to be redesigned. Unless MA cut corners and decide to just use the old skins and textures at first and then gradually update them as they progress with updates.

I think that could be a way they might speed it up if they did that but I would much prefer them to not use the old textures and skins etc and just redo everything from the start.

UE5 is a very very powerful engine and it has some amazing features and you can pretty much do anything you want with it. So in terms of Entropia's future well they have made the right choice in picking this engine.

As for the Avatars characters and NPC's I would guess they will be able to just use skins available already in UE5. I think there is standard skins but not sure. Then for more advanced you can add custom skins etc etc.
 
Well UE5 supports the same coding language as Cryengine, so the coding for the economy will probably just be migrated. It will probably need some tweaks to make it work but I would guess that the economy coding will be easily transferable/migrated without too much issues.

Same could be said for systems too and systems that they never brought back or did not finish. They should also be easily migrated over cos the coding is supported. All that will need to be tweaked is the references to cryengine etc if there is any and then reference it to UE5 etc etc. I mean I am not a game dev as such and I am not a strong coder. I am a web dev and work mainly in PHP so I can not be sure if it will be this easy to migrate the systems but I would say it should be the easiest part for MA.

What will take MA the longest time is re making the entire planets. All the textures they used and props/skins etc etc will all be very outdated. So they will all need to be reskinned with UE5 quality textures etc etc including the props and models, guns, items, ore/enmatter, loot, household items, clothes. Everything for that matter will all need to be redesigned. Unless MA cut corners and decide to just use the old skins and textures at first and then gradually update them as they progress with updates.

I think that could be a way they might speed it up if they did that but I would much prefer them to not use the old textures and skins etc and just redo everything from the start.

UE5 is a very very powerful engine and it has some amazing features and you can pretty much do anything you want with it. So in terms of Entropia's future well they have made the right choice in picking this engine.

As for the Avatars characters and NPC's I would guess they will be able to just use skins available already in UE5. I think there is standard skins but not sure. Then for more advanced you can add custom skins etc etc.
So you're saying that UE5 will have to be applied to everything to aid realism, not just the terrain? This would be the ideal, but AV and creature animations and interactions should also be updated. For instance running across dry sand, earth, etc, should result in small plumes or trails going up into the air and being blown by the wind, or going in and out of water should make clothing, etc, look wet. The list is endless...
 
I have refrained from commenting in this thread since its inception, but reading "UE5 will have to be applied to everything to aid realism, not just the terrain?"clearly forced me to drop a few thoughts, hoping to add some clarity to those who are not familiar with software and specifically game development. Apologies if I repeat thoughts from many others.

A game engine is to a game what Android or iOS are to a phone, Windows or Mac OS are to a computer. It's the foundation that underpins all the mechanics in the part of the game that runs on our computer. Also, it has nothing to do with the part of the game that runs on MA's servers, though any server/network induced loot lag will affect it. In other words, i's not a simple graphic effect, which you can apply here and not there. Nor can it be applied to some planets but not others.

Operating systems are inevitably linked to the hardware of the era in which they are developed. That's the reason why they evolve over time. Taking into account the speed of change in hardware and software in the last 10 years, especially in the gaming industry, the game is the equivalent of a program developed for Windows 95. Sure it still runs but 1) it might not even run for much longer; 2) it's almost impossible to maintain and develop; 3) it looks and feel from the late 90s.

We have grown to consider normal for our avatars to fall through the floor of a shop or get stuck in a tree or a wall, or worse plummet in the underground ocean. That is the work of a game engine, which makes sure that the laws of physics are never broken. Game developers should never write a single line of code about that, after they have described what an object is. Same as a phone app developer doesn't have to take care of the code to make the phone connect to 4G networks.

I have also read comments about the "potential" of the existing game engine. That is frankly utterly ludicrous and delusional. We all know that EU runs on CryEngine 3, but not many seem to be aware that Amazon bought CryEngine 5 a few years ago, to use it in their future AWS Lumberyard cloud game engine. They actually had to rewrite it from scratch to make it suitable for their plans, and even so, it hasn't been a success, to the point that just few months ago they changed strategy and open sourced it, hoping to get some traction.

Any gaming company starting from scratch in 2021, would have Unreal Engine (either 4 or much more likely 5) firmly at the top of their game engine shortlist. And the list is short indeed, I would add Unity, and possibly a few more sector specific ones, but that's about it.

Rather than looking at any technical transition problems from past experience from 15 years ago, we should all be delighted that MA has taken this step. For many investing time and money in this game, the biggest question has always been "is this game being developed and going to be around at all in 10-20 years"?
Looking at the current state of the game, one could be forgiven for thinking that MA were not really developing EU anymore but just looking to use it as a cash cow to squeeze money for as long as possible and then shut it down when it could not run anymore on, say, Windows 12.

By taking this step MA is announcing that EU not only is here to stay, but that they have plans to gear up its development both from a technical, and probably even more important, from a marketing point of view. And that is something that the entire player base has been screaming for years.
 
I have refrained from commenting in this thread since its inception, but reading "UE5 will have to be applied to everything to aid realism, not just the terrain?"clearly forced me to drop a few thoughts, hoping to add some clarity to those who are not familiar with software and specifically game development. Apologies if I repeat thoughts from many others.

A game engine is to a game what Android or iOS are to a phone, Windows or Mac OS are to a computer. It's the foundation that underpins all the mechanics in the part of the game that runs on our computer. Also, it has nothing to do with the part of the game that runs on MA's servers, though any server/network induced loot lag will affect it. In other words, i's not a simple graphic effect, which you can apply here and not there. Nor can it be applied to some planets but not others.

Operating systems are inevitably linked to the hardware of the era in which they are developed. That's the reason why they evolve over time. Taking into account the speed of change in hardware and software in the last 10 years, especially in the gaming industry, the game is the equivalent of a program developed for Windows 95. Sure it still runs but 1) it might not even run for much longer; 2) it's almost impossible to maintain and develop; 3) it looks and feel from the late 90s.

We have grown to consider normal for our avatars to fall through the floor of a shop or get stuck in a tree or a wall, or worse plummet in the underground ocean. That is the work of a game engine, which makes sure that the laws of physics are never broken. Game developers should never write a single line of code about that, after they have described what an object is. Same as a phone app developer doesn't have to take care of the code to make the phone connect to 4G networks.

I have also read comments about the "potential" of the existing game engine. That is frankly utterly ludicrous and delusional. We all know that EU runs on CryEngine 3, but not many seem to be aware that Amazon bought CryEngine 5 a few years ago, to use it in their future AWS Lumberyard cloud game engine. They actually had to rewrite it from scratch to make it suitable for their plans, and even so, it hasn't been a success, to the point that just few months ago they changed strategy and open sourced it, hoping to get some traction.

Any gaming company starting from scratch in 2021, would have Unreal Engine (either 4 or much more likely 5) firmly at the top of their game engine shortlist. And the list is short indeed, I would add Unity, and possibly a few more sector specific ones, but that's about it.

Rather than looking at any technical transition problems from past experience from 15 years ago, we should all be delighted that MA has taken this step. For many investing time and money in this game, the biggest question has always been "is this game being developed and going to be around at all in 10-20 years"?
Looking at the current state of the game, one could be forgiven for thinking that MA were not really developing EU anymore but just looking to use it as a cash cow to squeeze money for as long as possible and then shut it down when it could not run anymore on, say, Windows 12.

By taking this step MA is announcing that EU not only is here to stay, but that they have plans to gear up its development both from a technical, and probably even more important, from a marketing point of view. And that is something that the entire player base has been screaming for years.
So you have refrained from commenting in this thread since it's inception have you? Don't be so smug. Also nobody here needs a lecture on what a physics engine is or what it does. I was simply mirroring what RJ-Rob was suggesting, which was clearly referring to all in-game assets.
In addition, your analogy that a game engine is to a game what an OS is to a computer system is not right. A game engine determines the physics of in-game assets; lighting, reflection, etc, it does not determine the core functionality of a game, whereas an OS does determine the core functionality of a PC or phone.
 
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Entropia runs on CE2. Most notably, this means it's the version released before Crytek acquired Free Radical Design who massively optimised it so it was "console capable" (in the guise of CE3 with the flagship Crysis 2 game).
 
Many moons ago... Project Entropia had some pretty nice sky boxes. OK this was old tech but it was used well to create some incredible alien like skys. CE2 had clouds and day night cycles and this was used reasonably well and looked realistic (especially in the Thule starting area - which seemed to have ground cloud shadows. or at least darkening, too - not sure if main game has them?) but rarely had the feel of old sky boxes which were kinda crafted for "epic sky" appearance.

Anyhow with this in mind, I thought this looked quite interesting. OK maybe still not going to get to the "epic sky" of the past (and I'll admit realism wasn't there back then) but they do look really nice and better than what we have in CE2 I think (at least optionally). OK I grant that this is for Unreal 4 not 5 and MA are likely facing at least some issues in that they are building for a beta engine and most add on's likely don't support it yet, but still, I thought this was pretty interesting and something MA might be interested in considering. Aside from the "ooh pretty" the examples of how "easily" it can be used are pretty interesting. Sure, there is at least a reasonable degree of work involved but for the most part, to my untrained eye, it doesn't look too difficult to work with.



edit: Skys I was thinking of at this time stamp

 
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Unusual one... a mob/monster in UE5... shows what's possible at least even though I appreciate this wouldn't translate to an MMO necessarily.

 
Many moons ago... Project Entropia had some pretty nice sky boxes. OK this was old tech but it was used well to create some incredible alien like skys. CE2 had clouds and day night cycles and this was used reasonably well and looked realistic (especially in the Thule starting area - which seemed to have ground cloud shadows. or at least darkening, too - not sure if main game has them?) but rarely had the feel of old sky boxes which were kinda crafted for "epic sky" appearance.

Anyhow with this in mind, I thought this looked quite interesting. OK maybe still not going to get to the "epic sky" of the past (and I'll admit realism wasn't there back then) but they do look really nice and better than what we have in CE2 I think (at least optionally). OK I grant that this is for Unreal 4 not 5 and MA are likely facing at least some issues in that they are building for a beta engine and most add on's likely don't support it yet, but still, I thought this was pretty interesting and something MA might be interested in considering. Aside from the "ooh pretty" the examples of how "easily" it can be used are pretty interesting. Sure, there is at least a reasonable degree of work involved but for the most part, to my untrained eye, it doesn't look too difficult to work with.



edit: Skys I was thinking of at this time stamp

Like the Weather Quick Start vid. Didn't realise how much went into creating realistic cloud/weather dynamics.
 
Many moons ago... Project Entropia had some pretty nice sky boxes. OK this was old tech but it was used well to create some incredible alien like skys. CE2 had clouds and day night cycles and this was used reasonably well and looked realistic (especially in the Thule starting area - which seemed to have ground cloud shadows. or at least darkening, too - not sure if main game has them?) but rarely had the feel of old sky boxes which were kinda crafted for "epic sky" appearance.

Anyhow with this in mind, I thought this looked quite interesting. OK maybe still not going to get to the "epic sky" of the past (and I'll admit realism wasn't there back then) but they do look really nice and better than what we have in CE2 I think (at least optionally). OK I grant that this is for Unreal 4 not 5 and MA are likely facing at least some issues in that they are building for a beta engine and most add on's likely don't support it yet, but still, I thought this was pretty interesting and something MA might be interested in considering. Aside from the "ooh pretty" the examples of how "easily" it can be used are pretty interesting. Sure, there is at least a reasonable degree of work involved but for the most part, to my untrained eye, it doesn't look too difficult to work with.



edit: Skys I was thinking of at this time stamp


Sky Boxes are pretty much not that hard to do in games because engines have them by default. Depending on the engine they have a large variety of skies you can choose from etc. I know a lot about Sky Boxes because I used to make maps in Hammer Editor for valve games, Portal 2 mainly. :)

But UE5 skies do look breathtaking though.
 
Sky Boxes are pretty much not that hard to do in games because engines have them by default. Depending on the engine they have a large variety of skies you can choose from etc. I know a lot about Sky Boxes because I used to make maps in Hammer Editor for valve games, Portal 2 mainly. :)

But UE5 skies do look breathtaking though.
Did you just say that sky boxes aren't that hard because someone else does the work? :scratch:
 
skys do look like crap in game currently. They did look a lot better many years ago. Then someone started thinking it'd be a good idea to put physical cloud layers in so when you are flying around you bump in to these darn clouds as you try to get in to space... they just look like crap. Toulan once looked nice as did Rocktropia but then we started seeing these stupid sky cloud boxes and then they showed up on Calypso too..

kQMffn8-jfYEfFcA_lCDMSoCPDdtzpXR6kRw3WV1MNFL65zfY93PPGGgQjQGPe_IsTctROJLbCFQLbGmh_KPQgxOgBfLpq1O7-k8tti59n1ypX94p1TpGR7GmU5U3CfzSc9GL-7ew9k=w2400

so much prettier in the old day as in the above panorama before they cluttered up the sky.
 
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