Possible to play games using an older game`s engine?

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Jun 23, 2017
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I have a rather decent computer right now, an i5 4690k, 8GB DDR5 RAM, however no graphics card, although I do have crossfire compatibility, what`s the point without a graphics card? Currently I`ve managed to play a fair few brilliant titles with the onboard "HD Intel Graphics 4600" from many games released up until around 2013 at high settings and very recently I remember playing Dying Light at normal settings, The Crew at low (I managed with normal settings until some recent updates) and FarCry 4 at low which is somewhat bareable at 30fps. If you`re interested, many games with minimum requirements of a GTX 460 on steam were playable at low to normal settings.

I`m really struggling with money, as much as I would love the new GTX 1060 or a GTX 970 at least to upgrade my system, I need to allocate some savings for that. In the meantime I`ve become curious if what I asked in the title of this thread is possible:
Is it possible to play a title with overly demanding graphics, by modifiying it with the engine from a less demanding, previous title.

For example:
Assassin`s Creed: Black Flag and all the previous titles run like a charm on my computer. AC: Syndicate does not, it`s a hell to run on this system even at the lowest settings. Assuming these titles run using the same engine, but with different versions of a game engine... Is it possible to perhaps trick syndicate into running using the engine version for Black Flag? (because that engine version was less demanding) I`m sure someone may have tried something like this before.

I`m not 100% certain this is possible, but looking at how many people manage go to a game`s settings file and modify graphics settings (which arent accessible in game), to off or much lower, in a successful attempt to reduce the game`s demand, it makes me wonder if this may also be possible. Although it would not surpise me if it`s a pain to make it work.

I`m just curious.


Thank you in advance.
 
I think you're oversimplifying things. Different versions of the engine could mean critical portions were changed, not only to how something renders, but also what's allowed to render. Hypothetically, an old engine might limit a model to 1000 polygons, and a new engine would allow 100x that. If it were the same engine, it would probably be possible, but the amount of work required would be tremendous, and not really worth any hobbyists time.
 
I'm baffled by the level of naivety on display here. Or is it ignorance? Probably a bit of both for sure.

It seems to me that you think the engine in the game is just some DLL sitting somewhere in the bin directory, and if you replace it with a DLL from a game using the older engine you'll be set. Short answer: It's nowhere nearly that simple.
Games are made by combining the SDK of the used engine with tons of proprietary code, and then compiling it to a specific build that is the game. But even this is a huge oversimplification of things. You can't separate the engine from the game, they're one and the same. Even if the engine is licensed by the developers.

That said the only games that could come into play here are the ones that have been made open source. And where the SDK for the used engine is available for free.

Even if we presume that you have both the engine and the source code available. Re-creating the development environment so that you can actually compile the source code into a working build even without any modification would be extremely time consuming and needs experience and expertise. Not to mention that the compiler they used for the game is probably not free either, we're talking about a commercial version of Visual Studio most likely, especially if the game was made with an older version of it.
 
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Oh, and one more thing. I forgot in my previous post. Newer games are not slow because of the engine. On the contrary new versions of the same engine are usually more optimized than previous ones. So if the only thing you change in a game is the engine, nothing will change. So in theory, if you could regress back the game engine revision of a demanding game to an older one, you'd probably loose performance, not gain it.
Because the biggest factor in performance are the assets. How big are they, how much you're trying to handle simultaneously, etc etc. And how optimized they are for optimal performance with the engine. So for example you have a game that uses 2048x2048 textures. And you have an engine to match it. And you switch the engine to an older version, the game textures will still be 2048x2048, but now they're used in an engine that may only be optimized for textures up to 1024x1024. And the same goes for dozens of other things, shader complexity, number of lights in each scene / level, polygon count, sum amount of textures used in a scene, and so on.

To have a stupid analogy. What you're trying to do. Is ripping out an engine from a truck and putting a car engine in it and expect it to go faster, because cars are faster, In reality it probably won't even move.
 
I thought it would be too complicated to do, I guess it's just open source games because most of the code is premade for use by consumers. Honestly, you could perhaps say I've been ignorant, because I've only really marginally glanced the process of making games and have only managed to program a few things with java and python. So I agree it''s stupid to make such assumptions from my behalf. I should perhaps educate myself a little and start learning to make games with open source engines at least, such as Unreal during these holidays.

I'm really pleased to find such an informative helpful forum however, you have my apologies for the uninformed thread post and thanks for the responses M76 and NyteGard. Considering my current knowledge, I can't disagree with your statement mnewscv:

rather than modifying game engines, your time is better spent mowing lawns on the weekend to fund a 1060 purchase.
 
rather than modifying game engines, your time is better spent mowing lawns on the weekend to fund a 1060 purchase.

And not every game uses a hypernew engine - Titanfall (the original one) uses the original Valve Source engine (tweaked a bit, but the tweaks aren't that major) - and the engine was not why it got bashed.

GTX 1060? Please - GTX 1050 Ti (even though a lot of those are still being snapped up by miners) still makes better financial sense, performance sense, almost any other sort of sense - unless you're thinking in terms of 4K. First off, it can go 1080p at highest-end detail with DX11 and any game as long as you have a quad-core CPU - in fact, it can darn-near do it with a recent dual-core. Even more pleasantly surprising, most don't require a six-pin (that doesn't JUST include the GPU in my sig - it also includes the EVGA SSC that finished in second place in the chase to get my purchase - the only reasons it finished second was due to higher price and non-availability).
 
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