The game engine wars are now over, EA/DICE/Frostbite won

tybert7

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First, this is not directly related to video cards, but this game will run on video cards so... do with the thread what you will.


But have you seen this latest trailer?





I am not a shooter player, don't give a damn about battlefield 1, but that is the engine that is being used for mass effect andromeda, and it looks crazy promising. Some of the faces are a bit questionable, but my god those environments and effects, it looks beautiful.


I know there is a lot of love for UE4 here, but nothing I have ever seen from any UE4 game looks as good as what was displayed there. I just hope the gpus can play that at 4k. Though seeing as that the dice guys know how to actually optimize their engine, it should have a better shot at both running smoothly, and looking better.
 
Ehh will be replaced with something better next week...
 
Some of it looks state of the art then other stuff looks waxy/shiny like most of the faces and some of the uniforms.
 
Some of it looks state of the art then other stuff looks waxy/shiny like most of the faces and some of the uniforms.

I agree that some of the faces were a bit iffy, especially when contrasted with how the rest of it looked. Some faces looked great but others, like that guy with the scarred up face looked like a bad texture mod. Still work to do there, but that probably takes a lot more work to get right. Did not notice issues with the uniforms so that did not stand out as an issue.
 
I agree that some of the faces were a bit iffy, especially when contrasted with how the rest of it looked. Some faces looked great but others, like that guy with the scarred up face looked like a bad texture mod. Still work to do there, but that probably takes a lot more work to get right. Did not notice issues with the uniforms so that did not stand out as an issue.

Look at the early part of the video with the soldier's green uniforms. I think its when they were fighting by fire light in the darker scenes. They look plasticy/waxy.
 
What? It's a trailer, there is not a second of actual gameplay footage in there that I could see. So why make a fuss about this?
 
Engines are a lot more than pretty graphics. Although the beta looked decent enough for how it performed, it wasn't ground breaking. Certainly not nearly as good as what is shown in the trailers. Doubt the final game will look much different than the beta either.
 
What? It's a trailer, there is not a second of actual gameplay footage in there that I could see. So why make a fuss about this?
Because it uses the in game engine that displays how the game can LOOK. Gameplay is another topic.
 
i agree it looks great. i can't think of a better looking game. there might be one but it's not coming to mind.
 
Didn't look that impressive to me, to be completely honest. We've seen conceptual trailers on that level for ages, and every engine's failed to really deliver that at any reasonable framerate.
 
DICE's trailers are usually pretty accurate, even considering a lot of what is being shown is in-game cut scenes using the game engine.
 
As much as the tech and the trailer looks good, you fail to understand why the industry does not seem to want to pick up Frostbite.

I'll try to list as many reasons as I can based on my experience.

1. Is the engine available for 3rd party studios to license? (I know mine did not even put Frostbite as a choice ever.)
2. Are the tools for the engine freely available?
3. Are the tools for the engine easy to use?
4. Are the resources and assets for Frostbite abundant and freely available?
5. Is the engine easy to use, understand and code for?
6. Is the engine optimized for large scale or small scale?
7. What is the object instancing limit for the engine?
8. Does the engine scale with smoothly with increased resource and asset use?

As far as I'm concerned, Frostbite fails on #1 and therefore nobody even considers it as an engine. Feel free to quote any studio that uses Frostbite but I will stake my reputation and say it now: Nobody I know outside of EA uses the Frostbite engine. I do not think it is possible to license it at all.

Therefore, Frostbite cannot win anything, other than push their own EA sales.
 
Great visuals, but I haven't seen anything come close to Crysis 3, when "Prophet" entered the room to talk with the scientist during the cut scene. Their eyes couldn't be more real for a game.
 
What? It's a trailer, there is not a second of actual gameplay footage in there that I could see. So why make a fuss about this?

There are definitely clips of actual gameplay interspersed throughout the trailer, but mostly towards the end. As somebody that played the beta, the game looks absolutely stunning, and I personally can't wait till it comes out.

As for gameplay, if you're still not convinced, this is 100% gameplay.
 
What? It's a trailer, there is not a second of actual gameplay footage in there that I could see. So why make a fuss about this?
There is a ton of in-game footage. DICE always gives in-game footage for their trailers since the very beginning. You just aren't looking hard enough. Granted, there is a lot of cutscenes spliced in there. I will give you several examples. Anything you see from the first person perspective is 100% in-game. Other stuff can be pulled from in-game using vehicle chase cams or even fancy camera tricks from multiplayer spectator mode.

When DICE pulls from multiplayer, they often times will pull stuff that will be a bunch of DICE employees playing the game on a local server but doing so in a scripted way like actors in a movie. Spectator mode in the current game engine lets you move the camera around for different perspectives. They have in-house tools to strip all the HUD info (e.g. player names) from multiplayer. Fan made movies do the same thing DICE does using 3rd party tools like BF Cinematic Tools.

Here are the in-game sequences that I can spot that aren't cutscenes:

0:02-0:04 Charging scene
**0:16-0:20 fist fight scene possibly pulled from multiplayer. It looks like some of the same footage in the previous Gamescom trailer. In other words, same scene but different camera angle
**1:10-1:12 Battleships firing could be pulled from multiplayer. Battleships are confirmed Behemoth class that spawns in.
1:13-1:15 Gas mask charge into gas. It looks like some of the same footage in the previous Gamescom trailer. In other words, same scene but different camera angle.
1:16-1:17 Chase cam view of Tank gameplay
1:18-1:19 AA gun
1:19-1:20 Sweeping shot of battlefield likely pulled from empty multiplayer server using spectator mode
1:20-1:21 Bayonet charge
1:23-1:24 Chase cam view of plane
1:27-1:28 Another chase cam view of planes
1:29-1:30 First person view behind flamethrower guy on your team
1:30-1:31 First person view again and large explosion
1:31-1:32 Another chase cam view of planes
1:32-1:33 First person view firing into trench full of soldiers
1:33-1:34 First person view of same battlefield in 1:19
1:34-1:35 Chase cam view of Tank gameplay
1:34-1:35 First person view of Hero class playable character that wears suit of armor and hip fires LMG

**These are the only ones I'm not sure of.

Everything else I listed I'm 100% confident is pulled from in-game singleplayer or multiplayer. I've also played every Battlefield game since BF1942 and seen quite a few trailers over the years, including the BF1 Beta which a lot of this stuff looks exactly the same.

Didn't look that impressive to me, to be completely honest. We've seen conceptual trailers on that level for ages, and every engine's failed to really deliver that at any reasonable framerate.
DICE trailers and pre-release gameplay almost always can be reproduced by anyone. However, DICE also has had a habit of rendering a lot of it using the latest and greatest Nvidia graphics cards to put the trailers in the best light. I remember them using GTX 580's for Battlefield 3 because the PS3 and XBox360 were so dated they couldn't show off the engine's true potential. Things changed a bit with BF4 and SW Battlefront because the latest consoles were dramatically better.

In this case, they probably did pull a lot of this from Xbox since we are barely mid-life on them. BF1's graphics aren't much improved from last year's SW Battlefront. However, the few snippets of actual gameplay you see is so short and fast at a max of 1080p you won't be able to tell the graphical difference between it and PC versions.
 
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Because it uses the in game engine that displays how the game can LOOK. Gameplay is another topic.
But we all know that the game won't look like that. Sure you can push the engine to make it look like this, then you render it at low fps, then speed it up and sync the audio. Easy.

I'm pretty sure the First person view segments shown in this clip are not actual gameplay footage. Sure it was rendered with the game engine, but with such setup and parameters that would never work in real time.

I'm not saying that it will look bad, or that they'll pull an ubi and the final product will look 10 times worse than the trailers. What I'm saying is that it's unwise to outright call a game engine a winner, based solely on a pre-rendered trailer.
 
There is a ton of in-game footage. DICE always gives in-game footage for their trailers since the very beginning. You just aren't looking hard enough. Granted, there is a lot of cutscenes spliced in there. I will give you several examples. Anything you see from the first person perspective is 100% in-game. Other stuff can be pulled from in-game using vehicle chase cams or even fancy camera tricks from multiplayer spectator mode.

When DICE pulls from multiplayer, they often times will pull stuff that will be a bunch of DICE employees playing the game on a local server but doing so in a scripted way like actors in a movie. Spectator mode in the current game engine lets you move the camera around for different perspectives. They have in-house tools to strip all the HUD info (e.g. player names) from multiplayer. Fan made movies do the same thing DICE does using 3rd party tools like BF Cinematic Tools.

Here are the in-game sequences that I can spot that aren't cutscenes:

0:02-0:04 Charging scene
**0:16-0:20 fist fight scene possibly pulled from multiplayer. It looks like some of the same footage in the previous Gamescom trailer. In other words, same scene but different camera angle
**1:10-1:12 Battleships firing could be pulled from multiplayer. Battleships are confirmed Behemoth class that spawns in.
1:13-1:15 Gas mask charge into gas. It looks like some of the same footage in the previous Gamescom trailer. In other words, same scene but different camera angle.
1:16-1:17 Chase cam view of Tank gameplay
1:18-1:19 AA gun
1:19-1:20 Sweeping shot of battlefield likely pulled from empty multiplayer server using spectator mode
1:20-1:21 Bayonet charge
1:23-1:24 Chase cam view of plane
1:27-1:28 Another chase cam view of planes
1:29-1:30 First person view behind flamethrower guy on your team
1:30-1:31 First person view again and large explosion
1:31-1:32 Another chase cam view of planes
1:32-1:33 First person view firing into trench full of soldiers
1:33-1:34 First person view of same battlefield in 1:19
1:34-1:35 Chase cam view of Tank gameplay
1:34-1:35 First person view of Hero class playable character that wears suit of armor and hip fires LMG

.

Wow you have a lot of time on your hand. You didn't have to give a time stamp to list all the 1 seconds snippets of what could be gameplay. Even if those are real gameplay clips (which I'm not convinced of) the OP was raving about the characters which you see only in cutscenes. Whatever they show during cutscenes is irrelevant to me. A game engine should be judged on gameplay and not cutscenes locked to 30fps.
 
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The engine is awesome. Too bad they continue to make shitty games in it. :whistle:
Examples? Sure SW:BF didn't live up to expectations. But it wasn't outright shit. If that's what you're referring to.
I don't even know of that many games with the engine.
Need for Speed: The Run - That was a good game.
DA:I - Again very good game.
What else?
Oh I know one crap game battlefield hardline.

So what are you referring to?
 
Examples? Sure SW:BF didn't live up to expectations. But it wasn't outright shit. If that's what you're referring to.
I don't even know of that many games with the engine.
Need for Speed: The Run - That was a good game.
DA:I - Again very good game.
What else?
Oh I know one crap game battlefield hardline.

So what are you referring to?

The only one out of that list that I would say was decent was DA:I, and that's because I forgot it was a Frostbite game.

Battlefield hasn't been good since 2142, NFS hasn't been good since Hot Pursuit. I can't speak to the new Mirror's Edge but I haven't heard good things.
 
The only one out of that list that I would say was decent was DA:I, and that's because I forgot it was a Frostbite game.

Battlefield hasn't been good since 2142, NFS hasn't been good since Hot Pursuit. I can't speak to the new Mirror's Edge but I haven't heard good things.
The Run was actually a good nfs game. Hot pursuit is the 3rd nfs game, I'd think there were good games after that especially NFS PU. Or are you referring to the new hot pursuit from 2010? Because I think the series went south after the original Hot Pursuit 2 in 2002. Then all kinds of crap for years until The Run which was decent. And Shif2 was also nice, even though as a track racer not an NFS in essence. Since then back to the crap factory. But I don't know how many of those were frostbite. But I think we established that there are good games on frostbite too.
 
The Run was actually a good nfs game. Hot pursuit is the 3rd nfs game, I'd think there were good games after that especially NFS PU. Or are you referring to the new hot pursuit from 2010? Because I think the series went south after the original Hot Pursuit 2 in 2002. Then all kinds of crap for years until The Run which was decent. And Shif2 was also nice, even though as a track racer not an NFS in essence. Since then back to the crap factory. But I don't know how many of those were frostbite. But I think we established that there are good games on frostbite too.

It's all opinion either way. My opinion is that many of the games are shitty. Note that I didn't say all, I just said "they continue to make shitty games" with it. Meaning many of the newer titles they've come out with, in my opinion, have not been good.

I still agree that the engine is awesome, I just wish it was used for better games.

As for NFS specifically...it's been hit and miss for years. The original Hot Pursuit is the last one I really remember liking. The new one was alright but it wasn't the same. I did not care for any of the Shift or Underground titles.
 
Wow you have a lot of time on your hand. You didn't have to give a time stamp to list all the 1 seconds snippets of what could be gameplay. Even if those are real gameplay clips (which I'm not convinced of) the OP was raving about the characters which you see only in cutscenes. Whatever they show during cutscenes is irrelevant to me. A game engine should be judged on gameplay and not cutscenes locked to 30fps.
You claimed there was no actual gameplay in that trailer. You obviously didn't even bother to watch all of it (let alone the disclaimer at 0:01 that says "In-Game footage"), and are now lashing out at everyone that gave you evidence contrary to your claim. Myself and many others have played the BF1 beta and have already stated in this threat that the game looks exactly like in-game footage provided. I've also played every Battlefield game and am very familiar as to how to duplicate these videos using in-game footage and software like BF Cinematic tools. I also find it hilarious your attempt to insult me by saying I have a lot of time on my hands when you've made three more replies since. My one post took about as much time as your three to create.

As to the OP's claim, Frostbite hasn't won anything. It's a great looking engine, but I've seen plenty of other engines look just as decent. Even if the cut scenes are rendered by the engine, I have never seen that level of detail while playing the game. Frostbite's claim to fame is it's graphical fidelity, but not much else. It is often a bug riddled mess as the Battlefield series has proven quite often.

As much as the tech and the trailer looks good, you fail to understand why the industry does not seem to want to pick up Frostbite.

I'll try to list as many reasons as I can based on my experience.

1. Is the engine available for 3rd party studios to license? (I know mine did not even put Frostbite as a choice ever.)
2. Are the tools for the engine freely available?
3. Are the tools for the engine easy to use?
4. Are the resources and assets for Frostbite abundant and freely available?
5. Is the engine easy to use, understand and code for?
6. Is the engine optimized for large scale or small scale?
7. What is the object instancing limit for the engine?
8. Does the engine scale with smoothly with increased resource and asset use?

As far as I'm concerned, Frostbite fails on #1 and therefore nobody even considers it as an engine. Feel free to quote any studio that uses Frostbite but I will stake my reputation and say it now: Nobody I know outside of EA uses the Frostbite engine. I do not think it is possible to license it at all.

Therefore, Frostbite cannot win anything, other than push their own EA sales.
So far, this is the best explanation to refute OP's claim.
 
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To be fair bf1 was very impressive in terms of graphics and performance, wasn't even close to cpu limited, just ran really well
 
You claimed there was no actual gameplay in that trailer. You obviously didn't even bother to watch all of it (let alone the disclaimer at 0:01 that says "In-Game footage"), and are now lashing out at everyone that gave you evidence contrary to your claim. I've played the BF1 beta, the game looks exactly like that. I've also played every Battlefield game and am very familiar as to how to duplicate these videos using in-game footage. I also find it hilarious your attempt to insult me by saying I have a lot of time on my hands when you've made 3 more replies since.

As to the OP's claim, Frostbite hasn't won anything. It's a great looking engine, but I've seen plenty of other engines look just as decent. Even if the cut scenes are rendered by the engine, I have never seen that level of detail while playing the game. Frostbite's claim to fame is it's graphical fidelity, but not much else. It is often a bug riddled mess as the Battlefield series has proven quite often.
Assumptions are foolish. I did watch it from start to finish. And I don't think those 1 second snippets are from actual gameplay footage. At the least they went trough some after treatment. And at the most they're entirely rendered like the cinematics. To me the graphics in the actual gameplay footage linked above looks much less impressive than these. Even the overall lighting quality seems more cartoonish. From this video it looks ultra realistic. From the gameplay video, it actually looks like frostbite engine in DA:I. Of course improved over that, but it's very well identifiable.

I didn't mean it as an insult. It was actually a compliment that you took so much time. I'm sure extracting exact timestamps for all gameplay footage took you about 10 times the time it took me to write all the replies to this topic.
 
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Assumptions are foolish. I did watch it from start to finish. And I don't think those 1 second snippets are from actual gameplay footage. At the least they went trough some after treatment. And at the most they're entirely rendered like the cinematics.
Of course those snippets got treatment after. That's how they are made. In-game, you will have a HUD displaying things like a crosshair, mini-map, ammunition, waypoints, other player's names, etc. That does not mean they cannot be pulled straight from the game then remove those bits after the fact. People do it all the time with 3rd party tools, with footage pulled straight from un-ranked multiplayer servers and the players play the game like actors in a movie. I've linked to BF Cinematic tools in my previous post. Since you still don't believe me, why don't you watch for yourself the results of using in-game footage. ;)




I will re-iterate, just because I'm pointing this out does not mean I'm forgetting the other minute+ of cutscene footage that was used in the BF1 trailer.
 
yeah there was that whole video of it running on an ultra-wide with no HUD, looked like a movie!
 
Of course those snippets got treatment after. That's how they are made. In-game, you will have a HUD displaying things like a crosshair, mini-map, ammunition, waypoints, other player's names, etc. That does not mean they cannot be pulled straight from the game then remove those bits after the fact. People do it all the time with 3rd party tools, with footage pulled straight from un-ranked multiplayer servers and the players play the game like actors in a movie. I've linked to BF Cinematic tools in my previous post. Since you still don't believe me, why don't you watch for yourself the results of using in-game footage. ;)

I will re-iterate, just because I'm pointing this out does not mean I'm forgetting the other minute+ of cutscene footage that was used in the BF1 trailer.
It's not that I don't believe you. I believe that you're talking about something entirely different. I'm not bothered about removing the hud. That is so obvious that I didn't think it would need mentioning. I mean how stupid do you think I'm that I'd think that the footage in the trailer doesn't have hud therefore it's not gameplay? I'm talking about full screen after effects to make the scenes look better. Blur, lighting enhancement, and a bunch of other tricks.
 
It's not that I don't believe you. I believe that you're talking about something entirely different. I'm not bothered about removing the hud. That is so obvious that I didn't think it would need mentioning. I mean how stupid do you think I'm that I'd think that the footage in the trailer doesn't have hud therefore it's not gameplay? I'm talking about full screen after effects to make the scenes look better. Blur, lighting enhancement, and a bunch of other tricks.
I don't think you're stupid, but was a bit confused why you were making this claim in the first place which is why myself and others posted other info disputing what you were saying.
This is the quote I was referring to:
It's a trailer, there is not a second of actual gameplay footage in there that I could see.
But you have now clarified this point. I apologize if I didn't understand before. Thank you.

Technically, you and I are talking about the same thing but we didn't realize it. If I understand you correctly, you are saying everyone shouldn't get in a fuss because there's a chance that the in-game footage shown is doctored and dressed up to look better. Fair point. :cool:

I don't necessarily believe anything was added to spiff it up other than HUD item removal since I've seen the game engine capable of these things before, but you do bring up a valid concern because this type of thing is an industry wide problem.
 
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I know there is a lot of love for UE4 here, but nothing I have ever seen from any UE4 game looks as good as what was displayed there. I just hope the gpus can play that at 4k. Though seeing as that the dice guys know how to actually optimize their engine, it should have a better shot at both running smoothly, and looking better.

I'm going to address this particular point about UE4 because I see a lot of misinformation thrown around to disparage UE4 over vendor favoritism.

Firstly, do you know why UE4 is popular?

In today's videogames development, how many platforms do you think videogames developers develop for? If publishers are involved, any large budget game you make had better appear on at least 2 platforms: Xbox One and PS4. Windows PC is actually secondary to these 2. So if you are a developer who needs to develop for multiple platforms, do you want an engine that works on all 3 platforms? Of course!

Unreal Engine is a well known engine that works with Xbox One, PS4 and Windows PC. However, that's not all the Unreal Engine supports. Off my head, I remember it is also supported on iOS, Android, Mac OS and Linux. How about that? If we want ports on more platforms, Unreal Engine is a great start point to ensure easier portability between the platforms.

Can Frostbite do all that? I don't know. As far as I can tell, it's only Xbox One, PS4 and Windows PC, I can't tell you more. Frostbite is not available to me or my company.

And finally, to just hammer home a point that has annoyed me for a while. Unreal Engine 4 is supported on PS4 and Xbox One. It is one of the most popular engines and it works fantastic on the PS4 and Xbox One. The PS4 and Xbox One runs AMD GPUs, yes? So what is the excuse for AMD's poor showing? Bottom line is AMD needs to step up. Apologists for AMD are just giving AMD an excuse not to step up.
 
I'm going to address this particular point about UE4 because I see a lot of misinformation thrown around to disparage UE4 over vendor favoritism.

Firstly, do you know why UE4 is popular?

In today's videogames development, how many platforms do you think videogames developers develop for? If publishers are involved, any large budget game you make had better appear on at least 2 platforms: Xbox One and PS4. Windows PC is actually secondary to these 2. So if you are a developer who needs to develop for multiple platforms, do you want an engine that works on all 3 platforms? Of course!

Unreal Engine is a well known engine that works with Xbox One, PS4 and Windows PC. However, that's not all the Unreal Engine supports. Off my head, I remember it is also supported on iOS, Android, Mac OS and Linux. How about that? If we want ports on more platforms, Unreal Engine is a great start point to ensure easier portability between the platforms.

Can Frostbite do all that? I don't know. As far as I can tell, it's only Xbox One, PS4 and Windows PC, I can't tell you more. Frostbite is not available to me or my company.
Isn't Unreal engine relatively cheap to license? My fiance's school has a Game Art program and even they have licensed copies of it.

Frostbite may have a very small advantage on some graphical features, but it is completely proprietary and quite often a buggy mess.
 
Isn't Unreal engine relatively cheap to license? My fiance's school has a Game Art program and even they have licensed copies of it.

Frostbite may have a very small advantage on some graphical features, but it is completely proprietary and quite often a buggy mess.

No point talking about Frostbite since I am quite certain it is EA proprietary and nobody outside of EA can license it.

As for Unreal Engine, I have to ask the accounts people. But off the top of my head, I believe it is free to download and use/develop/mangle/experiment. Once you actually start selling or shipping your product does the royalty program kick in. Even then, I think you pay royalties only after a certain amount of sales.

The FAQ(Unreal Engine Frequently Asked Questions) says the following:

Once you ship your game or application, you pay Epic 5% of gross revenue after the first $3,000 per product per calendar quarter. For a more detailed explanation of how that works, see the EULA and our product release page. We also offer custom license terms to companies who prefer to pay an upfront license fee in order to lower the royalty rate.

Edit: by the way, all the best to your fiance. We need more people to join the industry. :)
 
Isn't Unreal engine relatively cheap to license? My fiance's school has a Game Art program and even they have licensed copies of it.

Frostbite may have a very small advantage on some graphical features, but it is completely proprietary and quite often a buggy mess.

Free to use as far as I know until you start making money off a product you produce using UE4.
 
It's all opinion either way. My opinion is that many of the games are shitty. Note that I didn't say all, I just said "they continue to make shitty games" with it. Meaning many of the newer titles they've come out with, in my opinion, have not been good.

I still agree that the engine is awesome, I just wish it was used for better games.

As for NFS specifically...it's been hit and miss for years. The original Hot Pursuit is the last one I really remember liking. The new one was alright but it wasn't the same. I did not care for any of the Shift or Underground titles.


That's partly why I'm more excited, not because of battlefield, but mass effect andromeda. I have NEVER played a mass effect game I did not love. The ME series has a better looking art style than any other bioware game by far, even on a dated engine it looked good. The sci fi space opera theme hits WAY more of my preference buttons than some mundane realistic real world sim. And if they made standard reality look as good as they did with that engine, imagine what could be seen in a world where they are not constrained by the real world.
 
Edit: by the way, all the best to your fiance. We need more people to join the industry. :)
Thanks. Unfortunately, she isn't in the game art program. She's getting her degree in animation. Her degree could translate to some work in that industry if she chooses to go that route, but she is a cartoonist first. :D
 
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