DICE should ditch frostbite

SantaC

Member
Imo frostbite has ran its course. It was once a good engine, but lately it has been surpased by other engines.

The same bugs you saw 10 years ago are still present. I bet DICE would do great again if they used Unreal Engine 5 instead. I remember that the original Mirrors Edge used a modified Unreal Engine 3 engine. I think Battlefield can be great again, but it needs an engine switch.
 
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I like Frostbite, it still produces some of the best looking games. And I like the new BF game despite it needing many changes before launch.
 
By your logic Unreal Engine would be worse because its first iteration was in 1998. I swear after that Unreal 5 demo came out everyone suddenly became a game engine expert and an Unreal Ambassador.
 
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Mario Lopez Football GIF
 
i agree. it's old now. time for something new. i played BF2042 beta on PC cranked right up and if i didn't know better i'd say it doesn't look much better than BF3/4. yknow, games from 8-10 years ago. and it's not even a visual thing. performance/stability ain't great either and don't throw me "iT's A bEtUr LoL". this game is meant to be out next month. it's not a fucking beta.
 
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i agree. it's old now. time for something new. i played BF2042 beta on PC cranked right up and if i didn't know better i'd say it doesn't look much better than BF3/4. yknow, games from 8-10 years ago.
Because they're using the same iteration of Frostbite,when they make their eventual Current gen only game it will probably use Frostbite 4.
 
So if a plumber installs a pipe that leaks, I am not allowed to question his work because he is a plumber and I am not?
No but telling the plumber they should have used XYZ pipes or ABC glue when you don't understand the pipes or the glue is silly. The problem could be the plumbers not the pipe or the glue that cause the problems (bugs). And the unsatisfactory results of the pipes (e.g. graphics) could easily just be out of the scope of the project at-hand. OP is not even questioning anything either he's giving advice. Questioning would be saying something like "why don't they used a third-party engine like Unreal that's stable and widely used/supported?"
 
When the previous gen started, Frostbite was one of the best game engines. BF4 looked and ran amazingly, for the time.
They even managed to make a great implementation of the Mantle API, on PC. I remember using an HD 7950 and getting a nice boost in performance with Mantle.
No only that, it ran very smoothly.
So it's really weird that Frostbite, be it in BFV and BF 2042 sucks in DirectX12. It runs like crap, with a ton of stuttering.
Even stranger is how UE5 managed to impress so much, even on an preview build, but Frostbite on BF 2042 is just so average.
It does have a big map, with a huge draw distance. But it's far from causing as big an impression as UE5, or Decima on Horizon Forbidden West.

I won't say Dice and EA need to get rid of Frostbite, but they need to do a lot more work for it to be up to par, for this generation.
Both in performance and graphics quality.
 
Yeah they definitely need to move on to a different engine, but I don't think unreal engine is it. Most games that use Unreal engine aren't that great. They'd probably be better off using the decima or slipspace engine.
 
What the fuck am I reading....

Also what are those UE5 games people have played??

I mean, man the shilling from Sony really worked for Tim, really well.
 
No but telling the plumber they should have used XYZ pipes or ABC glue when you don't understand the pipes or the glue is silly. The problem could be the plumbers not the pipe or the glue that cause the problems (bugs). And the unsatisfactory results of the pipes (e.g. graphics) could easily just be out of the scope of the project at-hand. OP is not even questioning anything either he's giving advice. Questioning would be saying something like "why don't they used a third-party engine like Unreal that's stable and widely used/supported?"

I was mostly getting at the argument that "you need to have knowledge in order to criticize". Because you can criticize a flaw as what it is, a flaw, without needing to know how to make it better.
In my example with the pipe, a leaking pipe is a leaking pipe. It doesn't matter what glue was used or who made it if the result is wrong or broken, same goes for gamers. If a game has lots of bugs or performs poorly, like in your example, we can't blame one or the other. I agree with you that we cannot blame the engine only or just the developers, but somewhere is a flaw that we are indeed allow to criticize for what it is.

To make it clear, I don't share OPs view that they should completely ditch frostbite, as someone else said, different engines are made for different purposes.
IMHO though, frostbite was always paraded for the graphics it can produce. Back when the engine was new, it really was one if not the "go-to" engine for state of the art graphics. Now, I can only talk about the beta, I do not know if those graphics are final or WIP, but even on ultra, it just feels off imho, especially when it rains everything just looks plastic to me.
 
The only way to know an engine is good, old or needs replacing is to actually use that engine, otherwise how would you know? can you tell us what needs to be updated specifically and what implementation would be better? can you tell us the reasons why that would be so? What makes you think it's not being updated? what are the pain points and what engine would be better suited for the job and why? not just X game uses X engine and i happen to like that game so they should you x engine as well.

That's like saying epic needs to ditch Unreal, what usually happens is they will eventually move over to a new engine take what's good from the older one, build on top of that while being sure not repeat the same pain points as the last one...then Call it something new like bitefrost lol.
 
They just lost a lot of talent particurlarly on graphics programming side couple of years ago for some reason. It takes to time recover from that.
 
The same bugs you saw 10 years ago are still present. I bet DICE would do great again if they used Unreal Engine 5 instead.

Would you care to guess how many bugs Epic is working through right now with the current version of Unreal Engine 5?

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Blaming the engine is literal 62 iq. When it comes to DICE and their Battlefield games, they need see a million complaints on EA forums/reddit and/or literally see if it has an actual negative effect on sales to put forth any effort to fix anything which is why the problems in their games span over multiple BF games. Same goes for most other AAA developers.

Remember the hitbox problem in BC2? Headshots never registered properly half the time from BF2(2005) all the way to the BF3 Beta(2011) because people or not enough people ever complained about it. The bug was obvious too when you got at least half decent at sniping. I had the bring it up on the old EA UK forum when Bad Company 2 was still new and fresh. I never would have said anything if there wasn't a mass PC gamer exodus from CoD to Battlefield. CoD4 and WaW were pretty polished and that's what PC CoD players were used to at the time so mega shit tons of complaints poured into all of the EA forums.
 
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Wut, it looks as good as any, is fully featured for both sp and mp and all kinds of different games (from the MGS-esque stealth of certain BF1 levels to the space battles of Battlefront 2) yet requires way lesser specs to run, look and play great.

It's probably the best engine around tbh. The games not being great is all on EA wanting to turn Battlefield into COD and pushing them to keep pumping them out (even if at times they aren't exactly yearly the intent seemingly always remains).
 
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Imo frostbite has ran its course. It was once a good engine, but lately it has been surpased by other engines.

The same bugs you saw 10 years ago are still present. I bet DICE would do great again if they used Unreal Engine 5 instead. I remember that the original Mirrors Edge used a modified Unreal Engine 3 engine. I think Battlefield can be great again, but it needs an engine switch.

Nah, the problem is the developers, not the engine. They have all the source code, so they could fix the problems - they just don't. That isn't Frostbite's fault.

UE5 is incredible, but an engine cannot magically make a game better.
 
Nah, the problem is the developers, not the engine. They have all the source code, so they could fix the problems - they just don't. That isn't Frostbite's fault.
In case of Frostbite blame might be better directed at EA management. They wanted to make Frostbite universal engine at EA from FiFA to BF.
 
they somehow managed to include leveloutions in the ps3 version of battlefield 4 and that's a miracle as far as i'm concerned and something like that can only happen on a highly optimized engine ...
 
 
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Could be worse too, Tekken 7 looks like shit compared to 6, mostly thanks to the engine switch....it's cheaper than making your own engine tho.
 
Imo frostbite has ran its course. It was once a good engine, but lately it has been surpased by other engines.

The same bugs you saw 10 years ago are still present. I bet DICE would do great again if they used Unreal Engine 5 instead. I remember that the original Mirrors Edge used a modified Unreal Engine 3 engine. I think Battlefield can be great again, but it needs an engine switch.

it would mean the complete failure of EA on the engineering side in a more than a decade long project.

if it happens it's going to look really bad on them, but they won't care since they make Most of their money on shitty games they barely update every year (I am looking at you Fifa)
 


The Evolution of Frostbite Engine 2008 - 2021. Destruction in Battlefield Series.
Graphics Comparison of Battlefield Bad Company, Battlefield 1943, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3, Battlefield 4, Battlefield 1, Battlefield V and Battlefield 2024 BETA.

Timestamps
Intro & Battlefield Hardline 00:00
Remote Explosives vs Building 00:29
Granade vs Building 06:51
Rocket Launcher vs Building 11:22
Tank vs Building 17:24

Battlefield Bad Company, Bad Company 2, 1943 and Battlefield 3 Captured on PS3.
Battlefield 4, Battlefield 1, Battlefield V captured on PS4 Pro.
Battlefield 2042 BETA captured on PS5.
 
i agree. it's old now. time for something new. i played BF2042 beta on PC cranked right up and if i didn't know better i'd say it doesn't look much better than BF3/4. yknow, games from 8-10 years ago. and it's not even a visual thing. performance/stability ain't great either and don't throw me "iT's A bEtUr LoL". this game is meant to be out next month. it's not a fucking beta
It's 2 things, 1. it's cross gen and 2. it's a low effort game.

Nothing they've done even is on the level of killzone shadowfall, but it's a reasonably capable engine and dice knows it. Surely they can update it.

The problem I have with it (beyond the bugs) is that EA is getting more and more insistent on all their developers using FB as opposed to their own, or licensing unreal.
 
Imo frostbite has ran its course. It was once a good engine, but lately it has been surpased by other engines.

The same bugs you saw 10 years ago are still present. I bet DICE would do great again if they used Unreal Engine 5 instead. I remember that the original Mirrors Edge used a modified Unreal Engine 3 engine. I think Battlefield can be great again, but it needs an engine switch.
no
 
But its not just DICE that is using it. EA definitely shares the engine expertise among their other developers also.
Changing an already successful (and beautiful) engine won't earn them bucks. And its not like their larger audience is even gonna notice the changes.
 
What other game engines can do giant maps, tons of players, ground and air vehicles and lots of destruction?

Can Unreal Engine do all this too?

If so, what games have replicated BF using UE? I don't know. Just asking.

Maybe other game engines can do this shit too, but nobody wants to put into an effort doing a BF kind of game?
 
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I thought Frostbite was designed largely for the battlefield games specifically.

In my opinion both EA's Frostbite and Ubisoft's Snowdrop tend to punch above their weight.
 
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