Support NeoGAF

[Sega Orphan]

Looking at what they got, I find it hard to believe that they went in big on slipspace. If they had, We probably would have ended up with a completely new from the ground up engine. This is more on the competency of 343. We will see the difference once turn 10 unveils their new motorsport running on their new engine.

I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I read that 343 considered porting everything over to UE5. Still something isn’t right, it’s obviously still taking them a geological age to do anything with what they have.

I personally think having to have the game on the Xbox One was the biggest problem for them, in addition to having less time to create the engine than they would have needed. Halo Infinate actually nailed the Halo look and feel, which was the thing they really needed to get right after their previous efforts.
The gameplay in Halo Infinite was excellent.
The biggest issue for me with Halo was the pop in, which I thinking was because they couldn't tailor the engine to take advantage of the XSX SSD. On top of that, the game lacked that polish I wanted to see. Stuff like ground deformation when the warthog was travelling for instance. Again, I think that came down to time, and I also don't think 343i are the most talented studio from a graphical point of view. Diversity over talent comes home to roost.

 

[arvfab]

But ForzaTech(or Unreal or id Tech) can't make a Halo game that plays like a Halo game.

And how does this influence the fact that an engine is bad/good?

So any game which has a custom engine just for that game, automatically means it has a good engine?

 

[Sega Orphan]

OP I understand your thought but you have to see that all those engines are not general purpose and solve specific issues those studios needed to have solved.
Its just cheaper to use UE than building your own general purpose engine.

I would agree with you if we were talking about a small single dev, but we are talking about MS. They have a number of high quality engines to base it off, they have the programming knowledge and infrastructure to do the work without destroying their game output, and they would have the ability and profile to promote the use with third parties.

 

[Papacheeks]

I had seen this topic mentioned before on a forum but couldn't find it in Gaf, but it really makes good sense, at least to me.
Microsoft now has some of the best first party game engines in the buisness.
Id tech 7 (id)
Forzatech (Turn 10)
Creation Engine (Bethesda)
Slipspace (343i)
Void Engine (Arkane)
And on top of that they will be having some cutting edge Engine tech coming in via Activision Blizzard such as IW Engine (Infinity Ward).

Microsoft is in a great position to take the best of all those engines to create a brand new cutting edge engine that incorporates all the DX12 U extensions such as Mesh Shaders, ML, SFS etc and then put it out as a third party middleware engine to compete against Unreal Engine. In that space there is only really UE, Unity and a bit of Crytech, which apparently is hard to program for.

With MSs software pedigree and coding resources they could put together an engine which would rival UE5.
Infact they are the company in the best position to do so. Their DX12U API is the leading API on PC, and Xbox by default. This could allow MS to chase other buisness areas such as Hollywood movie production like Epic is doing.
It creates another ecosystem for MS.
I think it compliments their existing products and Epic need some real opposition in that space.

Why not GAF? Why not?

Their API is why they are behind development and tool wise. It also is what added to halting of engine development for Finalization like UInreal 5. MS needs to fix their internal development of software engineers before they take on a actual Graphics engine.

 

[winjer]

Their API is why they are behind development and tool wise. It also is what added to halting of engine development for Finalization like UInreal 5. MS needs to fix their internal development of software engineers before they take on a actual Graphics engine.

Yes, MS needs to improve their APIs, SDK and OS. And a solution to shader compiling would also be nice, especially on PC.
But they are too busy making Ui changes, round corners, transparencies and the like.

 

[Snake29]

iD Tech is already the best engine out there. what more do they want?

Performance wise, i say one of the best. But graphics wise...it's mostly flat looking, not that high res and looks a bit stiff.

I'm not a fan of ID Tech in general.

 

[3liteDragon]

When was the last time you saw a game using Creation Engine? Bethesda have rebuilt the engine and with Starfield we will see the results of that.

Elder Scrolls 6 to redefine next-gen Creation Engine 2 technology

Bethesda is tweaking its next-gen Creation Engine 2 tech specifically for Elder Scrolls 6's design, Starfield will pave the way.

www.tweaktown.com

And we haven't seen real-time gameplay running on Creation Engine 2 yet, so no I wouldn't jump the gun & consider it one of their BEST engines overall alongside id Tech 7 & ForzaTech just yet.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Instead of creating a new engine they need to have Direct Storage available for all developers to use.

 

[winjer]

Instead of creating a new engine they need to have Direct Storage available for all developers to use.

Exactly.
This generation already started a year and a half ago, and we are still waiting for MS to finish and release Direct Storage.
Not to mention that PCs already had nVMEs bottlenecked by the old file system and I/O, for many year prior.

Unfortunately MS is too concerned with their Windows Store, Ui redesigns and breaking and fixing Windows 11.

 

[3liteDragon]

Instead of creating a new engine they need to have Direct Storage available for all developers to use.

Well that's part of DX12U, so I'm sure all their devs have already integrated that into their engines. I think Hellblade II might be the first game to use it tbh.

 

[01011001]

Performance wise, i say one of the best. But graphics wise...it's mostly flat looking, not that high res and looks a bit stiff.

I'm not a fan of ID Tech in general.

wtf? did you play Doom Eternal? that game has such a high amount of small detail in every corner it's crazy.

pretty sure your impressions are from iD Tech 6, but iD Tech 7 was a gigantic leap in quality

 

[Snake29]

wtf? did you play Doom Eternal? that game has such a high amount of small detail in every corner it's crazy.

pretty sure your impressions are from iD Tech 6, but iD Tech 7 was a gigantic leap in quality

It looked good, but something about ID tech was never really interesting graphics wise for me. I was never blown away about the graphics of any of the ID tech games. It was always down to the performance.

 

[01011001]

It looked good, but something about ID tech was never really interesting graphics wise for me. I was never blown away about the graphics of any of the ID tech games. It was always down to the performance.

I would agree for iD Tech 6 and earlier, but imo with iD Tech 7 they completely fixed all the issues.

we only have a single iD Tech 7 game so far and so we only saw a single style done with it. imo to fully judge it we'll have to wait and see how Wolfenstein 3 will look like since that has a more realistic style and not one as stylized as Doom.

but Doom Eternal has an impressive amount of depth on every single surface for a last gen game. so that "flat" look you mentioned is completely fixed in iD Tech 7. that was indeed an issue in iD Tech 6 and earlier.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Well that's part of DX12U, so I'm sure all their engines already have that integrated into their engines. I think Hellblade II might be the first game to use it tbh.

Man that's a long way off. They've been talking about Direct Storage since 2020. Starfield needs to be using it.

 

[Martinski43]

Well they have Idtech now and it’s one of the best so I don’t see a need.

 

[Sean Mirrsen]

UE5 is too good to ignore, but a competing engine would be nice if they somehow have feature on par to it.

Unigine 2 is pretty good, but it hasn't got the community tools yet, it's only recently available to common game makers.

 

[Roxkis_ii]

I think Microsoft should focus on getting games out the door first and foremost.

 

[Decontamination Silo]

Nah

 

[Sega Orphan]

Both Blizzard and Zenimax Online Studios also use their own thing.

Zenimax Online Studios is working on a new IP with a brand new engine

It was actually known for a while and has supposedly been a thing since 2018, but its great to see more official confirmation from the Lead Graphics Engineer.

www.neogaf.com

Microsoft also owns the Hex engine used in Killer Instinct, which was really good for action games.

These examples I mentioned are meant for specific use cases like Slipspace with 343i. They should not force devs to use one engine for everything. It would be like Microsoft making a mandate that all their software be developed in C# with .NET framework.

Void Engine and by extension engine tech used by MachineGames and Tango Gameworks and also Valve's Source Engine and COD's IW engine are all based off id Tech. What Microsoft is license id Tech to third party like it was the case when it directly competed with Unreal.

I think idtech is a great engine, for sure, and along with Forzatech it's very, very efficient on CPU workloads. Alot of engines just suck with CPU resources such as RedEngine and Cryengine. However Epic has bought alot of companies that help UE such as Quixel and RAD tools. They have massive libraries for textures that idtech doesn't have. There are some areas where UE has advantages, which isn't surprising considering the amount of money Epic has spent on it compared to what id has done on idtech.
MS has the money and the ability to give it those resources.

 

[Thirty7ven]

See this is why the fanbases are just different. They really are.

 

[xiseerht]

I am interested to see what the Forzatech engine can do on Fable. We have only seen it used on driving games. So Forzatech might end up being the best engine of them all. But id Tech is clearly no joke either.

 

[Sega Orphan]

I think Microsoft should focus on getting games out the door first and foremost.

I mean, they outdid Sony with first party game output last year including Forza H 5, Deathloop, Psychonauts 2 and Halo Infinate.
The "xbox has no games" meme is pretty dead at this point.

 

[Sega Orphan]

And we haven't seen real-time gameplay running on Creation Engine 2 yet, so no I wouldn't jump the gun & consider it one of their BEST engines overall alongside id Tech 7 & ForzaTech just yet.

No realtime gameplay, but the trailer was running on Creation Engine 2 and used no cinematic tools whatsoever, and that trailer looked impressive from an IQ point of view.

 

[JCK75]

Epic in a short time has become the Monopoly they claimed they were trying to prevent..
if someone comes along and makes a superior engine and the result is their company is wiped out forever... I will celebrate personally.

 

[Sega Orphan]

I am interested to see what the Forzatech engine can do on Fable. We have only seen it used on driving games. So Forzatech might end up being the best engine of them all. But id Tech is clearly no joke either.

I think so as well. They clearly have spent alot of time rebuilding the Engine, and I am really hanging to see more of Forza MS.

 

[3liteDragon]

Man that's a long way off. They've been talking about Direct Storage since 2020. Starfield needs to be using it.

You know I just realized something, developer previews for this went out in July 2021 & it was released to devs in Q4 2021 I think, games like Starfield which started production in 2018 won't be using this tech cause it needs to be built from the ground up with DS in mind. I'm actually starting to doubt whether Hellblade II will even use DS, cause that game went into production most likely during the latter half of 2021 & tech related stuff like this for games are all planned out thoroughly during the pre-production phase.

I think there's a MUCH better chance of Xbox first-party games that are in pre-production as of right now using DirectStorage than Hellblade 2 tbh. And MS supporting Windows 10 & 11 sounds confusing to me, I don't know how you make that work on two different OS's if you're developing a game with DirectStorage in mind, where one OS (Windows 11) has a superior storage stack that's supposed to "unlock the full potential of DirectStorage" according to MS while Windows 10's using the old software storage stack that they've always been using.

DirectStorage Developer Preview now available! - DirectX Developer Blog

DirectStorage for PC has entered its first developer preview phase! If you are a developer that watched our GSL talk and signed up to be part of our NDA developer preview program, you’ll be happy to know that we have started rolling out our first preview kit to you. For those of you that already...

devblogs.microsoft.com

 

[Roxkis_ii]

I mean, they outdid Sony with first party game output last year including Forza H 5, Deathloop, Psychonauts 2 and Halo Infinate.
The "xbox has no games" meme is pretty dead at this point.

Wow, your right. I actually forgot about all those games. I guess they didn't leave an impression.

 

[Star-Lord]

.

 

[Belthazar]

There's a well documented and supported engine that most professionals in the business know how to work with... And it also charges a very reasonable fee to be used.

Why do you think developers would be willing to put the effort to master a new one that would probably be a bitch to use for at least a couple years?

The only reason a developer has for having to learn a new engine is working in a studio that uses a proprietary. And in that case they would be around a lot of people that know it by heart so there would be no struggle of an entire development team figuring things out as they go.

 

[Papacheeks]

I think Microsoft should focus on getting games out the door first and foremost.

Thats the problem with their tools. Everything specifically Xbox is tied to DX12 API. Which is worked on by Windows team. Direct storage would benefit them even more but their instructions on the console are held back by Directx12 development. So if your having issues with that on top of using a engine thats not finalized like Unreal 5 then your going to have tons of issues. ID tech 7 is bethesda, and supports multiple API's like Vulkan. So they are probably safe project wise.

But they also are making PC versions which takes a good amount of time to test.

Microsoft needs to get their shit together.

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

I had seen this topic mentioned before on a forum but couldn't find it in Gaf, but it really makes good sense, at least to me.
Microsoft now has some of the best first party game engines in the buisness.
Id tech 7 (id)
Forzatech (Turn 10)
Creation Engine (Bethesda)
Slipspace (343i)
Void Engine (Arkane)
And on top of that they will be having some cutting edge Engine tech coming in via Activision Blizzard such as IW Engine (Infinity Ward).

Microsoft is in a great position to take the best of all those engines to create a brand new cutting edge engine that incorporates all the DX12 U extensions such as Mesh Shaders, ML, SFS etc and then put it out as a third party middleware engine to compete against Unreal Engine. In that space there is only really UE, Unity and a bit of Crytech, which apparently is hard to program for.

With MSs software pedigree and coding resources they could put together an engine which would rival UE5.
Infact they are the company in the best position to do so. Their DX12U API is the leading API on PC, and Xbox by default. This could allow MS to chase other buisness areas such as Hollywood movie production like Epic is doing.
It creates another ecosystem for MS.
I think it compliments their existing products and Epic need some real opposition in that space.

Why not GAF? Why not?

Unreal engine is the product of decades of hundreds of development teams' cumulative efforts to update.

MS cannot compete with Unreal. No single company can unless they release it as a middleware engine available to everyone and even then they'd be years behind Unreal in terms of ubiquity and community contribution.

 

[Kokoloko85]

They will probably buy Unreal and Steam in the next 10 years

 

[SSfox]

Microsoft need to do many things, but this definitely not one of it.

 

[oldergamer]

I dont think they need to do that. They can improve on what they have and even help make unreal better. No need to try and compete with unreal

 

[ZywyPL]

UE already has the newest and layest tech, it's a preview of what's coming in the next few years due to Epic and Nvidia/Intel/AMD/MS close cooperation, UE is basically the playground for those companies to inplement and test their new tech, so I really don't see a single reason why MS would need to spend a ton of time and money to at the end of the day achieve pretty much the same.

 

[NinersAllDay]

They bought one. It's called ID Tech.

 

[SportsFan581]

I'm surprised MS hasn't entered this field, as a core tenet of their business is leasing software to enterprise businesses. Would seem like a natural thing to do given the amount of talent that they already have in-house in that area. Plus, there would likely be benefits for the Xbox gaming division, potentially both performance and financial gains, to use an engine tightly integrated with the GDK.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Unreal engine is first class, a trust worthy engine.

 

[Whitecrow]

Calling cutting edge to everything with the word engine on it is a bit of a stretch...

 

[Bo_Hazem]

This usually happens only 1 out of 343 times, thou.

 

[THEAP99]

Unreal is generic

 

[DevilHunterX0]

The WeBoughtEveryone Engine, perhaps?

 

[ResilientBanana]

They should buy EA for the Frostbite engine.

Hell to the fuck no.

 

[rickybooby87]

They should really double down on UE, more specifically, UE5.

 

[DeepEnigma]

 

[ethomaz]

What is exactly is the business reason for that?
Engines gives very low profit… if not most were not fighting to survive.

Unreal Engine is a exception because games like Fortnite cover it.

 

[reksveks]

Instead of creating a new engine they need to have Direct Storage available for all developers to use.

And 3liteDragon winjer

First game using direct storage will be Forspoken. How much it is using it? Who knows.

 

[winjer]

And 3liteDragon winjer

First game using direct storage will be Forespoken. How much it is using it? Who knows.

I wonder why they choose that game. From every thing I saw about it, it ranges from annoying to bland.
Shame they didn't pick a better game to show off the tech at launch.

 

[Mister Wolf]

And 3liteDragon winjer

First game using direct storage will be Forspoken. How much it is using it? Who knows.

Thats beautiful news. Thank you. Now no excuse for Starfield. Guess I will be buying a nvme today.

 

[Tripolygon]

Why does MS need to compete against UE5 when none of the main Sony studios use it?

The only Sony first party using UE4 I can think of is … Bend lol. All the main ones use proprietary engines.

Pixel Opus and Housemarque used UE4 also.