EverQuest Producer's Letter July 2022

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Angeliana, Jul 21, 2022.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    And I am saying it doesn't matter, you are laser focused in on a couple of games that had well known issues and are trying to say that the entire industry has those same issues.
  2. Benito EQ player since 2001.

    I said:

    The substantive and effective counter would be to provide examples to the contrary. Example: X MMO was launched in 2019 with Y features and has Z players online on any given day.

    It's bizarre how you refuse to answer the query given the opportunity. The inability for you to provide examples (recent blockbuster MMOs) supports my argument.

    You refuse to substantively respond and a relatively minor statement (making a mountain out of a molehill) is derailing this thread. Good luck.
  3. Absor Developer

    I've been scanning this thread and this sure stood out to me.

    I don't think you know what a graphics engine is... You certainly don't know the slightest about making games and certainly nothing about 20+ year old game.
    Iven, Tallie, Kalamir and 7 others like this.
  4. Slasher Augur


    :) Some people think using higher resolution and better quality assets is a new graphics engine.
  5. Benito EQ player since 2001.

    It's a common idea (nee myth) that gets circulated from time to time.

    There's a running notion of plug-and-play when it comes to engines (or any labor-intensive feature).
  6. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    I’m giving you a raise after the lotto funds clear my account.

    Also, did you see my post about the shirts?
  7. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Yeah that's the way to make the game better, rather than use your vast knowledge of the game to spread some wisdom just belittle someone unlikely to have anything like that kind of knowledge.

    But hey if that cathartic release (of whatever nastiness that was from) made it less likely for you to unleash it on some poor sap who can't handle it then I am happy it was me not them. I hope you feel better now.

    I got something wrong, big deal, woulda been nice to learn something from it but that's not happening here, so moving on.

    Oh and FWIW I know what a Graphics engine is, & what it does - it's the code responsible for rendering the game world from the asset libraries, for collision detection & managing the memory used for those tasks often in conjunction with other "engines" that can draw the sky, draw trees, draw active flora/fauna, manage particle & spell effects, lighting, interactions with the sound engine, AI engines that control NPC behaviour or even dialogue etc. but hey I must be an idiot cus I never worked on a game for 20 years.
    Koshk and Brontus like this.
  8. Slasher Augur


    An example of them updating the graphics engine would be when they added support for shaders, advanced lighting, shadows etc. The real difference you want to see is higher resolution textures that is where the game would start to look better and more updated. Going to 64bit should help here as you will be able to load more assets into memory.
  9. Jedis Arch Mage

    It's not about what you said, it's about how you said it. You were speaking as if you were a definitive source about how and when the "graphics engine was updated" and what goes into it.

    A graphics engine in a video game is one of the most complex systems and isn't plug and play with something else. When a game decides to switch graphics engines, you're easily talking about a year+ of dedicated time for folks working on nothing but that. And that is for new games that make the switch, say from Unity to Unreal. EQ comes with ~24 years of baggage - dozens and dozens of people had their hands in it, hardcoded things, little documentation. All of that stuff that comes with maintaining a codebase that's several decades old. Like it or not, times were very different back in 1998 and people didn't employ best practices or plan on what they built to be around 20+ years later.

    Specifically to your point, they made updates to the existing graphics engine to support newer features in some of the DirectX revisions Eq incorporated; such as adding support for newer DirectX versions and things like shaders and shadows.. I think that's probably what you meant, but you didn't fully understand.
  10. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    And there is nothing to counter because you can't judge an industry based on a single buggy game, a crowd funded game with issues and a piece of vapor war that has been being talked about for around a decade.
  11. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    While a graphics engine update would be nice(DX9 is almost 20 years old!), I actually think they should go deeper than just graphics, especially if 20 year old code is such a big hurdle. Maybe rework the client completely...

    A lot of engine "patterns" from that era, like the "single-threaded gameloop", have issues...
    For example(correct me if Im wrong, Im just an "armchair programmer"):
    Coupling physic calculations with framerate(it actually affects falling damage and falling speed, and who knows what else).
    Only polling for input, once every frame(instead of in a separate thread) and trying to compensate if the framerate skips(why the mouse goes bonkers in lag-piles).

    I imagine having that client-architecture entangled into a complicated mmo client/server setup is just asking for trouble. which is probably why some of the bugs have remained since launch.

    Maybe the server have similar issues? There must be some reason why raidscripts are so sensitive to lag...:confused:
  12. Keella Journeyman

    Pretty hard to infer that tone from what he wrote, but maybe it's more about whether people like the poster or not.

    Good conversation in the the thread this post was from.

    Coming back to the Producer's Letter, 4/10

    Players are frustrated on multiple fronts & we got a fluff piece.
    Koshk likes this.
  13. Angeliana Senior Community Manager

    You will get them when CotF unlocks as you are supposed to.

    The change to windowed mode was a fix to a client crash that occurred on a new EQ install. This kind of issue is very bad for new player acquisition as well as returning players (if you can't install and run the game, you aren't necessarily going to do a lot of troubleshooting to figure out why that is the case before giving up).

    Sometimes we make changes that remove functionality or things that players like, and it's not always what the development team wants, either. But it is usually to solve another problem that can't be avoided.


    Have you created a forum thread suggestion so we can see if this is a change the majority would like to see? If so, please link me.
    vkeil, Benito and Nennius like this.
  14. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    Why would that matter? Just look at what you said above it.

  15. Angeliana Senior Community Manager

    Made it bigger, red, bolded, italicized and even underlined so you can't miss it this time.
    Do not twist my words to fit a narrative you wish them to fit. ;)
    ChiiChii and Nennius like this.
  16. Angeliana Senior Community Manager

    Let me be clear, I am not claiming that is a guaranteed change if a thread is created and the majority love the idea. That is not up to me, it is up to the Producer and Developers.

    I am simply stating that a suggested QOL change helps if I can show it will help the majority instead of only a few to justify time needing to be spent on it.
    Benito and Nennius like this.
  17. Trevor Elder

    that might be true, but also you know as much about making successful games as you have self restraint

    imagine developing a 20+ year old game for a majority of those years and making changes so bad that trilogy private servers have a competitive playerbase with live servers & people reroll on TLPs every year to avoid the newer expansions

    a game that only survives on deliberately making new content so unfriendly that people feel compelled to play (and sub/buy expansions on) multiple accounts

    it was pretty unkind of you to reply that way, especially in such a fragile glass house
    Brontus likes this.
  18. Angeliana Senior Community Manager

    It was not unkind at all when he purposefully and knowingly chose to leave out quite literally half of what was said to fit into his trolling remark.

    P.S. I do not make games, I'm a Community Manager :)
    Nennius likes this.
  19. Benito EQ player since 2001.

    You were the dude that posted a dupe on a weekend for all to see. No one is perfect.
    Nennius likes this.
  20. Timmyboi Dunning Kruger Award Winner

    Thanks for the update JChan. You're one of my favorite DPG employees of all time. You and Dreamweaver who is missed.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.