Convert Planetside 2 to Unreal Engine 3

And with this I think this thread can be laid to rest. "One does not simply walk into a new engine." You are basically looking for an entirely new game when considering changing the game at engine level from what these gentleman are telling us

o7

Lol, epic post by a 12 year old is epic...

Upgrade your brain. How many players are max on bF3 maps? 64, how many players are max on PS2? Yea. Oh and before you ask. Yes, it has something to do with performance of the servers, of the client, of the engine.

If this is the case why are GT660Ti users having no issues with running PS2? Why am I, with a GTX580 having no issues with FPS?

Like I said, it doesn't take more than 60% of a new video card's power to play this game. Its mostly CPU that keeps the FPS down.

Back in beta there was a guy that ran tests with Ps2 to see how much of the CPU core's power the game was utilizing. Thats where I got that information I stated.

In simple terms, the engine is not optimized efficiently.

And have you seen the viewing distance in TERA?? it is total and utter SH*T.... even buildings dont get redendered at full distance...they pop into view out of nowhere as you get closer!!...characters not visible beyond 30m ....if that!!!!

Wow... and you linked a Video which uses SWEETFX to tune the graphics. Really... wow. So we can all agree that PS2 default engine sucks.

When PS2 is totaly unplayable for you then theres something wrong with your hardware or OS/drivers. Migrating to another engine is bs. It means pretty much recreating the whole game from scratch + the unreal engine is crap for this game.

This thread has been answered several times, but conjecture/ignorance/denial/trolling is keeping it alive. Let's get some facts straight, just for fun.

Comparing MMOFPS with MMORPG

Before you start comparing Planetside2 to any other games like DCUO, you need to understand how those games work technically. All RPG style MMOs - from Everquest1 to World of Warcraft to DCUO - make heavy use of clientside simulation to create an illusion of realtime action.

In an MMORPG the server calculates game updates at a low frequency, which in laymans terms is equivalent to 5 FPS or less. It does this by normalising action over time, calculating cause and effect purely through DPS algorithms and other factors.

Clientside, these results are extrapolated into micro-events and simulated. In other words: faked. When a hundred people are hitting a dragon with spells and swords, all of those damage numbers flying up into the air are an illusion of what the server is actually doing.

RPGs are also less fussy about accuracy, and will quantize a lot of information such as object positions and rotations, and how often they are updated. All of this is to avoid unnecessary workload. The position of a character on one client could be different when viewed on another, but in an RPG that doesn't matter because collision detection is rarely required - spells and other actions are based on simple algorithms and interpolation.

In an MMORPG: approximation == optimisation.

Add to this the fact that RPGs are a more social environment where, at any one time, half the population of the server are likely to be idle.

Compare that to an FPS that embraces twitch reflex and it should be immediately obvious that a game like Planetside2 requires a much higher frequency of game updates, and a more accurate interpretation of events. It would not be unfair to state that Planetside2's workload is potentially an order of magnitude higher than any other MMORPG you could mention.


Comparing Forgelight with EngineX

Most arena based shooters limit player count between 32 and 64. The reason is because scalability is not linear. As the number of players increase linearly, the actual manageable workload starts to explode exponentially. So the difference between 32 and 64 players is not x2 the load - it could be x10. And the jump to 128 players could equate to x50.

Most game engines are not built to handle this. Their design has finite scope based on the underlying architecture, and simply throwing 100 players into a scene can bring these engines to their knees. I already pointed out how MMORPGs handle this kind of scale.

Forgelight is SOEs bespoke engine, designed exclusively for MMO games and with Planetside2 in mind. It's built to handle massive scale. It does a phenomenal job of doing it.

It is, however, still in the first two weeks of release and going through the usual optimisation cycle. All things considered I think it's a phenominal engine and the devs should be proud of their achievement.


Converting from EngineX to EngineY

A wise man already mentioned that you do not approach application porting lightly. Well, at this stage of development (a released game) you do not approach engine porting at all.

You would be laughed out of every game studio and publisher's office... and made to clear your desk for someone who knew what they were talking about.


Do I need to justify any of the above to change your mind?

I've been a game developer for 25 years. The answer is no.

UE3 is poop, trust me I'm a doctor...? Please? But I'm serious, Tera is really really bad and you using that to try to secure your argument just bolstered everyone against you.

If this was reddit, you would be de karmaized. You would be wiped off the karma spectrum for bringing up such a dumb topic. I dont think i hate you, but seriously I hope you step on a giant dog turd today. >

1) This engine is fairly new, they are still working the kinks out.

2) This engine renders 5X as much as most others you would look at, its been deliberately designed for this stuff. There is a reason other games limit their players so much.

3) Don't be a tool. Even on a 2 year old laptop I can run the game on medium settings and get 60fps during small-medium engagements. It doesn't drop off until I start fighting around The Crown typically, and even then its still above 30.

I think the OP does'nt understand that companies develop Graphics Engines to do what other engines cannot do. If Unreal Engine could do what this one can do, they would have used Unreal.

Every Engine made for a certain game is designed so the game they want to make can do exactly what they want to do. The only time you use another company's Engine is ONLY if can do what you want it to do thus making it cost effective.

Secondly the OP argues some issues with physics in the game like with grenades, that is just a coding problem. Someone just needs to do some changes to their math to get the grendades and other physics to throw bounce correctly. Changing the Engine for something like that is like taking a chainsaw to a patient with a sprained ankle. Its just nonsense.

And lastley ANY new engine just designed and released is gonna have some issues, it takes time to optimize it. I've been around other MMO's with new engines where my barley capable built PC can handle it then months later stabelizes and it runs like I had no problems.

Moral of the story: Patience is virtue. Also upgrade your system!!!

Those are probably left over from some failed install, lol. Also look at all the icons on his desktop, clearly he knows nothing of optimization. (he has two separate icons for smite.) Clearly, doesn't know how to uninstall/install things........

Figured if you did all that you would have something better to do than troll some PS2 forums. LOL Internet is great.

Dumbest thread ever.

That´s not because of the engine, that´s because the LOD distances are set incorrectly.
Every 3d model in most games use more models for the same object.

Example:
A character at 5000m distance: model detail lvl 20
A character at 350m distance: model detail lvl 50
A character at 100m distance: model detail lvl 85
A character at close range: model detail lvl 100.

The reason they do it like that is because your system won't have to render the textures 100% and the models won't need 100000 polygons rendered if you don't see them close enough anyway.

If you have a game that renders your models INSTANTLY or they were invisible or damn ugly from a distance, then it's most likely a render LOD (Level of Detail) issue that makes your model look ugly because the distances weren't set properly.

If it's not that, it could be the memory (That is an engine related problem, but in UE not known) or it could be a hardware problem.

...I could not agree more!

Stop all this talk about a new engine, specially about engines for only a very small number of players - that doesn't come into question for PS2 anyway.


Does anyone know if PS2 could run via GAIKAI?:
please see my new Thread: "GAIKAI for PSide2"


bye
SFxoFFx

I agree forgelight is utter crap for optimization. I can run Cry3 engine and UT3 engine games full blown high res solid 60+ frames on my 2x4890s just fine.

Oiy... This thread is still going? I thought we established on page 1 that trying to migrate PS2 over from Forgelight to Unreal was just about the stupidest idea anyone's ever had about the games's technical implementation.

Again: It's not your GPU, it's your CPU. It's everyone's CPU. PS2 is CPU-bound, and probably will be for a very long time yet. Unreal and CryENGINE designed to handle a vary, very small amount of network traffic and computing compared to Forgelight. Of course you're going to get better performance when there's roughly only one one-hundredth of PS2's average data flow passing through your Ethernet connection and CPU.

Why not convert it to the WoW/Warcraft 3 engine?

Oh wait... yes that's why because it's not ******* suitable.

Unreal engine does not support the scope or technical requirements of Planetside, in fact the only engine that does is the forgelight engine. You would be a millionaire if you could create an engine that could do better. Go study...