Borderlands 3

[Perkel]

They released patch for that. And yeah it was issue with texture streaming, when you looked through scope textures would reload in distance often causing stutter.

Overall it is Unreal Engine 4 game. You can create indies on that engine but anything more compex and it shits the bed.
X-com 2 is another example of that.

 

[abija]

Yeah blame the engine for cheaping out on software engineers (or hiring based on diversity, fuck knows anymore).

 

[Sykar]

So really retarded story, boring villains, anti climatic retarded death of a former playable character, hardly anything mindblowing new in terms of gameplay and Epic Store exclusive. Why should I buy this again?

 

[Child of Malkav]

Overall it is Unreal Engine 4 game. You can create indies on that engine but anything more compex and it shits the bed.
X-com 2 is another example of that.

I thought UE 4 is one of the best game engines. At least that's what it's said in various articles, unless they're blatantly lying.
So what is the best engine?

 

[Wunderbar]

So what is the best engine?

dev's own proprietary one

 

[Child of Malkav]

So what is the best engine?

dev's own proprietary one

So they have to make a new one for every game? Or is based on the type of game they're making? Different engines for different games?

 

[passerby]

So what is the best engine?

dev's own proprietary one

Dev has a full C++ source code access to UE, literally everything that can be done in propietary engine, could also be done in UE by rewriting part of it.

Decission to make proprietary engine instead of using UE can only be a purely bussiness one:
If the game engine requirements are basic enough, or the game publisher is big enough, then the cost of developping the engine is smaller than the 5% revenue cut of all current and future games.
If licensing conditions of UE will change in the future, publisher with propietary engine will not be dependent on Epic, to fully utilise years worth of accumulated codebase and employee experience.

 

[Perkel]

I thought UE 4 is one of the best game engines. At least that's what it's said in various articles, unless they're blatantly lying.
So what is the best engine?

There is no best engine. Every engine is build to accommodate various design decisions.
UE3 engine was perfect for making linear games with baked in shadows, lighting and everything else.
Which is why if it was very popular with TPS/FPP games last generation of consoles.

UE4 on other hand had to grasp with idea that everyone wants to build open world games now and clearly UE4 struggles with that in default form. IF it was great open world engine Borderlands 3 and other UE4 games wouldn't have level loadings but yet they do.

So either you build yourself engine to fit your game best or you pick something like UE4 and build around problems.
For example CDPR has their own engine RedEngine which basically allows you for completely seamless open world without any loadings and at the same time allows for very detailed indoor spaces, also without loadings.

Dev has a full C++ source code access to UE, literally everything that can be done in propietary engine, could also be done in UE by rewriting part of it.
Decission to make proprietary engine instead of using UE can only be a purely bussiness one:

Just because you can rewrite parts of engine it doesn't mean you should or it is good idea. Also it is not exactly easy because you lose support, updates and your are left alone with debugging everything. So if you want to go rewriting huge parts of engine then why even bother with using UE to begin with ? Just build your own engine.

Each engine build was build based on some type of game which leads to engine having issues with other types of games.
Decision based around idea that your game will have cutting edge graphics could lead to nasty sideeffects when you just want to make small game and game which was supposed to be maybe 1GB total becomes multi GIG stuff with abnoxious loadings and bunch of crap you don't need.

 

[abija]

Get the fuck out, you are clueless. Devs that can't make UE4 work aren't capable of writing their own competent engine. Or better yet go enjoy Quake Champions, Bethesda's wigs were too cheap to either hire (more) devs able to use/understand id tech, or pay for UE4.

This isn't some topdown arpg to get by with hipster coded shit like PoE. The devs working on Gearbox wouldn't be able to come up with a decent engine in a decade, with full UE source code in their hands.

 

[Gerrard]

PoE barely "gets by", that engine is a fucking mess. Or maybe it would get by if they didn't decide they need to have 5 million particle effects on the screen at any given time.

 

[passerby]

For example CDPR has their own engine RedEngine which basically allows you for completely seamless open world without any loadings and at the same time allows for very detailed indoor spaces, also without loadings.

I've watched a presentation by CDPR dev from some conference on how they optimised their open world.
The engine itself doesn't contain any advanced optimisation algorithms to handle open worlds and is extremely rudimentary in that regard.

They had an external tool that run on a server and constantly analysed the current build worldspace with refresh time of few hours. It was generating statistics of memory usage, lighting, polycount budget, etc. for every spot in the game.
Reports from this data could be displayed in a graphic form of a gameworld map used to find badly optimised spots.
Whenever devs testing current build encountered bad performance spot, they could use informations generated by the tool to figure out what is the cause and manually optimise assets, lods, lights and write streaming engine scripts for surrounding area.
For the next game they planned to upgrade the tool to automatically perform the most mundane worldspace optimisations.
You could drop the same army of underpaid eastern european junior developpers, to work alongside level artists and manually optimize the shit out of every single spot of the worldspace, on current UE4, or Frostbite and achieve even better results most likely.

The previous iteration of Red Engine used in W2, had tiny levels separated by pairs of doors and corridors, or rocky paths with a pair of climbing spots, to hide loadings ME elevator style.
While the character couldn't jump and was glued to the walkmesh and they were so proud they can have a bridge you can walk under ( but not jump from, unless it's a scripted animation) unlike with Aurora Engine.
They were so proud of these magnificient developments, that they even used them as marketing bullet points

Think where their games codebase could be now, if they could start with current UE instead of developing such barebone patchwork of an engine from scratch.
When they started UE wasn't what it is now, neither licensing was so cheap. But these days priopietary engine makes sense only if you are big enough to fund it with less than 5% of the revenue, or the game idea has a very basic requirements in terms of engine features.

 

[Perkel]

For example CDPR has their own engine RedEngine which basically allows you for completely seamless open world without any loadings and at the same time allows for very detailed indoor spaces, also without loadings.

Think where their games codebase could be now, if they could start with current UE instead of developing such barebone patchwork of an engine from scratch.

Their games would weight 150GBs still had closed levels with shitty streaming of textures that can't load quickly enough.
Texture streaming issue is like footprint of UE games which points out clearly that whatever Epic is using isn't up to snuff with rest of engines. Or it is some kind of cost they had to pay in order to do different stuff.

 

[passerby]

In W3 you'll have to stare at an empty white screen untill all textures loads fully, plus like I've said they've just scripted manually the shit out of when exactly preload and render stuff, and optimised level geometry, assets and lighting.
Not every studio has 100 junior devs working for 1k$/month at their disposal.

Their games would weight 150GBs still had closed levels with shitty streaming of textures that can't load quickly enough.

Do you think it's the engine that made these textures weight 150GB, or maybe it's their size, maybe their size has something to do with how long it takes to stream them ? Who knows, it's a mystery.

Texture streaming issue is like footprint of UE games which points out clearly that whatever Epic is using isn't up to snuff with rest of engines. Or it is some kind of cost they had to pay in order to do different stuff.

Or it has actually so efficient streaming, that most devs just rely on it and don't bother manually writing scripts to preload textures every step of the way.

 

[Lone Wolf]

And almost any enemy after L10 is a bullet sponge

I mean, this kind of statement just doesn't align with the reality of my lvl 42 TVH Zane melting bosses in ~4 seconds, after struggling with them in NVH. Normal enemies take 1-2 hits. It comes down to the guns, ultimately.

 

[Gerrard]

Do you think

 

[DalekFlay]

In W3 you'll have to stare at an empty white screen untill all textures loads fully

I would easily prefer a longer loading screen to having textures obviously pop-in after a load screen. Especially when what follows the load screen is a cutscene with cloesups. Fucking ADHD motherfuckers who have an aneurysm during loading screens making me suffer bullshit pop-in pisses me off.

 

[passerby]

Agree on that, was just pointing out that such choices have nothing to do with the engine being bad.

The white screen before cutscenes makes your eyes bleed at night though, why not make it black ffs ?
Maybe so that said ADHD monkeys don't get confused that their TV, or console stopped working, while you can't display any loading indicator on your loading screen, because marketing advertaised that the game has no loading screens ?

 

[Perkel]

Do you think it's the engine that made these textures weight 150GB, or maybe it's their size, maybe their size has something to do with how long it takes to stream them ? Who knows, it's a mystery.

Or it has actually so efficient streaming, that most devs just rely on it and don't bother manually writing scripts to preload textures every step of the way.

Then why oh why so many UE games weight so much ? Witcher 3 open world bahemoth is around 30gbs.
Gears of War 4 is around 130GBs, X-com 1 and 2 also have huge footprints.
Also so efficient streaming that apparently causes issues in load of EU games.

Also you seem to be confusing performance tuning to asset loading.
Take any scene from Witcher 3 even the most complex and you won't see texture streaming issues.
Load even the crappiest looking borderlands gears or whatever scene and you will see textures slowly catching up. So this is direct comparison of texture streaming tech and RedEngine shits all over UE4 in this case.

No general engine will be better than engine build specifically for game.
Star Citizen is best example of that. They wanted to use Cryengine because it was "state of the art" engine.
And yet they had to rewritte pretty much everything about it to use it as game was not created to handle scale of objects and distances.

 

[passerby]

If you double texture resolution you quadruple memory usage, no engine has anything to do with that. Streaming in any engine is pretty much the same.
For cutscenes, or level loading they just display totally not a loading screen longer, until textures get fully loaded, it's a matter of choice not some magic streaming tech.
For open world traversing, if you start to stream at higher distance you can't spot it, but you'll use more memory and memory bandwidth, it's an optimisation choice simillar to LODs distances.

Maybe the fact that W3 textures are not super high res has something to do with their small memory footprint and possibility to stream them earlier ?
Maybe it looks so great despite moderate textures size, because the assets are very well optimised ?
Or, maybe their engine can bend the laws of physics and mathematics ?

 

[Gerrard]

Do you think it's the engine that made these textures weight 150GB, or maybe it's their size, maybe their size has something to do with how long it takes to stream them ? Who knows, it's a mystery.

Or it has actually so efficient streaming, that most devs just rely on it and don't bother manually writing scripts to preload textures every step of the way.

Then why oh why so many UE games weight so much ? Witcher 3 open world bahemoth is around 30gbs..

First of all, W3 is 40GB with both DLCs, not 30. Secondly, you're retarded if you think W3's world is somehow big. And lastly, W3 doesn't even have textures that are especially high resolution (the environment ones in particular).
https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/4lsevp/toussaint_map_size_roughly_80_km2/
Around 54km2 with all DLC included. Considering that Just Cause 2 was around 1000km2 and it was like 5GB, W3 is pretty fucking bloated I guess.

In W3 you'll have to stare at an empty white screen untill all textures loads fully

I would easily prefer a longer loading screen to having textures obviously pop-in after a load screen. Especially when what follows the load screen is a cutscene with cloesups. Fucking ADHD motherfuckers who have an aneurysm during loading screens making me suffer bullshit pop-in pisses me off.

Just close your eyes nigga.

 

[Gerrard]

You can get this turd for 40-50% off already and it hasn't even been 3 months.
So much for that best selling title.

 

[Orma]

well 2k does expect outer worlds to sell much more

 

[LESS T_T]

Drew was persistent, but alas, they excelled at producing bunch of non-answers on the fly: https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-...nteractive-software-inc-ttwo-q3-2020-ear.aspx

Drew Crum -- Analyst

Okay, thanks, guys. Good afternoon what has led to the reduced view on Borderlands 3? Can you comment on how the game has performed on PC to date? And without getting into specific numbers, what are your expectations for the game once it's available on steam?

Strauss H. Zelnick -- Executive Chairman And Chief Executive Officer

Well, Borderlands is actually performing better than our original outlook. It's sold in nearly 8 million units. We've launched one of the downloadable content packs. We have three more expected at the moment. And in fact, the season passes attach rate is a record for the series and a record for 2K at this point of the title's life cycle, and we expect that the Borderlands 3 will set a record in terms of net bookings for the franchise. So our expectations remain solid and very strong. It's a great big hit for us.

Lainie Goldstein -- Chief Financial Officer

Right. When we went into the Christmas season, we had really seen real excitement for the title, and we've lifted our expectations a little bit higher than we had it at the very beginning of the year, which was very high to begin with. So we didn't meet those -- that higher expectations, but we did meet our original very high expectations for the title. So that's why we're bringing it down slightly, but it's very high from the beginning of the year.

Strauss H. Zelnick -- Executive Chairman And Chief Executive Officer

This is -- again, this is a massive hit by any standard. But we've always said this when we guide and when we revise, we aim to be accurate. And sometimes, the vagaries of the entertainment business will be that we don't exactly get it right.

Drew Crum -- Analyst

Okay, fair enough. And just a follow-up. I think in the initial press release, you indicated that the sell-through on PC was quite strong. Again, what are your expectations for the game once it launches on steam?

Strauss H. Zelnick -- Executive Chairman And Chief Executive Officer

We continue to have very high expectations. As I said, we fully expect that Borderlands 3 will set a record for the franchise.

Drew Crum -- Analyst

Got it? Okay, thanks, guys.

 

[Metro]

Lainie Goldstein -- Chief Financial Officer

Checks out. Anyway, not touching this shit if they insist on keeping Denuvo on it.

 

[DalekFlay]

That 8 million number coming after a PC specific question is pretty misleading. The question everyone wants answered is how Borderlands 3's first 6 months as an Epic exclusive compare to Borderlands 2's first 6 months as a Steamworks only game (didn't say exclusive so I don't trigger you guys).