Best RPG engine

[Andhaira]

Sowhat is in your opinion the best engine for crpgs? You have a lot of choices, such as the infinty engine, aurora engine, the elder scrolls engines, might and magic engine, divine divinity, etc.

I personally go for the engine powering Ultima 7, U7-2, and Ultima Online.

Its so versatile and so much ispossible with it, even today. No other engine has come close.

What about you?

 

[RK47]

Excluding the combat, Ultima engine seems best. But whenever you hit the C key while the danger theme song is playing RTWP seems like the stupidest combat system ever.

 

[caliban]

Infinity wasn't bad for its time, and I like what CDP did with the Aurora Engine.

 

[Andhaira]

Yeah I agree combat wasn't U7's strong point. Really don't know what happened; the comabt was great in u6

 

[JarlFrank]

I really like the Infinity Engine. Mainly because of its style.

 

[DraQ]

One that gets the job done.

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[mondblut]

IE sucks. Combat is bad, interiors load separately and hand-drawn levels are inefficient and extremely space-consuming. Makes me feel I am wandering over a large jpeg, too.

I guess Fallout engine is better among the bunch. Tile-based yet good-looking and has TB combat. Functional, efficient and looks decent enough.

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

ToEE's engine. Awesome combat, and it also looks very nice. I hope someone will build a good, roleplaying-heavy module with it.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Infinity Engine, IMO.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Bioware Aurora Engine, most definitely.

From it we got NWN, NWN2, The Witcher, and KOTOR 1 and 2. Ok, those last two were built on the Odyssey Engine, but that is just a rehash of Aurora.

 

[Texas Red]

Infinity wasn't bad for its time

It still looks better than any RPG to date and has better combat than NWN, KotOR or whatever.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

If JA2 counts, it's that. Otherwise, I don't really know. I suppose Fallout's engine doesn't have a lot of all kinds of flaws I hate.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I would say the Morrowind engine, except the NPC interaction. Lots of items, extremely persistent, vast, unrestrictive. Except Ultima 7 no other game gave me that sense of freedom.

For an even better engine I would take Morrowind and mix it with Gothics NPCs. Add in some really good storytelling, balance and character development and it would be the perfect (for me) RPG.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

I would say the Morrowind engine, except the NPC interaction. Lots of items, extremely persistent, vast, unrestrictive. Except Ultima 7 no other game gave me that sense of freedom.

For an even better engine I would take Morrowind and mix it with Gothics NPCs. Add in some really good storytelling, balance and character development and it would be the perfect (for me) RPG.

Morrowind was a fantastic game, but the engine was kinda crappy. Lots of items in a small space causes major lag, and the view distance is tiny even when set to maximum.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Bioware Aurora Engine, most definitely.

From it we got NWN, NWN2, The Witcher, and KOTOR 1 and 2. Ok, those last two were built on the Odyssey Engine, but that is just a rehash of Aurora.

I was just thinking about how i hate aurora engine. Mainly because it's seemingly designed exclusively for railroaded games. Background landscapes are not better than IE's ''jpgs'', just in laggy 3d rendering. Witcher looks good, it definitely made it prettier than before, but it still has it's annoying limitations in terms of exploring. I remember how when just started The Witcher i looked at the countryside of whatsitsname and thougt - goody, nice fairly large area to wonder around. But then i realised there are only one circle shaped path around the whole thing and all the backdrops with houses, bushwood and what not are only decorations. It's well suited for lazy developers.
Also every game that was made in it had sucky boring combat.
Did i say it's laggy?

I'd also go far JA2. It's almost perfect. Complex, good looking and well balanced. It hasn't aged at all.

 

[DraQ]

I would say the Morrowind engine, except the NPC interaction. Lots of items, extremely persistent, vast, unrestrictive. Except Ultima 7 no other game gave me that sense of freedom.

I think it'd possible to get decent character interaction in MW engine. The engine itself, however, isn't exactly a programing masterpiece - It's resource consuming and about as stable as drunk clown riding a unicycle over power lines during hurricane.

 

[Ratty]

It's difficult to say which engine is the best without having any real insight into its internals. By my crude estimate, Origin's RPGs tended to have excellent engines. It's amazing how stable, fluid and pretty Ultima games were when you consider that every iteration used a brand new engine, without any code carrying over from the previous release. With Ultima Underworld and its full-3D textured enviroments Origin broke new grounds and provided inspiration for John Carmack and the guys at id Software who pioneered first person shooters.

Of the more recent examples, I was impressed by the engine Piranha Bytes developed for Gothic 1 and 2. Massive seamless world with impressive view distance, no transitioning between exterior and interior areas and realistic-looking terrain and vegetation is enough to make the programming nut in me writhe in ecstasy. I'm also happy to state that I never encountered any bugs, but that's likely because I played the English version of Gothic, which had already received extensive patching.

I don't consider Infinity Engine exceptionally bad given the fact that it was BioWare's first. Sure, pathfinding was shit and interface was clunky, but property maps instead of tiles in an isometric CRPG turned out to be a great approach because it permitted a more natural area layout which, coupled with atypically beatiful artwork, resulted in some of the best looking areas ever seen in CRPGs.

On the other hand, Aurora is an inexusably sub-par engine that seems to be getting worse with each new "improvement", NWN2 and its catastrophically inefficient renderer being the unquestionable apex of shittiness. Poor performance and stability issues that have consistently plagued Aurora and its bastard offspring would perhaps be forgivable if the engine was capable of visuals that were at least half-way decent. But instead all Aurora/Odyssey games had graphics that were inferior to what was considered standard at the time when they came out, and I can't help but cringe when I see NWN or KotOR struggle hopelessly with tiny areas, low-poly models and volumetric fog or violently hit the keyboard when staring at yet another two-minute loading screen for an area that contains five minutes worth of gameplay.

 

[RK47]

I think Ratty forgot to mention how fucked up the requirements were for Ultima RPG, I know my cousin who showed my first Ultima6 said he spent a few days making a boot disk just to get the damn thing running.

Someone mentioned JA2, it's definitely nice and would be fantastic if any RPG adopted SirTech's engine.

Fallout engine with its SPECIAL statistic is no slouch either, but combat leaves much to be desired since several late game encounters devolve into praying to whatever deity you believed in for the enemy not to get a hit critical hit, else you hit the load game. The armour model needed a helmet or some sort of gear to prevent critical hits instead of relying on simple dumb LUCK.

Yes, there are several valid tactics in approaching combat such as hitting the groin, followed by an aimed shot to the eye when opponent is knocked down (you can also disarm him if he is critically unconcious), but the array of aimed shot felt like a gimmick after a while.

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

The holodeck.

Depends on your goals. Would a Planescape:Torment or Fallout style game have benefited from using the Wizardry 8 engine, or the TOEE engine? Maybe. I don't know. I feel Wizardry 8 and TOEE both had good engines (particularly in the combat aspect), but I don't think Planescape nor Fallout required such a combat focused engine. So, trying to implement all types of RPGs using a single, 'best' engine probably isn't appropriate.

 

[JarlFrank]

The holodeck.

Depends on your goals. Would a Planescape:Torment or Fallout style game have benefited from using the Wizardry 8 engine, or the TOEE engine? Maybe. I don't know. I feel Wizardry 8 and TOEE both had good engines (particularly in the combat aspect), but I don't think Planescape nor Fallout required such a combat focused engine. So, trying to implement all types of RPGs using a single, 'best' engine probably isn't appropriate.

Well, the holodeck *would* be a perfect engine for any RPG.

 

[RK47]

I think Torment can easily use the Final Fantasy battle engine and everyone here would still suck its cock. Honestly, I remembered casting spells in that game and suddenly time just stops. Mecha Cannon or something like that where a bunch of little desktops operate a huge cannon to fire. Animation takes nearly 15 seconds to complete. Awesome first time, but really repetitive.

 

[MetalCraze]

none.
every rpg engine is flawed to death

 

[cardtrick]

Overall, I'd go with TOEE if you can ignore the bugs. Almost perfect combat, and I loved the interface (although I realize it's not for everyone). The 3-D characters with 2-D backgrounds worked very well, too; TOEE is a beautiful game. And yes, Fallout or PS:T would have been wonderful in the TOEE engine.

Honorable mention goes to Wizardry 8, for being a truly inspired adaptation of much older engine mechanics to more current tastes. It's not an engine that would work well for most types of RPGs, but for a game like Wiz8 it's difficult to think of how it could be much better (and believe me, I've been trying).

 

[Andhaira]

Oh yes, Wizardry 8 had a fantastic engine that has aged increadibly well. Its really funny; if you go back into the archives of sites such as ign and gamespot and read the reivews of W8 when if first came out, you will see they call out wiz8 on its grafix, stating they hare outdated and look clunky compared to the games of that day.

Yet, today wiz 8 looks gorgeous while those same games praised back in the day look shit.

As for U7, I remember it was EXTEREMELY
resource extensive like all ultimas. However I had a stateof the art 486, newly bought and it ran U7 just fine; no bootdisk required.

 

[Jeff Graw]

Infinity engine ftw.