Developer's Desk - Year End 2015 Discussion

[Amarie Ancalimon]

Discussion thread for Developers Desk - Year End 2015

[Aekaitz]

I have to commend you all on the work you've done this year, it haa been absolutely fantastic. And the bit about upgrading to the Unreal engine? I'm SO excited! I can only imagine what could be done after that! Great year

[Machaeon]

I applaud you all for the work you've done this year, well done! I'm beyond thrilled for the engine upgrade and can't wait to see what new possibilities lie ahead for the world of Istaria. Hope everyone has a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!

[meepsa]

can't wait to see what ya'll can do with the unreal engine! proper lighting? heck yes! normal maps? woo!

[Kida]

Good luck upgrading to Unreal. Doesn't support MMOs without a lot of tweaking, add-ons, and programming work so. /shrug

You can get all the assets in to see a nice single player experience, at least.

Cool to see a summary of all the changes. Good job on all the work so far. The focus on fixing what's in the game rather than piling more onto it was a nice and welcome change.

[EmanuelM]

Interesting so the mention of Linux/Steammachines support on steam greenlight was no joke afterall. Can't wait to play istaria on linux (Currently it runs horrible using wine) .
I’m a little worried if moving to a new engine may not destroy the feel of Istaria tough . Several visual remakes of classic games failed the mark, it's the game play and not the visuals that is important.

I like what the ryzom devs did. They released the engine as opensource, so the community can add features and fix bugs.
Asherons call is releasing the servercode (not sourcecode tough) . Maybe it's time to talk about Istarias future what once it cannot pay for it's servers and developers anymore just shutdown or liberate the code to the community?

[Vaz]

Oh! An engine upgrade, that's extremely cool-- WAIT DID YOU SAY NEW DRAGON COLORS? SIGN ME THE #$%# UP.

[hantse]

Oh great ... it's serious the Upgrade to Unreal Engine ?

[Vahrokh]

Graphics engine change? That sounds cool! It's truly something epic and challenging for a MMO to change their engine, very few even dared to do that!

[ArchDemon]

Graphics engine change? That sounds cool! It's truly something epic and challenging for a MMO to change their engine, very few even dared to do that!

i made many hints and tellings there changing there engine. anyway It wont lose the feel of istaria this i know infact its going to improve it dramaticly. Istaria will dare not be a wow clone its doing its own way and sticking to the roots of the old ways. So enjoy everyone Istarias going to evolve soon and i cant wait!

[Teto Frum]

I have to say for once, job well done this year. The game so needed polished up. It looks better and it plays better than this time last year.

[Drakarius Shadows]

This year had a lot of improvements and it sounds like there are many more to come.
Will this be the Unreal engine 4 ?

[meepsa]

This year had a lot of improvements and it sounds like there are many more to come.
Will this be the Unreal engine 4 ?

yup, I was a bit confused about it too as they didn't specify it in any post, but it's going to be Unreal4 (if I didn't get the wrong info hehe)

[Tentabulis]

SO excited about the move to Unreal. Would love to see the devs do something like converting over all the models/shaders, and then opening them up for the community to go through and refine/enhance/optimize them. Also, getting away from Intrinsic Alchemy seems like a great move for the future life of the game.

[Cooolios]

Love to hear about the new engine! Is there a sample screenshot of what things will look like? Kinda a before and after? and are yall looking at doing this mid 2016?

[meepsa]

Love to hear about the new engine! Is there a sample screenshot of what things will look like? Kinda a before and after? and are yall looking at doing this mid 2016?

I doubt anything art wise has been done for the new engine yet, it takes quite a bit to make the models co-operate with the engine (putting them in in their current state would most likely not work at all). The original models were made before any modelling theory was set in stone (ie. no use of N-gons, as little use of triangle faces as possible, etc.). Not to mention there's work being done to get the T3 revamp in before the engine switch if I'm not mistaken.

From what I can gather from all announcement posts most things that have been done in preperation is programming related.

one of the biggest changes I'm most excited for is the textures, currently we're forced to deal with horrible resolutions like the 128x128 on the shoulder pets due to how Alchemy handles it, or so I've been told, new engine would mean we can finally upscale that to something more reasonable like (ATLEAST) 512x512, or 1024x1024.

[Sindala]

Ohh...can we upgrade to the new VR engine from Unreal????
That would be awesome (aslong as they added a 1st person view too, don't need VR view of a big assed dragon).
I could finally then lock the door from the inside of my man cave and vanish from RL.