-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Spider-Man 2: Should Insomniac use the Decima engine or stay with their own.
- Thread starter NLCPRESIDENT
- Start date
I'm really starting to hate those comments that state how it's likely nobody here knows anything about game dev or engines and "this ain't beyond3D" (paraphrasing).
This makes it sound like "game dev" is some singular thing. It ain't. It encompasses a huge number of separate disciplines and expertise in different areas. Developing an open world game requires a massive amount of manpower, and no singular person in a team knows everything or even most things. Tool devs might not know a lot about game design, for example. But the different disciplines could be a lot more subtle than this, where you have a programmer specialising in netcode who wouldn't know where to begin with graphics pipeline, but sure, one programmer could train in one area and transition to another area, sure.
My point is this: there is no magic involved in game development. Almost everything we see is a result of hard labour, planning and more labour. Sometimes the results may seem like magic, but there is nothing fundamentally mysterious or difficult to understand about game development or how an engine works. Of course there are some proprietary details we aren't privy to, but it's kind of annoying seeing so many people talk about it as though there is something involved in the process that is beyond the capability of mere mortals to understand.
An incredible amount of information is shared openly about engines and rending pipelines and physics and animation and beyond. Pretty much every aspect of creating games is openly shared amongst the dev community. Like the animation engine of For Honour, which is being adopted by ND and refined. Or how the innovative rendering engine of Dreams came to be. This shit is all out there and presented in a way that is easily digestible, so I really don't know where people get off saying nobody here knows anything. It boggles my mind.
I'm not saying I can do any of these things, or I'm as smart as any of the people creating these games. I'm a dumb fuck, but I can program to a good level. I've never created a game from scratch, but I understand how shit works and I think anybody can if they just looked into it even a little bit. Are many single-person teams gonna create huge open worlds like we see in spider-man? Hell no... that's why there are teams of hundreds and sometimes thousands of people creating them, but the core components of what is being created isn't hard to understand. I could go and on and on and on about this, but I won't.
It would be so nice to just enjoy the fruits of the labour, and be able to discuss some aspects of the game production without being bashed for knowing nothing about game development.
I am guilty myself a little, making fun of the OP, but that was just silly banter. It's a different thing.
To me, for anybody to suggest that nobody here understands anything about game development is even more egregious than the content of the OP.
This makes it sound like "game dev" is some singular thing. It ain't. It encompasses a huge number of separate disciplines and expertise in different areas. Developing an open world game requires a massive amount of manpower, and no singular person in a team knows everything or even most things. Tool devs might not know a lot about game design, for example. But the different disciplines could be a lot more subtle than this, where you have a programmer specialising in netcode who wouldn't know where to begin with graphics pipeline, but sure, one programmer could train in one area and transition to another area, sure.
My point is this: there is no magic involved in game development. Almost everything we see is a result of hard labour, planning and more labour. Sometimes the results may seem like magic, but there is nothing fundamentally mysterious or difficult to understand about game development or how an engine works. Of course there are some proprietary details we aren't privy to, but it's kind of annoying seeing so many people talk about it as though there is something involved in the process that is beyond the capability of mere mortals to understand.
An incredible amount of information is shared openly about engines and rending pipelines and physics and animation and beyond. Pretty much every aspect of creating games is openly shared amongst the dev community. Like the animation engine of For Honour, which is being adopted by ND and refined. Or how the innovative rendering engine of Dreams came to be. This shit is all out there and presented in a way that is easily digestible, so I really don't know where people get off saying nobody here knows anything. It boggles my mind.
I'm not saying I can do any of these things, or I'm as smart as any of the people creating these games. I'm a dumb fuck, but I can program to a good level. I've never created a game from scratch, but I understand how shit works and I think anybody can if they just looked into it even a little bit. Are many single-person teams gonna create huge open worlds like we see in spider-man? Hell no... that's why there are teams of hundreds and sometimes thousands of people creating them, but the core components of what is being created isn't hard to understand. I could go and on and on and on about this, but I won't.
It would be so nice to just enjoy the fruits of the labour, and be able to discuss some aspects of the game production without being bashed for knowing nothing about game development.
I am guilty myself a little, making fun of the OP, but that was just silly banter. It's a different thing.
To me, for anybody to suggest that nobody here understands anything about game development is even more egregious than the content of the OP.
OP, before posting a thread like this, assuming you actually know what a game engine is and what it does, can you explain the pros and cons of each engine to better inform the rest of us so that we can make up our minds?
Thnx
I'm sorry but this in bollocks.
Regardless of how much public information is available about game engines and what they do and how they work, to suggest that everyone or even a fair portion of people on this forum have actually taken the time to go through this info and understand it is pretty naive at best and utterly absurd at worst.
Even your own lack of knowledge on the subject matter is proven limited by your inaccurate uses of the terms, "animation engine" and "rendering engine".
If you're discussing a technical subject and not used the proper technical terminology to define the things you intend to discuss, you're only going to end up creating confusion and muddying the discussion.
Regardless, upon all your frustration at those saying peeps here don't know what a game engine is and what it does, I must ask, do you?
Edit:
Taking a step beyond this, the core issue here that I see, is that even if this thread was full of game developers and even engine programmers at that, unless they had worked with Decima and worked at Insomniac games, they would have no clue how to answer the question in the OP.
What the Op refers to as a "game engine" is really just the engine's graphics renderer that the end user can see the results of. If you were knowledgeable on the subject you'd immediately understand that an engine is more than just a renderer.
Why would they when they've built their own? Guerilla has always been good at smoke and mirrors effects in their games where the gameplay was lacking. Insomniac has never had that problem.
I already said I'm not a game dev, therefore the terminology may not be accurate.
Game engines come in many forms. Unity, game maker, unreal, custom. Some are very abstracted and don't even require coding. Custom engines usually go closer to the metal and and therefore more efficient at using the available processing power. They are sets of frameworks and systems that define, organise and execute what the game designers want to represent to the player.
I've developed a few apps, there isn't a huge amount of difference between an engine and an SDK. Sets of rules and APIs you use to represent whatever it is you want.
I don't think the precise technical terms are important to the point I'm making. Which is: the purpose of an engine and how it works is not fundamentally difficult to understand.
However, I'm not seeing how the use of the words "animation engine" is in any way incorrect. How would you refer to it?
Edit: of course I know it involves more than the renderer. Nothing I said in my post suggests that I think an engine is only it's renderer. Come on. That's Just dense AF.
Double edit: I also wasn't expressing frustration about people saying other people don't know what a game engine is. It's that people are making blanket statements about knowing nothing about game development. There is a hell of a lot more to game development than just the engine.
Triple edit: I also didn't say that everybody or even a fair portion of people on this forum have perused the the publicly available information on game engines etc. I merely stated the fact that this information is out there and to suggest that "nobody knows anything" is where the absurdity lies. I think you really should learn to read a comment and consider what is being said before spouting bollocks. Maybe you did read but failed to understand basically anything, in that case, you need to work on your comprehension.
Last edited:
Studios should use whichever engine they are comfortable with. That's why I think it's great that Sony's first party have several different engines. Each engine has different advantages tailored for the different games they make.
This thread has destroyed any meaning of the word 'engine' in relation to game development.
You know it was also used for the tight, narrow confines of The Killzone games too, right? It wasn't called Decima then, it was just a software development platform without a name.
Like Guerilla & ND, IG have built themselves a development environment that has evolved around their work flow & project management style, why drop it and have to learn a new tool & possibly make lots of other internal changes just for the sake of it?
You know it was also used for the tight, narrow confines of The Killzone games too, right? It wasn't called Decima then, it was just a software development platform without a name.
Like Guerilla & ND, IG have built themselves a development environment that has evolved around their work flow & project management style, why drop it and have to learn a new tool & possibly make lots of other internal changes just for the sake of it?
Insomniac has been working on their own engine tech for years and years and who knows if Decima currently has the features or workflow they need. Decima is apparently one of the best engines around period (better for PS4 than Unreal) but that doesn't mean that upending Insomniac is remotely wise and would likely result in a worse game
Huh what? Why would they do this? The good thing with Sony First Party games is that all of them use their inhouse dedicated engines which makes them stand out and look different from each other and each studio brings hiw iwn touch. I don't want all the exclusive games to look the same like UE games or EA games tbh. Plus I don't find anything that Spider-Man engine can't do that Decima can. In fact I found Spider-Man to be much more impressive than Horizon in different aspects tbh. Really strange request OP.
Aside from all the other good reasons put forth in this thread, I remembered that while the decima engine excels at generating natural environments, it's not so great at streaming in hand built assets for things like man-made terrain. I remember walking through the main city in Horizon and the framerate stuttered in a few locations, and the loading seemed to suffer a bit also.
It worked fine for what they were trying to accomplish in that game, but I think Insomniac's engine is perfect for what they've done with Spidey.
It worked fine for what they were trying to accomplish in that game, but I think Insomniac's engine is perfect for what they've done with Spidey.
They should use Luminous Engine from Square-Enix because that worked great for Final Fantasy 15 and Kingdom Hearts 3.
I don't think anyone in this thread has the necessary insight of the engines to make an educated statement. But I don't see why they should start from scratch again if they can just build upon the foundation they've got now and improve it.
I think you've lost the thread of discussion here.
Your original post was complaining about people posting that most people on this forum don't understand what a game engine is, because the information is publicly out there.
That in itself is a failure of logic for the simple fact that information being publicly out there and people on Era having knowledge of it are two completely different things. The posts you were complaining against were saying people on Era don't know what a game engine is, not noone in the world does.... that's a weirdly misinterpreted strawman that you invented.
And quite why you think that stating an engine is more than a renderer is dense AF, is baffling to me, since it's clear that the majority of people on ERA obviously don't understand that, based on the way they incorrently throw around the term "game engine" when really they're only referring to the final framebuffer it generates (N.B. I wasn't even targeting that at you but the people on this forum, e.g. the OP being a prime example).
Also, strictly speaking a game engine and an SDK are not the same thing at all, since an SDK is patform specific and provided by the platform owner to developers, and is often integrated into a larger game engine to allows developers to deploy projects on the new platform.
The craziest thing about this thread's premise is that changing the engine would result in "deeper" and more personal side quests.
The game looks great and performance is flawless. What reason is there for them to change engines at this point?!
In all seriousness though: the overhead costs of switching to Decima for whatever reason are probably such that is most likely not worth it. Everyone directly working on the game would have to be educated on the workings of the new engine. The entire pipeline will have to be revised. And for what? Better lighting? Better foliage? I'm sure that it is far cheaper for them to implement whatever feature they want in their own engine themselves.
Regarding Decima and it not handling city environments: I don't know if that's true, I don't know the inner workings of Decima, but the engine could be conceivably be worked to support such scenes and environments (better). Will cost money though. Add that to the overhead costs of Insomniac switching to Decima and you'll see that is very much not worth it.
Lastly, I can imagine that there is also some legal stuff regarding Decima only being used on Playstation platforms, and I'll take a shockingly wild guess here and say that Insomniac wants to stay independent and would like to bring their own tech with them going forward for multiplatform purposes.
source: am game developer
Regarding Decima and it not handling city environments: I don't know if that's true, I don't know the inner workings of Decima, but the engine could be conceivably be worked to support such scenes and environments (better). Will cost money though. Add that to the overhead costs of Insomniac switching to Decima and you'll see that is very much not worth it.
Lastly, I can imagine that there is also some legal stuff regarding Decima only being used on Playstation platforms, and I'll take a shockingly wild guess here and say that Insomniac wants to stay independent and would like to bring their own tech with them going forward for multiplatform purposes.
source: am game developer
I don't understand why you think a different game engine would make a deeper world in Spider-Man 2? Surely that would be down to attention to detail, writing and mission design first and foremost? I don't see why you think them switching engines and having to relearn lots of stuff would be a good thing.
The puddles in Horizon actually evaporate in the sunlight.
Checkmate, puddlegate!
Oh cool. I wonder what engine they were using, and why they're switching (or thinking of switching) now. Either way, that probably means Wild is a PS5 game. I kind of assumed it was cancelled, so it's good to see it's not at least.
The craziest thing about this thread's premise is that changing the engine would result in "deeper" and more personal side quests.
Game Engines are like the Pens you write books with. Better the Pen better the Book.
Good game design and writing is far more likely to result in better and deeper side quests than what engine you use. A better pen isn't gonna produce a better book if the talent in the hand using it isn't there.
Nah. Insomniac has great mastery of their engine and uses an AA solution that works really well. Building on their own engine also saves time for them. Honestly, I think their latest offerings looks really really good and feels great to play. Keep doing what you do best I'd say.
A modern game engine isn't gonna magically make your game design and writing better. In the same way a pen doesn't magically make you a better writer.
Not sure why they would start from scratch on a new engine. Seems like the current one is fine.
Guys, I'm fairly certain Hotcyder was taking the piss!
You can never tell because game engine threads have so many bad takes.
I don't know if they ever gave it a fancy code name like we see with UE4, Decima, Unity etc.
All I know is with Ratchet ps4 and Spider-Man it's an incredible engine with maybe the best lighting and AA solution around on consoles.