The Origin of Forge Light (Speculation)

[Saieno]

TL;DR Version
Project Offset, an amazing graphical game engine is shown in 2005. Intel buys them out in 2008, cancels the project in 2010 but rumors of a development framework exists. Early 2011 SOE closes The Agency, three studios, 205 jobs, and states they want to focus on Planetside and EverQuest. Weeks later Smed confirms Planetside Next was moved to a new internal game engine, which is later revealed as Forge Light. Because of the power of this engine, its sudden presence at SOE, and similar features plus rendering to Project Offset, I believe Forge Light is Project Offset reborn.


Detailed Version
A company called Offset Software launched in 2005, and was formed by several former members of S2 Games who created Savage 2 and Heroes of Newerth (and happen to be my favorite small developer). The company released videos of Project Offset, a graphically rich first person shooter set in a fantasy world. In 2008 Offset Software was purchased by Intel but development on Project Offset continued. In 2010 the project was cancelled by Intel, with the founding Offset Software members creating a mobile games company called Fractive LLC. So what does all of this have to do with SOE, and more importantly, Planetside 2?

Back in late 2009 rumors on development of Planetside Next started to appear, and nearly a year later in 2010 it was announced that Planetside Next would be releasing in the second quarter of 2011. In March of 2011 there were three studios and 205 jobs closed down at SOE, cancelling The Agency to make a new focus on the Planetside and EverQuest properties. A few weeks later on these very forums, GarbageGnome brings up the fact that SOE is saving a bunch of money by 'axing' The Agency and some studios to provide more resources to Planetside Next and EverQuest Next. The interesting tidbit is the response from Smed on the comment:

Recently (a few weeks ago actually) we made the call to update the game to a new internally developed engine. Doing that meant delaying the game, but we thought it was in the best interests of Planetside Next. It also means delaying releasing further info for a little while.

Smed

Notice the section highlighted in bold, where he states "we made the call to update the game to a new internally developed engine". It didn't cross my mind at the time, but recently I've been thinking about this fantastic new engine that SOE has and the the events that lead up to this point. My first concern is why a company that is developing an internal game engine would start Planetside Nexts' development on an inferior one, only to change their entire game engine and development plan a year later. Secondly, where would SOE suddenly obtain an extremely powerful game engine that is capable of running on 7 year old hardware? It didn't hit me till I thought about Project Offset again.

Keep in mind this is from 2005
Project Offset" Sneak Peak 2 - HD 1280x720p - YouTube

Intel bought Project Offset and devoted a significant amount of energy towards positioning Offset as the showcase engine for what Larrabee, their first-generation GPU, could do. With Larrabee, if you recall, Intel was pushing the idea that real-time raytracing (RTRT) could replace traditional rasterization in 3D gaming. ATI and NVIDIA never took too kindly to the idea; the result was quite a bit of back-and-forth posturing about what could and couldn't be done with near-generation hardware. After Larrabee was cancelled, it was widely rumored that Intel was offering the Offset Engine as a potential development framework in its pursuit of the next-generation PS4/XBox 720. I believe that Sony Online Entertainment obtained the Offset Engine through their connections and partnerships at Intel, thus Forge Light was born.

I'm not making this claim simply based on the coincidence that all the events line up to fit my theroy, just one look at the Project Offset demos compared to Planetside 2 footage and you begin the see the similarities. Every engine has certain quirks that make them stand out, even through all the unique art styles and development, which is why you can tell when you're playing a game on Unreal Engine 3. Little things like the rendering style for models, lights, and effects, even how things load when you enter the game world. Lets make a quick comparison though so you can see what I mean.

This is the Planetside 2 Announcement Trailer we all know and love. When you're watching it this time however, try to focus on the little details, such as the first person perspective view, subtle motion blur effects, and the phsyics. Look at the animations, how everything is moving, and the number of enemies on the screen at one time. Remember, Planetside 2 is looking to have 1,998 players on a map at one time, so the engine has to be able to render that flawlessly for Planetside 2 to be successful.

Planetside2 Announcement Trailer - YouTube


Now lets look at a Crowd Test from Project Offest. Keep in mind this is from 2005 (nearly 7 years ago), and even back when ATI 9800 Pros and Nvidia 7800s were the great cards, we have hundreds of fantastic looking characters on screen with physics, motion blur, and ray-tracing in real time. This was an unbelieveable achievement in game engines, just imagine how it would look and perform on todays hardware.

Project Offset - Crowd Test - YouTube


So there you have it. From the beginning of Project Offset to the mysterious new engine that SOE seemed to pull out of thin air, Planetside 2 rises from the flames to bring us an unbelievable visual and game play experience. Again this is all speculation, there is no official word on the origin of the Forge Light engine, and unless a blue name could confirm my suspicions then I would take them with a grain of salt. However if Forge Light is the Offset Engine reborn, I can't wait to see what happens with EverQuest Next.

[Kwintus5]

Interesting... I would lock your door before the top-secret intelligence service of Microsoft comes nocking! *Saieno!! INTERNATIONAL SECURITY! OPEN UP!* *Troopers drop trough the windows, special forces break open the door* *Gunfire* *Saieno dies while trying to flee*

Newspaper of the day after: "A highly sought after cybercriminal has been shot in a heavy firefight. "We didn't had a choise." Said a special forces member. "He was going for his grenades." The world is a bit safer once again."

Yep, i see it happening.

*edit* And ofcourse, nice job, it's interesting to see this "old" engine being used again with modern stuff. Impressive.

[TOCS]

Forgelight, Frostbite get it? No? Awwwww.

[Hamma]

Awesome post Saieno - very curious indeed. It did seem like Forgelight just kind of appeared.

[Raymac]

Very cool post.

[EVILPIG]

This is funny.

[Hmr85]

Interdasting...I remember watching that vid in 2010. I wouldn't be suprised. Very cool though.

[Eyeklops]

I think your wrong. Higby wants so badly for PS2 to be amazing that he made a deal with Satan for the game engine. The name "Forgelight" was only used as a bad joke aimed at God by the Devil. The code is so full of black magic and demon script that any devs who attempt to reverse engineer it die instantly to intense projectile diarrhea. So keep digging into this subject if you dare, but I suggest wrapping yourself in a man-sized garbage bag to make the cleanup easier for your kin.

[Figment]

I think your wrong. Higby wants so badly for PS2 to be amazing that he made a deal with Satan for the game engine. The name "Forgelight" was only used as a bad joke aimed at God by the Devil. The code is so full of black magic and demon script that any devs who attempt to reverse engineer it die to instantly to intense projectile diarrhea. So keep digging into this subject if you dare, but I suggest wrapping yourself in a man-sized garbage bag to make the cleanup easier for your kin.

Almost, but it was Hefaestos, not Satan. Satan does not exist after all. The Forgelight is a reference to the vulcano forge of Hefaestos with which he makes awesome weaponry.

I mean it's obvious.

[Ailos]

That's a very cool proposition and some very cool similarities between them.

Unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever find out the origins of Forgelight. It's too good a piece of technology for them to really disclose where it came from. Even though I don't think there'd be any shame in admitting that they bought/licensed/received it from Intel.

[kaffis]

While it's certainly an interesting theory, I see no reason not to take Smed at his word and read his words plainly for an equally compelling theory.

Namely, that Forgelight is an engine that was *developed internally* (note that this is a fundamentally different statement from "a proprietary engine that we acquired exclusive rights to by buying the code/team that made it") for use on future MMO projects (like, you know, EQ Next, which is what was first shown on Forgelight).

Also, it's not a surprise that Planetside 2 development switched mid-stream from an old engine (the actual Planetside 1 engine) to this new engine. That switch corresponded with the decision to refocus development efforts and resources on the Planetside and EverQuest properties. Since the EQ team were already working on the engine for EverQuest (which supports Smed's other statements that Forgelight is an engine designed from the start for use in MMOs, again, fundamentally a different statement from this Project Offset, which was, apparently, being made by the team that created it for an FPS), refocusing resources from other projects onto Planetside meant taking it from a simple reskinning of PS1 (including probably some updates to netcode and gameplay, but primarily sounded like it was simply revisiting the old models to improve the polycounts and texture sizes to look better on newer hardware that could handle it) to rewriting the game from scratch for the engine that the EQ team had made.

In other words, it's an interesting theory, but it's all circumstantial and doesn't create a more convincing or reasonable explanation than what we've already been told about Forgelight. And believing what we've already been told means not having to suspect Smed et al. of lying to us for no reason.

[ringring]

Haven't SOE already used Frogelight on another game? I'm sure I read that and if so once it was proven why not switch PS2 development to it?


ps I think it was Free Realms.

[Raymac]

Haven't SOE already used Frogelight on another game? I'm sure I read that and if so once it was proven why not switch PS2 development to it?


ps I think it was Free Realms.

I don't think so. I think Forgelight was just officially announced at last year's Fan Faire.

[CyclesMcHurtz]

... It did seem like Forgelight just kind of appeared.

I believe all the engineers here who have devoted many, MANY hours and months and years to the development would not agree that it "just appeared" ;)

[Lokster]

Assumptions and baseless conclusions aside, this was fun to read.

[sylphaen]

I believe all the engineers here who have devoted many, MANY hours and months and years to the development would not agree that it "just appeared" ;)

I would have bet engineering was like magic, though. And especially when you see Forgelight.
;)

[Saieno]

Namely, that Forgelight is an engine that was *developed internally* (note that this is a fundamentally different statement from "a proprietary engine that we acquired exclusive rights to by buying the code/team that made it") for use on future MMO projects (like, you know, EQ Next, which is what was first shown on Forgelight).

I don't think you can really grasp how long a game engine takes to develop. We're talking easily 5 to 7 years for a fully featured next generation game engine, which is why middleware game engines like Unreal and CryEngine are so popular. Just to correct a point you made though; EverQuest Next was not the first game shown on Forge Light. They showed a model from EverQuest Next, though Planetside 2's Announcement Trailer was the first shown from within the Forge Light Engine.

Also, it's not a surprise that Planetside 2 development switched mid-stream from an old engine (the actual Planetside 1 engine) to this new engine. That switch corresponded with the decision to refocus development efforts and resources on the Planetside and EverQuest properties. Since the EQ team were already working on the engine for EverQuest , refocusing resources from other projects onto Planetside meant taking it from a simple reskinning of PS1 to rewriting the game from scratch for the engine that the EQ team had made.

If you could link me to the article that discusses the original Planetside engine being used for Planetside Next development that would be great. But anyway I want you to consider what switching an engine mid-development means. The only thing that carries over are the assets, which have been consistently redone lately anyway, so you're left with starting over from scratch again. Also, Planetside 2 is much farther along development wise than EverQuest Next as far as we know, so to assume that Forge Light was made specifically for EverQuest Next and not Planetside 2 doesn't seem to match up.

In other words, it's an interesting theory, but it's all circumstantial and doesn't create a more convincing or reasonable explanation than what we've already been told about Forgelight. And believing what we've already been told means not having to suspect Smed et al. of lying to us for no reason.

I don't believe Smed is lying to us at all, they could certainly get the ground work of the Offset Engine and heavily modify it into Forge Light. Offset isn't a middleware engine for distribution so stating the rebirth is in-house built would be just fine, but if they were using heavily modified versions of Unreal or CryEngine that would be a different matter. And what we know about Forge Light is exactly what we know about the Offset Engine. It could be SOE developed an engine in house so similar to Offset that its coincidence, but Forge Light seemed to appear out of no where especially after having used Unreal Engine 3 for DC Universe.

Forge Light - SOE***39;s Next Generation MMO Engine Detailed - Featured In Everquest 3 and PlanetSide 2 - YouTube

Haven't SOE already used Frogelight on another game? I'm sure I read that and if so once it was proven why not switch PS2 development to it? I think it was Free Realms.

As is stated in the video above, Planetside 2 is going to be the first Forge Light game.

[EVILPIG]

As is stated in the video above, Planetside 2 is going to be the first Forge Light game.

Free Realms is the same engine. You have a great imagination, but there are a lot of things missing from your theory. It was a funny read.

[Rbstr]

You've brought the term "Wild conjecture" to new heights with this thread.

[Saieno]

I believe all the engineers here who have devoted many, MANY hours and months and years to the development would not agree that it "just appeared" ;)

I don't doubt the ability of SOE by any means. You guys have created in-house engines for a number of games including Planetside, Star Wars Galaxies and EverQuest 2. I don't know which engine FreeRealms uses so I'll make an assumption that it was in-house built, and was also used for Clone Wars Adventures. However unless the engine development at SOE were developing two completely different engines at once, Forge Light would have been made in two years. It's just an unbelievably impressive engine, with the closest comparison being Project Offset.

DC Universe Online did use Unreal Engine 3, but I'm sure there were reasons behind doing so. Usually we hear about game engines being worked on years before we see any details on games, so the announcement of Forge Light was certainly a shock.

[EVILPIG]

Free Realms is not using the Forgelight engine. It is using the backend of a piece of the 'now' Forgelight engine (before it was called forgelight) to manage accounts and servers.

True, and http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/af/Prince_logo.svg/45px-Prince_logo.svg.png was Prince Nelson before he became famous and adopted a symbol as his name.

[Rbstr]

True, and http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/af/Prince_logo.svg/45px-Prince_logo.svg.png was Prince Nelson before he became famous and adopted a symbol as his name.

The engine formerly known as Forgelight.

[Bravix]

This thread makes me realize just how much I love eating pie...

[Saieno]

Free Realms is not using the Forgelight engine. It is using the backend of a piece of the 'now' Forgelight engine (before it was called forgelight) to manage accounts and servers.

Edit: Maybe it is a varation of a seriously light version of the FL engine.. But I doubt it.

This was my understanding as well. I don't know which engine FreeRealms is using, however it certainly doesn't look or act like the Forge Light engine.

[Shogun]

interesting popcorn thread ;)

i don´t think it really matters, if soe built it totally from scratch, or where they did inspiration/experience or brainpower from. the actual state of the engine is AAAA. some people worked very hard for years on this, and i think it shows! still interesting if parts of this cool unfinished engine were involved. it´s always sad when something with such great potential never finishes, and seeing parts of it do the fenix feels just good.

[Saieno]

Why would they develop an engine just for one game? They didn't. They have been evolving an in house engine since FR and now it has a name called Forge Light.

I wouldn't expect them to make an engine for one game, which is why we have FreeRealms, Clone Wars Adventures, and I would assume Magic the Gathering Tactics. When I play those games I don't see the Forge Light Engine at all, not even a small representation of it but that could be because of certain features being turned off. Once I have a chance to play Planetside 2 maybe I'll see more of a resemblance, but I don't think FreeRealms and Planetside 2 are using the same thing.

I'm not saying SOE hasn't created the Forge Light Engine, I'm simply pointing out the similarities between Offset and Forge Light since its exciting to think that the project lives on.

[EVILoHOMER]

I really hope SOE open the engine up seeing as it is a F2P game and let players create content for Planetside 2 like how we do with TF2. SOE could gain so much confidence in the player base by doing what Valve does and lots of profit too. The players can create content faster than SOE ever could and it would make the money too. I would really love having a weapon design or something approved for sale on the store.

We still don't know if the engine is any good or not yet, SOE have never been very good at it the past, we all the know massive failure of SWG and EQ2 purely down to performance issues. EQ2 still takes no advantage of the GPU and barely uses any of my CPU power it the other 4 cores lol.

[Saieno]

We still don't know if the engine is any good or not yet, SOE have never been very good at it the past, we all the know massive failure of SWG and EQ2 purely down to performance issues. EQ2 still takes no advantage of the GPU and barely uses any of my CPU power it the other 4 cores lol.

I have to agree with you on the points you make here. EverQuest 2 consistently gave me memory issues and crashed a lot, while Star Wars Galaxies had some pretty choppy frame rates. From the videos we've seen though the Forge Light Engine looks rock solid, even through all of the GDC gameplay.

[Noivad]

If the engine is only half of what the old engine was, and we all have or should have seen the 45 min viedo of game play, and SOE has all the major game elements of PS1, and it looks like it does and then some, the game will blow all of you away.

I never had memory issues on any SOE game I tried, or FPS issues for that matter.

Maybe I built a better computer then you purchased, maybe it was just luck.
But I don't really believe in luck, except the luck I make by buying quality.

Your probally on an Intel machine, perhaps you should give AMD a try ;) with a good nivida vid card in it. Perhaps your using vista, try upgrading to Win 7 or downgrading to XP.

As far as people designing stuff for the game, I hope not. I don't want anyone to get any code. I don't want any hackers having any insight as to how the Forgelight engine works.

And does it really matter if the ideas of Forgelight came form a game engine that was developed in the past. Its not the same engine of the past. In fact the one in the past never saw daylight, or was used by any gamer.

What does matter is that SOE in their brilliance has remade a FPSMMO that will have more players on a map that work together in a Team enviroment.

No other game engine out there has ever done that. No other engine, no other game company, has ever made the equal to PS1.

But in light of what I just said and all that was written before it was a funny read. :evil:

[cellinaire]

One fact : Forgelight FTW!!

[Saieno]

Maybe I built a better computer then you purchased, maybe it was just luck. But I don't really believe in luck, except the luck I make by buying quality. Your probally on an Intel machine, perhaps you should give AMD a try ;) with a good nivida vid card in it. Perhaps your using vista, try upgrading to Win 7 or downgrading to XP.

You're making quite a lot of baseless assumptions, so let me correct a few things for you. I have built every gaming machine I own, I use AMD with Nvidia cards, and I use Windows 7 and Linux. The memory issues in EverQuest 2 plauged thousands of players, 104 pages of Issue Tracking is a testament to that (http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?&topic_id=364955). Various OS's, various configurations, different video card manufacturers. It was a huge performance issue that may not have affected you, but just because you didn't have issues doesn't mean they didn't exist.


And does it really matter if the ideas of Forgelight came form a game engine that was developed in the past. Its not the same engine of the past.

The entire point of this thread is excitement in that Project Offset may not have died off completely. This isn't a stab at SOE with a giant "AHA! WE CAUGHT YOU!" record of events, its a possible scenario where the Offset Engine could partically be powering some of the greatest games yet to come. That's it, nothing more, so please stop being so defensive. I'm a huge fan of SOE, I'm also a huge fan of what Project Offset was, so the possibility of them coming together is a positive not a negative.

[Zekeen]

I believe all the engineers here who have devoted many, MANY hours and months and years to the development would not agree that it "just appeared" ;)

That's a lie, I know there were no engineers on the project, only an army of highly trained WIZARDS conjuring out a game engine that defies time and space!

[Rabb]

Firefall uses a highly modified version of the offset engine.

[Hamma]

I believe all the engineers here who have devoted many, MANY hours and months and years to the development would not agree that it "just appeared" ;)

:lol: well for those of us on the outside it did just kind of appear. I'm sure many long hours were spent building this beast which looks totally amazing.

:D

I believe he was referring on how it was presented. It did just "appear". We didn't have any idea that this was even being created for a very long time, so when it was announced, it just smacked us.

In the teeth!

[Snipefrag]

:lol: well for those of us on the outside it did just kind of appear. I'm sure many long hours were spent building this beast which looks totally amazing.

:D



In the teeth!

Well, it makes sense for them to keep their next gen engine which allows them to make MMOFPS games like Planetside under wraps, its given them a massive head start on the competition.

If this game is as successful as we all think/hope it will be, and MMOFPS becomes the new buzz word in town like its threatening to do.. then they are going to have EA, BioWare, Infinity Ward and every other FPS company in the genre clambering to:

A) Buy a licence to use their engine to provide their own iteration of the MMOFPS experience with their own IP
B) Spend a HELL of a lot of time making their own engine (at least 10 years of development knowledge/experience has gone into Forgelight, it will take a LOT of time to make something comparable).

[Tatwi]

And you folks thought I was crazy when I posted last year that PS2 will be a launch title for the playstation 4. Sony is going to delivering a grand unified user experience across their product lines.

[EVILPIG]

If Planetside2 is released on a console, I pity the console players.

[Saieno]

If Planetside2 is released on a console, I pity the console players.

Why? They would obviously have their own servers, just like DC Universe Online.

[EVILPIG]

Why? They would obviously have their own servers, just like DC Universe Online.

Having their own servers would be one thing. If they mixed with PC players, pity.

[CyclesMcHurtz]

I would have bet engineering was like magic, though. And especially when you see Forgelight.
;)

Just because it's Magic, doesn't mean it's not hard work. Someone has to fetch those eyes of newt and so on!

[Soothsayer]

If it were up to you the whole engine would be newt eyes...

[Roy Awesome]

Keep in mind, Engines aren't created, they evolve. UE3 still has code from UE2. Source still has code from HL1 (even back to Quake 3). Even the engine that powers Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 has code from WC3 (and probably even starcraft). Code never goes bad, you just figure out better ways of implementing things and have to update them for the times.


Now, lets take a look at Forgelight. SOE has been making MMOs since the 90s. They know how to do network tech and they know how to do character interactions. They probably took the back end networking and entity state management stuff (things invisible to players) from previous games like FreeRealms and EQ2 and slapped a fancy graphics engine on top and incorporated PhysX. While this is a ton of work (and it totally is paying off, Forgelight looks fantastic), They did not start from scratch...giving the appearance of coming out of nowhere.

[Elude]

I don't think project offset is in any way related to Forge light. I also think it's a bit far fetched to assume two games use the same engine because they look similar graphically.

I feel like this way of thinking has left a mark on people because of the mass main stream games built with Unreal Engine 3. People think they've got a clear indication of what an Unreal Engine 3 game looks like only because the developers behind those games don't care to change what they don't have to.

Given enough attention you could make almost any engine look like another, after all most have similar technologies (if you could call it such) behind them. Unreal Engine 3 has the capacity of looking near identical to CryEngine 3 or Frostbite 2.

[kaffis]

EverQuest Next was not the first game shown on Forge Light. They showed a model from EverQuest Next, though Planetside 2's Announcement Trailer was the first shown from within the Forge Light Engine.
http://pcmedia.ign.com/pc/image/article/111/1111108/everquest-next-working-title-20100809060318943.jpg
That's the first in-engine screenshot ever released for Forgelight. It was released in 2010. That's EQ Next. If you read my statement as "the first gameplay shown in action on Forgelight," I'm sorry you misunderstood me. EQ Next was the game the first demonstrations (in the form of still photos of in-engine renders) used.

As is stated in the video above, Planetside 2 is going to be the first Forge Light game.
Sure, Planetside 2 will beat EQ Next to market. This is because MMORPGs require massive amounts of content generation. Multiplayer-only FPSes are fairly content-light. You don't have to write dialogue for NPCs, you don't have to write quests, and the expectations for things like backstory are completely different between EverQuest and Planetside.

In short, MMORPGs have a development cycle probably averaging 5 years or so, while Planetside 2's development cycle will probably be 3 years, max, and that's being very liberal with where you start counting given the whole Planetside Next -> Planetside 2 development switch.

[Saieno]

Given enough attention you could make almost any engine look like another, after all most have similar technologies (if you could call it such) behind them. Unreal Engine 3 has the capacity of looking near identical to CryEngine 3 or Frostbite 2.

That is very true. I'm not saying SOE hasn't developed an engine, I'm saying they've made an engine that is thoroughly impressive and similar to what we saw with Project Offset. Hell even if they did start off with Project Offset that's still a 5 year old engine they'd have to work on to bring up to current generation standards; lots of development needed. I'm super excited about the Forge Light engine, can't wait to get in Planetside 2 and see how it all works and renders.

In short, MMORPGs have a development cycle probably averaging 5 years or so, while Planetside 2's development cycle will probably be 3 years, max, and that's being very liberal with where you start counting given the whole Planetside Next -> Planetside 2 development switch.

That's a fair point and one I agree with.

[Rbstr]

That is very true. I'm not saying SOE hasn't developed an engine, I'm saying they've made an engine that is thoroughly impressive and similar to what we saw with Project Offset.

Your original implication was that Forgelight is derived from Offset. And it's a pretty absurd and baseless claim. Nothing but conjecture.

[Saieno]

Your original implication was that Forgelight is derived from Offset. And it's a pretty absurd and baseless claim. Nothing but conjecture.

Yes this entire post is about the sudden public knowledge of Forge Light which is an unbelievably advanced engine, and happens to share similarities with Project Offset. I don't see how its absurd or baseless as my original post describes all of my evidence and the chain of events that lead to the suggestion. Obviously its conjecture, which is why I specifically state its nothing more than a theory and titled the post as speculation.

[PredatorFour]

Calm down, no reason to get angry. So what if it is the same engine ? i dont understand what the fuss is about. Obviously its taken years to make this amazing engine and it all had to start somewhere.

[Saieno]

Calm down, no reason to get angry. So what if it is the same engine ? i dont understand what the fuss is about. Obviously its taken years to make this amazing engine and it all had to start somewhere.

Is this directed to anyone in particular? Usually helps to quote whoever you're responding to.

[Elude]

^I honestly don't see anyone getting rattled, who needs calming?

[TeaReks]

If forgelight turns out to be half as good as it seems I feel that a lot of the other mmo development studios may be caught out.

If you go back to most MMO releases it wasn't terrible game play that sunk them, its the inability to play at all. Anarchy Online, Age of Conan, EQ2 vs Wow and even Planetside 1 all suffered because people couldn't play.

[Saieno]

If forgelight turns out to be half as good as it seems I feel that a lot of the other mmo development studios may be caught out.

If you go back to most MMO releases it wasn't terrible game play that sunk them, its the inability to play at all. Anarchy Online, Age of Conan, EQ2 vs Wow and even Planetside 1 all suffered because people couldn't play.

This is a pretty fair statement. Many of SOEs great titles were unplayable at their launch and throughout their early lives. I remember Planetside being unplayable the first time I tried beta, EverQuest 2 brought my system to its knees in beta, Star Wars Galaxies shadows turned the experience into a slideshow, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes chunk lines gave me enough time to make a sandwich, and The Matrix Online was like the Windows 98 version of the actual Matrix.

Of course SOE isn't to blame for all of those examples. They created Planetside, EverQuest 2, and Star Wars Galaxies, but in the cases of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and The Matrix Online they merely adopted the games once the original developers were done failing. Vanguard was ruined by Microsoft long before SOE had their hands in the mix, still don't know why they thought creating an MMO that required an operating system, that wasn't even out yet, was a good idea. The Matrix Online was made by Monolith who brought us F.E.A.R, which you would assume would lead us to some amazing MMO experiences. Alas we had a janky gameplay experience, with the only saving grace being the continuation of the Matrix trilogy (which was flippin epic I might add).

[Senyu]

Omg thats the video i've been looking for again forever. I was so excited for that game to come out when I first heard of it.

[CuddlyChud]

I read that firefall uses a modified Offset engine

[Saieno]

I read that firefall uses a modified Offset engine

That's correct. From the BigDownload.com (http://news.bigdownload.com/2010/07/07/offset-engine-still-being-used-by-red-5-studios/) article we can see some really interesting connections going on.

Last week Big Download exclusively revealed that Intel had shut down development of the Offset Software project it had bought two years ago along with the Project Offset game. However the Offset Engine is still being used by a third party game developer, Red 5 Studios, for its long-in-development MMO game.

Red 5 Studios, formed in 2005, announced it had licensed the Offset Engine from Offset Software in 2006, two years before Offset Software was acquired by Intel. Gamasutra reports that a rep for Red 5 Studios confirmed today that it is still using a "highly-modified version of the Project Offset engine" for its unnamed game. The rep added, " . . . the closing of the Intel team does not impact our ability to complete our own project.." Red 5 Studios was at one point close to being shut down earlier this year before being acquired by China-based game publisher The9 for $20 million

As we reported last week the founders of Offset Software have regrouped following Intel's decision to shut down the project and have formed a new game development studio, Fractiv. The company has not yet commented on whether or not the team has the rights to the Offset Engine technology or the Project Offset game IP.

Do you see the bold there? "Red 5 Studios was at one point close to being shut down earlier this year before being acquired by China-based game publisher The9 for $20 million". The9, the same China-based game publisher that has partnered with SOE to help develop Planetside 2. This just seems to support the theory more and more. Lots of connections going on now!

[Timealude]

I believe all the engineers here who have devoted many, MANY hours and months and years to the development would not agree that it "just appeared" ;)

by engineers you mean lvl 60 warlocks locked in the basement performing magic rituals right?

[CyclesMcHurtz]

by engineers you mean lvl 60 warlocks locked in the basement performing magic rituals right?

We are not allowed to discuss the specifics of any rituals that may take place.

[Mechzz]

We are not allowed to discuss the specifics of any rituals that may take place.

So you're saying there are rituals?

[Xyntech]

There are always rituals.

Some just involve more TaB and Doritos than others.

[Rabb]

There are always rituals.

Some just involve more TaB and Doritos than others.

And by Doritos you mean a bucket of soapy frogs right?

[Xyntech]

And by Doritos you mean a bucket of soapy frogs right?

I don't want to go to the convenience stores you've been to.

Soapy toads are much better.

[basti]

We are not allowed to discuss the specifics of any rituals that may take place.

That explains all the goat blood everywhere...

Make sure you always stab the heart! If you miss, bad things happen. Speaking from expirience here.

[Kipper]

Can't see it, F2P relies on accessibility, so I'd expect support for older computers and slower connections.

You can always have changable graphics settings to please people with more capable machines, but you can't change how it uses bandwidth for individuals.

[TerranTitan]

This post, and the forum in particular needs a "thumbs up" button.