PlanetSide 2 Q&A with Tom Schenck

[Hamma]

http://www.planetside-universe.com/news-planetside-2-qa-with-tom-schenck-2953.htm

PlanetSide 2: Q&A with Senior Engineer, Tom Schenck - YouTube

[Hamma]

Pretty cool interview - be sure to take a few mins and watch it.

[SGOniell]

The entire time I was thinking to myself: "Man, I want that shirt..."

[PredatorFour]

Cool interview, good to understand things from the team's perspective.

[Hamma]

Yea I love these kinds of interviews because these are the types of folks you usually don't get to see. That's what's awesome about SOE Live all these guys come out and you can ask them all sorts of questions about things that just don't get talked about.

[wasdie]

I'm actually wonder how many of the Forgelight programmers are still working on Planetside 2 specific stuff. I would bet most are actually working on stuff for Everquest Next.

You can tell the engine is being built for more traditional MMOs when you crack open the userconfig.ini and see MMORPG stuff like guild invites and trade/dual requests in it.

[Hamma]

That's a good question - Tom is definitely the main guru but I'm sure there are still a few.

[Fara]

i wonder where he keeps his crowbar...

[MrBloodworth]

I'm actually wonder how many of the Forgelight programmers are still working on Planetside 2 specific stuff. I would bet most are actually working on stuff for Everquest Next.

You can tell the engine is being built for more traditional MMOs when you crack open the userconfig.ini and see MMORPG stuff like guild invites and trade/dual requests in it.

When a company has a cross game Platform like SOE or Turbine ( All Trubine games are the same engine ). There is a group dedicated to JUST the engine itself, agnostic of the games made with it.

But do not be confused with engine layer and game layer.

So far SOE has used this engine for Free Realms, Starwars and now Planetside.

[Bags]

"I got hired in 1990"

"How many years is that"

>_>

[wasdie]

When a company has a cross game Platform like SOE or Turbine ( All Trubine games are the same engine ). There is a group dedicated to JUST the engine itself, agnostic of the games made with it.

But do not be confused with engine layer and game layer.

So far SOE has used this engine for Free Realms, Starwars and now Planetside.

I know this. That's why I said Forgelight programmers, not Planetside 2 programmers. My guess is that they are probably working on more engine specific stuff for use in Everquest Next.

They said Everquest Next would have a lot of sandbox elements, so im guessing they are probably working with adding stuff dynamically to the world for player placed objects (like houses and buildings). The rendered is probably being tweaked for more smaller scale environments with more detail. Planetside 2's focus was on large scale environments with a very large render distance, there is no reason for that kind of a system with a more traditional MMORPG.

I'm sure they have a few Planetside 2 specific tech guys (obviously they have at least one), but the core engine team must be doing other things.

This isn't a bad thing. During SoE live last year Smedly was talking about implementing outfit bases and stuff that would require stuff like player placed objects and whatnot. The stuff they work on for other games could be adapted to Planetside 2. So it's not like time spent working on the engine for other purposes is wasted.

The engine is also both what's running locally on the machine and what's running on the servers. I'm sure they have guys working on both. The increase in render distance is a good indication that the engine is getting more stable when they start really punishing it.