The Origin of Forge Light (Speculation)

[sylphaen]

Originally Posted by CyclesMcHurtz

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]

Originally Posted by kaffis

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.

Originally Posted by kaffis

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.

Originally Posted by kaffis

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.

Originally Posted by 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? 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]

Originally Posted by Saieno

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]

Originally Posted by CyclesMcHurtz

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]

Originally Posted by IDukeNukeml

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 was Prince Nelson before he became famous and adopted a symbol as his name.

[Rbstr]

Originally Posted by EVILPIG

True, and 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]

Originally Posted by IDukeNukeml

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]

Originally Posted by WildVS

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]

Originally Posted by EVILoHOMER

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.

[cellinaire]

One fact : Forgelight FTW!!