They are using a new in-house engine. The keyword is in-house. In other words, it was not made by Emergent. Is it 100% new? No, not any engine is entirely new as much of it based upon previous code. Cry-Engine 3 is sure as hell not entirely original. As the number indicates, it's not the only version of Cry-Engine. However, Cry-Engine 3 is still a new engine. Same with iD Tech 5 and the previous iD Tech engines.

http://twitter.com/nickbreckon/status/14059634595729408

"It's a new graphics/gameplay engine built internally. We'll have more details down the road."

That means Bethesda built its own engine, not Emergent. It's not Gamebryo.

People prefer to complain about things they haven't seen yet. Just to be safe. :hubbahubba:

I'm kinda mixed on this 'new' engine thing. When Todd was asked some time ago he implied BGS was sticking with 'their' engine as opposed to adopting Idtech 5. It seems they distanced themselves from Emergent quite some time ago as they refer to the previous engines as 'Oblivion engine' or 'Fallout engine' and not 'Gamebryo'. I don't know what if any relationship they've maintained with Emergent but I remember reading that Emergent offered them new features like shaders and BGS declined saying they can write their own. Perhaps BGS owns their Gamebryo derived source code outright. Who knows? And who knows what 'brand new' means? When a marketing person throws that phrase around I raise an eyebrow. The implication of a truly 'brand new' engine with potentially new (and proprietary) file formats for assets will sigificantly impact modding so I'm concerned.

THIS.

I really don't get why this is so hard to grasp. They say it's new, built in-house, that should have ended the whole thing. Too many people seem to be basing their opinions on some odd hope that they keep Gamebryo just so they won't have to learn a new model format.

Modding can flourish without the need for new models. Plenty of really good stuff in Oblivion exists that doesn't use a single custom resource. It may result in less variety, but one can always find clever ways to use what's been given. People will continue to do the same with Skyrim.

If people end up needing to learn a new format, it's probably for the best anyway. Emergent went belly up and their assets were sold in November. They don't exist. Gamebryo is a dead engine. That effectively makes the .nif format a dead format. Blender and 3DS Max will still exist. Exporters will come along. Life will continue.

You make it sound like we're just lazy. A new format means someone's going to have to decode and write new exporters. We started with a vendor provided exporter in Civ4 before we had exporters from the NIFtools team. So its a 'concern' for those of us who provide assets. Unless the community is cool with no custom animations, armor/weapons, or modified boobies for ESV.



I'm sure it can but imagine no Q3, no MMM, no OOO, no Exnem and the thousands of other mods for OB.



Not entirely sure what things will look like with the new system. Thats why 'some' of us are concerned.

I wanna still bet my pants that you will see an upgrade/overhaul/evolution of GameBryo when it launches, and they are also correct when they say it is a new engine.

I do not want to repeat the marble puzzle example in this new thread.

I could say the exact same thing about it being a different engine.
Too many people seem to be basing their opinions on some odd hope that they throw out Gamebryo.
Fact is we are all reading into what was said but some of us are only reading into a single sentence fragment passed on second and third hand.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-08-16-bethesdas-todd-howard-interview
Read the whole interview, apply what you know about the previous games and pay attention to how Todd refers to all of them.

It could go either way and to say that it will definitely not be Gamebryo when more evidence than not points at it being just that, well it just gets under my skin. To me the evidence says it will be Gamebryo but it still may not be and that's fine.

.

What if Bethesda is the one that bought the assets? What then? Bethesda could easily call it their own tech then huh? Just like they call Fallout their IP. Did they create it? No, but they damn sure own it.

I belive that the "new" thing is just a new renderer. And that's what Gamebryo was. The rest will remain the same, with the Havok physics, Radiant AI, the Cell structure for building and so on.

That said, that's just me speculating

Or we can say that they are off the hook, and can do any thing with the engine.

For instance they can overhaul it and rename their engine as something else, and they can say that it is something new, and they are not tied to the rules set by a middleware company.

For instance naming rules for their used engine.

It honestly just doesn't matter. For one, it's out of our hands on which engine they will use. For the other, it's about time Bethesda dumped a bucket of WakeupJuice on us. New engine or not - ESV will be here and we'll be there to pick up the modding pieces if Bethesda shatters our mirror.

My only real concern engine-wise is...will they cheat us like they did with Oblivion? I mean, they cut out half of the RAI, completely cut out dynamic shadows (excepting for NPC/Player shadows), and probably cut out things we'll never know was there. Modding will make a return, I'm sure, because it's one of the core reasons Bethesda has such massive popularity as a developer. They developed three mainstream titles (FO3, OB, and MW) which all feature hard-core modding for the PC. Morrowind STILL sells for 20 bucks a copy at my local Wall-to-Wall Mart. I doubt they'll cut away a major attraction.


On a semi-related side note - if Bethesda does use a truly new inhouse engine, that's miles and miles apart from Morrowind's, do you think they'll release a true SDK to the Morrowind community?

I don't think they will ever look back, but it's plain to see they have been ramping up since day one. The game(ideally) and the modding gets better with each new release and they have built their reputation on striving to do just that consistently. Their integrity and success obligates them to push forward until the current system stops working. So far sales have only gone up so we haven't peaked yet I don't believe. The best is yet to come.

Not quite according to http://www.emergent.net/en/News/Press-Releases/Long-time-Partner-Gamebase-Acquires-Assets-of-Emergent-Game-Technologies/. They were acquired by Gamebase and I doubt very seriously they bought Gamebryo and Lightspeed just to throw them away.

This may be irrelevent as far as ESV goes but I'm routinely miffed that Gamebryo gets trashed left and right when I've seen what its capable of.

That makes two of us. Guess you gotta get inside to appreciate it.

I pray to the Lord up above it's a new engine. Cause if it's not we will be saying, "And we thought Vegas was buggy." It just seems as though Gamebyro has become an old Dino in the work of game engines. It's that old t-Rex in the museum of natural history.

Id Tech 5 is technically a new engine, and it's an upgraded version of Id Tech 4.
Honestly, I REALLY don't see what people are worried about. They already said that it will be based off of existing technology and use some form of the original gamebyro engine. None of you seem to realize what new means in terms of technical languages. I for one have enough confidence in Bethesda to were they actually know what they are doing.

You could say the same thing about any first version engine. Does that mean their later versions are unworthy? No it does not. Fact is the Gamebryo Light Speed engine has yet to be featured in any game released because we are just now nearing the end of a 4-5 year development cycle that started upon it's release in 2007. No one here can comment on it's quality with any kind of validity.

It's not unusual for developers to take an existing engine and reengineer it for their purposes. After OB, and into Fallout they have pretty much taken the Gamebryo as far as it would go and still be good for all platforms, so they have probably reworked it and expanded it to maximize graphics while still being playable on multiple platforms. Don't be surprised if PC's get the most of this game.

Gamebryo Light Speed wasn't internally developed by Bethesda. It just isn't the engine Skyrim will be using.

As I said, that will remain to be seen.

When Bethesda has gone out of their way to say it's "new" and then later ALSO says it's been developed "in-house" that's more than just marketing speak. It's also NOT the first time they'd have done this. Since it seems someone came along and grabbed up Gamebreyo's assets, it seems highly unlikely Bethesda could "get away" with rebranding something based on it and calling it something new. So I think it's entirely safe to say they're using something that's actually new and not some crazy rehash of a broken piece of junk from 2001.

Gamebryo is the rendering portion of the game, and I'm pretty sure everyone here knows that it's beyond its time now. It can't handle the demands people want from today's games, and Bethesda should know this by now if they've paid even a passing amount of attention to complaints across the board about it.

It may all be speculation, but it's well founded speculation. Whatever Todd may have said back in August, he never flat out said it's Gamebryo. People are reading that in to his statements with no foundation for it. I also don't think the two community managers are just going to spit out "marketing speak" without it being cleared by the higher ups.

Thank you, Arthmoor. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Forgive those of us who are questioning the definition of 'new'. Time will tell and you can say 'I told you so' all you wish if thats the case. But in defense of Gamebryo the engine did 'not' stop development in 2001 and the game bugs in OB and FO3 are not the responsibility of the middleware vendor. Bioshock 2 was built on Unreal 3.5 and it was unplayable before the 1st emergency patches. Did you blame Unreal and say it was rehashed POS from 1999? I've seen what Gamebryo is capable of and it was far more than what BGS or Obsidian implemented. That said lets fold our arms, sit back, and see what BGS has done.

That's not really the case with Gamebryo. Gamebryo was pretty much only a renderer, and not a "full" engine like Source, CryEngine and so on. The cell system, the AI, the physics and lots of other things weren't related to Gamebryo. This way many of the games that use Gamebryo play and look very different, I mean, Oblivion and Civilization V both use Gamebryo, and they are very different games. While many Unreal 3 engine games are somewhat similiar in gameplay.

If they replaced Gamebryo with a new renderer, it won't really mean that much. Maybe they added the Umbra middleware or something for better performance, but I don't really expect much of a difference between the Gamebryo renderer and the new inhouse renderer when it comes to visual capabilities (the visual look is something else entirely and depends on the artists).


Indeed, Gamebryo hasn't been standing still. It's been under constant development (well, until they fired a lot of people last year), and it seems like a lot of people don't understand that. It's like saying the Quake 1 engine and Quake 3 engine are the same thing.

Gamebryo Lightspeed was released last year, I don't think there is any released game that use it yet, but somehow it's "bad" already? Continuing on the example of Hel Borne, that would mean that the Unreal 4 engine is already bad too?

Just as you should forgive those of us who take 'new' to hold a certain meaning. When they say "new engine" that carries a lot of meaning behind it. I can't see anything other than it being new rather than rehashed old stuff.



Wouldn't know, because I never played either of the Bioshock games.

I also think that when Bethesda says new engine that it might mean even more than just the rendering parts. They might have gotten sick of the hodgepodge of middlewares they've been using and gone and made something entirely their own so that they don't have to put up with a huge tangle of legal agreements. They've certainly had enough time given Skyrim was under development on some level for the last 4 years.

I'm sure we'll be able to tell once the GI issue comes out and puts this matter to rest. Hopefully

NOTE:
We never got Real Time Dynamic Shadows in Oblivion due to the Console market. Don’t expect stuff that would be beyond stuff the Console market could pull off. There still the same consoles as back in the days Oblivion was launched.