Todd has been quoted as claiming the engine they used in Oblivion (which was based in Gamebryo) was basically their own because it was so heavily modified - which could then be considered an "internal" engine. This in turn nullifies your claim that Gstaff's comment must exclude Gamebryo completely. Sorry, try again.




I think the problem here is the understanding the term "new". I personally believe they're calling it "new" because it's been heavily upgraded to the point that it's not the same as before and therefore is "new". If you want to believe that this engine is indeed completely brand new no without a hint of Gamebryo in its bloodline then fine by me. I just don't want to see people disappointed by an unrealistic expectation. That is all.

What is so unrealistic about this expectation exactly?

I don't recall Todd ever claiming that Gamebryo was their own engine (feel free to provide a quote showing otherwise), and him saying "we made a lot of changes so it's basically our own" isn't the same as saying "it's an internal engine". One is ambiguous. The other is not. You can't consider an engine someone else made that you fiddled around with an "internal engine", because it isn't.

EDIT: I mean, consider what we're arguing here. You're trying to claim that "all new" means "partly new", and that "internal" means "external, but we messed with it a bit". Again, skepticism in some areas makes sense and trying to keep expectations realistic is perfectly fine, but this seems to be an outright denial of clear and apparent facts.

Great news!




This is true. I don't see why to code entirely new engine, if they have good engine code which is familiar to them and easier to improve.
Like I said eariler, it can't be Id's Tech 5. I suspect that it is just GameBryo which has gotten massive upgrade.

edit - It would be massive waste of resources if they coded engine from scratch. But if they do... it better be worth it.

That people will expect many of the quirks of Morrowind and Oblivion to be absent, such as loading screens, rain through overhead coverings, interior/exterior separation, etc.



I can't find the quote, but I'm pretty certain. Either way, it's not really worth the argument.

I agree that it seems ridiculous to disagree with such obvious implications from recent statements, but I'm interpreting "all new" with a grain of salt. With Eurogamer earlier claiming that Todd said it's built from previous technology, there's an obvious tension in the details between the article and Gstaff/Nickb's statements. How would you reconcile that despairing difference?

I'm honestly not being anywhere near polemic as others are making me out to be. The polemic is coming form the antithetical responses of others (including you). It's almost as if the response is, "ARG, how dare you disagree that this is one iota less than a completely brand new out of the box engine! You die now!"

Except it's not. Not really. Emergent only went down the pan recently, so Bethesda couldn't have rushed out a new engine in the time between then and now. Most likely they were never going to use Gamebryo in the first place.

Also a good point. But they may have known (or had suspicions) about Emergent's impending demise and made a smart business decision.

I think they've been working on this new engine longer than we all think, like before oblivion as a side/future project with intentions to start using it and breaking away from gamebryo. Now just happens to be the perfect time to do so with Emergent going down. Thats just me though. Cant wait to see some screenshots!!

This might be very true. I would love to see engine made just for Elder Scrolls.

I don't think they ditched Gamebryo because they thought they were going to go under. Zenimax have been going through some pretty large-scale expansion, and a new engine of their makes perfect business sense. They already have IdTech5 for closed-world games, now they have the Skyrim engine for open worlds.

Perhaps is a mixture between the Gamebryo and the Tech 5

i feel like a number of you are looking in the wrong direction...http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/12/12/elder-scrolls-v-will-use-new-engine.aspx is the proof that they will use a new engine...

That is just an elaboration on the Nickb tweet, but thank you for sharing.

I personally fail to see how:

Can be interpreted as anything other than BRAND NEW.
You don't buy something, then gut the entire thing, rebuild it, and then tell someone it is "brand new".

Damn a vast variety of new dragons for ESV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOcpTytpaNA&NR=1

I'd be surprised if its a new game engine because it would take Bethesda even longer to make the game then what's currently being done. If it is a new engine it better have less bugs or I'd just rather have Gamebryo.

This is kinda gonna svck, though. With Nifskope and the like, there was a ton of reverse engineering done, with an engine we were already somewhat familiar with. I'm sure Bethesda will accommodate modders with a CS and exporters (or something resembling them), if they're buggy, it's going to be a pain to patch on our own, or wait for them to do it with a brand new engine. Unless they can import a known format (like the .nifs of old) then I'm seeing some bigger problems on the horizon. Not that they won't be worthwhile to tackle, mind you... But hey, we'll see.

I haven't read all the pages here, but I'm a bit confused. Didn't Todd Howard say in an interview earlier it was an updated version of Gamebryo? And now Hines says it's a new one?

Exactly. If you buy an old car and revamp everything about it, it's still not a new car. Same goes for this engine. I'm sure they're calling it "brand new" to get some hype but it's just gonna be a heavily tweaked version of Gamebryo.

Gagnon39, on 01 November 2010 - 07:48 PM, said:
I'm willing to bet anyone who wants to lose $100 that their new game is NOT TES V.
Stain said:
I'm game. I'll see your $100 and raise you $1000


Gagnon39 will have to pay... :banghead:

honestly id rather them have just stuck with gamebryo so they could focus 100% on content/gameplay/story instead of coding a new engine.

Apparently you must believe everything salesmen and politicians tell you.




Hines didn't say it (that I'm aware of), Gstaff and Nickb did.




Precisely.

Like I say: Perhaps is a mixture between the Gamebryo and some things of the Tech 5

I certainly hope not anyways. Bethesda BADLY needs an in-house engine that can handle the types of games they make.

I don't think a lot of people here appreciate how much time the Oblivion developers wasted by trying to hack in features to an engine that just did not like them.
Even though building a new engine takes a lot of time, you also save a lot of time in the development phase because there are masters of the engine around to help people out and to get stuff working much faster.


If a salesman sells you something and says it is "brand new" and it is in fact old or used, that is called fraud and punishable under most legal systems in this world. So, yes I tend to believe a sales person when they say something is brand new because I am sure they don't wish to lose their job and/or business and possibly spend time in jail for a criminal offense.

Then you probably shouldn't have brought it up to support your claims.


Which article is that, http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-08-16-bethesdas-todd-howard-interview? Because I don't see that much tension between Todd's statements there and the more recent ones. Here's the quote:
There's a great deal of ambiguity in there, but at no point does he actually say that it's built from previous technology. He does say that they used previous technology as a starting point, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a new engine. That just means that they used the experience they had with that prior tech as the basis for the new engine. And really, the rest of it makes the entire passage look like he was trying to provide an answer to the question without leaving hints that they'd be using a new engine for their next game (since that's the sort of announcement they would clearly want to hold back on until after the game itself is officially announced).

EDIT: To expand on the "starting point" bit: there's an indie RPG called The Broken Hourglass in development that uses Baldur's Gate and the Infinity Engine as a starting point. The people creating it had experience modifying those games, so they used that experience to move on to creating, their own similar game. The result is an engine that shares a lot of similarities with the Infinity Engine... but it's not the Infinity Engine. At all. It's an entirely separate engine developed by them to take advantage of the knowledge they'd learned from working with the Infinity Engine.

Very, very easy to interpret what Todd said in that interview as meaning that Bethesda's done exactly that.


No. The problem isn't that you're saying it's an iota less than a completely brand new engine. The problem is that you're saying that them going out of their way to unambiguously announce in multiple places that they're using a new, internally-developed engine isn't enough to confirm that they're using a new, internally-developed engine, while at the same time claiming that you're doing it to try and avoid "unrealistic expectations". Claiming that plain, official statements mean the opposite of what they're saying doesn't prevent unrealistic expectations, it creates them - the only unrealistic expectation at this point would be expecting that they're going to continue using Gamebryo.


Except that Emergent's been heading down the pan for quite some time. Gamebryo was never the most popular engine, but as far as I know its use has been on a pretty consistent decline for a very, very long time. Bethesda probably noticed this and decided to jump ship a fairly long while ago.


As I've said already, id Tech 5 is not an engine for "closed-world" games.

EDIT:
If you have to resort to implying that Bethesda, the people producing the game and the only ones who know most anything about it at this point, are actually lying about this to support your claims that it's not a new engine, I'm pretty sure this discussion is over.