Alright the topic is pretty self explanatory. I didn't have a use something else option because Zenimax now owns id software so if Bethesda does use another game engine it would most likely be id Tech 5 for obvious reasons. Personally I'd like them to use id Tech 5 gamebryo is just starting to feel to archaic to me.

I don't think there's really anything terribly wrong with Gamebryo, but I'd go with Tech 5, all things being equal. id makes nice games, but their really standout features have always been their technology. Tech 5 looks pretty promising on a technical standpoint if they can follow through on the claims they're making with it.

Tech 5. It wouldn't be a game breaker for me if it just used the current or a modified Gamebryo engine though.

So, we are comparing these two?

ID Tech 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnBPqrhY3hw

Gamebryo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn2eKApX83w

Yes

To be honest, I don't think Gamebryo is that bad. It actually satisfies my standard of entertainment.

I voted Gamebryo. Sometimes dev's get better results with tools they know backwards.

Will it satisfy you four or five years from now (I'm speculating of course) when Fallout 4 comes out?

Considering John Carmack's on the zenimax pay roll and has stated that he was more then willing to let Bethesda share there technology I don't see how this would be a huge issue. Hell we might get a less buggy game if they use id Tech 5.

Isn't Id Tech 5 the engine they are using for Fallout 3 clone 002, aka Rage?

It certainly looks nice in the latest pictures I saw featured in Game Informer though I bet my computer will probably not be able to even run this crap in minimum settings.

Frankly, I don't care either way. Use one or the other, I just want the games to have better stability and less bugs. I don't necessarily need to have the game look like a photo shopped world in order to enjoy it. Outside of the dune buggy stuff and the graphics being nicer, I see little to sway me in one direction or another. :shrug:

Having id on their side for their tech expertise will certainly be a big help to Bethesda. (And I'd also be suprised if they didn't make use of Tech 5 - if for no other reason than since Zenimax owns id, it's going to be more financially feasible to use what is now technically an in-house engine than stick with Gamebryo.)

As far as bugs go, though - that's not really anything to do with the engine they used, but the coding they did for the game (which is still basically C++ when you go right down to it...)

I think people get a bit confused on just what role an engine plays in game development. (Not saying anyone here so far doesn't understand, but just for clarity's sake:)

The difference between using one engine or another when making a game is roughly equivalent to whether I design a webpage in Dreamweaver or GoLive. Or whether I make an image using Painter or Photoshop, Flash or Illustrator. Or whether I make a 3D model using Maya, 3DStudioMax, or Blender. It's just a set of tools. Some can be better at different things (in the case of engines, how the image is rendered, etc,) but the efficiency of the coding in that web page; or the end result of an image, still come down to familiarity with those tools and the skill of the user. In fact, it's very much like using any of those other programs. It's a common suite of tools that all of the design team use to create what they're doing.

For the end-user, the videogame player - the only thing that really matters in terms of which engine was used lies more in which reflections you think look better, or how the game handles level of detail transitions, etc. Things like bugs, animations, etc, are much more related to the actual coding and design of the game itself than the engine that was used. (In the same way that I can botch a script just as easily in Dreamweaver as any other HTML coder.) The actual graphics themselves and such generally have much more to do with the modellers, texture artists, art direction team, and animators than it does the engine that was used.

Buggy was the wrong term I should've said stable.

Well even then, it's more to do with the programming underlying the foundation of the game than an inherent property of the engine. (And regardless, that all comes down to C++ when you get right down to it. In the same way that no matter what web design suite I'm using, I'm still just coding in HTML.)

The engine really only has to do with rendering 3D objects and making it easier for the designers to insert the models into the game. Even the physics engine is a separate element, a lot of times. (Some are built into the engine at times, though.)

It's not as if the makers of Gamebryo won't be releasing new versions of their engine as well.

Judging from what I've seen from id's Rage so far, it kinda totally blows away Fallout 3 when it comes to post apocalyptica. So I'll say Bethesda won't have much choice but to finally toss out Gamebryo.

Really though, I'd be a little suprised if they didn't switch over to Tech 5. That's now pretty much an "in-house" development tool, now that id is under Zenimax. I mean, up until they got id; Zenimax basically was Bethesda, after all. There's the obvious advantages of having John Carmack and co. making games for you. But it would seem a little odd to me if they didn't also intend to use this merger to Bethesda's advantage, as well. id has always been a very tech-savvy developer, after all.

Well, Bethesda employees have made statements in the past to the effect that "we're already familiar with the Gamebryo engine" and "we won't be abandoning it anytime soon." Having seen Tech 5, however, and remembering how items float up out of tables or crash around the room due to the quirky Gamebryo physics engine, I really hope they decide to switch.

Let me put it simply man I get tired in Fallout 3 of walking from say Springvale School to Big Town and the town being invisible to I'm with in 20 ft. of it. You can find examples of that all over in Fallout 3. That's what I meant by less buggy and stable.



Why would they even use it though? id seems like they make a better product then Emergent Game Technologies.



Getting a new game engine was probably on there priority list here as well.

Okay, I think I finally get what you're driving at.

Yeah, looking at the id Tech 5 demo, it looks like they've (if their hype proves to be true) found a way to be much more efficient in their rendering; which could very well lead to better draw distances, and LoD and texture swapping. (Because they'd be able to render to greater distances due a more overall efficient engine.) Because they'd be able to render farther out without seeing a drop in framerate.

The current build of Gamebryo is a few years old now, as well, though. They might come up with something that would also be able to achieve the same effect, as well.


That's the Havok physics, though - which tends to be a little quirky with things like that. I'm not sure if Tech 5 comes with a built-in physics engine or not, at this point. If not, you'd run into the same problem running a game that was built in Tech 5 with Havok physics, as well.

But who are we to tell the sculptor what Chisel and Hammer to use?

Are you sure you've maxed out view distance?

Yeah, actually, I was wondering that, too. Because I can see pretty much all the way to the horizon for the most part, in my game. (But I'm playing on a PC with max settings; not sure what it would look like on a console or with lower settings.)

That said, from the claims they're making about Tech 5 (specifically the "our artists can add as many details as they want and it won't affect the framerate'" <= paraphrasing,) you might be able to more effectively increase the draw distance without taking a significant hit to the framerate. (For example, I still remember a quest in Morrowind where you had to watch some guy from a distance - the only problem being I could only play that game at the time with so much fogging on that I couldn't tell where he was going... )

In the long term I think Bethesda is likely to switch over to id's technology. Gamebryo has its advantages, but it's hard to say no to engines that are effectively free: even if Bethesda technically pays for the license it's ultimately staying in Zenimax.

This being said, I imagine Bethesda started work on their current game well before Zenimax acquired i, so I wouldn't be surprised if Bethesda's upcoming generation of games continues to use Gamebryo.

It's not the view distance it's when going from springvale school to Bigtown the town doesn't actually load for a very long time and then just appears. I have no problem with view distance it's that certain things don't load up in the game quickly you can see buildings in the distance and everything else fine but certain instances like the one I mentioned it takes forever for it to load up. I'm on the PC and my computer runs the game smoothly this is problem with the engine not my rig.

We're arguably the most important part of the process ? the customers. In ancient times, sculptors made their livings by taking on commissions, and those commissions determined what form the sculpture would take, and sometimes the material that would be used. Game engines are more akin to the material used than the actual "hammer and chisel" (because the engine is ultimately what the game is "made out of").

Of course, "we" are millions of customers, not a single wealthy patron. So our preferences and suggestions are extremely diluted, and Bethesda will do whatever its business managers believe will sell the most copies, which may or may not include a change of game engine.