Monday, May 14th 2012
Treyarch says Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Doesn't Need a New Engine to Advance Graphics
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 doesn't need a brand new game engine to improve the graphics over previous games in the series, Treyarch has insisted. Black Ops 2 is built using the latest, most advanced version of the engine that Call of Duty developers have used to build the first-person shooter series since 2005's Call of Duty 2: a heavily modified version of the id Tech 3 engine. Some fans have called on Activision to invest in a brand new graphics engine in order to spruce up Call of Duty's visuals. But Treyarch chief Mark Lamia said continuing to upgrade the current engine was enough to meet the development team's design goals. "People always ask me, 'Is this a new engine?' he told One of Swords. "I liken it to people who live in an older house that has been remodelled. Just because you're remodelling the house and it will look new or it will have a new kitchen, you don't tear out the foundation, or break out some of the framing. You might even go as hardcore as replacing the plumbing, and we will do that sort of thing, as an analogy. It's a gross simplification, but it's one way to say that. There's a lot of good still in that foundation that you wouldn't get rid of, and we don't. We look to advance in the areas that support our game design.
"Engines, each time they get touched, they change. The creators alter them; they don't modify what they don't need to, and then they alter what they need to. You can't make a competitive product if you're not upgrading that engine along the way." He added: "I think the whole thing about a new engine... sometimes that's a great buzzword. Well, I have a new graphics engine - is that a new engine? Where does it start and stop? Elements of the code, you can trace back for a very, very long time... but whole parts of the code are entirely new. Two areas we did focus on for this game were the graphics and the lighting - a pretty significant amount of work is going into that."When Activision announced Black Ops 2 earlier this month it promised a "visual overhaul", with graphical upgrades a mix of "tech and technique". In a demo to press played on an Xbox 360 build of the game, an unpopulated level set on Socotra Island in Yemen showed HDR lighting, bounce lighting, self-shadowing and a new texture technique called reveal mapping - all running at 60 frames per second.
"I think what people are asking for is for us to push," Lamia explained. "They want us to make a better-looking game; they want things. I don't think those are things people can't ask for. We asked ourselves that very same question - we wanted to advance the graphics. I think the questions are valid. The answer may not need to be an entirely new engine, but you might need to do an entire overhaul of your entire lighting system. "The trick is, we're not willing to do that if we can't keep it running at 60 frames per second - but we did that this time. So this is the Black Ops 2 engine."
Source:
Eurogamer
"Engines, each time they get touched, they change. The creators alter them; they don't modify what they don't need to, and then they alter what they need to. You can't make a competitive product if you're not upgrading that engine along the way." He added: "I think the whole thing about a new engine... sometimes that's a great buzzword. Well, I have a new graphics engine - is that a new engine? Where does it start and stop? Elements of the code, you can trace back for a very, very long time... but whole parts of the code are entirely new. Two areas we did focus on for this game were the graphics and the lighting - a pretty significant amount of work is going into that."When Activision announced Black Ops 2 earlier this month it promised a "visual overhaul", with graphical upgrades a mix of "tech and technique". In a demo to press played on an Xbox 360 build of the game, an unpopulated level set on Socotra Island in Yemen showed HDR lighting, bounce lighting, self-shadowing and a new texture technique called reveal mapping - all running at 60 frames per second.
"I think what people are asking for is for us to push," Lamia explained. "They want us to make a better-looking game; they want things. I don't think those are things people can't ask for. We asked ourselves that very same question - we wanted to advance the graphics. I think the questions are valid. The answer may not need to be an entirely new engine, but you might need to do an entire overhaul of your entire lighting system. "The trick is, we're not willing to do that if we can't keep it running at 60 frames per second - but we did that this time. So this is the Black Ops 2 engine."
95 Comments on Treyarch says Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Doesn't Need a New Engine to Advance Graphics
Game may look great however, never know. Just depends on the finished product.
Im more likely to play a game even if it has a shit storyline and mediocre gameplay just because I can walk around the scenery and get totally lost in it and not some game that has turd brown textures for most of scenery throughout 99% of the game - even if it has amazing gameplay and storyline.
I wouldnt be able to bring myself to play it or at least concentrate long enough to even get far into the game
remember back in the early days when IW/Treyarch used to give the community dev/mod tools for CoD games?? the communty added all sorts of mods and ported maps in from OTHER GAMES into CoD specially with CoD1 and MW4. I saw maps from medal of honor:AA and maps from quake and loads of other games ported to the game.
same thing can be said about earlier Battlefield games and other games where the they gave the community dev tools.
but publishers and developers want more money so they stopped giving out dev tools and in effect forced the community to buy map packs as there was no other choice if you wanted to keep playing the game.
CoD4:MW1 on the PC still has quite a large group of active players purely because you can play on modded servers or on servers with a crap load of custom maps.
Those days are long gone, as they think the community isnt 'smart enough' to use the dev tools they provide... Or isnt that what EA said about BF3???
who knows anyway. all i know that giving the community SDK tools only adds to the popularity and longevity of a game as vanilla gets boring after a while.
I personally was sick of the stock maps of MW1 after playing it non stop after 2 weeks and i never touched stock maps again after that until i eventually stopped playing the game entirely
But not only that. If we look in general, except for Battlefield, Red Faction, Hydrophobia, the fire propagation in Far Cry 2 and the easy map creator in MP, euphoria in GTA 4, the open vast environment of Just Cause 2 and some other minor exemple, there aren't any truly new gameplay features out there. Skyrim is pretty much the same as Oblivion, with some simplified things. There aren't any "epic" battles like in Mount and Blade with tens or hundreds of soldiers on screen. Todd said something in line of "more hardware power will only give us a better looking game 7 feet away, where the player doesn't see much anyway. Nothing more". But in some short clips prior to Oblivion, he argued about the dedication of Bethesda to reinvent TES every time and how the new hardware helped them to achieve such a goal. Now, being no new console, he's view suddenly shifted. I'm not surprised.
Going back to CoD, the gameplay is actually the same as before. Just some new story and new maps. Nothing a moding team can't do in a year or two, which rises the question for me: how come people buy this game in such large numbers? :)
PS: Think how the original Deus Ex for instance, would look on the version of UE that was used for Samaritean demo or on Cry Engine 2/3; how the atmosphere, animations, characters and world detail, could improve the game.
i wished if valve released source sdk base 2012...
just because they arent naming this engine different doesnt mean its exactly the same engine as 7 years back.
and this engine is pretty efficient, resource wise.
they are really starting to show their age to me, the blocky shite textures and low detail worlds actually starting to put me off playing at all.... and its as simple as this the AI ,in game physics, lighting and texture detail dont just need upgradeing id start again if i were them its very poor compared to the frostbite engine
im not buying another thing from Treyarch till they put some damn effort in