Yang Xangai wrote:CryEngine 2 supports more than 32 players, its just necessary adapt it on engine. I really think that this engine will do a great job in PR, because it has all the required features, such as: Long Draw Distance, vehicle physics, physics on everything, a exoskeleton (included dismembrament), time of day, great graphics, custom assets, and very other tecnologies.
Devs, what do you think?
I've not heard anything that indicates Cry Engine 2 will extend beyond 32 players. Adapting an engine is not really a simple task hehe. The Cry Engine 1 & 2 collectively have about $30 to $35 million dollars invested into them. I don't necessarily believe that a mod crew could pick up the engine and achieve what the original developer was not able to achieve with it (even if we could gain a license to it, never mind source to modify it).
Realistically when looking at the engines that power AAA titles, the thinking needs to be "mod" and not "extend the engine".
Deadfast wrote:I have not heard of anything being changed about player limit from ArmA 1 to ArmA 2.
Therefore, theoretically, you can have 100+ players.
The problem will be with a massive lag.
ArmA 1 features materials indicate 100+ players. ArmA 2 features materials indicate 50+ players. I am not aware of any reports of stable and regular gameplay at 100+ players with ArmA 1. Anytime I tried ArmA 1 when it originally came out servers were laggy and buggy with 30+ players. I recently re-installed now that the ACE is out, but I've not had time to play much. Still rarely see servers with more than 40 slots.
For ArmA 2, I believe that BHI's perspective is that 50+ players with 120 bots is a lot of activity. That may be the case, but I'd prefer to see 100+ players and use a few bots here and there to add in some interesting game play elements.
gazzthompson wrote:well, what sort of limitations and abilitys dose bad company engine have, same with bf3 if we even know what engine it will have, threads for discussion not just, "lets use this game it looks cool"
Bad Company is built on Frostbite and I believe the PC version of that is called Frostbite DX. BF3 is an unannounced game - AND MAY NEVER HAPPEN. However you would have to assume that EA will milk the franchise. But PC gaming is not very lucrative any longer. And EA has really come to dislike PC gaming due to piracy and lower than expected sales figures.
My understand of some interesting features for BF3 are:
- 40 players per team (80 total)
- squads can merge into "batallions"
- expected to support longer view distances than BF2 (not new to PR, but we may get better visuals)
- 4sq km maps, but terrains up to 32sq km can be generated
- everything can be destroyed (not new to PR)
- NATO vs MEC in a modern setting (this is relevant because it means assets that ship with BF3 can be used in PR, whereas 2142 assets are largely useless to PR)
The Frostbite DX engine tech likely means that BF3 will bear little resemblence to BF2 in terms of leveraging existing PR assets. So from a workflow and asset re-use perspective, BF3 / Frostbite would likely be nearly as much work as a complete platform switch.
It's also unknown as to how much support EA will provide for modding BF3 (if the game ever ships). 2142 has no tools support from EA whatsoever. Modders for 2142 are using BF2 mod tools hacked up to work with 2142. Additionally PR is an anomaly in the BF mod scene... the ranking system (not exposed to modders) really deterred players from trying BF2 mods.
EA/DICE has done little more than lip service around mod support for BF2 & 2142. Shortly after the release of BF2 mod support was basically left to the community to figure out. And frankly if they really were interested in mod support they would be engaged with folks like Project Reality, Black Sand Studio, BF Pirates, etc, etc to ask what we want from them regarding upcoming releases and mod tools & support.
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Huxley is an interesting game.. it's based on UT3 and is an MMOFPS. It's being developed in Korea. I highly doubt it will be moddable because it's a "master server" like MMO.
The world can be viewed here:
http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/6176/mapmq2.jpg
And some trailers here:
null from GameVideos
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Another problem with games that are on the scale of PR is the cost of servers. If it were not for the community of PR server admins, there wouldn't be a PR to play. But if you now add in the cost of a server that can support 100+ players (assuming there was a game that did so) you get into potentially very high monthly server fees.
And when you look at the cost of developing an engine & game that can support that kind of scale, you are talking about a $15 to $20 million investment. That is VERY hard to recover from PC sales aone, so the devs / publishers need to look at not only frahchise sales, but a recurring revenue stream. By that I mean some sort of subscription fee, whether that is from server companies or players themselves.
So now there's a possibility that to find an engine that support PRs scale requirements, the only viable model is a subscription based MMO (because servers are too expensive to rent and publishers are not willing to develop a game engine with that scale and then give the servers away for free). Example is that MAG is an MMO that may have pay to play; Huxley is an MMO but the subscription model is not known. Planetside is a big pile of dung imo, but the scale (via the "zoning") was pretty massive. I can't imagine paying a monthly fee for that.
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It's not a simple task to find something that can replicate current PR features, address current shortcomings and open up new possibilities!
egg
Source has given me weird lag problems for a year plus, they recently fixed it though and true enough bf2 does seem to do physics better if not well 
Enemy territory already has big maps, so I bet its possible to stretch the limits.
