Upon What Engine is ESO Built?

Gidorick

I know it's an engine that ZOS developed from the ground up just for ESO, but what do they call it? What is its name?

Micallef

Good place to start http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/499331#Comment_499331
I remember another discussion involving Havoc where it was mentioned that it was used only in early development while they were busy writing their own engine.
A search should reveal some more info.

Arkadius

At the very beginning they used HeroEngine. But then they decided to create a new engine from scratch.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/05/25/why-the-elder-scrolls-online-isn-39-t-using-heroengine.aspx

Gidorick

Yes... and they must have named it something.

MisterBigglesworth

Heavily modified HeroEngine. You can tell because it has a lot of the same bugs and weird quirks found in SWTOR

Micallef

Gidorick wrote: »

Yes... and they must have named it something.

Lag-o-tronic 2015?

drschplatt

Gidorick wrote: »

I know it's an engine that ZOS developed from the ground up just for ESO, but what do they call it? What is its name?

"Tears of Shattered Children of Lag Engine"

ItsGlaive

Modified version of hero engine. Used the base engine for prototyping then "created" their own.

RainfeatherUK

If it still had hero engine components integrated, they would have to show that as they did before. Its illegal not to, right down to the base code of the engine.

ESO looked massively different in the early days under hero, for those of us around who can remember it all. From artwork, concepts, prototypes and otherwise. Its come along long way since back then.

It uses many of the associated middle-ware features that other mmo's do. Havok being one of those. But as for resembling the swtor's fiasco, far from it.

Naysayers will have you believe otherwise, but it is a homebuilt engine. Lets just call it ESOengine. Unless they sell it commercially, it doesnt need an external/out of house title.

ItsGlaive

They do show it, in the installer. Also they don't HAVE to, swtor doesn't irrc

BuggeX

Doesnt they use a other form of the own Creation Engine?

kevlarto_ESO

Lag-O-Master 3000 nobody builds lag better...LOL

fromtesonlineb16_ESO

Gidorick wrote: »

Yes... and they must have named it something.

Why?

It's an in-house development, why 'must' they have given it a name at all?

fromtesonlineb16_ESO

Micallef wrote: »

Good place to start http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/499331#Comment_499331
I remember another discussion involving Havoc where it was mentioned that it was used only in early development while they were busy writing their own engine..

This is correct.

Havok is credited simply because it was used during early development as a stand-in for the engine being written in-house.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/102820/eso-using-hero-engine-and-havok-seriously-you-lied-to-us/p1

ZOS_TristanK wrote: »

Hi, folks. When we began development for ESO, we licensed the HeroEngine so that we could hit the ground running. We used it as a tool for things like area prototypes and design concepts so that we could begin honing the art style. HeroEngine was our whiteboard: a great tool to put our ideas in the game and seeing them while the production engine was in development.

/thread

NewBlacksmurf

Whatever they are doing...other than the bugs which are being worked out...it went pretty well for consoles but not so hot for PC. Each has some of the same bugs tho
Havoc is listed in the console splash but not sure as others point out IF that's the one so to soeak

Enodoc

I assume Havok is still used, since it's still on the splash screen, and that handles the physics. Then they have their in-house engine which does the graphics rendering, audio processing, and such like.

Gidorick

Not /thread @fromtesonlineb16_ESO. That doesn't answer what they call their engine. They built it from the ground up. Cool. Does it have a name?

Personally I like to think it's something Elder Scrolls related. Like the CHIM Engine.

RSram

I don't know what engine it is, but apparently it's not firing on all cylinders!

Weberda

RSram wrote: »

I don't know what engine it is, but apparently it's not firing on all cylinders!

Pretty sure it's a Model T engine they found at Acme Car Wrecking in New Jersey.

EQBallzz

Micallef wrote: »

Gidorick wrote: »

Yes... and they must have named it something.

Lag-o-tronic 2015?

You sure it's not the Cash Shop 5000 engine?

Sylvyr

"The Engine That Shall Not Be Named"

or

"Oopsies"

Sotha_Sil

The elder engine

ps. I miss lol

Robbmrp

Well if ZOS created their own engine for ESO that explains a lot of the issues that are still here from launch. The other engines must not have been able to do what they were trying for ESO. Otherwise it would be a complete waste of development resources to not build off an existing one and create something new.

Gidorick

I Quite like The Elder Engine @Sotha_Sil

Jaxsun

Hypertionb14_ESO wrote: »

Omg, LOL

Attorneyatlawl

ESO is built on a custom, in house engine. In its early development Hero engine was used for prototyping and some early work but it was realized that it didn't meet Zenimax's requirements, so they shifted to a proprietary platform. While some middleware is used for subsystems (havok is leveraged for some physics and collision detection for example, and was enabled a brief time before the game launched through today), the game isn't built on top of any specific platform. If you Google around you can find some very old tech discussion interviews laying out this story. More recently, post launch, FaceFX integration was added to improve characters' facial morphs and animations in line with their voiceovers, as well.

For the curious, here is the FaceFX site: http://www.facefx.com/

Pallmor

kevlarto_ESO wrote: »

Lag-O-Master 3000 nobody builds lag better...LOL

Yeah, but they're hoping to fix all the problems by upgrading to the Lag-O-Master 4000 engine this fall.

RSram

Robbmrp wrote: »

...The other engines must not have been able to do what they were trying for ESO....

Like run on MS DOS?

Although ESO looks pretty, it's engine doesn't do anything that I can see better than any of the previously mentioned game engines. I been playing since beta and I see nothing ground breaking or earth shattering in the game engine that I haven't seen five years ago!

I turn the grass off because I it drives me crazy then I turn my character and see the grass rotate: That's 1990's sprite technology. I think sprites are used for all of the 3D effects; I'm not saying this is bad, but if your going to take this approach to increase performance, then why is there so many uses with frame rate issues?

There is no real physics in this game! When I kill a NPC on the edge of a cliff, their corpse just floats in mid air. Ragdoll physics do not exist in this game.

What ever game engine is being used, it's network code needs an overhaul; including the server farm hardware.

Finally, some of you who read my previous post, know that I like to circumvent the invisible walls around the zones and so far I haven't found a zone that I couldn't conquer, but it's interesting that once I walk into an uninitialized zone with no NPC's, players, and other interact-able props. my frame rate jumps from 40 to 60 FPS on a Geforce 680 (4 GB VRAM) at 2560 x 1440 with every graphics option turned on to the max settings. Note that my graphics card VRAM is never overloaded even in crowded cities, so I have to assume that there is another issue causing the jerkiness and latency that a lot of player's are experiencing.

One other point: You usually modify a game engine to enhance the game, not to travel back in time to the 1990's!

Lava_Croft

The Havok logo that ESO shows does not inherently mean it uses Havok Physics. Havok provides several different products.

Attorneyatlawl

RSram wrote: »

Robbmrp wrote: »

...The other engines must not have been able to do what they were trying for ESO....

Like run on MS DOS?

Although ESO looks pretty, it's engine doesn't do anything that I can see better than any of the previously mentioned game engines. I been playing since beta and I see nothing ground breaking or earth shattering in the game engine that I haven't seen five years ago!

I turn the grass off because I it drives me crazy then I turn my character and see the grass rotate: That's 1990's sprite technology. I think sprites are used for all of the 3D effects; I'm not saying this is bad, but if your going to take this approach to increase performance, then why is there so many uses with frame rate issues?

There is no real physics in this game! When I kill a NPC on the edge of a cliff, their corpse just floats in mid air. Ragdoll physics do not exist in this game.

What ever game engine is being used, it's network code needs an overhaul; including the server farm hardware.

Finally, some of you who read my previous post, know that I like to circumvent the invisible walls around the zones and so far I haven't found a zone that I couldn't conquer, but it's interesting that once I walk into an uninitialized zone with no NPC's, players, and other interact-able props. my frame rate jumps from 40 to 60 FPS on a Geforce 680 (4 GB VRAM) at 2560 x 1440 with every graphics option turned on to the max settings. Note that my graphics card VRAM is never overloaded even in crowded cities, so I have to assume that there is another issue causing the jerkiness and latency that a lot of player's are experiencing.

One other point: You usually modify a game engine to enhance the game, not to travel back in time to the 1990's!

That's great, but things aren't that simple on the inside. It's one thing to look at a skyscraper and say, "that thing doesn't look so good". It's another entirely to say how to build it, fix it, or both when you don't understand how it even works or any architectural design. Visual fidelity isn't the only consideration for methods used for the artwork, and from your mentions of grass being billboarded and "not looking better than other games" it's clear enough to me that you don't .

On a simple level the majority of other MMORPG titles of recent times have not had need to maintain framerate well or responsiveness in large environments, particularly with several hundred player characters in the same zone with no segmentation or instancing between them such as Cyrodiil or the upcoming Imperial City. ESO does utilize physics libraries, but gratuitous ragdolls for character deaths not only would add too much visual clutter to the game field but simply wouldn't work gameplay wise in an area such as Cyrodiil. Your ally died next to you on the keep wall? One sec rez.... uhoh his corpse rolled off to the ground over the edge of the wall and cancelled the rez! Get what I mean?

It should be absolutely unsurprising to someone just as a player that when there's not much going on your framerate goes up...

Vram usage also isn't relevant as an individual statistic when discussing overall game performance. If you wanted to get technical about it, tools don't actually show usage but allocation, which are two distinctly different measurements internally.

On the main topic, here is one of those older interviews I'd mentioned earlier: http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,1034123/The-Elder-Scrolls-Online-Improved-effects-with-DirectX-11-Exclusive-Tech-Interview/News/

Attorneyatlawl

Lava_Croft wrote: »

The Havok logo that ESO shows does not inherently mean it uses Havok Physics. Havok provides several different products.

They sure do, but ZOS has explicitly stated they have integrated their physics libraries for collision detection and other physics tasks already anyways.