Give ESO the Oblivion treatment

richo262 · August 4

I'll be short.

Many have asked for a revamp. ZOS is sprucing the game up a little here and there.

They managed to slap Unreal Engine over the top of the dated Oblivion engine. What is fundamentally stopping this approach?

PeacefulAnarchy · August 4

Single player and multiplayer games interact differently with their engines.

richo262 · August 4

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Single player and multiplayer games interact differently with their engines.

I thought that may be the case, but didn't Runescape do something similar at one stage? Two different game clients communicating on the same server. Isn't the Unreal Engine slap on just a cosmetic ontop? Does it really need to touch the netcode?

ESO_player123 · August 4

richo262 wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Single player and multiplayer games interact differently with their engines.

I thought that may be the case, but didn't Runescape do something similar at one stage? Two different game clients communicating on the same server. Isn't the Unreal Engine slap on just a cosmetic ontop? Does it really need to touch the netcode?

Out of curiosity, what two different Runescape game clients are you talking about?

katanagirl1 · August 4

I haven’t ported code to a new engine but I do have experience in software. I don’t think you just “slap on” a new engine. It is the framework the rest of the code interacts with and is built upon, so it is a considerable amount of work to do.

Gagoimaliu · August 4

It's easier for Oblivion because it's a single player game that came out over 20 years ago, the most ESO could really feasibly do is update the models and textures like WoW for more graphical fidelity

Would it be possible to skin-graft UE5 over ESO? Probably, can ZOS with its current state do it? No, and they probably couldn't even do it with 700 people

Fundamentally stopping this is things like manpower, skill, the time needed to do it when they already have class refreshes and crossplay pushed back.

A graphics upgrade is probably needed, but after the classes and when we know what kind of content we'll be getting

tsaescishoeshiner · August 4

Maybe one day, but for now I'm happy that people with potato computers can run ESO. They're part of the community, and new computer parts are more expensive than ever, even in countries with better exchange rates.

Improvements for higher end players make sense, as well as a way to uninstall 4k texture packs for those who can't use them.

Gagoimaliu · August 4

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

Maybe one day, but for now I'm happy that people with potato computers can run ESO. They're part of the community, and new computer parts are more expensive than ever, even in countries with better exchange rates.

Improvements for higher end players make sense, as well as a way to uninstall 4k texture packs for those who can't use them.

Being able to run on potato PCs, maybe not run well but run at all is partly the reason MMOs are so successful, especially among the more casual crowds who might not have or can afford beast top of the line spaceship PCs. My computer isn't the best but I can run ESO on high just fine apart from major cities but that's to be expected with all the people

HatchetHaro · August 4

Heya, Unreal Engine game dev here. The thing fundamentally stopping this approach is budget and time.

Even if you do the Oblivion approach of pairing the two separate engines and having ESO's code run as-is and piping the rendering through Unreal Engine with brand new assets, you still have to make those assets. And boy oh boy, are there a lot of assets. You've got concept art, sculpting, 3D modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, materials, shaders, particle effects, so much more. There's also loads of debugging and playtesting work to do to make sure it functions and runs well.

As you can see, ZOS doesn't exactly have the capacity to support that workload.

Sluggy · August 4

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I haven’t ported code to a new engine but I do have experience in software. I don’t think you just “slap on” a new engine. It is the framework the rest of the code interacts with and is built upon, so it is a considerable amount of work to do.

In this case, the OP is referring to the fact that the Oblivion remaster is quite literally running the original game engine in the background to simulate the entire original game.

As was pointed out - fundamentally a different engine that allowed for that sort of thing.

Also, I personally found the remaster to be of exceptionally poor quality. No thanks.