Obsidian Entertainment - More Onyx Engine RPGs

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
I don't think that "engine" means "UI" here.
In my opinion, both are separate parts of the whole game.

Yeah but they kind of go together in some sense. You can transfer a UI or parts of it to a degree with the same engine but it's not as easy to do when you are moving over to a completely different engine. You pretty much have to rebuild it.

However, in the interest of 'I don't give a shit enough and don't feel like getting into some stupid internet argument over it'…

Right, engine and UI=totally separate. Onyx=good engine (supposedly), DS3=shit console controls. Let's hope to see more of a good engine with PC specific UIs in the future.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
Could be interpreted differently, too : Someone's licensing this engine … Money flows in …

I'm not sure how you get this, unless you don't understand english that well.

Originally Posted by Motoki
Yeah but they kind of go together in some sense. You can transfer a UI or parts of it to a degree with the same engine but it's not as easy to do when you are moving over to a completely different engine. You pretty much have to rebuild it.

Not trying to get into a debate, but I will just point that you *can* really put a vastly different kind of UI and controls on a same engine. You just need to look at the Unreal Engine 3 for instance which has been used for pretty much any kind of gameplay imaginable with vastly different gameplays and UIs.

That's not to say they wouldn't recycle the DSIII UI if they felt it appropriate, but if they aim for a different kind of game, they'd probably go with a different UI (the Alien RPG UI was nothing like it, and it was the same engine)

So I wouldn't worry about it really.

-Sergorn

Despite of being an Obsidian fan I'm not exited with this news either. I was disappointed with Dungeon Siege 3. But my disappointment not stem from controls or action gameplay. It's from the narrow, small maps with little room for exploration. Also graphics are too blurry. Actually I don't know if it's the game or the engine that the real culprit here. But I'm not impressed with the engine at all.

Originally Posted by Sergorn
Not trying to get into a debate, but I will just point that you *can* really put a vastly different kind of UI and controls on a same engine. You just need to look at the Unreal Engine 3 for instance which has been used for pretty much any kind of gameplay imaginable with vastly different gameplays and UIs.

As another example Civ IV and Oblivion both ran on Gamebryo, and they are fairly dissimilar games..

Interfaces are quite often built with 3rd party/ plug in stuff now, things like Flash and the like. No need for them to be built directly into the engine.

Originally Posted by Gokyabgu
Despite of being an Obsidian fan I'm not exited with this news either. I was disappointed with Dungeon Siege 3. But my disappointment not stem from controls or action gameplay. It's from the narrow, small maps with little room for exploration. Also graphics are too blurry. Actually I don't know if it's the game or the engine that the real culprit here. But I'm not impressed with the engine at all.

Personnally I was impressed by the seamless nature of the engine. My first thought was "God Id love an Ultima that looks like this!"

-Sergorn

I thought it looked pretty good, with smooth framerates and seamless loading - also, relatively bug-free.

I don't think you can draw too many conclusions from DS3 itself, which was obviously a console project through and through. Obsidian made many comments ("that wasn't in the scope of the project") that lead me to believe Square kept a narrow focus on the project, and that's the way it is when you do work-for-hire.

Originally Posted by Sergorn
Personnally I was impressed by the seamless nature of the engine. My first thought was "God Id love an Ultima that looks like this!"

-Sergorn

But in order to provide this seamless world, they had to lower the textures (because of the technical limitation of consoles) and to cover these low textures they overused the bloom effect.

Actually there're two Ultimas that have been made with a seamless engine. DS1 engine remakes of Ultima 5 and 6. Try them, you won't be disappointed.

Not excited at all. Dungeon Siege III was a poor game, on par with Dragon Age II.
And the engine was unoptimised; small world, small textures. yet it needed more computer resources than Witcher 2. But if Obsidian will impove it - who knows…