Age of Decadence - Improving the Performance

*facepalm* My bad... I didn't notice you had replied to my previous post.

What do optimizations have to do with money though? Wouldn't it have a lot more to do with the competency of the dev team?
 
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JDR13 said:
What engine are they using? Is it an existing engine or their own?
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No idea, really, but it seems to me to be an amateur project - with people who're primarily driven by the game design - and not the technical aspects of development.

I could be wrong though, but I do know that coding an engine with 3D capabilities like this, as a small amateur team - is quite the undertaking. Even if you use an established engine, you're going to be in trouble with something as involved as this game seems to be.

Most professional development teams have several people totally dedicated to engine development and optimising asset implementation, who have done nothing BUT that for years. That, or they simply license some engine and tweak it - using years of experience.

But if this game is actually done by professional people with strong experience in the field, then I'm obviously in the wrong :)
 
What do optimizations have to do with money though? Wouldn't it have a lot more to do with the competency of the dev team?
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Well, you can take as an example an engine like unreal engine or unity, they use for example lightmass / beauty, which does extremely complicated and optimized lightning caluclations. Software made by the best in the industry who spent years to make this renderings. Same thing with things like speed tree... expert who spent years just optimizing grass and tree rendering.... each part of these big commercial engines are made by specific expects of that field who spent years on optimizations.
 
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The project has a FAQ page, that might be worthwile reading for those interested in the game.

They use the torque game engine renderer (that's an older version of Torque, while Dead State usies the current generation torque 3D) and a lot of custom-built tools for content generation. So its an old engine that's been taught a couple of new tricks (e.g. the shadow system). Also the game allows you to zoom out to a near isometric perspective, which of course means a lot of geometry has to be rendered. High polycounts will still bring even the best engine and computer to their knees. I don't think contemporary hardware has actual performance "issues" (the demo certainly played fine on my 4 year old laptop), but of course with a game that clearly looks dated anyway, you want to make sure it doesn't lag - people would not be very forgiving about that. Another aspect is that it is good for them to have very low system specs - the game is targeted to appeal to "oldschool" people and quite a proportion of those may be running older hardware.

Regarding release, nothing definite has been announced. The next milestone is a full demo of the starting area, with full quests and dialog. The most precise date on this is "rather sooner than later" which I interpret with some confidence as "hopefully this year". But yes, they are amateur (well as in "working on the game part-time, having day jobs") so things go slowly.
 
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Regarding the bit about the ability to hide (remove) roofs being a godsend.
Just think for moment, if taking one step into a large building shows the complete floor plan space within that building might be seen as "too much too soon" - why not have a radius fade-off distance around the player character?
Would having the ability to see the building exterior roofs and all but showing the building's interior only in the player characters immediate local vicinity increase (or reduce) the fps rate any further? - maybe the incidental discovery factor would also be increased as the player character would have to explore to fresh unrendered interior area's before finding and exposing any interactive articles, npc's etc' - only problem with this i can see is the fade-off area would/may have to be big enough to show other npc's such as combatants...but then a combat scenario could enable total roof removal situation....maybe with an audio exclamation.
 
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GothicGothicness said:
This sounds like some kind of gamespot style blackmail…. hey give me an interview and I will be fair………
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If you need to twist things to make you feel better, whatever. I was giving him a chance to prove his game to me and others who will be on the fence. I have done a couple of interviews in the past with basilisk games, but hey if you guys have no interest(since I was going to do it for here) then fine, no skin off my back.
 
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rune_74 said:
Your right, that wasn't very clear and informative. I do think I saw potential, your right. I liked the combat generally…
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Why, thank you.

I'm not a fan of what I saw of you on the codex, thats true. You were not an easy guy to like on there…
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Is that what we're here for? To be liked?

Tell you what, you give me an interview and tell me all about the game and answer some of my questions and we can call it even, I think I have asked for one from you before. Don't worry I'm fair and I use your exact words, I just send you some questions to answer:)
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Sure, why not? You don't have to be fair and can ask anything you like. Loaded questions make interesting interviews, do they not?
 
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rune, for years now I have seen you contort yourself into every humanly possible shape defending AAA developers on several different forums, entreating everyone to just give them a chance, spending hours of your life meticulously countering every criticism.

Now, on RPG Watch, you're (sort of, feebly) passing judgment on the AoD combat demo (but not really, it's got potential. Maybe.) and declaring it's somehow not worthy? Duh, what?

Honestly, it sounds like a disingenuous ploy to get an interview, but I must be wrong about that because obviously it would be easier to just ask.
/rant
 
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I've reached the point where AoD along with Eschalon Book 3 and KotC 2 are far more likely to be what I want than the latest Bioware or Bethesda games.
 
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screeg said:
rune, for years now I have seen you contort yourself into every humanly possible shape defending AAA developers on several different forums, entreating everyone to just give them a chance, spending hours of your life meticulously countering every criticism.

Now, on RPG Watch, you're (sort of, feebly) passing judgment on the AoD combat demo (but not really, it's got potential. Maybe.) and declaring it's somehow not worthy? Duh, what?

Honestly, it sounds like a disingenuous ploy to get an interview, but I must be wrong about that because obviously it would be easier to just ask.
/rant
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Actually I am pretty much open to every game Screeg, I don't go on crusades. I'm open to any game that is fun to me. I'm fair as well. To be honest, I am quite interested in what Vince has done since last we really heard anything.

If you really want to follow where I post, go to www.colonyofgamers.com, www.basiliskgames.com, and here. Oh I also post about hockey at HFboards….though it is a different game;)

I am currently working on an interview with the guy who made Legerdemain…tell me that is not niche;)

EDIT: So, um, can we discuss what I said and end the personal attacks please??
 
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I'm pretty much in the same boat as Quasimodo. I think my list is now AoD, Dead State and KotC2. I'll probably take a look at the Witcher 2 also. And probably Skyrim, though I'm not terribly encouraged by what little I've read about this one.
 
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