Gamebryo and Torque - Engine Blues

Not strictly RPG related but it seems both the Gamebryo and Torque engines have fallen on hard times. Gamasutra reports Emergent Techologies has been forced to sell its assets including the Gamebryo engine and InstantAction - the owner of Torque - is winding down operations (thanks, Rampant Coyote).
More information.

According to this article at GameSpot, Instant Action intends to continue to support its Torque engine and will keep the TorquePowered site going:

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6283937.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=newstop&tag=newstop%3Bstory%3B6

They are trying to keep the website open, so long as nothing bad happens to it, but there is nobody there to support Torque anymore. Unless someone comes in and buys it from them, in which case what happens next will depend upon the new buyer.

I wonder what will happen with the GameBryo engine. I believe Bethesda used a heavily modified version of GameBryo for their last three games (including New Vegas). Same goes for Larian.

Gamebryo has been used for hundreds of games but if I were Bethsoft, I'd be leveraging id for the next tech. Why buy an outside engine when you own one of the most famous engine developers in video game history?

Dhruin said:

Gamebryo has been used for hundreds of games but if I were Bethsoft, I'd be leveraging id for the next tech. Why buy an outside engine when you own one of the most famous engine developers in video game history?

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Anyway, they are developing one game now for which they have worked one and a half year to modify the Gamebryo engine.

I don't think they'll do an engine switch for the next two games they will develop (probably TESV and Fallout 4).

But if they make an engine switch, it will probably be 2015. And several types of games might have used IdTech5 by then and we'll know if it is applicable as an open world rpg engine.

If you have seen videos of Rage it looks like that is an open world game so the engine might be a good complement to Bethesda's games. I don't understand why Gamebryo is in financial difficulties when it is in most of the games out now. They must really suck when it comes to the financial side of the business.

Dhruin said:

Gamebryo has been used for hundreds of games but if I were Bethsoft, I'd be leveraging id for the next tech. Why buy an outside engine when you own one of the most famous engine developers in video game history?

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I think that Bethesda (or the Zenimax group including all of its studios for that matter) might make use of id's engine development skills at some point in the future but there is quite a number of reasons why it may be unlikely that any Bethesda game of the near future is going to be based on id tech 5 (the Rage engine).
For example it might be more expensive to train your staff to learn tech 5 than to just purchase the GameBryo license once more which the Bethesda dev team has tons of experience with. It is also quite possible that id tech 5 is not well suited for an open world game where you need to stream content. id is not exactly famous for making engines that work well for open world games. Finally, I remember reading a while ago (I think before the Zenimax acquisition) that id said they made tech 5 just for themselves. Unlike the Q3A engine they did not write the engine with the intent of selling it. This means that documentation and support is probably pretty poor and that a third party who has not been working with the engine on a day to day basis like id for the last couple of years would probably have a hard time to work with tech 5 efficiently.
All of these issues could be worked out, of course, and maybe there is already a tighter cooperation between Bethesda and id than we know but I doubt that it is as simple as "well, they got id" .

I dont really think its hundreds of games for Gamebryo, I know of about 30 titles and many of those use 10.2 instead of the latest and greatest because I think it was cheaper to license if there was a preexisting contract with NetImmerse. While it does cost a lot to license it on the order of many hundred thousands of dollars for a AAA title if I recall correctly for the latest engine that would be spread out over 3-5 years for the average game.

That is not really that much money when you consider the amount of staff they probably had to keep for management, sales, bug fixing and new development. I think they got a lot of good mileage out of the engine but it really did need a substantial redesign I think and has to compete against Unity and Ogre and the like on the low cost side and Unreal and Id on the high end.

Edit: Guess I should have actually read the article first. It does say 300 games but I would guess most of those were not AAA titles commanding the full price of the engine. Zoo Tycoon and Pro Cycling Manager were not sold in stores that I remember.

Todd Howard said they would not be using id 5 for the next elder scrolls game. He said that id tech 5 was not good for open world games, and that the super textures would make moding the game difficult for gamers.

TheGameSquid said:

Edit: Guess I should have actually read the article first. It does say 300 games but I would guess most of those were not AAA titles commanding the full price of the engine. Zoo Tycoon and Pro Cycling Manager were not sold in stores that I remember.

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Wow. Zoo Tycoon is incredibly common over here, or at least was.

Shame, really, I've had no real problems with Gamebryo outside of Bethesda games. It seems to be fairly open to modding as many of the games I've played with it have been moddable.

I did say next tech, not game.

And Zoo Tycoon was a massive release for Microsoft, though I suppose they might not make the little guys pay full price.

As long as it's a good engine to mod with i dont care what Bethesda use.. The longer their devs use a certain tool the better they're gonna be at it, no doubt about that, same with modders.. so i dont mind if they keep using Gamebryo.

I don't think it is entirely unlikely that bethsoft buys gamebryo....

Dwagginz said:

Wow. Zoo Tycoon is incredibly common over here, or at least was.

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Here as well.

My sister and I just loved Zoo Tycoon 1 !

But we never played Zoo Tycoon 2.

One day, I'm going to give her the Mac version of Zoo Tycoon 1 as a present - because she has a Mac since a few years.

Besides - I don't know if actually Zoo Tycoon 1 is meant as using the Gamebryo engine; I assume it'd be rather Zoo Tycoon 2.

Edit : As an afterthought : Buying the Gamebryo engine would be a clear decission for "companies" which do nothing but buy patents, and ask every other company for fees for them (the ptents) - or just outright sueing known industry firms because of that.

Because owning an already used engine is not too different from a patent in terms of collecting fees, imho.

GothicGothicness said:

I don't think it is entirely unlikely that bethsoft buys gamebryo….

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I was thinking the same thing.

Die Gamebryo, DIE!!!!! The human sacrifice has FINALLY worked!

~cough~ Gamebryo is a trash engine. Anyone honest with themselves can see that.

countingdown7 said:

~cough~ Gamebryo is a trash engine. Anyone honest with themselves can see that.

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Sorry, I can't hear you over how great it is in Civ IV and Freedom Force.

countingdown7 said:

Die Gamebryo, DIE!!!!! The human sacrifice has FINALLY worked!

~cough~ Gamebryo is a trash engine. Anyone honest with themselves can see that.

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I assume you could design one that is better?

Dwagginz said:

Sorry, I can't hear you over how great it is in Civ IV and Freedom Force.

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Anyone saying its "trash" is obviously not involved in the Morrowind/Oblivion/FO/Freedom Force/Civ mod community.. I'd like to see another game which has so many quality mods, almost daily if you take all the games into consideration. The games are almost endless because of how big and dedicated the community is with the games and this easy-to-use engine / editor.