Epic update?

[roidanielsen]

So when is the update for the Unreal Engine coming?

I remember something about SV waiting for an update before they could do the graphics enhancement.

The current graphics are a laught compared to other games with the unreal engine .

[Aethaeryn]

They did update it already. You missed the entire volcanic ash thing? Either you are joking and mocking them or are now going to be horribly disappointed. The game also does not look as good as in closed beta. Some technical limitation I guess once you get more people on?

[Lerdoc]

Ummm.... about 6-7 weeks ago?

[MrHoot]

Ya i've been wondering about that too.

SV stated that for numerous bugs and problems, including the "?" item bugs and the AI pathing, they needed a patch from EPIC. But so far, we haven't heard a whisper from them so far via SV.

[roidanielsen]

Damn. Saw a shitload of buzz on the forums and IRC. It's already implemented? Shit, it didnt help a bit.

[Aethaeryn]

Ah so there is an "fix" coming then maybe related to it. They did the version change a long time ago but there still might be a some "update" to that version coming.

[fariic]

Same for flash support.

[dscoombs]

Creature AI is also waiting on it I believe.

[Isher]

They needed it for speedtree.

That doesn't mean foliage and shit are magically inserted into the game by fairies.

It doesn't have anything to do with better resolutions at all.

Click last 2 links in my sig.

As I stated in the thread whit "Henrik´s Release Statement", we will be able to experiment whit speed tree 5. But there is no chance you guys will see "speedtrees" in nave until after release.

[Paratus]

Just because they did a big engine build merge, it doesn't mean that they're done all of them. As far as I know, SV is constantly (well, probably every couple months) applying engine updates from Epic. It's an ongoing thing.

But yes, the big one they did not long ago did make Speedtree 5 available for use, but now that the engine supports it they still have to create all the art assets and place them in the maps just to test it. I imagine most of the SV devs are pretty busy with very important things before that's all done, too.

[SOFWarrior]

If I recall correctly, one of the main reasons for the UE and Atlas upgrades was being able to fix the problem with desync, which it most certainly did.

[Henrik Nystrom]

Originally Posted by SOFWarrior

If I recall correctly, one of the main reasons for the UE and Atlas upgrades was being able to fix the problem with desync, which it most certainly did.

Correct, that was the main concern we had to solve to be able to actually release the game. With that core inplace we manage to release without desync as planned. And have a solid core to build on.

We are now as Paratus said, testing and updating different areas within UE and the network codes, this means we are getting closer to a better AI with fully working Navmesh, more "eye candy and visual updates thanks to the new UE update as in ST5 testing, and texture optimization. Some of these are major areas which do take some time but we now got the core to actually use it which we lacked with our old build. Slowly progressing in these important areas we are always working on stability and critical bugs. And sometime we are able to enable some features along the way as everyone cannot work on stability only, some works on critical bugs and some are working on features which are about done but not yet enabled like we mentioned before.

It's not that we forget about critical bugs when enabling for instance the ghost features in our last patch, but it was simply missing 2 hours coding from someone available at that area which we had and gave you. Stability and critical bugs are always prio one and are always the planned ones in each patch, any feature being added during these patches are more of a "bonus" that is ready to be enabled. Also because we said we would add features as soon as we are able to, and there is a demand of new features of course. But we wouldn't enable them if theres not a valid reason to. For instance block hit which coming in this patch is nothing new that we worked on but actually had it in early betas, we had some small problems and changed some things which made us chose the safe before the sorry and disabled it along a lot other stuff. Now one area affected this and suddenly we had it for free now since we are working on combat pretty much to make it even better we simply got that added in this patch. It worked well before, and hopefully it will work now as well, adding another strategic move for those interested in pvping.

In most patches there are a lot or most bug fixes and stability fixes and every now and then a small feature added. Being angry because you read features only in our patches is pretty misleading as they are often only bug fixes, sometime we do not add each change into those patch notes as its in-relevant what we fixed which not affect you visually or directly game play wise but stability wise overall.

We sometime hear that you think we keep forgetting some logical bugs instead of adding that new "silly" feature. Sometime there is a valid reason we cannot simply fix that anoying bug in that patch, and we need more time or another area working first before we actually can patch that fix. We understand your frustration not being able to see the entire picture always but I hope this helps explain why it is like it is sometime. It could be a full time job for someone explaining why every patch look like it does as well, so I hope we can refer to this information from now on when its the same question about this. Your support is allways thankful when you fill in the information for those who lack the info, it sure isnt easy to keep track of everything in here.. Our under dev section will soon get an update and be more frequent updated so you can get prepared and see what we are working on.

If you still aren't happy with this explanation, then let us simply work in our own "mysterious way"

Just to give everyone an update on this pretty common question.

[zpullin]

Originally Posted by Henrik Nystrom

Correct, that was the main concern we had to solve to be able to actually release the game. With that core inplace we manage to release without desync as planned. And have a solid core to build on.

We are now as Paratus said, testing and updating different areas within UE and the network codes, this means we are getting closer to a better AI with fully working Navmesh, more "eye candy and visual updates thanks to the new UE update as in ST5 testing, and texture optimization. Some of these are major areas which do take some time but we now got the core to actually use it which we lacked with our old build. Slowly progressing in these important areas we are always working on stability and critical bugs. And sometime we are able to enable some features along the way as everyone cannot work on stability only, some works on critical bugs and some are working on features which are about done but not yet enabled like we mentioned before.

It's not that we forget about critical bugs when enabling for instance the ghost features in our last patch, but it was simply missing 2 hours coding from someone available at that area which we had and gave you. Stability and critical bugs are always prio one and are always the planned ones in each patch, any feature being added during these patches are more of a "bonus" that is ready to be enabled. Also because we said we would add features as soon as we are able to, and there is a demand of new features of course. But we wouldn't enable them if theres not a valid reason to. For instance block hit which coming in this patch is nothing new that we worked on but actually had it in early betas, we had some small problems and changed some things which made us chose the safe before the sorry and disabled it along a lot other stuff. Now one area affected this and suddenly we had it for free now since we are working on combat pretty much to make it even better we simply got that added in this patch. It worked well before, and hopefully it will work now as well, adding another strategic move for those interested in pvping.

In most patches there are a lot or most bug fixes and stability fixes and every now and then a small feature added. Being angry because you read features only in our patches is pretty misleading as they are often only bug fixes, sometime we do not add each change into those patch notes as its in-relevant what we fixed which not affect you visually or directly game play wise but stability wise overall.

We sometime hear that you think we keep forgetting some logical bugs instead of adding that new "silly" feature. Sometime there is a valid reason we cannot simply fix that anoying bug in that patch, and we need more time or another area working first before we actually can patch that fix. We understand your frustration not being able to see the entire picture always but I hope this helps explain why it is like it is sometime. It could be a full time job for someone explaining why every patch look like it does as well, so I hope we can refer to this information from now on when its the same question about this. Your support is allways thankful when you fill in the information for those who lack the info, it sure isnt easy to keep track of everything in here.. Our under dev section will soon get an update and be more frequent updated so you can get prepared and see what we are working on.

If you still aren't happy with this explanation, then let us simply work in our own "mysterious way"

Just to give everyone an update on this pretty common question.

Good to hear you are working on combat.

[Kuroi]

thanks Henrik for the reply

[spawny13]

Originally Posted by Henrik Nystrom

Correct, that was the main concern we had to solve to be able to actually release the game. With that core inplace we manage to release without desync as planned. And have a solid core to build on.

We are now as Paratus said, testing and updating different areas within UE and the network codes, this means we are getting closer to a better AI with fully working Navmesh, more "eye candy and visual updates thanks to the new UE update as in ST5 testing, and texture optimization. Some of these are major areas which do take some time but we now got the core to actually use it which we lacked with our old build. Slowly progressing in these important areas we are always working on stability and critical bugs. And sometime we are able to enable some features along the way as everyone cannot work on stability only, some works on critical bugs and some are working on features which are about done but not yet enabled like we mentioned before.

It's not that we forget about critical bugs when enabling for instance the ghost features in our last patch, but it was simply missing 2 hours coding from someone available at that area which we had and gave you. Stability and critical bugs are always prio one and are always the planned ones in each patch, any feature being added during these patches are more of a "bonus" that is ready to be enabled. Also because we said we would add features as soon as we are able to, and there is a demand of new features of course. But we wouldn't enable them if theres not a valid reason to. For instance block hit which coming in this patch is nothing new that we worked on but actually had it in early betas, we had some small problems and changed some things which made us chose the safe before the sorry and disabled it along a lot other stuff. Now one area affected this and suddenly we had it for free now since we are working on combat pretty much to make it even better we simply got that added in this patch. It worked well before, and hopefully it will work now as well, adding another strategic move for those interested in pvping.

In most patches there are a lot or most bug fixes and stability fixes and every now and then a small feature added. Being angry because you read features only in our patches is pretty misleading as they are often only bug fixes, sometime we do not add each change into those patch notes as its in-relevant what we fixed which not affect you visually or directly game play wise but stability wise overall.

We sometime hear that you think we keep forgetting some logical bugs instead of adding that new "silly" feature. Sometime there is a valid reason we cannot simply fix that anoying bug in that patch, and we need more time or another area working first before we actually can patch that fix. We understand your frustration not being able to see the entire picture always but I hope this helps explain why it is like it is sometime. It could be a full time job for someone explaining why every patch look like it does as well, so I hope we can refer to this information from now on when its the same question about this. Your support is allways thankful when you fill in the information for those who lack the info, it sure isnt easy to keep track of everything in here.. Our under dev section will soon get an update and be more frequent updated so you can get prepared and see what we are working on.

If you still aren't happy with this explanation, then let us simply work in our own "mysterious way"

Just to give everyone an update on this pretty common question.

thank a lot , that 's what we wanted i think.

[TomBor]

Henrik are you also working on getting MO back to the graphical standard it used to be in beta?

A lot of us are aware that it isn't top priority at all, but the issue has come up a lot recently and not a word about this from the devs.

A simpl "yes" to my quoted message would satisfy A LOT of people.

[roidanielsen]

Thanks alot Henrik. That is something you guys should post without us having to ask.

[Corwen]

Originally Posted by TomBor

Henrik are you also working on getting MO back to the graphical standard it used to be in beta?

A lot of us are aware that it isn't top priority at all, but the issue has come up a lot recently and not a word about this from the devs.

A simpl "yes" to my quoted message would satisfy A LOT of people.

Would also like an answer to this

[Henrik Nystrom]

Originally Posted by Corwen

Would also like an answer to this

We need to rewrite our armor system partly to be able to optimize our texture usage in the memory. This is not a fast nor simple task, but we have the design ready for it and need some time to change it.
As long as we fixed the top prio bugs everyone screamed for we get new ones that seem as important as the one before. So its hard to prio this one when it comes to critical bugs. As soon as our bug fixing doesnt get interputed by the armor update we are able to start on this area. It's not only going to update the visuals but we will have a huge amount of more armor parts with this system in place, so we are eager to finish it as you are to have it, but other bugs takes up most time atm.

As soon as we got the top bugs solved we will be able to put some guys to focus on this area again. We are working hard and progressing fairly fast atm I think so hopefully we will start getting some candy real soon.

[Lagoon]

Originally Posted by Henrik Nystrom

It's not only going to update the visuals but we will have a huge amount of more armor parts with this system in place

I suppose this is what's needed to see a variety of civil clothes in the game, which I'm eager to see

[Henrik Nystrom]

Originally Posted by Lagoon

I suppose this is what's needed to see a variety of civil clothes in the game, which I'm eager to see

Its needed to add a larger amount of clothes yes.
Right now we are working on some guild tabards/banners for our slot we already have working in game but disabled tabards and banners for the time being. What we need now is pretty much to skin the guild tabards/banners, add our guild logo support which also is ready and in use "invisible" on some of the armor part already So this will get in the game very soon.
Should help Guild ID and war strategics.

[Narrat]

Originally Posted by Henrik Nystrom

Its needed to add a larger amount of clothes yes.
Right now we are working on some guild tabards/banners for our slot we already have working in game but disabled tabards and banners for the time being. What we need now is pretty much to skin the guild tabards/banners, add our guild logo support which also is ready and in use "invisible" on some of the armor part already So this will get in the game very soon.
Should help Guild ID and war strategics.

sounds cool, and i'm not even guilded.

[Hodo]

Henrik,

Will we see the slower more deadly combat of previous beta or are we going more towards the speed click fest that we have now?

[Kuroi]

Originally Posted by Henrik Nystrom

We need to rewrite our armor system partly to be able to optimize our texture usage in the memory. This is not a fast nor simple task, but we have the design ready for it and need some time to change it.

Originally Posted by Henrik Nystrom

Its needed to add a larger amount of clothes yes.
Right now we are working on some guild tabards/banners for our slot we already have working in game but disabled tabards and banners for the time being. What we need now is pretty much to skin the guild tabards/banners, add our guild logo support which also is ready and in use "invisible" on some of the armor part already

nice but i think that TomBor with "graphical standard in beta" was asking about general graphics, not just armors, take a look at these :P

Spoiler for BETA moh-ki:

Spoiler for RELEASE moh-ki:

graphics seem to be too cartoonish now...

[Mark]

Originally Posted by Kuroi

nice but i think that TomBor with "graphical standard in beta" was asking about general graphics, not just armors, take a look at these :P

Spoiler for BETA moh-ki:

Spoiler for RELEASE moh-ki:

graphics seem to be too cartoonish now...

Wow, this really shows how much worse the graphics have gotten.

[Henrik Nystrom]

Originally Posted by Hodo

Henrik,

Will we see the slower more deadly combat of previous beta or are we going more towards the speed click fest that we have now?

We are working to make combat feel better and get away from a spam fest only strategic. One step was to add spamming=crap damage. We have some things left to add, and rebalance, then see if we need to overall slow down the speed or what we need to do to make it even better. Combat beta was ok, but it was still very one way strategic of fighting, we want more depth than that.

[Kuroi]

Originally Posted by Mark

Wow, this really shows how much worse the graphics have gotten.

and in the first screen i had even disabled shadows, the other settings are maxed in both screens

[zpullin]

Originally Posted by Henrik Nystrom

We want more depth than that.

So do we.

[Mark]

Originally Posted by Kuroi

and in the first screen i had even disabled shadows, the other settings are maxed in both screens

Looks like they added the forest (with their "epic" trees) in which adds even more to the cartooney bit.

[Henrik Nystrom]

Ah I see, well ya I forgot to say that with the armor update we are able to use higher textures on the world as well, so yes those will get bumbed as well.

About your 2 screens down, and to answer the one who says the graphics sux now since the old one. The thing is it uses the exact same setting but with a different onscreen effect to fit its area. This is something we simply have to tweek, also day and night cycle overrides this a bit. We need tweaking there for sure to get the visual back to the first screen in at least a certain time period during the day.

So to conclude, from the first and second there are the same texture packages, but different onscreen effect changing the overall look.
We need to tweak that, AND then get our armor optimization in place and add higher textures to use, that will help the overall graphics for sure. We will also get some other cool looking effects with our next small UE update.

Originally Posted by Kuroi

nice but i think that TomBor with "graphical standard in beta" was asking about general graphics, not just armors, take a look at these :P

Spoiler for BETA moh-ki:

Spoiler for RELEASE moh-ki:

graphics seem to be too cartoonish now...

[Mendrak]

Thank you for the awesome news! Lots of great stuff coming into the game, very nice to hear.

[Henrik Nystrom]

Originally Posted by Mark

Looks like they added the forest (with their "epic" trees) in which adds even more to the cartooney bit.

Yes I think the tree models are changed, to a cheaper one, but it didnt change the performance I think, so we will remake trees again to make them look better in time.

And like you clearly can see, its getting night in the later screen, harder to justed compare a half way night screens visuals with a full day screen.
But like I said, I still think we need to tweak the changing effect during time.

[Mark]

Thanks Henrik, few developers go on the forums of their game to fill in the community. Glad to hear your actually listening .

Originally Posted by Henrik Nystrom

Yes I think the tree models are changed, to a cheaper one, but it didnt change the performance I think, so we will remake trees again to make them look better in time.

And like you clearly can see, its getting night in the later screen, harder to justed compare a half way night screens visuals with a full day screen.
But like I said, I still think we need to tweak the changing effect during time.

I see, thanks for the update, hopefully the game will return to its former visual awesomeness soon.

[Paratus]

Yep, I agree, something so simple as desaturation post-processing effect gives it a much more realistic feel.

[Kuroi]

Originally Posted by Henrik Nystrom

So to conclude, from the first and second there are the same texture packages, but different onscreen effect changing the overall look.
We need to tweak that, AND then get our armor optimization in place and add higher textures to use, that will help the overall graphics for sure. We will also get some other cool looking effects with our next small UE update.

Originally Posted by Paratus

Yep, I agree, something so simple as desaturation post-processing effect gives it a much more realistic feel.

great!

so Kopatch was right about saturation :P

( http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/4...aturation.html )

[Kelt]

All interesting and lovely things Henrik, really happy to see some of these things planned for the near future, however, i must ask this, when will we be able to build more interesting buildings, first thing that slips to mind is taverns.

[Mark]

Originally Posted by Kuroi

great!

so Kopatch was right about saturation :P

( http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/4...aturation.html )

WOW, that's pretty much the entire graphics change right there!

[Hodo]

Originally Posted by Henrik Nystrom

We are working to make combat feel better and get away from a spam fest only strategic. One step was to add spamming=crap damage. We have some things left to add, and rebalance, then see if we need to overall slow down the speed or what we need to do to make it even better. Combat beta was ok, but it was still very one way strategic of fighting, we want more depth than that.

Thank you for that answer.

Perhaps you all at SV should schedual a once a month Teamspeak3 or IRC dev chat.

Where everyone is muted by the channel admin and must basicly turn on their light to ask a question. TS3 has the channel commander option that turns your light red.

This would do much to giving the community a idea of where your going, and the ability to give real time Q&A.

A previous game that I used to play does this, and it was always a great success.

[Paratus]

Originally Posted by Hodo

Thank you for that answer.

Perhaps you all at SV should schedual a once a month Teamspeak3 or IRC dev chat.

Where everyone is muted by the channel admin and must basicly turn on their light to ask a question. TS3 has the channel commander option that turns your light red.

This would do much to giving the community a idea of where your going, and the ability to give real time Q&A.

A previous game that I used to play does this, and it was always a great success.

Stratics, the IRC server MO already uses, does something like that which they call the "House of Commons" chats.

Was a huge thing back in the day with UO.

[Kuroi]

Originally Posted by Hodo

IRC dev chat.

Where everyone is muted by the channel admin and must basicly turn on their light to ask a question

it already used to happen, but without muting the channel lol, total chaos ^^ using +m would be really cool