Treyarch: Black Ops II Doesn't Need a New Engine

[deathbydeath]

While I agree with Lamia on this, I'd also say that you need a good art team to compensate, instead of plastering brown on the environments all day, every day. Case in point: Beyond Good and Evil. This game came out in 2003, and it still kicks ass in the visual department to this day.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

I agree, Call of Duty feels great to play already (In fact in my opinion it has the best gameplay out of just about any first person shooter out there), and I think it actually still looks great, possibly because I havent been spoiled by PC graphics.

Theres not much they can do to improve in that aspect

 

[Cyrus Hanley]

I hope they're not using IW 3.0 (modified World at War engine) again.

A Call of Duty game set in the near future (wait, basically the last three Modern Warfare games) at least deserves IW 4.0 (Modern Warfare 2) if not "MW3 Engine".

 

[Sucal]

See, while I strongly don't like the call of duty games, and personally believe they've been over-rated, I believe he has a very healthy view of game engines here.

I mean, every-time a game engine is updated there are always complaints about the old things that were thrown out in favour of shiny new graphics. Check out Saints Row 3 for example, especially when compared to Saints Row 2. The third was far shinier, but at the downside of a quarter of the weapons, half the activities, and a far smaller city/story. Not only that, but the supposed 40 weeks of DLC that SR3 was meant to have has been buggered up, because of memory issues preventing new shiny weapons from being added unless they were already on the disk.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

Yeah, but there's no denying that they've all looked very similar for a while. Maybe better textures and graphics, and while I will say the engine is probably the best an FPS has been on Consoles so far, but I think they're getting to the point where they need to change the game again.

Call of Duty could look like Battlefield if they wanted it too.

 

[Woodsey]

All they're doing is adding some plants and lamps to their house, and ignoring the fucking dreadful 1970s wallpaper.

 

[ThePS1Fan]

IW Engine was first used in 2005. Valve's Source Engine was first used in 2004. I bet people would rejoice if they announced they were using a modified Source Engine for BlOps 2. The engine itself hasn't seemed to limit them yet. I guess using an engine from 2005 and remaking the same game from 2005 wouldn't cause too much trouble.

 

[knight4light]

oh noes! they didn't make a new engine to make it totally not like everything else?! BLASPHEMY! Everyone knows if you're going to make a new game like this you need MOAR graphics! *stuffs more rendering capability* More graphics! we need more graphics! WE DON'T CARE THAT GRAPHICS CAPABILITIES HAVE PLATEAUED! GIVE US MOAR!

now. that the trolling is over. i think everyone here needs a refresher course.

http://youtu.be/5oK8UTRgvJU

Oh Extra Credits. how we miss you on this site. you are sorely needed. :'(

 

[Metalrocks]

fully agree. not every game needs to look awesome. as long it still looks alright and it works, why not keep it? look at games like portal 2, dear esther. the engine is old but still looks good. or even the unreal engine. its also old but they still manage to tune it up a bit and is still hardware friendly.
i cant remember hearing people complaining about amnesia. the graphics werent nice either but still delivered a nice atmosphere.

but i have to agree with others. the graphics dont look so good in MW3 as in black ops 1. i played black ops again and it does really look much better then MW3 in my opinion. also, less fagkimo noobs.

anyway, it will not be a hardware hungry piece of software that requires some people to get a new machine.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

It's not the issue of whether or not the game has a new engine, it's what this game brings new to the table. The answer is difficult to define since they are trying out a new setting. This is obfuscated by the fact that they released the same game several times since 2007 and now they are trying to push something that looks like Crysis out into the market. Obviously it's going to be 60$ and it's going to follow the same formula as the previous titles. There are a ton of futuristic shooters out there, many of them good or at least passable. new players may be somewhat hard to come by, so are MW players going to like the different setting and presumably weapons?

Who is this game for? They have been riding the "Modern Warfare" train for a while and the setting and weapons as well as the engine have become familiar to the core players, who are essentially the only ones who are a sure sell.

They are actually making a LOT of changes to the formula. They aren't changing the core gameplay, because that would be stupid. But they are changing the way the campaign works (dying affects the whole game, you make choices etc) and they are also changing a LOT about how MP works (they are scrapping everything Modern Warfare 2, BO and MW3 added and starting anew). They also have the obvious new setting, which means more vehicles and such. They have already confirmed fully controllable jets and horses. They are also adding a lot in the zombies front. It'll still be the same "survive endless waves, get money, kill zombies", but it will probably have a lot of changes and they've confirmed it's going to have a 6 hour campaign and other things.

 

[The Funslinger]

The thing is though that even they all use the Source engine, a lot of Valve games look like they're running on different ones, as per upgrading it between games. I enjoy a good bit of Zombies as much as the next guy, but aside from slight adjustments to weapon effectiveness, etc. the Black Ops engine seems pretty much the same as the CoD 4 engine. They really ought to change it. After all this time, imagine all the improvement to be made...

If you have a car, and you've replaced every piece of it at some point along the line, is it still the same car?

Something to think about.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Quake 3 variant? Are u serious?

Wow... no wonder why I get headaches from playing TreyArch CoD games. The gfx from Q3 never sat well with me, and every TreyArch CoD made me sick as well...

 

[ToastiestZombie]

They are actually making a LOT of changes to the formula. They aren't changing the core gameplay, because that would be stupid. But they are changing the way the campaign works (dying affects the whole game, you make choices etc) and they are also changing a LOT about how MP works (they are scrapping everything Modern Warfare 2, BO and MW3 added and starting anew). They also have the obvious new setting, which means more vehicles and such. They have already confirmed fully controllable jets and horses. They are also adding a lot in the zombies front. It'll still be the same "survive endless waves, get money, kill zombies", but it will probably have a lot of changes and they've confirmed it's going to have a 6 hour campaign and other things.

Source for any of that.

Some of the things may not be the exact truth, since I just got this out of memory. But there's a kotaku article somewhere, wait a sec. http://kotaku.com/5906808/48-things-that-you-should-know-about-call-of-duty-black-ops-ii

Things I wasn't entirely right about: The zombies campaign (they are adding new zombies modes, just haven't said what they are yet).
The choices and stuff are in a new game mode that links directly to the campaign, they aren't really in the campaign. Which is fine really, since I can imagine the campaign follows one or two major characters whereas this mode follows the larger battles and how they affect what happens to the characters in the campaign.

 

[Abedeus]

If you have a car, and you've replaced every piece of it at some point along the line, is it still the same car?

Something to think about.

If the engine still has most of the original parts, then yes, it's still more or less the same car.

If I change my hard drive, memory, case and clean the fans, it's still the same PC.

fully agree. not every game needs to look awesome. as long it still looks alright and it works, why not keep it? look at games like portal 2, dear esther. the engine is old but still looks good. or even the unreal engine. its also old but they still manage to tune it up a bit and is still hardware friendly.
i cant remember hearing people complaining about amnesia. the graphics werent nice either but still delivered a nice atmosphere.

but i have to agree with others. the graphics dont look so good in MW3 as in black ops 1. i played black ops again and it does really look much better then MW3 in my opinion. also, less fagkimo noobs.

anyway, it will not be a hardware hungry piece of software that requires some people to get a new machine.

Portal 1 was a beautiful game and Portal 2 looks even better.

CoD stopped looking good after CoD 4 or MW1.

 

[Baresark]

I would agree with this assessment. Blops 2 doesn't need a new engine. I hate COD at this point, but there is no reason they can't make enhancements and have it look and play just fine. It's actually a pretty good engine, it runs well and seems easy enough to optimize....

All that said, they wouldn't make a new engine because the current consoles couldn't support a better engine. It's rather impressive they have it run at 60FPS (not that you would see a difference between 60 and 30 FPS on a console since TV's only actually display 30 frames of information per 60 draw cycles anyway (so it's like having a PC game run at 120FPS on a 60Hz monitor, you only see 60 frames of information so there is no difference)). That of course comes in the form of muddy/blurry textures with tiny little maps with nowhere to go but forward, but still, impressive.

 

[ToastiestZombie]

Some of the things may not be the exact truth, since I just got this out of memory. But there's a kotaku article somewhere, wait a sec. http://kotaku.com/5906808/48-things-that-you-should-know-about-call-of-duty-black-ops-ii

Things I wasn't entirely right about: The zombies campaign (they are adding new zombies modes, just haven't said what they are yet).
The choices and stuff are in a new game mode that links directly to the campaign, they aren't really in the campaign. Which is fine really, since I can imagine the campaign follows one or two major characters whereas this mode follows the larger battles and how they affect what happens to the characters in the campaign.

I looked and saw nothing about jets, there is at least one horse section IN THE SINGLE PLAYER, I see nothing about "choice systems" (though this will be bullshit no matter what they say), "futuristic helicopter" call-ins are still just helicopter call-ins, and I don't care about zombie modes since I have played l4d, killing floor and a bunch of other BETTER zombie games to death.

Again. What does this game bring to the table except for another flashy hollywood singleplayer? If they used the horses for the multiplayer that could be really awesome. But for a couple of parts in the singleplayer? Might be cool I guess.

Well you're not going to buy it anyway, so I'm not even going to bother arguing with you. It's changing a LOT of stuff, it's not changing it's style because that is stupid.

 

[hermes]

Understandable. If the options are "nicer graphics" or "maintain 60 fps", I will go with the framerate...

 

[FallenTraveler]

like many others I understand this point. You don't need a brand new engine for each game, and you wouldn't completely replace the foundation of a house if you were remodeling.

But this isn't a house.

No one wants an antique game on their current gen system. I think that they should upgrade to a new, prettier, more efficient engine that is built from the ground up for current hardware. These people are making games based off of an engine released 13 years ago! that's like 200 years in tech time. That's the difference between dial-up and 4g on your phone! That's VHS to Blu-Ray

Dafuq...

 

[jawakiller]

I definitely like the feel of the engine they use but I don't want them to pull another MW3. I mean, if Blops 2 just winds up being Blops 1 with slightly different guns, I'm going to be very disappointed. So please Treyarch, don't be like Infinity Ward. Change shit, don't just rehash your last success and expect people to love it.

 

[XDravond]

Well seems like a lot of people are "nah we don't need a new engine" well I don't think you need a new engine for every game but did you know the latest CoD games are built on Id Tech 3.
Games made with the same engine are for example original CoD (2003) and Quake III arena from 1999..... (The most current Id Tech engine is 5 from 2011 for g*d-sake and 4 is from 2004..)

And even though modified and improved it's still not as good looking tech as Source since Source has added so many features and improved it's not even close to Source "1"... whilst Id tech 3 is not too different
(and yea I know about it's harder to develop on source than Id's engines)
It might be a great engine but I believe that you should consider a new engine when you have a brand selling millions of copies for 60$ each... And whilst the Frostbite 2 engine is far from perfect and very demanding it is however far better and so much more fun since it's driving technology forward not bolting it down with standard argument "it's good enough"....

But then again I don't find CoD Multiplayer any fun nowdays, I do however when feeling brain dead the singelplayer is ok.. Linear shooter with some minor story but really simple to just shoot a lot.
CoD looks like s!hit on max details compared to BF 3 on min detail anyway...