OrbWeaver on 23/4/2007 at 21:02
Quote Posted by Flux
I can understand the need to re-write the renderer, but who is responsible for breaking the working features of the unreal editor which is totally unrelated with the renderer, that's beyond me.
That's exactly the problem, there was no need to
rewrite the renderer; they could have extended the existing one (which is tried and tested) with new features, rather than writing a new one from scratch that is buggy and immature.
In general, rewriting from scratch is a (
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html) bad, bad idea.
Quote:
Someone worked
deliberately to mess up certain features like "breaking the bsp-grid" or "matinee" or 2dshape editor and tons of other tiny but nifty features.
Unlikely. The problems we see are the result of allowing a "lone gunman" coder to rewrite the engine from scratch without proper code review, the blame for which falls largely on the shoulders of management.
New Horizon on 23/4/2007 at 21:21
Quote Posted by OrbWeaver
Unlikely. The problems we see are the result of allowing a "lone gunman" coder to rewrite the engine from scratch without proper code review, the blame for which falls largely on the shoulders of management.
Yup. If I remember correctly, the coder was asked to extend the existing renderer...but instead chose to write one from scratch. Everyone was wowed by the eye candy and the rest is history. A shame really.
Ziemanskye on 23/4/2007 at 21:26
Also, I believe it's been mentioned before and is rather important:
They didn't start with UE2. They started with about 1.7, I think, so even the engine they started messing with was missing things we now consider integral to the UE experience, and they couldn't get the new renderer to play nice with the added stuff so they just let it lie. Ergo no Terrain and no Anti-portals (and I think that's why there's no proper-T3Ed shader broswer/manager/maker thing)
I might be wrong on that of course, but I'm pretty sure it was mentioned by Krypt ages ago.
Krypt on 24/4/2007 at 00:02
Quote Posted by Ziemanskye
They didn't start with UE2. They started with about 1.7, I think, so even the engine they started messing with was missing things we now consider integral to the UE experience, and they couldn't get the new renderer to play nice with the added stuff so they just let it lie. Ergo no Terrain and no Anti-portals (and I think that's why there's no proper-T3Ed shader broswer/manager/maker thing)
I don't remember the precise version of the Unreal engine we were working with, but we did have terrain tools in the earliest versions of the editor before switching to the new engine. The first versions of many of our maps for DX2 and T3 had big outdoor areas with terrain, which would have been awesome, but that all went by the wayside. I don't recall whether we had antiportals or not, but we wouldn't have really needed them with the way the engine wound up anyway.
Quote Posted by Flux
Matinee tool works like charm in normal, not messed-up versions of unreal engine, like most of the other features.
We discussed maintaining Matinee, but ended up scrapping it since we weren't going to have in-game cutscenes in either game and were writing our own conversation system for DX2 anyway, which had some of the same features.
Quote Posted by Flux
Breaking features like simple 2dshape editor can't not be explained by xbox limitations, design/art choices, re-writing the renderer or a careless mistake.
I'm not sure how the 2d shape editor got broken, but it again became something we didn't really need since our games had pretty basic BSP with most of the detail coming from static meshes. I never missed it much anyway.
Quote Posted by Flux
Someone worked
deliberately to mess up certain features like "breaking the bsp-grid" or "matinee" or 2dshape editor and tons of other tiny but nifty features.
It wasn't deliberate, it was just extremely poor tools support. On 3 or 4 occasions during the development of DX2 and T3 we hired new programmers specifically to work on tools, but they always got pulled off to work on something else within a few weeks, leaving the tools unsupported. There was too much firefighting needed just to get the game working, which is another result of poor technical management. Everyone knew the editor sucked including the programmers, but in a development environment like we had, that's what you end up with.
Angelfire on 24/4/2007 at 00:11
Nevertheless I enjoyed both games immensly :)
Flux on 24/4/2007 at 00:18
Deus ex 1 has seen "renderer re-write", however the editor works fine, albeit with some nice extra features like con-edit, nice in-game cinematic tools which the original unreal editor has never seen.
Undying has a different renderer(better shadows for that age) too, it's editor has even some more lovely extra features added to it like the ability to export the whole level to max and then back without any bsp-problems.
Rune had totally different skeletal animation system, again the editor remained the same, with some extra features like extended movers...
People made fms for these games without any extra problems, just the regular unreal editor quirks, nothing major.
Somebody who knows the inner working of unreal engine should correct me, afaik the renderer has got nothing to do with editor. I'm just simply trying to understand how it is possible to break the editor while re-writing the renderer.:confused:
It seems like every developer with this engine made some improvements to the editor, only us, just plain came unlucky at the end.
Also, I'm having a hard time believing the 1.7 or 2 version thing. Terrain tools are there, just like matinee...when you license the unreal editor, support is automatic, as long as epic updates their stuff, which they do often...
And the bsp-structure of unreal editor has never been changed at all, even the case is the same for this famous next-gen unreal engine 3, which powered the gears of war. You can check robo-blitz editor for that...
The only logical explanation that comes to my mind, which I don't want to believe, is that someone along the way decided to re-write the editor also, but then decided to leave it unfinished.
I never have any problems of these "infamous bsp-problems" of the engine, no matter what version. Only thief3 version is borked about the bsp-stuff. Fyi, if you import a relatively complex bsp-brush/parts of levels from other unreal editors to the flesh simply as brush, it works fine...I tried that. However,when you want to add stuff, everthing goes wreck...
Now, if only dark mod had some more coders working with the team...;)
Quote:
It wasn't deliberate, it was just extremely poor tools support. On 3 or 4 occasions during the development of DX2 and T3 we hired new programmers specifically to work on tools, but they always got pulled off to work on something else within a few weeks, leaving the tools unsupported. There was too much firefighting needed just to get the game working, which is another result of poor technical management. Everyone knew the editor sucked including the programmers, but in a development environment like we had, that's what you end up with.
I wasn't really serious about the deliberate thing Krypt. Sure, I was just, still a bit mad about the flesh. Looking at the prolific ut2004 modding community, I'm just thinking how it would be cool if we had a moddable editor...Thanks for the info...
Krypt on 24/4/2007 at 01:01
Quote Posted by Flux
Somebody who knows the inner working of unreal engine should correct me, afaik the renderer has got nothing to do with editor. I'm just simply trying to understand how it is possible to break the editor while re-writing the renderer.:confused:
We did actually change and add a lot of stuff to the editor, though in a piecemeal fashion by many different programmers working independently on their own stuff. The slowness and the bugs mainly come from the new features and whatever under-the-hood stuff the programmers put in. Poor tools support, again.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the T3 editor was never intended for a public release. That's not to say it would have been much better if it was, but there's a lot of stuff that's broken because it was designed for our internal pipeline and didn't didn't adapt too well to running on a single machine.
sparhawk on 24/4/2007 at 07:29
Quote Posted by Flux
It is not the unreal engine to blame, rather the short-sighted coders at ion storm for messing up the engine. Matinee tool works like charm in normal, not messed-up versions of unreal engine, like most of the other features.
Certain decisions are not done by a single coder, they are done by the project leader by defining design goals. In the case of TDS it was explained that there was a programmer who didn't have clear enough instructions and when he delivered what he thought that he should do, it was too late. So once again it was a projec tmanagment problem, and not simply stupid programmers.
Quote:
Someone worked
deliberately to mess up certain features like "breaking the bsp-grid" or "matinee" or 2dshape editor and tons of other tiny but nifty features.
Which of course is utter crap. No programmer would intentionally break functioniality. There is always a reason for it. Even if that reason is only a perceived one and opnly exists in the mind of a person who missunderstood some instructions or goals.
scumble on 24/4/2007 at 07:42
I think a similar thing must have happened with Unreal 2 - the editor was partially "broken" and had some out-of-date features which made it a pain in the arse to work with. For some reason Legend decided to rewrite the animation system, with the only apparent benefit being that NPCs could follow you round the room with their eyes. The conversation system was a bit ropey as well.
Similarly, I don't think there are many mods or levels for Unreal 2.
Unreal engine licensees have a terrible habit of breaking Epic's rather well designed development platform, which is probably a testament to their good management. That Tim Sweeny is a clever chap, and his emphasis on having the best tools really pays off. It's a shame that developers working with Unreal often can't maintain the same standards.
Still, it's always an interesting window on game development for us, even though it's frustrating to work with hacked-up software.
sparhawk on 24/4/2007 at 07:44
Quote Posted by Flux
Deus ex 1 has seen "renderer re-write", however the editor works fine, albeit with some nice extra features like con-edit, nice in-game cinematic tools which the original unreal editor has never seen.
The problem with editors is, that in a lot of commercial environment the managment often sees it as a money sink. After all the editor is not sold so it doesn't generate money. That this is not exactly true, or at least extremly short sighted doesn't get into economy students heads.
Quote:
Also, I'm having a hard time believing the 1.7 or 2 version thing. Terrain tools are there, just like matinee...when you license the unreal editor, support is automatic, as long as epic updates their stuff, which they do often...
Updates are not neccessarily free. It depends on your agreement. Also you have to consider, that once you start to rewrite core features, an update can not be as easily incorporated anymore. In fact I hate it everytime Id brings out a new patch, because we have to merge it into our existing codebase. In our case, this is pretty trivial compared to TDS though, and I found a way to make it easier, but it's still a very annoying task. And the more frequent updates happen, the more time it takes away from your coding time.
