Call of Duty: Ghosts to be "powered by next-gen engine"

[Grievous]

The cod engine was never developed inhouse, since it is a modified version of ID Tech 3, it is still a licenced engine then, right ? so why is it a problem for them to licence a newer more advance engine since they are practically paying id soft royalties. and also why do alot of smaller companies with a quarter of activisions budget go and licence these mainstream engines, if its so expensive ?

Not exactly true in regards to the unreal engine. Its $99 to be able to sell your game, the royalties are pretty high 25%, but that only kicks in if you make over $50 000. So its actually a great engine for smaller companies. I'm fairly certain a bigger company would be able to work out a better deal.

In regards to the ID Tech engine, they won't be able to license the new one. Since Zenimax bought id software, its become an in-house engine only.

 

[Dohc-WP]

Not exactly true in regards to the unreal engine. Its $99 to be able to sell your game, the royalties are pretty high 25%, but that only kicks in if you make over $50 000. So its actually a great engine for smaller companies. I'm fairly certain a bigger company would be able to work out a better deal.

In regards to the ID Tech engine, they won't be able to license the new one. Since Zenimax bought id software, its become an in-house engine only.

read again what i said ! graal said its expensive to licence engines and i never said they should licence the new and current id tech engines.

 

[Graal]

The cod engine was never developed inhouse, since it is a modified version of ID Tech 3, it is still a licenced engine then, right ? so why is it a problem for them to licence a newer more advance engine since they are practically paying id soft royalties. and also why do alot of smaller companies with a quarter of activisions budget go and licence these mainstream engines, if its so expensive ?

Actually, you're mistaken. CoD runs on the IW Engine, not iDtech3. Some of the technology is based off the original iDtech3 engine, but the IW Engine is not the iDtech3 engine. Regardless, I believe iDtech3 belongs to Activision, seeing as it was developed by iD Software when they were still owned by Activision.

As for smaller development studios licensing these engines? That's because you get different packages. They're not going to charge a 20-man studio the same as they would charge a giant AAA studio like Activision. As an example, independent developers can license the engine for free, but have to pay a percentage of your revenue to CryTek. This scales according to the size of your studio and scope of your project. AAA developers need to contact CryTek for a quotation.

Unfortunately no.
There is a reason they are charging so much.
Building an engine such as this is not s small task,it requires very unique skills and takes more time to develop than a AAA title.

Square-Enix is one of the few companies that like to create their own serious engines.

Blizzard creates their own engines, Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft uses the same one, look at how often they release titles.

Yeah, fair enough. But once you've got the engine, it's yours. You don't have to pay anyone licensing fees, no royalties and you can license the engine out yourself. I reckon it's a lot cheaper and makes a lot more sense developing your own engine than licensing one each year. Especially if you're using a business model that involves bringing out a new game each year.

 

[GlacieredPyro]

Yeah, fair enough. But once you've got the engine, it's yours. You don't have to pay anyone licensing fees, no royalties and you can license the engine out yourself. I reckon it's a lot cheaper and makes a lot more sense developing your own engine than licensing one each year. Especially if you're using a business model that involves bringing out a new game each year.

Absolutely correct, for certain franchises it does make sense.
However translating this sense into something your exco can understand is no small task.
And it's also not about once off development, you effectively need to create an entire new sub division in your company to manage and maintain this engine, it's licensing, it's support, it's sales etc..

This has resource implications on a permanent basis from R&D all the way to legal.
It's a super risky move even for the biggest of players.

The rule of thumb in development is that if someone has done it, why build it in house (unless you can tear their work a new one).

 

[MetalSoup]

Regardless, I believe iDtech3 belongs to Activision, seeing as it was developed by iD Software when they were still owned by Activision.

id was never owned by Activision.

 

[Grievous]

id was never owned by Activision.

And they are paying royalties for it.

 

[Graal]

id was never owned by Activision.

Indeed. My bad. But they were partnered with them for several years before iD left to partner with EA instead, shortly before Bethesda bought them up.

And they are paying royalties for it.

Not necessarily. As has been said, CoD does not run on iDtech3. CoD runs on the IW Engine, which while originally based on the iDTech engine, has gone through around 5 different iterations since then. Infinity Ward are credited as the developers of the IW Engine, not iD.

 

[HavocXphere]

probably via a reduction in polycount and particle effects.

That too, but primarily a combination of low render resolution & dedicated upscaling hardware.

Just because the games release annually doesn't mean they've only spent a year on the engine.

Oh I don't doubt that they have been working on it for more than a year. What I'm saying is that even with that assumption the numbers don't work.

Lets say they are awesome & can write an engine from scratch in half the time Epic can (lol). That would mean they started coding round about CoD4 time. During that time they couldn't even keep their star dev team Infinity Ward alive, let alone have 5 years foresight for a next gen engine.

So yeah, not impossible but I rate its pretty close. I hope they do.

Also, remember, part of why they stuck to the old engine for so long is because their core audience is on console

Fair point.

 

[JP'S]

Lets say they are awesome & can write an engine from scratch in half the time Epic can (lol). That would mean they started coding round about CoD4 time. During that time they couldn't even keep their star dev team Infinity Ward alive, let alone have 5 years foresight for a next gen engine.

It does seem highly unlikely... btw how did Crytek develop the Cry engine 3 so fast? I mean Crysis 2 still ran on the Cry engine 2 and that released way back in 2010 ( if I'm not mistaken) soo a whole new engine in a matter of ~2 years? OR did they just tweak the Shit out of it and give it a new name?

 

[HavocXphere]

It does seem highly unlikely... btw how did Crytek develop the Cry engine 3 so fast? I mean Crysis 2 still ran on the Cry engine 2 and that released way back in 2010 ( if I'm not mistaken) soo a whole new engine in a matter of ~2 years? OR did they just tweak the Shit out of it and give it a new name?

Cry engine 3 was first shown in 2009 (per uhm wikipedia) so its been in development for 3 years+. First seen @ 3 so probably more round the 6 year mark since dev start.

Plus they have Cry 2 to base it on. Once you've got one solid engine framework you've got a much better shot at doing +1 gen vs EA's patching an ancient engine continuously. I suspect thats why Epic rewrote their v4 from scratch to coincide with the release of next gen consoles. Those consoles will rock for the next ~7 years & they can keep updating their clean v4 build for those years. Essentially you want engine "jumps" and hardware "jumps" to coincide. On the consoles at least...PCs move more fluidly & there are no distinct "generations". Anyway...I'm waffling so I'll stop.

 

[Dohc-WP]

It does seem highly unlikely... btw how did Crytek develop the Cry engine 3 so fast? I mean Crysis 2 still ran on the Cry engine 2 and that released way back in 2010 ( if I'm not mistaken) soo a whole new engine in a matter of ~2 years? OR did they just tweak the Shit out of it and give it a new name?

crysis 2 used cryengine 3 afaik

i think to put it simple it goes like this.

cryengine 1 - far cry --> (Dunia) -----> Far Cry 2 -------> (Dunia 2) Far cry 3 (dunia 1 & 2 is essentially a highly modified cryengine 1)

cryengine 2 - crysis 1

cryengine 3 - crysis 2, crysis 1 (console ports) crysis 3, sniper ghost warrior 2, warframe etc.

 

[JP'S]

Cry engine 3 was first shown in 2009 (per uhm wikipedia) so its been in development for 3 years+. First seen @ 3 so probably more round the 6 year mark since dev start.

Plus they have Cry 2 to base it on. Once you've got one solid engine framework you've got a much better shot at doing +1 gen vs EA's patching an ancient engine continuously. I suspect thats why Epic rewrote their v4 from scratch to coincide with the release of next gen consoles. Those consoles will rock for the next ~7 years & they can keep updating their clean v4 build for those years. Essentially you want engine "jumps" and hardware "jumps" to coincide. On the consoles at least...PCs move more fluidly & there are no distinct "generations". Anyway...I'm waffling so I'll stop.

Ah now it makes sense thanks

 

[Grievous]

Not necessarily. As has been said, CoD does not run on iDtech3. CoD runs on the IW Engine, which while originally based on the iDTech engine, has gone through around 5 different iterations since then. Infinity Ward are credited as the developers of the IW Engine, not iD.

Just because you modify something doesn't mean you don't need to pay royalties for it. I never said it wasn't modified. The fact that id softare appears in the credits for MW, would make me think its more likely they did get some cash out of the deal.

 

[Dohc-WP]

Indeed. My bad. But they were partnered with them for several years before iD left to partner with EA instead, shortly before Bethesda bought them up.



Not necessarily. As has been said, CoD does not run on iDtech3. CoD runs on the IW Engine, which while originally based on the iDTech engine, has gone through around 5 different iterations since then. Infinity Ward are credited as the developers of the IW Engine, not iD.

and yet ID is still credited ?

 

[Glordit]

crysis 2 used cryengine 3 afaik

i think to put it simple it goes like this.

cryengine 1 - far cry --> (Dunia) -----> Far Cry 2 -------> (Dunia 2) Far cry 3 (dunia 1 & 2 is essentially a highly modified cryengine 1)

cryengine 2 - crysis 1

cryengine 3 - crysis 2, crysis 1 (console ports) crysis 3, sniper ghost warrior 2, warframe etc.

Most of the time as soon as one engine is created (CryEngine 1) they start work on improvements to it (CryE 2 and 3) so technically CryE1 is still running Crysis 3 just a heavily modified version of it. Sometimes they add a few extras and call it a new engine.

When video cards with support for 3.0 pixel and vertex shaders were released, Crytek released version 1.2 of the engine which used some of the capabilities for better graphics.
Later the company developed CryEngine version 1.3, which added support for HDR lighting.

Added HDR and labeled it 1.3, I do believe they just kept adding features and improving performance and kept calling it a new engine.

***On Topic.

It is about time they made a new engine anyway IW's engine is so CPU intensive. It seemed to struggle to balance the load to the GPU or even render anything on it at some times.