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Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

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Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that?

Classic "glass floor" hire. Take the fall, get paid.

Almost! The common term is "glass cliff":

> The glass cliff is a phenomenon described by psychologists Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam, in which women are more likely to break the "glass ceiling" (i.e. achieve leadership roles in business and government) during periods of crisis or downturn when the risk of failure is highest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UE is also just not a good engine. If you reduce "what is a 3D game engine" really hard it is "framework for running an input-process-output loop while consistently rendering audio and video". UE fails at the latter (factually unfixable shadder stuttering issues). A pragmatist might consider the taxonomy and say UE is therefore not a game engine. Unreal seems to be a great framework for assembling and generating cont…

Isn't the shader stuttering an issue with games refusing to compile shaders ahead of time?

No, I think it's widely regarded as engine limitations even when people continually claim it's up to individual game devs to optimize their games.

If that were the case then why do nearly all UE5 games suffer from the same engine stutter issues. And to OPs point, even if it can be optimized away, why isnt the engine in a state where the baseline performance for realtime rendering does not exhibit these stutter issues on the majority of games.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, is it easy to work with an undocumented IDtech engine? Even a previous generation, say Rage? I think it’s very hard.

How many UE5 games run even remotely well? I've not played one. Doom runs like butter on the switch. Might be hard to run, I don't know, but at least it was well made.

Expedition 33 ran well, at least on Xbox Series X. It runs like dogshit on a Steam Deck, though.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#414

Microsoft, one the world's greatest monopolists, bequeaths a game engine monopoly unto Epic Games, in one the biggest corporate blunders of all time. If they were smarter about this, they would commoditize their compliment and open source the Doom The Dark Ages engine just like John Carmack did with the Quake 3 engine.

That's not how it works, first of all IdTech is not a general engine, it's only made to build specific games: fps.

Next you need to make a product out of that meaning a very large investment so that the engine is actually usable outside of ID, people that don't know what an engine is think of the rendering part but it's actually very minor compare to pipelines ect ... which we know nothing about, it might not even be good or painful to use.

Unreal is widely used because it can create any kind of game and the pipeline, tooling are good and well integrated.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#415
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think this is the wrong diagnosis of this situation. The studios in Microsoft gaming appear to have been given a lot of room to take risks under previous leadership, build passion projects, etc. while letting big franchises sit on the side. Those things ended up being anywhere from abject failures to small successes - where some players and critics loved them - but most don't seem to be commercial successe…

I'm confused, do people want endless sequels or not?

Different people want different things, because they are different.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#416
post #104
post #19

I think we'll see stuff like this continue to happen over time. As a game company, having your own engine means that you have to be able to cultivate internal expertise in your tooling. Your employees will know this and could do bad things like ask for more money because they know that replacing them would significantly hurt productivity. Meanwhile, laying off your whole engine team and switching to UE5 means that yo…

You're framing this as a thing done by a greedy corporation in an evil manner, which maybe it is, but it's also just a sign of the times. For most of the 90s and 00s, your game engine, specifically idTech in this case, was a competitive advantage. Doom and Quake/2/3 all represented massive technological jumps over their predecessors and were way ahead of their competition in terms of looks. Games like Unreal (Tournam…

> what is the competitive advantage in maintaining your own engine?

It's still a product-distinguishing decision you can make at the indie scale. What I mean is, you can create an engine that allows you to get the performance + aesthetic that otherwise would not be possible. i.e. Specialize in a profitable niche.

And if hardware costs keep ballooning, performance will become more important.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#417
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're framing this as a thing done by a greedy corporation in an evil manner, which maybe it is, but it's also just a sign of the times. For most of the 90s and 00s, your game engine, specifically idTech in this case, was a competitive advantage. Doom and Quake/2/3 all represented massive technological jumps over their predecessors and were way ahead of their competition in terms of looks. Games like Unreal (Tournam…

As a former AAA dev, this is spot on. At the end of the day, games are a business. Margins are not attractive and competition is fierce as the barrier to game development has lowered with Steam: both are downward pressures on wages. After entering games with naive expectations of the wild west of the 90s, I would recommend other programmers not enter the AAA space, if compensation and job security are concerns. Indie…

Agreed. In addition, the purpose of games is to entertain players, not to provide jobs for developers.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When UK blocked the merger this very board flamed anti business old Europe.

One does wonder how many bots were involved in the flaming

I’d love to blame collective internet myopia on bots, just as I’d love to blame leaded gas for the mental state of geriatric politicians, but in my heart I don’t buy it.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#419
post #414

Microsoft, one the world's greatest monopolists, bequeaths a game engine monopoly unto Epic Games, in one the biggest corporate blunders of all time. If they were smarter about this, they would commoditize their compliment and open source the Doom The Dark Ages engine just like John Carmack did with the Quake 3 engine.

That's not how it works, first of all IdTech is not a general engine, it's only made to build specific games: fps. Next you need to make a product out of that meaning a very large investment so that the engine is actually usable outside of ID, people that don't know what an engine is think of the rendering part but it's actually very minor compare to pipelines ect ... which we know nothing about, it might not even be…

Your first statement is wrong. The new Indiana jones game is not an FPS and it uses the same engine

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who understand society care about it. When you employ someone you take on a certain responsibility. You can't negate that by pretending that you're in an equal power relationship. That's why we have workers' rights.

Society determines what "shoulds" turn into "musts," and currently our society does not have any "must" for general cultural or social good. Only fiduciary responsibility. That's the structural cause here and should be the focus of attention

I'm not a worshipper of Mammon so I disagree that it basically all comes down to money.

I agree that many people are, I'm just arguing that they're wrong.

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