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Orbit: EA's first open source project

blog.bioware.com

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Re: Orbit: EA's first open source project

#31

Post by jklinger410 »

zamalek wrote: post #20
venomsnake wrote: post #12

> Orbit is a modern Java framework that makes it easier to build and maintain distributed, secure, and scalable online services. It is inspired by a variety of existing frameworks and brings some exciting new things to the table. Except both bioware and EA have dismal track record of massive online services. Origin barely works, SWTOR was barely loaded, Sim City - you know the story, Battlefield launches are terrible…

> Origin barely works Never had an issue with it. > SWTOR was barely loaded, Sim City All of them: now fixed. It's not an excuse but online game launches, nearly without exception (most certainly not exclusive to EA), always go like that. The reason is as Blizzard described it with the Diablo launch: during a launch you have a massive influx of players of which a good amount completely lose interest over the next wee…

So if you admit that EA releases buggy, unfinished games and has a tendency to not be able to handle large influxes of users on launching products why would a critique of a framework for an online service (of which they have a TERRIBLE track record with) be unfair?

Your comment seems to contradict itself and needlessly defend EA. No one should be defending this company. Good for them for "giving something back" but I doubt their motive is honest charity.

Re: Orbit: EA's first open source project

#32

Post by jklinger410 »

MAGZine wrote: post #13
venomsnake wrote: post #12

> Orbit is a modern Java framework that makes it easier to build and maintain distributed, secure, and scalable online services. It is inspired by a variety of existing frameworks and brings some exciting new things to the table. Except both bioware and EA have dismal track record of massive online services. Origin barely works, SWTOR was barely loaded, Sim City - you know the story, Battlefield launches are terrible…

citation needed. Origin works pretty well (i've seen this echo'd in various internet outlets... reddit, gaming communities, etc), Sim City was launched by maxis a studio that has little (apparent) online knowledge, battlefield launches suffer from buggy gameplay, but their servers are generally solid. Also, most of the BF stuff you interact with is Frostbite, not online (apart from battelog and online connectivity) N…

>Sim City was launched by maxis a studio that has little (apparent) online knowledge

Sim City was launched by EA. Very little of "Maxis" existed when that product came out. It was entirely an EA project and EA has ample experience with online gaming.

>Now, how about FIFA and Madden which have userbases that absolutely dwarf those games?

If you've ever tried to play an EA game beyond casual 1v1 online matches you would rethink your praise of their online systems. As an avid NCAA 14 player believe me when I say that they have a basic misunderstanding of what players want out of an online experience. They're not even good at 1v1, to be honest, when you're playing over a network their solution to input lag is to just slow down the gameplay entirely. EA is a cheap company.

>I applaud them and am rooting for the active movers inside EA to keep pushing for more OSS.

EA has made so much money off of shit products they would have to do 100 Open Source projects before I felt they deserved praise.

Re: Orbit: EA's first open source project

#33

Post by jjoonathan »

zamalek wrote: post #20
venomsnake wrote: post #12

> Orbit is a modern Java framework that makes it easier to build and maintain distributed, secure, and scalable online services. It is inspired by a variety of existing frameworks and brings some exciting new things to the table. Except both bioware and EA have dismal track record of massive online services. Origin barely works, SWTOR was barely loaded, Sim City - you know the story, Battlefield launches are terrible…

> Origin barely works Never had an issue with it. > SWTOR was barely loaded, Sim City All of them: now fixed. It's not an excuse but online game launches, nearly without exception (most certainly not exclusive to EA), always go like that. The reason is as Blizzard described it with the Diablo launch: during a launch you have a massive influx of players of which a good amount completely lose interest over the next wee…

> All of them: now fixed.

I just tried to fire up Mass Effect 3 and it couldn't connect to the DRM server. Three years after launch and it only manages to verify itself ~30% of the time. Mirror's Edge has never worked but it isn't a problem because the game lets you play without logging in.

They're 0 for 2, even {3,7} years after release.

> You are confusing EA's ability to write code and manage infrastructure with their tendency to be greedy

Do you really think they're intentionally saving money by taking a PR hit at every release vs giving the DRM / multiplayer teams the time and resources they need to build a robust system? Also, even if they are, why would I want to use software with such a dismal reputation? When I'm making my choice I don't really care if the team that built the software has an excuse or not, I care if the framework is going to work.

Re: Orbit: EA's first open source project

#34

Post by zamalek »

jklinger410 wrote: post #31
zamalek wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Origin barely works Never had an issue with it. > SWTOR was barely loaded, Sim City All of them: now fixed. It's not an excuse but online game launches, nearly without exception (most certainly not exclusive to EA), always go like that. The reason is as Blizzard described it with the Diablo launch: during a launch you have a massive influx of players of which a good amount completely lose interest over the next wee…

So if you admit that EA releases buggy, unfinished games and has a tendency to not be able to handle large influxes of users on launching products why would a critique of a framework for an online service (of which they have a TERRIBLE track record with) be unfair? Your comment seems to contradict itself and needlessly defend EA. No one should be defending this company. Good for them for "giving something back" but I…

> No one should be defending this company.

Please take this debate elsewhere. HN is not the place for anti-EA circlejerk and as much as I disagree with their scummy and greedy practices I am not going to bleed the circlejerk into HN. Users here are supposed to be above that crap.

> critique of a framework for an online service (of which they have a TERRIBLE track record with) be unfair?

I already addressed that if you took the time to read my comment.

Re: Orbit: EA's first open source project

#35

Post by zamalek »

jjoonathan wrote: post #33
zamalek wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Origin barely works Never had an issue with it. > SWTOR was barely loaded, Sim City All of them: now fixed. It's not an excuse but online game launches, nearly without exception (most certainly not exclusive to EA), always go like that. The reason is as Blizzard described it with the Diablo launch: during a launch you have a massive influx of players of which a good amount completely lose interest over the next wee…

> All of them: now fixed. I just tried to fire up Mass Effect 3 and it couldn't connect to the DRM server. Three years after launch and it only manages to verify itself ~30% of the time. Mirror's Edge has never worked but it isn't a problem because the game lets you play without logging in. They're 0 for 2, even {3,7} years after release. > You are confusing EA's ability to write code and manage infrastructure with t…

> I care if the framework is going to work

You are not your code. EA is not their code. The code stands on its own merit. This is fundamental knowledge to developers who care about the quality of a piece of code instead of the personal ethics of the person who wrote it.

Would I not use your code because you participate in this circlejerking? No, if your code was good I'd use it: and then I'd call you an asshole in the appropriate forum.

Re: Orbit: EA's first open source project

#36

Post by tulsidas »

na85 wrote: post #2

I just surprised myself with how low my opinion of EA is. My first instinct was that EA would never be so benevolent as to do anything open-source or give anything back to the community and therefore this had to be an April Fool's joke. I see some commits on the github are from 5 days ago, though, so now I'm not so sure.

I've been looking at it for a couple minutes now, and I'm still not sure if it's an April Fools joke

Re: Orbit: EA's first open source project

#37

Post by mattnewport »

exDM69 wrote: post #19
BSousa wrote: post #8

The first EA open source project I remember was their own implementation of STL [1] many years ago to deal with STL slow parts. [1] https://github.com/paulhodge/EASTL seems to be a clone of it and has commits from 4 years ago

To be strict EASTL is not an "implementation of" the STL, it's a "replacement for". It has similar functionality (containers, algorithms) but the API is not compatible. In particular, EASTL has different memory management that is more suitable for games and especially consoles.

I used to maintain EASTL. I think it's more accurate to describe it as an implementation of the STL than a replacement. As far as possible it is API compatible with the STL, the API differences are primarily in the allocator model and it is possible to write EASTL code that compiles against another STL implementation with fairly minimal changes, almost none if you're not using custom allocators. There are a few extensions / extra containers but we went to great lengths to keep as much of the API identical as possible.

Re: Orbit: EA's first open source project

#38

Post by muraiki »

el_tone wrote: post #22
alexatkeplar wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting innovation (at least on the JVM) seems to be the use of _virtual_ actors. At first glance this looks similar to Microsoft's Orleans project: http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/210931/Orleans-MSR-TR-201...

I was about to suggest that they seem to have leaned more toward Orleans than Akka. Orleans on Github: https://github.com/dotnet/Orleans

Orbit Actors is a framework to write distributed systems using virtual actors. It was developed by BioWare, a division of Electronic Arts, and is heavily inspired by the Orleans project.

http://orbit.bioware.com/orbit-actor-overview.html

Re: Orbit: EA's first open source project

#40

Post by DonHopkins »

MAGZine wrote: post #13
venomsnake wrote: post #12

> Orbit is a modern Java framework that makes it easier to build and maintain distributed, secure, and scalable online services. It is inspired by a variety of existing frameworks and brings some exciting new things to the table. Except both bioware and EA have dismal track record of massive online services. Origin barely works, SWTOR was barely loaded, Sim City - you know the story, Battlefield launches are terrible…

citation needed. Origin works pretty well (i've seen this echo'd in various internet outlets... reddit, gaming communities, etc), Sim City was launched by maxis a studio that has little (apparent) online knowledge, battlefield launches suffer from buggy gameplay, but their servers are generally solid. Also, most of the BF stuff you interact with is Frostbite, not online (apart from battelog and online connectivity) N…

The problems with the SimCity launch, and the insistence on requiring a connection to play, were thanks to Origin, not Maxis.
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