Tom Clancy's The Division [PS4, XO]

[Laa-Yosh]

AC can use hundreds of NPCs at the same time. Also, the entire game world is built from elemental components in order to facilitate the freerunning traversal. The large number of NPCs is only possible because of heavy re-use of textures, meshes, animations and other data, too.
The Division has no need for either and thus it's probably allocating resources and implementing game assets in a very different way. You have to understand that AC has far more constrains and thus it has to make trade-offs, possibly to the point that there's no upside to leveraging the features of the Snowdrop engine.

Watch Dogs may be pretty similar in principle, regardless of its implementation. For example, it seems that nothing is working in the Division - no public transport, no lighting at night, no communication networks and so on. Once again, different trade-offs that may have a fundamental effect on how the game and rendering systems are built.

Ubisoft is like the second or third biggest publisher at this time. I'm sure they're looking pretty deeply into leveraging existing technologies, far more than what we can do here using publicly available information. I would not argue with their decisions...

 

[RudeCurve]

In the engine video recently released they say, right up front, that the engine was specially designed for The Division. So if there is no game requirement for vast numbers of NPCs or vehicles then it may not be great at those things. CryEngine, idTech5 and so on have to be jack of all trades because selling the engine is part of the business of the company. There's no suggestion of this with Ubisoft and Snow Drop.

The fact that Ubisoft teams are using a bunch of different engines actually suggests that certain games benefit from engines that are strong in certain areas.

Then we're just arguing about who is guessing right...with no technical proof that the engine couldn't be used for their other franchises. The fact they have a bunch of different engines up to now doesn't really say much about this engine's use for future games based on existing franchises.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Disrupt was also built specially for Watch Dogs. It's not as though historically Ubisoft had a bunch of which they are now in a position to replace. Teams are actively developing new engines for specific franchises. If one engine could do everything equally well they'd likely be using that one engine because it makes things easier for the entire company; from training new programmers to developing tools to QA.

 

[RudeCurve]

I think the real reason why there are so many different engines have little to do with engine specific features. For example the original Rainbow 6 Vegas used UE3 but the new game for 2014 will use AnvilNext aka AC engine. Will the new Rainbow 6 game have lots of NPCs? None of the Rainbow 6 games had lots of NPCs. Is the new one going to be different? This points to what I believe is the real reason which is each team is familiar with the engine "they" built so whatever UBI franchise they've been tasked to undertake will use their engine and not another team's engine. I firmly believe the upcoming Patriots game is using the AnvilNext engine only because it's what team Montreal is familiar with not because that engine is specifically suited to that franchise. I mean do you seriously believe Snow Drop can't handle Patriots??? This kinda of saddens me because I hope Patriots looks as good as The Division and at this point AnvilNext isn't looking nextgen at all. It makes absolutely zero sense to use an engine designed for lots of NPCs, lots of vegetation, seamless parkour for a game like Patriots. Snow Drop would be perfect for that type of game with MP squad base tactics and a handful of enemies at any one time.

Anyway I think it's ironic that Patriots takes place in NYC just like The Division but is using a less sophisticated engine because the team in charge of the game didn't develop Snow Drop.

On the other hand if Patriots looks as good as The Division I'd be very happy.

 

[DieH@rd]

Patriots will look better than Division most probably because of the fact that it will come ~4 years after Division.

 

[Arwin]

I trust they will use the engine that makes sense to use. It's good to have different engines, because not all games are created equal, and not all engines are suitable for all games. Important is that they shared technology - those procedural destruction features for instance could well be implemented in different platforms, perhaps not requiring all that much extra effort.

 

[pjbliverpool]

http://hexus.net/qab6qz

PC version won't be a simple console port but will take advantage of the systems capabilities. I wonder of what we've seen so far is actually from the PC version? I'm getting interested in this game.

 

[Arwin]

Lol, surely right now there are no console ports, only PC ports! It will take one or two years for this to change surely!?

 

[RudeCurve]

I just started playing TC's Ghost Recon FS and the Moscow level looks a lot like The Division in terms of art style. The graphics of course are not at the same advanced level but it does still look very good for current gen. I think the gameplay in the urban settings will be very similar.

 

[loekf]

Rumours that the game will be released in 2015, not 2014

http://www.gamereactor.eu/news/1047...n+2014"/?sid=8ed876045d74837cf848312952c35225

I feel a lawsuit from angry shareholders coming...

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I would rather they did this than release it not ready. And hopefully Ubisoft don't have many shareholders dumb enough to try and devalue the same company they have invested in.

 

[RudeCurve]

I too would rather they delay the game than release something that's not finished. There's plenty of games releasing next holiday season anyway.

 

[dobwal]

I too would rather they delay the game than release something that's not finished. There's plenty of games releasing next holiday season anyway.

I just hope they don't give a release date then backout just weeks from release. I think thats why ubi received so much flak with WD.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Seconded. Postponing weeks from launch is not cool. I was really looking forward to Watch Dogs, mercifully there was a bunch of good next gen games to keep me busy so disappointment quickly turned to forget. I'm still looking forward to it tho, but not as much as The Division.

 

[DieH@rd]

 

[AlNom]

The lit smoke is nifty.

 

[Rangers]

The $64,000 question is how much of this graphical splendory will remain on particularly Xbox One.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

The $64,000 question is how much of this graphical splendory will remain on particularly Xbox One.

Same question but replace X1 with PS4. Although playing KZSF, it sseems possible but with what IQ, what res? I don't want 720p please.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Better quality screens.

 

[ultragpu]

Doesn't look too much different than KZ Shadow fall honestly, I'd say with enough time to learn the hardware 1080p/30 should be right around the ballpark for PS4 at least. 900p or less on Xbone I'm calling it.