....The Source engine was a nightmare of a codebase to muddle through. Yes, it was a very tested engine compared to Spark and performed pretty well on low end systems, but to push it do the things we were wanting to do with NS2 would still have required a lot of effort with unforeseen consequences...
matsoMaster of PatchesJoin Date: 2002-11-05Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
Maybe also the fact it was 100% LUA (only some needs to be LUA).
It is far from 100% LUA.
I'm pretty sure I saw someone post something about it being 100% LUA. But I guess he was wrong then?
The game is LUA. The engine is not.
Afaik.
Pretty much. Though it may be more of a nitpick - technically, the Spark engine is does not contain any NS2-specific code, so all NS2 specific code is written in Lua.
Of course, the Spark engine is designed to _support_ the stuff that NS2 needs ... many useful capabilities has been added to the engine in order to support NS2 needs (like ai navigation), while capabilities not used by NS2 is severly lacking.
So saying that NS2 is 100% Lua is kinda true, kinda false - can be confusing if read out of context.
So if most of the performance problems are now locked in Spark, and Spark 2.0 is being developed, do we have more performance increases to look forward too?
So if most of the performance problems are now locked in Spark, and Spark 2.0 is being developed, do we have more performance increases to look forward too?
So if most of the performance problems are now locked in Spark, and Spark 2.0 is being developed, do we have more performance increases to look forward too?
Also, what else are you making on Spark!?!
This is what I am curious about. Will NS2 see backwards updates from the dev of Spark 2.0`?
I can only hope so! Would love to see my favorite multiplayer game become prettier and run better over time!
This is what I am curious about. Will NS2 see backwards updates from the dev of Spark 2.0`?
I can only hope so! Would love to see my favorite multiplayer game become prettier and run better over time!
Unfortunately, the majority of the work being done on Spark 2.0 will not be able to make it back to NS2. NS2 would pretty much have to be rewritten from the ground up to take advantage of the changes that are being done.
This is what I am curious about. Will NS2 see backwards updates from the dev of Spark 2.0`?
I can only hope so! Would love to see my favorite multiplayer game become prettier and run better over time!
Unfortunately, the majority of the work being done on Spark 2.0 will not be able to make it back to NS2. NS2 would pretty much have to be rewritten from the ground up to take advantage of the changes that are being done.
are we going to see the spark 2.0 engine beeing used in a possible ns3 then?
matsoMaster of PatchesJoin Date: 2002-11-05Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
This is what I am curious about. Will NS2 see backwards updates from the dev of Spark 2.0`?
I can only hope so! Would love to see my favorite multiplayer game become prettier and run better over time!
Unfortunately, the majority of the work being done on Spark 2.0 will not be able to make it back to NS2. NS2 would pretty much have to be rewritten from the ground up to take advantage of the changes that are being done.
are we going to see the spark 2.0 engine beeing used in a possible ns3 then?
Well, the Spark engine is optimized for multiplayer FPS, so whatever is built on it would be a game that could take advantage of that.
Building a run-of-the mill CoD/BF clone would be silly, so whatever game Spark 2.0 would be used for would have to have something that made it stand out, preferably as much as NS2 stands out (and NS2 is by far more original than titanfall, IMO).
I expect that there are some serious talks/brainstorming going on in UWE just how to make a game stand out, without it being (too much of) an NS2 clone...
I would expect an NS2-like game would be possible on the Spark 2.0 platform, but I guess that UWE has taken lessons from the Spark 1.0 engine and decided to re-architect things that has been a hassle in the current Spark engine - like inability to scale with more cores (Spark 2.0 is at a very rough guess 3-4 years into the future so 8 cores is probably the kind of CPU you want to support).
Hopefully, they will also support record/replay of game state from the start (mainly for bug replication - the number of hours spent trying to replicate rare bugs ... so much wasted time ) - I know that Dushan was looking into that but I assume it was too hard to retrofit into Spark.
Anyhow, the reason NS2 would be hard to port is probably that most of the Spark 1.0 Lua API that the current NS2 code relies on would be gone. Not only the method calls, but probably whole concepts will be dropped and added, so porting NS2 would not be a matter of just changing the names of a few function calls.
Anyhow, these thoughts are just feverish rantings of someone that has no inside information, the color of this text notwithstanding.
Unfortunately, the majority of the work being done on Spark 2.0 will not be able to make it back to NS2. NS2 would pretty much have to be rewritten from the ground up to take advantage of the changes that are being done.
I can imagine the renderer is undergoing some pretty big changes. Still, excited for Spark 2.0 then! Thx for the reply.
We did think we would be able to license the tools, even though we weren't licensing the engine, which did end up being a costly mistake. We ended up having to spend a lot of time on stuff like our own level editor instead of being able to license Hammer, and if we'd known that at the time it might...might...have swayed our decision, as that stuff sucked up a very large amount of development time. (...)
But that is where we are at today. We have our own engine, that we know the ins and outs of. We know the benefits and we know the weaknesses. Moving forward, we are developing Spark 2.0 for one our next projects, and we can now apply everything we've learned over the years, and rework and rewrite it to take advantage of our experience and the new tools that exist now. That puts us in a pretty good place, moving forward, so yes, I would say it was worth it.
And that pretty much answers the developer side of the question, as I proposed earlier.
Thanks for clearing up the licensing question, it turns out my memory was just as fuzzy as I feared -- I remembered it backwards!
I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with in the future, I have no doubt it'll be interesting.
@Squeal_Like_A_Pig
I was wondering, have you guys thought about bringing in key people from the community mainly the modders out there to take feedback on Spark 2.0 at the appropriate time?
I imagine many people such as myself are interested in making something using it at some point and who knows maybe even license it if possible, of course if its all around good to work with.
I'm guessing that its super early in development, but are you guys planning on going open development with it in the future like UE4 has been doing lately?
@Squeal_Like_A_Pig
I was wondering, have you guys thought about bringing in key people from the community mainly the modders out there to take feedback on Spark 2.0 at the appropriate time?
I imagine many people such as myself are interested in making something using it at some point and who knows maybe even license it if possible, of course if its all around good to work with.
I'm guessing that its super early in development, but are you guys planning on going open development with it in the future like UE4 has been doing lately?
Yeah, we have talked about it. For the next Spark project want to get something in the hands of people outside the studio as soon as possible (although we don't yet have a timeframe for that).
Personally I don't expect it to be as open as UE4 seems to be (I can't see us having people vote on engine features for example), but we'll make a decision on that sort of thing when we get closer to "going public". Whatever we choose to do will be based on whatever works for the next game, since we aren't developing the engine in a vacuum.
I'm curious if the version of Spark used for NS2 will ever be allowed to be worked on by those ambitious modders, maybe rewrite some of the bits that aren't optimized for LuaJit? (from what I've read, thats the main hit on performance).
@Insane
thanks for the answers!
On the same note, is it built using Spark 1.0 as a base or is it a total rewrite from the ground up?
Also has there been any internal discussion on whether to make Spark 1.0 open source? or at least some of it's tools like the map editor?
matsoMaster of PatchesJoin Date: 2002-11-05Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
@Insane
thanks for the answers!
On the same note, is it built using Spark 1.0 as a base or is it a total rewrite from the ground up?
Also has there been any internal discussion on whether to make Spark 1.0 open source? or at least some of it's tools like the map editor?
From my understanding of other threads, the Spark2.0 is going to use an incompatible Lua-interface (which is arguably one of the the weak points in Spark 1.0), which means that porting NS2 would be a total rewrite, basically.
Spark 2.0 will most probably retain stuff that worked well in Spark 1.0, like most of the rendering pipeline.
Personally, what I would really like to know is how well Spark 2.0 will support multiple cores, another weakness of 1.0; Spark 1.0 servers are basically single threaded. By the time 2.0 comes out, you can probably expect a minimum of 4 or even 6 cores for any decent gaming rig, so supporting multiple cores will be important.
There has been discussion about making the 1.0 tools open source, but I expect it got stuck on someone actually doing it :-/
TBH I could care less about porting NS2 to Spark 2.0, what I'm really interested in seeing is 2.0 expanding on the ease of use from 1.0, like making the whole art pipeline as easy as drag and drop for models and textures instead of going through a build process.
Having worked with 1.0 for quite some time I could come up with so much but I guess I'll just wait and see what UWE comes up with, in any case its exciting for me to see where it will be heading as I tend to nerd out on these kind of details.
TBH I could care less about porting NS2 to Spark 2.0, what I'm really interested in seeing is 2.0 expanding on the ease of use from 1.0, like making the whole art pipeline as easy as drag and drop for models and textures instead of going through a build process.
Having worked with 1.0 for quite some time I could come up with so much but I guess I'll just wait and see what UWE comes up with, in any case its exciting for me to see where it will be heading as I tend to nerd out on these kind of details.
I can't really go into much detail at this stage, but we've already streamlined the art pipeline substantially, and we're actively working on improving it further. That's likely going to be one of the areas we'll be particularly interested in feedback on.
Soul_RiderMod BeanJoin Date: 2004-06-19Member: 29388Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue
@Insane To me that is the best news. I really feel NS2 could have had so much more modding success with an easier art pipeline, so it's great to hear that has already been rectified. While I know it's a long way off, and you won't be doing an epic type of access, I was wondering about the possibility of 2.0 maybe being given to modders to work with as the next game is in development. I think this could benefit UWE hugely on so many levels. I do understand it is still a way off, but it is something I'd like you to consider.
@Insane
Awesome! will keep a close eye on this as it peaked my interest.
Good to hear that you are taking feedback on that one, UWE got our contact info if they are interested in our feedback.
TBH I could care less about porting NS2 to Spark 2.0, what I'm really interested in seeing is 2.0 expanding on the ease of use from 1.0, like making the whole art pipeline as easy as drag and drop for models and textures instead of going through a build process.
Having worked with 1.0 for quite some time I could come up with so much but I guess I'll just wait and see what UWE comes up with, in any case its exciting for me to see where it will be heading as I tend to nerd out on these kind of details.
I can't really go into much detail at this stage, but we've already streamlined the art pipeline substantially, and we're actively working on improving it further. That's likely going to be one of the areas we'll be particularly interested in feedback on.
Are you guys making the switch over to a more normalized linear lighting/ PBS work flow for your textures?
Am I not understanding a joke, or is this some discussion of what to do in the future?
UWE made spark for ns2. They plan on using it in some future endeavors more than likely. Why not use your in house engine? So they are improving it, hence 2.0.
Comments
AKA, HL3 multiplayer mod.
The game is LUA. The engine is not.
Afaik.
Pretty much. Though it may be more of a nitpick - technically, the Spark engine is does not contain any NS2-specific code, so all NS2 specific code is written in Lua.
Of course, the Spark engine is designed to _support_ the stuff that NS2 needs ... many useful capabilities has been added to the engine in order to support NS2 needs (like ai navigation), while capabilities not used by NS2 is severly lacking.
So saying that NS2 is 100% Lua is kinda true, kinda false - can be confusing if read out of context.
Also, what else are you making on Spark!?!
Valve outsourced HL3 to UWE!!
I can only hope so! Would love to see my favorite multiplayer game become prettier and run better over time!
are we going to see the spark 2.0 engine beeing used in a possible ns3 then?
Well, the Spark engine is optimized for multiplayer FPS, so whatever is built on it would be a game that could take advantage of that.
Building a run-of-the mill CoD/BF clone would be silly, so whatever game Spark 2.0 would be used for would have to have something that made it stand out, preferably as much as NS2 stands out (and NS2 is by far more original than titanfall, IMO).
I expect that there are some serious talks/brainstorming going on in UWE just how to make a game stand out, without it being (too much of) an NS2 clone...
I would expect an NS2-like game would be possible on the Spark 2.0 platform, but I guess that UWE has taken lessons from the Spark 1.0 engine and decided to re-architect things that has been a hassle in the current Spark engine - like inability to scale with more cores (Spark 2.0 is at a very rough guess 3-4 years into the future so 8 cores is probably the kind of CPU you want to support).
Hopefully, they will also support record/replay of game state from the start (mainly for bug replication - the number of hours spent trying to replicate rare bugs ... so much wasted time ) - I know that Dushan was looking into that but I assume it was too hard to retrofit into Spark.
Anyhow, the reason NS2 would be hard to port is probably that most of the Spark 1.0 Lua API that the current NS2 code relies on would be gone. Not only the method calls, but probably whole concepts will be dropped and added, so porting NS2 would not be a matter of just changing the names of a few function calls.
Anyhow, these thoughts are just feverish rantings of someone that has no inside information, the color of this text notwithstanding.
I can imagine the renderer is undergoing some pretty big changes. Still, excited for Spark 2.0 then! Thx for the reply.
Thanks for clearing up the licensing question, it turns out my memory was just as fuzzy as I feared -- I remembered it backwards!
I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with in the future, I have no doubt it'll be interesting.
Plenty of Pub servers tried that for NS2, none do now.
Leave Unreal Tournament alone and play NS2, maybe?
"Kill a Fade in 3 - 90%+ pellets hit shotgun shots!"
Achievements that are actually achievements of skill and not random easter egg shit.
I was wondering, have you guys thought about bringing in key people from the community mainly the modders out there to take feedback on Spark 2.0 at the appropriate time?
I imagine many people such as myself are interested in making something using it at some point and who knows maybe even license it if possible, of course if its all around good to work with.
I'm guessing that its super early in development, but are you guys planning on going open development with it in the future like UE4 has been doing lately?
Yeah, we have talked about it. For the next Spark project want to get something in the hands of people outside the studio as soon as possible (although we don't yet have a timeframe for that).
Personally I don't expect it to be as open as UE4 seems to be (I can't see us having people vote on engine features for example), but we'll make a decision on that sort of thing when we get closer to "going public". Whatever we choose to do will be based on whatever works for the next game, since we aren't developing the engine in a vacuum.
That'd be cool, but I may just be dreaming
thanks for the answers!
On the same note, is it built using Spark 1.0 as a base or is it a total rewrite from the ground up?
Also has there been any internal discussion on whether to make Spark 1.0 open source? or at least some of it's tools like the map editor?
From my understanding of other threads, the Spark2.0 is going to use an incompatible Lua-interface (which is arguably one of the the weak points in Spark 1.0), which means that porting NS2 would be a total rewrite, basically.
Spark 2.0 will most probably retain stuff that worked well in Spark 1.0, like most of the rendering pipeline.
Personally, what I would really like to know is how well Spark 2.0 will support multiple cores, another weakness of 1.0; Spark 1.0 servers are basically single threaded. By the time 2.0 comes out, you can probably expect a minimum of 4 or even 6 cores for any decent gaming rig, so supporting multiple cores will be important.
There has been discussion about making the 1.0 tools open source, but I expect it got stuck on someone actually doing it :-/
Having worked with 1.0 for quite some time I could come up with so much but I guess I'll just wait and see what UWE comes up with, in any case its exciting for me to see where it will be heading as I tend to nerd out on these kind of details.
I can't really go into much detail at this stage, but we've already streamlined the art pipeline substantially, and we're actively working on improving it further. That's likely going to be one of the areas we'll be particularly interested in feedback on.
Awesome! will keep a close eye on this as it peaked my interest.
Good to hear that you are taking feedback on that one, UWE got our contact info if they are interested in our feedback.
Are you guys making the switch over to a more normalized linear lighting/ PBS work flow for your textures?
Am I not understanding a joke, or is this some discussion of what to do in the future?
UWE made spark for ns2. They plan on using it in some future endeavors more than likely. Why not use your in house engine? So they are improving it, hence 2.0.
Why are we talking about Spark 2.0 when Subnautica hasn't is not even in alpha yet? Just curious.