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Emergent Game Technologies (Gamebryo engine) goes belly up

S

subversus

I've done nothing with my life except eat and fap
I know, I know when people lose their jobs it's not good and all but something inside me screams with joy :lol

I hope everybody involved land on their feet soon while RPG aficionados celebrate all night long!



SUMMARY OF HISTORICAL INFORMATION

Emergent Game Technologies (“Company” or “”Emergent”) is a technology company that directly licenses and supports its products, Gamebryo® and Gamebryo LightSpeed®, to customers around the world. Founded in 2000 with a mission of developing tools and technologies for 3D interactive entertainment, Emergent merged with NDL in 2005, the company that created the Gamebryo game development engine and tools.
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Emergent Game Technologies has fallen. Their attempt to resurrect themselves in September with the Krome Studio partnership was short-lived. Days after the Emergent/Krome announcement came word that Krome was shuttering its studio, leaving little doubt that Emergent's days were numbered as well.

Emergent was able to secure over $30 million in funding over the years and secured a number of key accounts in China including Tencent. It obviously wasn't enough. We hope the assets find a good home.
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http://www.gamingbusinessreview.com/emergentsellsassets.htm
 
Gamebryo sucks, so while its unfortunate that people lost their jobs, the positive side effect is that Gamebryo is dead.
 
FUCK YEAH

Nirolak said:
They don't have to give up the engine just because Emergent died.
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No, but the engine isn't going to get updated in the future, so unless Bethesda decides to update it themselves, they're probably going to switch.
 
Amneisac said:
Fallout / Elder Scrolls moving to UE3 confirmed?
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They gutted Gamebryo and made their own. They would have used Id Tech 5, probably, but apparently it's not good for open world games.
 
Lagspike_exe said:
FUCK YEAH



No, but the engine isn't going to get updated in the future, so unless Bethesda decides to update it themselves, they're probably going to switch.
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I think they've been doing that for years at this point.
 
I feel sorry for the those that lost their jobs, but fuck the Gamebryo engine.

Id Tech 5 for life, plz.
 
You guys are mean. Its not like the engine ruined any games.

Bethesda games are fantastic regardless, and Oblivion was one of the best looking games when it came out. Maybe even the best looking game.
 
Sorry about the people who lost their jobs, but this is the best thing to happen in gaming in awhile.
 
Given that there is no track record for ID Tech 5 in the open world genre, why are people so excited to see it in Fallout/ES?

I know, Carmack and all, but I wonder if he was thinking about open world stuff with Tech 5 given his genre preferences. It would be interesting, for sure.

My bet is they continue with Gamebyro until the wheels fall off. The cost of developing a new engine is pretty damn high I would think.

Or maybe they already have carmack working it out.
 
gregor7777 said:
Given that there is no track record for ID Tech 5 in the open world genre, why are people so excited to see it in Fallout/ES?
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What?

Isn't Rage kind of an open world game?
 
Pakkidis said:
Can someone explain to me what made it such a bad engine compared to others?
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They think because some of the games using the engine didn't look as good as other games that it must have been the engine's fault.
 
Falagard said:
They think because some of the games using the engine didn't look as good as other games that it must have been the engine's fault.
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You think that is the reason people never liked Gamebryo? :lol
 
Falagard said:
They think because some of the games using the engine didn't look as good as other games that it must have been the engine's fault.
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it has (had) horrible look and huge animation/number of NPCs issues. Is it enough?
 
ezekial45 said:
It's a set of open instanced areas. It's more in the vein of Borderlands, than Fallout.
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Then just lock John Carmack up in a room and force him to go at it for a couple days and boom, you've got yourself and open world engine.
 
Would've been happy just to see Bethesda go with another engine, but I'm glad we won't be seeing Gamebryo in anything ever again.
 
BobsRevenge said:
Then just lock John Carmack up in a room and force him to go at it for a couple days and boom, you've got yourself and open world engine.
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It seems a shame that he's (figuratively) right down the hall from a sister company who happens to catch a lot of shit about their game engine and isn't (as far as we know) being used for that purpose.
 
Falagard said:
They think because some of the games using the engine didn't look as good as other games that it must have been the engine's fault.
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bugs, man, bugs. Needed a can of Raid and Luck +10 to save in New Vegas
 
I think Bethesda's hand is kind of being forced as far as a new engine goes. Even people who are enjoying New Vegas think that NV should be the last game to use the engine. It's old, it's ugly, it's janky as hell. I'm not sure if there is any major game from any point in this generation that has worse lighting than NV has today. It's just time to move the hell on from this ugly ugly engine.
 
Takuan said:
Would've been happy just to see Bethesda go with another engine, but I'm glad we won't be seeing Gamebryo in anything ever again.
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one more game and I hope it's over or evolve into something not Gamebryo at all like Q3->COD4.
 
im pretty sure they are using gamebryo for their next game also, they just overhauled a lot of it todd howard said in an interview recently.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-08-16-todd-howard-working-on-two-new-games
Howard wouldn't be drawn on many details about the game - thought to be a new Elder Scrolls title - but said the technology was derived from the engine that powered Fallout 3, albeit with significant modifications.

"Fallout 3 technically does a lot more than Oblivion. The new stuff is an even bigger jump from that," he said. "I can say it is on the existing platforms, which we're really happy with. You almost feel like you have a new console when you see the game."
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Somebody email Betsheda some vide clips of Two Worlds II and Risen. Elder Scrolls V has to surpass that to replicate the wow-effect Oblivion had when it was released.

The bar has been set very high for the graphics in open-world RPGs now.
 
DennisK4 said:
Somebody email Betsheda some vide clips of Two Worlds II and Risen. Elder Scrolls V has to surpass that to replicate the wow-effect Oblivion had when it was released.

The bar has been set very high for the graphics in open-world RPGs now.
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i dont get the risen hype mebbe I need to replay it but that first town was so god awful I just about quit, and did quit once I got out of it to that sunnier villa looking area.
 
DennisK4 said:
Somebody email Betsheda some vide clips of Two Worlds II and Risen. Elder Scrolls V has to surpass that to replicate the wow-effect Oblivion had when it was released.

The bar has been set very high for the graphics in open-world RPGs now.
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From what I saw of the Risen demo, it just had impressive scenery. I didn´t see anything impressive about the character models or animation, which are the biggest problems with the Gamebryo engine.
 
I liked the lighting (atleast in outside areas) of Arcania demo too. Havent played Two worlds 2 though.
 
It's not like the engine isn't capable of better. I remember when Oblivion was first shown it had real time lighting on everything until they nerfed it for consoles.
 
gregor7777 said:
Given that there is no track record for ID Tech 5 in the open world genre, why are people so excited to see it in Fallout/ES?

I know, Carmack and all, but I wonder if he was thinking about open world stuff with Tech 5 given his genre preferences. It would be interesting, for sure.
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Wasn't Rage supposed to have large outdoor (racing) environments? Quake Wars maps were already pretty expansive, too.

Gamebryo doesn't do open world all that well either. It loads whole new cells when you pass boundaries on a rectangular grid, which is just about the most naive implementation you could have. There are already tons of competing engines that do the smarter approach, streaming bits and pieces as you go, avoiding the big block of loading altogether. GTAs, Ass Creed, Red Faction Guerilla, whatever they used for Infamous, "even" UE3. For the longest time Gamebryo has been lagging behind its competition in efficiency, plain and simple.

Plus animations, basic character movement etc.

Frankly, I haven't seen any technical progress between Morrowind and Fallout 3. And no, texture resolution is not an engine feature.
My bet is they continue with Gamebyro until the wheels fall off.
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They've been grinding on the axles for five years already.
 
CecilRousso said:
From what I saw of the Risen demo, it just had impressive scenery. I didn´t see anything impressive about the character models or animation, which are the biggest problems with the Gamebryo engine.
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And the lighting. It's the worst lighting engine around. I'm really scratching my head here trying to think of another major release from this entire console generation that has worse lighting. None that I can think of. There is no amount of PR speak that is going to convince me that they can make a modern looking game with this engine.

The animations and character models are a disaster. But can we talk about jumping in these games? Do you really believe that they are going to somehow magically transform this engine into something modern looking when they cant even fix the jumping mechanics between 3 full games and close to a dozen expansions?

Not that I'm not enjoying New Vegas, but I knew 20 minutes into the game that I wont be buying another game that uses Gamebryo. At some point you need to stop being cheap and reinvest all of that money you've made on these games back into a new engine. They are just being cheap. I have no doubt that they intend to use this engine through the entire console generation no matter how long it lasts.
 
subversus said:
it has (had) horrible look and huge animation/number of NPCs issues. Is it enough?
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I think that's more to do with Bethesda. Warhammer Online and Divinity II both use that engine and don't have those problems.
 
It won't matter which engine Bethesda make their games with, there will be glitches galore anyway. They make complex games, and complex games have glitches. That's just how it is.
 
DrFunk said:
bugs, man, bugs. Needed a can of Raid and Luck +10 to save in New Vegas
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it has (had) horrible look and huge animation/number of NPCs issues. Is it enough?
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It's old, it's ugly, it's janky as hell. I'm not sure if there is any major game from any point in this generation that has worse lighting than NV has today. It's just time to move the hell on from this ugly ugly engine.
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A game engine is just a framework for game developers and artists to build things with.

Game bugs, animation issues, NPC problems, etc. are a result of the game developers, not the engine.

I'm talking from experience with other engines, but Gamebryo almost certainly doesn't lock you into using their shaders and lighting system, so everything you're seeing in games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 / New Vegas are a result of the game developers themselves.

If you think the lighting, textures, shaders, animations, etc. look bad then it's not the engine you should be blaming. UE3 or Id Tech 5 probably couldn't handle an open world game like Oblivion without resorting to using the same techniques that they used with Gamebryo - realtime lighting, a terrain rendering system and heavy use of LOD and billboards. It would end up looking very similar with those engines anyhow.

I'm not knocking on Oblivion or Fallout 3 though, I personally think those games look great.
 
*Thinks of the amount of €€€ his University spent to licence the Gamebryo Engine*
:-/

But why did Emergent fail? Did they not sell beyond Bethesda really?
 
Rolf NB said:
Wasn't Rage supposed to have large outdoor (racing) environments? Quake Wars maps were already pretty expansive, too.

Gamebryo doesn't do open world all that well either. It loads whole new cells when you pass boundaries on a rectangular grid, which is just about the most naive implementation you could have. There are already tons of competing engines that do the smarter approach, streaming bits and pieces as you go, avoiding the big block of loading altogether. GTAs, Ass Creed, Red Faction Guerilla, whatever they used for Infamous, "even" UE3. For the longest time Gamebryo has been lagging behind its competition in efficiency, plain and simple.

Plus animations, basic character movement etc.

Frankly, I haven't seen any technical progress between Morrowind and Fallout 3. And no, texture resolution is not an engine feature.
They've been grinding on the axles for five years already.
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Oh, I won't argue with any of that. By "wheels falling off" I mostly mean "when the new consoles arrive".
 
kind of pathetic to see all these man-babies praising the fact that a piece of technology they feel has somehow "wronged" them is no longer going to be around.

sucks for that company, i've enjoyed many a game built on the gamebryo engine.
 
ZombieSupaStar said:
i dont get the risen hype mebbe I need to replay it but that first town was so god awful I just about quit, and did quit once I got out of it to that sunnier villa looking area.
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Decent lighting and vegetation. but the animation and character modelling was dogshit. And the game itself was a mediocre gothic.
 
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