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Concerns about Unreal Engine upgrades and Scope Creep
Liniker
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
I'd like to share some concerns I have about the development. We recently had the upgrade from Unreal Engine 5 to 5.1 and from 5.1 to 5.1.1 - and according to Steven during the last live stream this was a "big endeavor" he explained that upgrades like this can be a headache due to all the custom changes they have for networking/backend and all that and this upgrade took them 6 weeks plus all the weeks that they now have to spend bug fixing after the upgrade.
6 weeks, for a team the size of Intrepid's, that's easily over 1.5 million dollars of development cost and that's also over 11% of a development year.
and this is not taking into consideration the time spent bug fixing, so clearly upgrading engines is not something simple, with that said, we already have an announcement for Unreal Engine 5.2... so should they be upgrading again? wouldn't that be considered scope creep? What if after UE5.2 comes 5.2.2 or 5.3, 5.4 ?
Intrepid was originally planning on delivering the game on UE4, when we backed AoC our expectations was for UE4, they already got the upgrade to UE5 and all the amazing tools it brings, back when they did this upgrade, we were told this wouldn't significantly push a release date since supposedly it would make the development easier, and while I do believe this, it's now almost 2 years after alpha 1 and still no roadmap for alpha 2, and we are still doing 6 weeks engine upgrades.
I believe Intrepid should lock a build and just move on, and after launch, they can take the time and do more upgrades. I would hate to see them get stuck in development limbo trying to keep on with all the latest tech and delivering nothing, the "game will be ready when it's ready" shouldn't go on forever and keep getting pushed due to new tech that originally didn't even exist and wasn't part of the plan - I believe that would be the definition of scope creep, and it's the same thing projects like Star Citizen is doing. What are your thoughts on this?
6 weeks, for a team the size of Intrepid's, that's easily over 1.5 million dollars of development cost and that's also over 11% of a development year.
and this is not taking into consideration the time spent bug fixing, so clearly upgrading engines is not something simple, with that said, we already have an announcement for Unreal Engine 5.2... so should they be upgrading again? wouldn't that be considered scope creep? What if after UE5.2 comes 5.2.2 or 5.3, 5.4 ?
Intrepid was originally planning on delivering the game on UE4, when we backed AoC our expectations was for UE4, they already got the upgrade to UE5 and all the amazing tools it brings, back when they did this upgrade, we were told this wouldn't significantly push a release date since supposedly it would make the development easier, and while I do believe this, it's now almost 2 years after alpha 1 and still no roadmap for alpha 2, and we are still doing 6 weeks engine upgrades.
I believe Intrepid should lock a build and just move on, and after launch, they can take the time and do more upgrades. I would hate to see them get stuck in development limbo trying to keep on with all the latest tech and delivering nothing, the "game will be ready when it's ready" shouldn't go on forever and keep getting pushed due to new tech that originally didn't even exist and wasn't part of the plan - I believe that would be the definition of scope creep, and it's the same thing projects like Star Citizen is doing. What are your thoughts on this?
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Anyway, the 5.1 update brought a lot of stuff to the table, it's up to the team to measure the effort in updating vs the amount of effort fixing by hand the: culling, field of view, drawing distance, shadows, performance, foliage, etc
It could be much cheaper updating to 5.1... and then stay at 5.1
You are right though 2 years post A1 and nothing on the horizon sort of is a drag, also its been about 8 months since we heard "spot testing will start in the next several months"
If UE5.2 can't have any effect of that kind, I definitely would agree with the notion that they should just leave the updates to UE as they are and finish the game on the current version as entering another upgrade cycle would most likely do more harm than good.
But if there is an important update that will make development smoother and/or more optimized and they feel they need it I'm sure they will do it. Just has to make sense I'm sure.
But the question that arises - is it easier and more logical to immediately upgrade the game in the newest UE version as opposed to waiting for patches or expansions? As a software developer, having the most effective way to code something is imperative, you want to avoid redundancy or repetitive code, so in essence, installing these newer versions of UE is likely saving time/money and may be considered a wise investment in the long run on behalf of the developer team.
Clearly, you don't have to stop all employees in the company but only a few people, in the long run it could save time and money.
Why is this even a concern to us? We are not an investor board, it's not our money.
However I think Intrepid is a small studio so even such simple and small upgrades take too much time to do.
So I feel like Steven should only do these upgrades if he sees significant performance/physics/functional improvements related to AoC's goals.
Main priority should be releasing the game honestly. After that if its not complete trash its gonna make enough money for Steven to hire a bigger team. With a bigger team they'll be able to push out engine upgrades faster and honestly I feel like engine upgrades, especially graphically enhancing ones(like 5.2), should be saved for later when the game's graphics really get outdated. Currently the graphics are acceptable, so just work on getting closer to releasing the game.
upgrading your tools isn't scope creep. adding more and more features is scope creep.
upgrading a major version (unreal 4 to 5) takes a lot of work.
usually, upgrading minor versions (unreal 5 to 5.1) is painless.
upgrading a patch version (unreal 5.1.0 to 5.1.1) is usually effortless, as these are just bug fixes.
learn more about semantic versioning here https://semver.org/
with that being said, after checking out unreal migration guide, you would realize that you also have to upgrade other tools to major versions and change some references in your code.
they had issues upgrading because of all the custom code that they had, not necessarily because upgrading from 5 to 5.1 is difficult. also, how you organize your code has an impact on how easy or hard it is to upgrade.
also consider that those upgrades would bring out of the box features that would normally take months to develop, if not longer. so you end up saving time anyways
Private server?? The game is not released yet... the only thing they have is a development server.
This post yells it is their faut with custom code or its easy to upgrade. Just because new tools are added or experimental ones does not mean you need to upgrade every version nor will those always be useful to you right away...
As i read these post its like all these people work for IS know all their problems and say its easy to upgrade. This is kind of wack.
Let them decide when they need to upgrade and if its worth the time and effort. This is their game and they will know it the best, peanut gallery is a bit crazy from people that don't know that much on their development, game development, or working with unreal engine.
Just don't pull a Star Citizen and announce you need funding in 1-2 years because of unforeseen circumstances.
If they need more funding then i hope Microsoft buys them xD
I never said they HAD to upgrade. its their choice to do so or not. i was simply explaining how software versioning works and upgrading your tools isn't scope creep.
what if they continue to do these upgrades on their tools, and it starts to add up? 1 extra year, extra 2 years, 3?
keep in mind, when we backed this game we were expecting UE4 and a "before 2020" and this is the explanation on why we didn't get a launch before 2020:
so it was due to their hiring schedule, issues with production and the issues with the architecture found on Apoc that they said caused a 9 month delay
but does anyone think if it wasn't for these issues they would have the game Ready for launch in 2020? they are still making Art every week, and art has nothing to do with engineering, so clearly there's more to it,
the issue I have with these engine and tool updates is because it would make sense for them to focus on delivering the promises made as soon as "possible", a minimum viable product frist, and now 2 years after Alpha 1 and 8 months after they said "we will start spot-testing in the next few months" I'm starting to believe that it's time to lock a build and move on - because IF they continue to do these upgrades they would start crossing the line of scope creep
I think my problem with not doing this would be that UE5 would continue to upgrade and have new features that could greatly help game performance. And we need great performance on multiple fronts in order to be able to have the giant sieges we're all dreaming of, and that I believe will be a focal point of the game. The Intrepid team would be unable to include those future updates easily at launch if they just decided to skip years worth of patches. So I think they've made a decision to continue upgrading with UE5, and that will pay off in the future.
Mistake here is thinking that all the development team is necessarily held back by the upgrade. We frankly don't know, I think this would be a great question for Steven during this month's livestream.
I don't think the lack of roadmap for Alpha 2 has anything to do with the Unreal 5 update. They wanted to make a new combat system that was animation focused and coded in a way they thought would be the most bug-free. They really didn't have many features in Alpha 1, and Alpha 2 is far more feature-heavy than Alpha 1.
Expect a lot of scope creep.
Back in 2021, when people were complaining about Alpha 1 Dwarves looking like Gnomes, I was saying, "Don't expect the Dwarves to get much wider - or, if they do become signifcantly wider, expect a significant delay in the schedule.
Even in my wildest dreams, I could not imagine a gap of 2+ years between Alpha 1 and Alpha 2.
When do we get Nodes 3??
When will we get the last two Articles for Know Your Nodes?? We've been waiting for those for at least 3 years and those don't rely on UE.
There will always be compelling reasons to upgrade to the new version of UE.
6 weeks or 6 months? xD what about another 6+ years for a release? because that's not impossible at all, projects that continuously updated and add new features/tools easily go beyond the 10 year mark
This is the correct take. Other people are like they need to have all the features (right away) without fully understanding development.
Like i said before let the dev's worry about what they need to develop the game lol. If they need input on features that is what feedback should be about not to tell them how to develop the game X.X
@Mag7spy what you are doing is white knighting, and this is detrimental for any project - so we should not express concerns and only provide input if the developer ask? Steven himself tells the community to share any thoughts and concerns about the project so why are you trying to shut down and dismiss other people's concerns? X.X
Objection!
There's plenty of IT people around here and a few, like myself, have been in the gaming industry (simulators in my case).
HOWEVER, I know that IS wants as-modern of a game as they can make - and the conversion from 4 to 5 certainly seems to have been worthwhile, given the animated-motions difference.
Scope creep is a different matter, though; Scope creep is where more features are added - and SS has maintained that the roadmap is fairly concrete; He doesn't want to be adding previously un-planned features to the game.
Every project is it's own thing tough, the project's engineer guy has to foresee things like these years ahead.
what if by being able to finish those graphics earlier the devs have the ability to spend more time cultivating the gameplay?
Think about creating resource spawns
This isn't white knighting its being realistic, what you are doing right now is white knighting.
You are free to quote, but at what point have hey asked for feedback on how to develop the game from a technical perspective?
You are effectively mixing up asking for feedback from what players want from a game and feedback on the technical part of development. I'm guessing we are not on the same page if you think everyone should be saying how they should approach the development of their game. What do you know about developing with unreal engine or udk I'm curious?
Based on the answer we can go more into depth on this c:
That leads to my second part, if you are objecting to "feedback should be about not to tell them how to develop the game" have they asked for help in their own development or what do you know about their development issues have they told you?
If they answer is no to either or, how are you suppose to give a supporting answer when you are not aware of the issues they have? It is exactly why my point is let them do what they do as professionals they can make the correct calls and choices.
I really wish i could find it strange, everyone has an opinion as far as gameplay and what people want that is good. But when everyone is suddenly a developer or think they understand their issues (without any basis to back it up) seems like a really bad direction. People will start complaining why aren't you doing this why aren't you doing this with engines, or saying they should use certain tools. Effectively it just leads to you trying to tell them how to do their job with most people not understanding really what they are talking about.