this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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Blizzard's cancelled survival game, Odyssey, reportedly killed due to its engine (archive.is)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

I'm not so sure.

Unreal Engine can obviously handle some things well, but when I've seen it used for less common mechanics, the results have been mixed. For example, climbing and traversing uneven terrain are pretty bad in games like Palworld and Palia. Compare to the Breath of the Wild engine, which handles those things beautifully.

It's plausible that such mechanics were planned for this game, and that Unreal Engine made it difficult to get results that meet Blizzard's standards.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That's not an issue with the engine that's an issue with gameplay programming.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I'll consider the possibility that the engine is blameless when I see two Unreal Engine games that do it well, hinting that it's not unreasonably difficult. Sometimes a tool just doesn't work well for certain uses. That could be due to a design that tries and fails, or one that doesn't try at all and lacks a good foothold for a custom approach.

In any case, my comment is not about one specific issue. Thus the words "for example". The point is that what GGP said was obvious is in fact not obvious. Blizzard might very well have passed on that engine because of limitations they found, regardless of whether they detailed them publicly.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

It doesn't matter if you see it in games, it's not a part of the engine. There's no built in functionality for ledge grabbing and climbing, that is 100% game logic built on top of the engine.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Unreal Engine is open source, if there was something it couldn’t do then that could be rewritten so that it can do it

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The decision of whether to modify software to suit one's needs is often about the level effort required, both initially and for ongoing maintenance and support. Having permission to do it doesn't magically make it worthwhile.

And no, Unreal Engine is not open-source. (Which brings up another possible factor in Blizzard's decision: Royalty payments.)

[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

What do you mean it’s not open source?

i have cloned their GitHub repo many times

Also no it doesn’t bring up royalties because that isn’t related to source code

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Read the license. It's what we generally call "source available", but it does not qualify as open-source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_license

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available

It brings up the issue of royalties because those are part of Unreal Engine's license terms.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Open source and free are different

It can be considered open source because you can sell derivative engines (there are no royalties on that btw) and push upstream

Under your source available link the inability to create derivatives is the common theme for what makes it not open source

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If someone else comes along, Unreal Engine checks all of those

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Unreal Engine checks all of those

No, I don't believe it does. In particular, Section 4: "How You Can Share the Licensed Technology When It Isn’t Part of a Product" imposes restrictions that contradict the very first clause in the Open-Source definition: "Free Redistribution".

At a quick glance, I expect the royalty requirements fail the first clause as well, but there's no point in combing through them for this conversation, given the above.

You obviously want to believe otherwise, though, and I don't want to argue with you. Feel free to test it in court. Good luck.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)
  1. Integrity of The Author’s Source Code

You can sell your engine made from unreal and there are no royalties

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

The license does not place any restrictions on this