Originally Posted by kaffis
Namely, that Forgelight is an engine that was *developed internally* (note that this is a fundamentally different statement from "a proprietary engine that we acquired exclusive rights to by buying the code/team that made it") for use on future MMO projects (like, you know, EQ Next, which is what was first shown on Forgelight).
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I don't think you can really grasp how long a game engine takes to develop. We're talking easily 5 to 7 years for a fully featured next generation game engine, which is why middleware game engines like Unreal and CryEngine are so popular. Just to correct a point you made though; EverQuest Next was not the first game shown on Forge Light. They showed a model from EverQuest Next, though Planetside 2's Announcement Trailer was the first shown from within the Forge Light Engine.
Originally Posted by kaffis
Also, it's not a surprise that Planetside 2 development switched mid-stream from an old engine (the actual Planetside 1 engine) to this new engine. That switch corresponded with the decision to refocus development efforts and resources on the Planetside and EverQuest properties. Since the EQ team were already working on the engine for EverQuest , refocusing resources from other projects onto Planetside meant taking it from a simple reskinning of PS1 to rewriting the game from scratch for the engine that the EQ team had made.
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If you could link me to the article that discusses the original Planetside engine being used for Planetside Next development that would be great. But anyway I want you to consider what switching an engine mid-development means. The only thing that carries over are the assets, which have been consistently redone lately anyway, so you're left with starting over from scratch again. Also, Planetside 2 is much farther along development wise than EverQuest Next as far as we know, so to assume that Forge Light was made specifically for EverQuest Next and not Planetside 2 doesn't seem to match up.
Originally Posted by kaffis
In other words, it's an interesting theory, but it's all circumstantial and doesn't create a more convincing or reasonable explanation than what we've already been told about Forgelight. And believing what we've already been told means not having to suspect Smed et al. of lying to us for no reason.
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I don't believe Smed is lying to us at all, they could certainly get the ground work of the Offset Engine and heavily modify it into Forge Light. Offset isn't a middleware engine for distribution so stating the rebirth is in-house built would be just fine, but if they were using heavily modified versions of Unreal or CryEngine that would be a different matter. And what we know about Forge Light is exactly what we know about the Offset Engine. It could be SOE developed an engine in house so similar to Offset that its coincidence, but Forge Light seemed to appear out of no where especially after having used Unreal Engine 3 for DC Universe.
Originally Posted by ringring
Haven't SOE already used Frogelight on another game? I'm sure I read that and if so once it was proven why not switch PS2 development to it? I think it was Free Realms.
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As is stated in the video above, Planetside 2 is going to be the first Forge Light game.
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