@OskooI_007 wrote:Does anyone have a link to the podcast?
It's the drawcall podcast. Episode 19 (part 1) and 20 (part 2). Part 2 is where Jim discusses his involvement with the development of BF2042.
@DigitalHype Thanks for the link! What an eye opening interview! Turns out everything Tom Henderson said about DICE stuggling with the Frostbite engine is true
Jim Hejl talks about how the UI HUD in 2042 was so unoptimized that rendering the little red dot above vehicles caused more frame rate drops than rendering the actual vehicle itself. DICE had no idea and had to higher Jim as an outside contractor to figure it out.
Jim goes on to talk about how hard it is to work with the Frostbite editor. He says all the collage students are learning on Unreal and Unity and have no idea how to use Frostbite.
Another interesting comment is he seems to think the video game industry is moving towards player generated content. Like during the early days when game modding was popular.
A very insightful and eye opening interview well worth listening to.
@RayD_O1 wrote:
As a matter of interest how long have DICE been using the Frostbite engine.?
Since the early days, I believe. But it went from a focused engine for BF and other shooters into EA's "everything" engine used across all games (sports, racing, action, shooter, etc.) that's grown into quite the hydra over the years.
And it comes with years of reporting on teams struggling to work with the engine that's apparently notoriously difficult to work with - compared to trying to build a sand-castle in a sandbox of hypodermic needles - and breaking extremely easily.
@edgecrusherO0 wrote:
@RayD_O1 wrote:
As a matter of interest how long have DICE been using the Frostbite engine.?Since the early days, I believe. But it went from a focused engine for BF and other shooters into EA's "everything" engine used across all games (sports, racing, action, shooter, etc.) that's grown into quite the hydra over the years.
And it comes with years of reporting on teams struggling to work with the engine that's apparently notoriously difficult to work with - compared to trying to build a sand-castle in a sandbox of hypodermic needles - and breaking extremely easily.
Good info, thanks, kinda makes me wonder why they have persevered with it for so long if it's so complex / quirky.
@RayD_O1 wrote:
@OskooI_007
Eye opening indeed and maybe goes some way to explaining why everything seems to take so long.
As a matter of interest how long have DICE been using the Frostbite engine.?
Frostbite debuted in 2008 with Bad Company. After Bad Company 2, EA decided to use Frostbite for most of their in-house games. Shortly after Battlefield 3, EA made the Frostbite engine team their own seperate entity no longer part of DICE studio.
After Battlefield V the lead rendering architect of Frostbite Johan Andersson (aka repi), left EA to become a stake holder and CTO at Embark Studios with former EA Executive Patrick Sunderland.
Frostbite is a great game engine, but the editor and dev tools sound difficult to work with. Jim said he doesn't understand why EA doesn't use more off the self software for the dev tools.
