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Looking for nerd help: Why was Incarna so bad?
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Mr Kidd
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#61 - 2011-10-25 01:44:37 UTC
Elise DarkStar wrote:
I don't know **** about making video games and this has been bugging me for a long time. What was the problem with the Incarna "engine" (i dont even know what terms to use) that made it so costly to develop yet so underwhelming? Couldn't they have used existing examples from other games and already have created full working multiplayer station environments? Is it because they are trying to make such high-quality graphics?

I'm really clueless about this stuff and would greatly appreciate some explanation of what's going on.

Thanks.



My guess, as good as yours, is that Incarna, or rather CQ, was preliminary development for a game expected to see the light of day perhaps 3-5 years from now. The underwhelming characteristic is prolly due to hardware requirements. We get to see one room with one avatar, that's it. And still the demands on our hardware for such a small space, for me, indicates that either the technology was seriously flawed or its execution fubar'ed or it's intended for consumer hardware a few years from now. Expansive, dynamic environments with multiple avatars would probably have put even the most bleeding edge hardware through its paces.

Just from aesthetics, there's nothing to it. CCP started with the worst possible choice: Minmatar.

Honestly, I wasn't even that impressed with the actually rendering of and quality of the avatars. But, then I don't have a lot of compare it to because, well, that's not the kind of stuff that draws me to games.

Don't ban me, bro!
PotatoOverdose
Handsome Millionaire Playboys
Sedition.
#62 - 2011-10-25 13:12:19 UTC
I'm just going to clarify something. When Incarna was RELEASED it melted graphics cards. Seriously, go back to the time of the jita riots, search the tech support forums (or even the protest threads). it melted quite a few high end ATI cards (Nvidia ran it fine for the most part). CCP has since fixed the issue, but the next time your in CQ, crank all video settings up to max (if they're not there already) and see how incarna uses resources for a tiny environment with one character model. Yeah.