I don’t see how this could be true when the physics themselves illustrate the code below.
For example, let’s take the mechanic with the jump from mount and/or casting of stuff while moving - this particular new mechanic is not available in D3 not because the D3 engine hasn’t been updated for it, but because to update the engine for something like this the coders have to write ton of other stuff before that like how these layers interact with everything else.
If it was so easy to just update some engine and D4 is a D3/OW updated engine we would have seen new mechanics in D3 already, based on the new code from Diablo 4.
Diablo 4 engine is written with the idea for every other of the new implementations in mind like the seamless interaction in the world or the matching of players during world events.
You can’t just take some engine and update it for a few months and call it a new game. 150 of the PoE programmers are making their 4.0 version with major engine update for more than 2 years now and the result is that such mechanics like those shown in Diablo 4 are completely missing. One can’t add whatever he wants to an engine. It’s not that simple.
Why would it be difficult to add new things to an old engine? Let’s keep using the Creation Engine as an example. Prior to using in F76 it had zero lines of code to support any sort of multiplayer. Yet they managed to add multiplayer features to that engine, much to my astonishment.
A game engine is basically a collection of “sub-engines” attached to a skeleton. These sub-engines include: graphics, audio, physics, networking, etc. The skeleton underneath usually stays more or less untouched but all others attached to it can be upgraded. The skeleton underneath is typically very invisible to most people.
edit:
Engine upgrades are rarely done to an existing game as it requires a lot of effort to make it work properly. Usually such things are done for new games.
for sure they didnt take D2 engine for D3 … was a mistake ?
U cannot say D4 have his own engine , and nothing to compare to D3 , there is some similitary or likeness .
Nothing more to say , graphic of D4 gameplay are not so good , i feel like they are from 2015-16 …
D4 is on 4k? wtf are we talking about on this topic?
Yes, but you can’t use that skeleton for every next game. There comes particular time when new technologies appear and you simply build a new engine based on these.
I am not an expert in the programming field, but I can tell you for sure that they started Diablo 4 with the idea to be an MMO game with seamless interaction between the zones, and if D3 engine wasn’t the best option or didn’t allow for this, they build the major portion of the D4 engine from scratch. It’s never 100% new code, but I guess the bigger portion of the code is new.
We are luring some of the D4 crew members to join the thread and share info about the D4’s engine. Shhh!
Edit: In fact I just invited Matthew Cederquist to this topic (you can do that from button invite at bottom of thread).
Really? Take Unreal Engine 4, peel off enough and you should find the skeleton of the very original Unreal Engine.
If the skeleton is good, it can be used a very, very long time. You can’t judge whether the engine new or not based on what you see. As I’ve already said, a lot of the aspects can be updated and expanded of an old engine to make it very modern. That doesn’t make it however a new engine.
To my understanding, it’s a new engine, a new renderer, and new lighting system. The folks here have spent a lot of time modernizing it to bring it to it’s full potential.
I know everyone is chomping for more information but I’m sure they’ll have more details as time progresses!
Of course you can - if the engine uses a new technology not available to old skeleton and you see it in-game this means it can’t be the old engine. Whether this is the case with Diablo 4, we have to see.
Great news! Thank you for sharing with us since this is something that is interesting for many gamers.
Yeah, Diablo 4 gameplay looks incredible. And the world atmosphere as a tone and direction is on the level of a top Hollywood production. This is simply the best game in the series visually by far from the rest.
Blizzard most likely has a barebones engine they use to start projects from scratch. When they feel the engine needs to be updated, for example modern rendering, they update the rendering component. As far as networking goes an engine can support both MMO and ARPG style multiplayer, because the low level networking component only cares about sending and receiving data, not how or why that data is networked.
Blizzard probably has all sorts of engine components and tools at their disposal, no sense in re-inventing the wheel.
They could have their own in-house engine like Unity with a fully fledged editor and high level scripting layer, or they could be doing it all the hard way. The term engine is used loosely, some people might refer to engine as the rendering/networking/asset loading/etc, some people might refer to engine as the arpg/mmo/gameplay logic.
Therefore it is not new, it’s an upgrade. If you see the video i posted, Brevik stated that when a company announces a game with a new engine it is almost all cases a marketing move to name an existing upgraded engine. Is it the case for D4?
Instead of focusing on semantics look for yourself and see what’s different. Rendering, lighting and modeling all look like major improvements. “New” engine or not what we’ve seen is basically pre-alpha so a lot can and will change.
You know nothing about engines, you think Unreal 4s engine is also built from scratch. As if none of the prior stuff from Unreal engine 1, 2 and 3 is there?
All engines get improved and built up on. Sometimes they smack a 2 or a 3 when major changes have been done. Its vey rare you build things from scratch again.
People need to stop asuming everything requires a new engine. Its a classic noob misstake.
Sounds damn good to me. Even a 10+yo engine like D3’s STILL provides the best combat out of every ARPG game out there today. It’s a good engine - it’s the servers that suck.
Lol that’s rich considering the game you’re idolizing, aka the minor leagues. D3 is a supermodel compared to POE 4.0.
True. Whoever thinks the D4 demo was a marketing trick (like the Brevik attention seeker guy) with fixed stuff just to look cool and this is 95% the old D3 engine is clueless.
All you need to look at is the game HE put out which he had design control over.
And then 12 years later the re-release still has the old bugs. Another one-trick pony, he will fit right in at GGG since they’re all about one-trick ponies.
GGG crew have totally wrong perception of where the aRPG genre is going, but let’s not derive this thread with them.
It’s a mix as pointed out by Crayz - old code plus new, but the majority is probably new from what we saw in the demo. As long as the demo wasn’t a marketing trick as Brevik wants ROFL.