In our conversation with Intrepid Studios founder Steven Sharif and lead designer Jeffrey Bard at Gamescom, we also discussed the use of Unreal Engine for the MMORPG Ashes of Creation.
The Unreal Engine produces fantastic graphics on screen but has performance issues with open-world online games. The MMORPG Bless Online demonstrated this. Will Ashes of Creation face the same problem?
Unreal Engine serves as a base
Unreal Engine is optimized for Ashes of Creation: The development team is primarily glad to have such a stable base as Unreal Engine 4 and not having to program an engine from scratch. Unreal Engine 4 already has many tools and features that can be utilized. However, modifications are also necessary to achieve the performance that an MMORPG requires.
Intrepid Studios has a special engineering team that modifies the source code of the engine to reshape it so that the features needed for Ashes of Creation can be integrated. This includes a network infrastructure for MMOs that is not included in the base engine. And here is where the experience of the programmers comes into play, who know exactly what they are doing as they have done this a hundred times before.
A proprietary engine can never compete with existing ones: Steven Sharif and Jeffrey Bard also explain that an existing engine such as Unreal, Unity, Lumberyard, or Cryengine is always a better choice than developing a proprietary engine. One can never compete with such products. One needs a dedicated team for the engine, which must be continuously expanded and optimized. With an existing engine, such a team is already behind it, with whom one simply collaborates and gets what one needs.
Ashes of Creation aims to become the MMORPG prestige game for Epic Games
Ashes of Creation is a kind of showcase product for Epic Games: As for Epic Games, the company has recognized that Unreal Engine 4 can play a significant role in the MMO market and therefore sees Ashes of Creation as a kind of prestige object that must be particularly supported. To demonstrate that Unreal Engine can also be used for MMORPGs. Hence, Epic Games supports the Intrepid Studios wherever possible.
“Using Unreal Engine is like having our own engine,” they say in the interview. “Why should we build a new car when we have the option to buy an available car whose engine can be optimized to get the best out of it?”
The developers are very optimistic: Regarding the sieges in the game, Intrepid Studios aims to have 500 players per battlefield. They admit that this presents a challenge with Unreal Engine, but they know exactly what they need to do to make it work. And here, the upcoming Alpha 1 will play a role. Because with it, the performance will also be tested, and corresponding adjustments will be made.
In battlegrounds, 100 players will meet, and in the sieges, initially 200. Additionally, there will be a mode where 50 players must defend a city against bosses and NPCs. From there, the performance will be continuously improved to allow more and more players until 500 players for conquests and 10,000 players per server becomes possible.
