Why have no other games been made with the 4A engine? (Metro 2033/Last Light)

Ice That Jaw

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In anticipation for the new Metro game I am replaying Last Light and I am disappointed that these guys never rented out their custom game engine. It's fuckin brilliant. It's clear that their developers and designers are skilled but the graphics in their engine is so, damn, immersive.

Don't just take my word for it. Here are my actually in-game screenshots. These were just random, no effort put in to the captures.

Akthough sadly they are keeping their engine proprietary, I am pretty confident the upcoming game is going to be insane. Last Light just oozes with immersion. The graphics, the sound, the gameplay. Just awesome.

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Great graphics, and great performance to match. Puzzling. Pretty sure I have both of them maxed out, and never saw a drop below 60.
 
That's a good question. I was very impressed by the graphics in both games, especially given their age. With the final battle in Last Light, they showed you can have quite a lot going on at once and performance stays strong. I'm hoping with the new one, they improve the lighting further. So much of the tension in those dark corridors and rooms comes from the lighting, the dust motes in the air etc.
 
When an engine is purpose built for a game/game series they usually don't offer the flexibility needed for other games to be developed on it.
 
When an engine is purpose built for a game/game series they usually don't offer the flexibility needed for other games to be developed on it.
Yeah, I'd infer that the primary reason a company would go to the lengths of building their own, proprietary game engine is because they want to keep it proprietary; in other words, they don't want any other games to look like their game. They're going that extra mile for uniqueness, not as a market investment. Otherwise, why not just use Unreal Engine or CryEngine like everybody else?
 
Seems like a huge waste especially for a small studio
 
Seems like a huge waste especially for a small studio
Possibly. The other possibility is that-- while it is my understanding that building game engines is far more expensive than renting the rights to them-- this may not be true in the Ukraine (their initial headquarters when they first built their engine). They may have been able to build this more cheaply using good old-fashioned elbow grease in a generally more impoverished country with cheap developers; especially when the alternative was using their weak currency against American software rental fees.

That seems to be the most sensible explanation if it isn't a matter of pursuing a more unique experience (which is less fiscally direct, but also ultimately a business strategy aimed at financial success).
 
If you build a good engine, license it out. Having an unique engine would make sense for a really big producer making dozens of games.
 
Its a proprietary engine

Its like why Ubisoft uses their own Anvil engine

EA use Frostbite

Engines handle a lot more than graphics too, everything from physics, AI, scripting have to be incorporated

The Witcher 3 and GTA use their own engines too, as well as Doom
 
Its a proprietary engine

Its like why Ubisoft uses their own Anvil engine

EA use Frostbite

Engines handle a lot more than graphics too, everything from physics, AI, scripting have to be incorporated

The Witcher 3 and GTA use their own engines too, as well as Doom
Yes, but EA also licenses out Frostbite to a bunch of other developers, and that's what we're discussing, here.
 
If you build a good engine, license it out. Having an unique engine would make sense for a really big producer making dozens of games.

But it's an engine purpose built for Metro. It's not going to be as open as Unreal Engine or Cryengine. For an engine to be universally available, it has to be built that way from the ground up.

Yes, but EA also licenses out Frostbite to a bunch of other developers, and that's what we're discussing, here.

IIRC, all games that are made with FrostBite are from EA owned studios.
 
the 4a engine is probably in the top 4 most powerful engines. Cryenigne being number one and red engine coming 2nd.

then again there is also the void engine and ID tech


Sadly they actually canceled there open world sci-fi game and foced on some stupid VR game and metro exodus
 
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Did they refuse to license it, or where there simply no takers?

edit.. an open flame is seldom a good choice of illumination.
 
IIRC, all games that are made with FrostBite are from EA owned studios.
Not quite. It isn't the ones they own, but only games they publish:
Wiki said:
To date, Frostbite has been exclusive to video games published by Electronic Arts.
Still, it seems weird that they would charge a licensing fee to studios who are partnering on the product, so yeah, I doubt they are charging a licensing fee, but rather, they're probably running the offer that any studios who might want to develop using Frostbite have to sign an agreement to publish through EA.

There's probably a Reddit somewhere where the guys who actually run these businesses talk about this stuff.
 
Did they refuse to license it, or where there simply no takers?

edit.. an open flame is seldom a good choice of illumination.

I would wager it's in the same category as Dead Island/Dying Light's chrome engine, and nobody gave enough of a shit to license it out
 
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This game was made using the Phyre Engine, which is..... FREE for game devs.......
 
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This game was made using the Phyre Engine, which is..... FREE for game devs.......
No doubt.

Vulkan is an open-source API to developers, and you can code for it in Unreal Engine 4 which is also free. Developers today can make incredible looking games that run on shitty, mobile, cheap, Chinese billion-core processors without paying a dime to anyone. Grab a virtual pickaxe and mine the OpenGL library developed over the years for textures and everything else shared by the community that are forward-compatible with Vulkan.
 
No doubt.

Vulkan is a open-source API to developers, and you can code for it in Unreal Engine 4 which is also free. Developers today can make incredible looking games that run on shitty, mobile, cheap, Chinese billion-core processors without paying a dime to anyone. Grab a virtual pickaxe and mine the OpenGL library developed over the years for textures and everything else shared by the community that are forward-compatible with Vulkan.

Let's be real here. While that engine looks good, it doesn't really compare to the 4A engine. Look at the lighting. It looks Unreal 3 like. The lighting and particle effects in the Metro games are just plain incredible at times. My screenshots weren't planned out so I wasn't really able to capture it but you know about it because you've played them.

The way the fog, smoke, sparks, dust, etc move around in various lightshafts is the main reason why the games are so immersive.

Let's not also forget their proprietary form of AA which while in-game says that it's SSAA, is really some kind of mix of whatever they use. Point being, the end result is zero jaggies without SSAA performance drops. It's brilliant.

Zoom in on my screenshots. Doesn't it almost look painted on? Look at the grating on the car? Have you ever seen grating look that clear in a game? lol
 
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