There was an old Gameboy Harry Potter game I really enjoyed that was basically you performing the major Harry Potter plot points (sneaking around, buying stuff, talking to people). The combat was kind of the Pokemon style turn based thing where each side had a health bar and so many moves. Very neat game.
Window’s compatibility layer is still far beyond what a console provides. Beyond that, WINE (for Linux) is increasingly able to run Windows programs from many decades… In a sense, Linux is becoming the best Windows compatibility layer for old software and games in the world.
I also just wanted to add; if you want to look at what this looks like when the game development company is functioning properly look at Crytek and Hunt Showdown.
Crytek has publicly stated Hunt has a lot of issues internally in its code base. They then responded by committing to fix those issues (i.e. fix their spaghetti), and then they followed up by actually fixing issues (off the top of my head, an advantage when peeking from the left down to how the game handled the player camera was fixed, bugs in the ammo system resulting in a number of issues with reloading were fixed).
They didn’t stop there though. They said in their last roadmap update, they’re working with their internal CryEngine development team to make major changes to CryEngine (and this is reflected by Crytek’s CryEngine team stopping release of CryEngine to make major refactors for CryEngine 7) to do everything they want to do, remove hacks coded into Hunt’s fork of CryEngine, and pay all the tech debt down to get Hunt running on the most recent CryEngine (and hopefully keep it there, with all the tech advances that brings).
I just am cynical about Jagex’s willingness to spend money in this space. Ever since they’ve been owned by venture capital, everything is penny pinched; it needs to have an obvious return on investment.
We as players normally only see the content developers in interviews, and they’re often folks that don’t even have proper computer science degrees or training. Jagex internally for years has hired largely unskilled workers into their QA department and then promoted them into “developer” positions that work with RuneScript.
I’m fairly confident the engine team was a skeleton crew (and one split among developing iOS, Android, and Desktop clients) until the last few years when it became apparent at least some investment into the engine on the server side/more broadly was necessary.
I looked into joining their engine team at one point, and then promptly walked away when I saw the payscale.
Basically, I see no reason to give them slack; it’s actually a bit counter productive in my view. The community should be stern that Jagex should address their issues rather than running from them and constantly blaming “yesterday’s Jagex” for why “today’s Jagex” is making bad decisions, can’t do XYZ, etc
It’s certainly a very large financial undertaking to change the engine like that, and at that point they’re honestly better off just making a new game entirely.
They might be doing exactly that FWIW. There’s some evidence Jagex is working on a “RuneScape universe” oriented game in Unreal Engine.
Still, that’s not the silver bullet that people often think it is. Rewrites are often far more expensive than originally anticipated and extremely risky as even if you intend to make the exact same game, there are often differences that come down to the underlying engine in how the game plays that can be controversial.
For context, I’ve been on a team that did a full rewrite of a large complicated C# web application in Ruby and I’ve also worked on several C/C++ “desktop” applications that have roots in the late 80s and early 90s. The former is more “fun” in a sense, you can make up for a lot of sins. However, I fundamentally believe that unless the language you’re moving from has serious fundamental issues (e.g. you’re insane and wrote a million line application in Bash), you’re probably better taking a hard look at your application and retrofitting new systems inside of the old application where you most badly need those changes.
Even in the “worst case” it’s in practice true that most of the code doesn’t need touched, it’s just some really intertwined portions that need revamped. You can often get away with making a new system that replaces the guts of the old, thus powering both the existing code, and allowing you to achieve whatever goal you had in rewriting in the first place (working faster, safer, more readably, etc).
PC parts can be reused and resold until they’re irrelevant. Decades old PC software can run on the latest hardware (often much better than it did on its original hardware).
Meanwhile, consoles do one job only, play games. If something breaks, more often than not you get an entirely new console; maybe the manufacturer actually fixes your old one (if they’re still working on it).
They also lose security updates and become opportunities for botnets to infect and exploit. No device should be used past its end of software life that’s connected to the Internet. Regardless of that, many people do continue to use old consoles and smart phones that are long past their socially responsible expiration date.
Beyond that, if someone has a computer capable of playing a game, to force them to buy a different piece of hardware is by definition unnecessary ewaste.
EOC is something I’ve come to see as a mistake over time. It was way too much scope creep.
Agreed.
The popularity of PvP in WE2 makes me think they could do something, but maybe that window has completely passed.
Yeah, I think the right thing to do would’ve been to make the wilderness a safe PvP faction vs faction area that’s basically a continuous version of one of those events.
I don’t know that the engine criticism is fair though. The game has tons of spaghetti code that its built on. And the downside of having a custom engine is that you have to train anyone who’s going to work on it. You can’t hire someone experienced in the system.
Any code base can be fixed, it’s just a function of time and money. They can yell spaghetti code all they want, but ultimately Jagex is the one that allowed that to happen in the first place. It’s not an excuse to further gaslight your customers. It’s something you should take accountability on, and work to fix. Done right, having your own engine is an opportunity to do new and exciting things.
You mean we won’t have to buy ewaste electronics to play Mario Kart? Sign me up.
Realistically though, I’d bet on a “Mario Kart Mushroom Kingdom Racing” release (or something) that would just be a cross platform live service.
… and honestly I’ll take that any day over Nintendo, which I’ve given $0 in over a decade because I refuse to buy their ewaste. I would love to have their games on PC though.
The Squeal of Fortune, replaced by Treasure Hunter.
But in the grand scheme of company fuck ups, that’s still one of the best.
I really don’t know about that. They seem to do it so regularly that it’s been a borderline abusive relationship over the years. Back when the Gowers ran the company, things operated much more smoothly and particularly the pay-to-win aspects were completely absent.
There’s no other game I know of with a subscription, pay-to-win loot boxes, cosmetics store, season pass, and bonds. There’s also no other game I’m aware of that has overhauled its combat system to such controversy that it split the game in half (and seemingly most people play the old version) – the closest being Minecraft. There’s also absolutely no game where the developers regularly say “that’s engine work so we can’t do it”, when they own their own engine.
I still like RuneScape, but at this point I’ve completely given up on PvP in the game and anything resembling fairness. I just expect Jagex to do everything they can to try and entice me to give them more and more money for … ultimately … less.
Jagex is respectful not the company I’d look to for inspiration in terms of correcting past mistakes 🙂 For the uninitiated, they legally gaslit the community when they made their first major controversial change roughly a decade ago by “removing the feature” then “adding” the same feature with a different coat of paint.
Basically just memeing to death how bad is was… it actually had valve like store policies, really good latency compared to other cloud options (even now) to the point it felt local even on a shooter, false information that you had to pay a subscription to play your purchased games, etc
I’m all for Godot getting better; that said, has Epic, Open3D, or Crytek made similar moves?
(I know Crytek isn’t much of a player currently, but as someone who’s been following them closer in recent years, it really seems like they got their house back in order)
It’s a shame idTech is no longer released publicly. It would’ve been amazing to see what people could do with the beast of an engine that powered DOOM Eternal, especially modders.
I did some of my gaming for like 2 years for basically free thanks to Google’s refund, and got free gaming hardware (controllers)… call me an idiot or call me a genius, but, that was a heck of a deal.