VB:
"Crytek just sold the rights to Homefront to Saints Row publisher Deep Silver, and the company is also enacting some major restructuring.
The Crysis and Ryse: Son of Rome developer is closing its U.K. studio and cutting jobs from its U.S. team in Austin, Texas. Much of the talent from Crytek U.K. will join Deep Silver’s new studio in England to continue working on Homefront: The Revolution. The Austin wing of the company will remain open to operate as a support team for North American developers that license the studio’s CryEngine development toolkit, but development of co-op thriller Hunt: Horrors of the Gilded Age will move from Austin to Crytek’s Frankfurt team. This news comes after months of rumors that the developers was missing payroll payments to its employees."
Timesplitters has always been considered a wonderful oddity in the industry. Nothing compares to the series' wacky antics and insane multiplayer action. Unfortunately despite critical success and a rabid fan base the franchise is struggling against modern forces threatening its very existence.
Triad Gamer takes a look at the Timesplitters series and investigates why after 9 years the franchise is still waiting on a 4th iteration.
Crytek retains the rights to the TimeSplitters intellectual property following the publisher's sale of the Homefront franchise to Deep Silver, a representative for Deep Silver confirmed to Polygon this week.
"The TimeSplitters IP did not come with the deal — it was only for the Homefront IP," the Deep Silver spokesperson said.
They've already said many times that they have no interest in reviving the TimeSplitters franchise, so why even keep it?
I'd be interested in seeing where they've said they have "no interest" in reviving it. I did a quick Google search, but nothing comprehensive.
I recall hearing about the team's excitement and passion for the franchise and a desire to create another game multiple times, and even remember them putting out some kind of social media campaign to gauge consumer interest-- sounds a lot more like a lack of funding and demographic than "no interest."
They said the TimeSplitters series wasn't popular enough for them to revive the series. Yeah, the developers were fans of the series, but they were never going to actually make a game.
I spent quite a lot of last week listening to various
highly intelligent people bang on about the potential
benefits of remote processing, aka "the power of the
cloud", at the Develop conference in Brighton, UK.
Among these highly intelligent people was Mark
Jackson, technical animation director at Crytek - a
company that is reportedly undergoing something of a
financial meltdown right now. Jackson wasn't able to
comment on these claims on the record, but he was
able to say a few things about how Xbox Live's
scalable server support might be of service to
animation departments in particular.
Replies(1)
Industry professional, prepare to be shot down by N4Gs technically inept who know better...
@Fishy Fingers:
Overreaching industry professionals prepare to be treated to skepticism by those who have yet to see any practical, released to retail, examples of what you're talking about.
Nevermind that said professional is both on thin ice credibility wise by what he's said yet hasn't delivered in the past, much less that he can't pay his staff.
"Industry professional"
You're calling a company that can't pay it's own employees and had people walk off the job as a result, an industry professional?
Also, they describe the tech demo as "running on a high end machine." And you can bet the "cloud" wasn't several states away, the servers were probably set up in the back.
p.s. "Jackson discussed the difficulties of trying for the same level of fidelity you'd expect of Ryse: Son of Rome"
When 100 employees walk off the job from not getting paid, it can be difficult...
rdgneoz3
Bless you, you seem to think that Crytek is a talking entity...
The person who works for Crytek and talking to said website is the industry professional.
Idk about the Cloud ever helping graphics, but what really excites me and no one ever talks about this, is the effects it could have on AI. Drivatar flat out works and changes the way racing AI plays. It's not perfect and it's not 100 percent there, but it's pretty damn good. I have no clue why this tech can't be put into shooters or action games where you could take the way real humans play and put into the AI enemies attacks through cloud data.
This could change sports games, shooters, RPG's, ect. Another promise that I'd like to see more talk on is the effects it has on destructibility. If they can blow apart buildings like they showed at BUILD with the framerate staying locked, then that's game changer.
Microsoft, in my opinion, should look into these things I've mentioned exclusively and maybe hold off the graphics boost stuff. Is it possible, maybe, but the infrastructure might not be there yet. To shit on the idea of what the cloud can do for gaming is ignorant though.
No you don't, because if you did you would notice drive-a-tars is calculated using the cloud and Forza 5 has been available since launch. Not to mention Dedicated servers and the AI (Dumb or not) in Titanfall
On topic, I can't to learn other ways the cloud will contribute to my gaming experience. Crackdown could be a gamechanger with the destructibility.
PSNow is 100% calculated on a server or "in the cloud". The only thing we are doing on the client side are location calculations. The examples truefan gave are also calculation being made server side and then applied to the client who is running a remote application.
Cloud compute is very real with Folding at Home being an earlier attempt at using cloud compute to simulate a super computer for calculations. You want examples when they are all around you. You just need to stop not wanting to see it.
@Death
Folding@home was an example of distributed computing. The software was run locally on PS3s or PCs and then the data that had been processed locally was sent back to Stanford.
I don't think Forza is a particularly grand example of what the cloud is capable of. All those fancy AI routines actually run offline after all, the servers just crunch data to put the profile together.
But I do think AI, physics, persistent and/or connected worlds are the areas MS can achieve things, and I think that is exactly what they are focusing on.
@RDG to a limited extent, AI and physics have been present in MMORPGs for many years too. But then so have "polygons" and "lighting" and everything else that makes up today's games. That doesn't mean there is no potential to improve those areas.
"I don't think Forza is a particularly grand example of what the cloud is capable of. All those fancy AI routines actually run offline after all, the servers just crunch data to put the profile together."
Exactly, the game is basically uploading and downloading data from servers that it can use even when it's not connected online.
"persistent and/or connected worlds" MMO's / dedicated servers.
He doesn't really go as far as saying that any of the calculations around animation could actually be offloaded. I'd think those fall under the "real-time critical" category?
At least where the player character is concerned anyway. I suppose it could be used quite effectively for NPC animations, particularly combined with hosted AI.
Cloud compute can help graphics multiple ways. By not using a consoles available power for AI, it frees up resources for other calculations such as graphics. The demo we seen by Microsoft of the exploding building are another way. By using servers, the calculations made for the falling pieces of the building are being done remotely leaving more power for the console to use. We seen how cloud compute not only was more detailed, but the frame rate was much faster. If you lose your internet connection, the game still plays, but the building animations will be far less detailed.
Cloud compute in gaming is still in it's infancy. It will take time to see all the benefits it can have. Anyone expecting it to make a differance overnight is going to be disappointed.
People have to look beyond resolution and FPS to understand the potential benefit of the cloud. Just look at something like WoW. That is the benefit of having hundreds of millions of $$ of servers supporting a game. Except MSFT is putting BILLIONS to work. Yes - a mega hit like DOTA or WoW can probably afford its own servers, but many titles sacrifice and have user hosting. So don't think of the cloud as offering a bump from 900p to 1080p or to 60fps. Think of the cloud as more massive and expansive worlds, massive numbers of "smart" npcs, and things like physics effects that allow for tens of thousands of pieces of debris and fully destructible environments instead of exploding barrels.
Wait, so you are saying that with cloud computing we can't have exploding barrels any more?
This is an outrage, I'm unplugging my XBox immediately.
rdgneoz3, I'm going to post this here since for some reason I can't reply to your comment. What does Crytek having financial problems have to do with their expertise on technology? That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard anyone say on here. These guys are easily some of the most gifted programmers and game designers in the world and their games, no matter how flawed the combat and story were, always stood out for their animations and graphics. You're saying this guy isn't an industry professional because his company has financial problems?
that sucks
A shame, really.
But let's face it: Crytek is dead. There's not a chance in hell that they can recover from this.
i feel bad for the people working on homefront. Its been jumping around like crazy lol to cryteck, and now deepsilver. Starting from THQ
Should of sold Ryse to MSFT back in March...