The Secret World's engine takes center stage

Maybe this will work out okay. Maybe... maybe he just wants a friend.

Unified engines for MMOs have long been a rarity, simply due to the time needed to develop a game and the number of different companies developing separate products. The Secret World manages to buck this trend, using the same core Dreamworld Engine as Funcom's Age of Conan. A recent interview with lead programmer Øystein Eftevaag discusses the way that the engine interacts with the newer game, how the unified engine helps both games, and what special features the game is using in a technical sense.

Eftevaag explains that the Dreamworld Engine benefits chiefly from cross-pollination; improvements made in terms of optimization for Age of Conan can be imported to the engine on The Secret World with minimal extra legwork. The engine also uses a series of dynamic equations to determine what player characters should be able to see, subsequently leaving obscured areas blank to save on processor cycles. It's an interesting look under the hood at the technical side of Funcom's upcoming conspiracy and horror title, even if this particular dream world is tilted toward a nightmare.

Reader Comments (22)

When AoC transitioned to Dreamworld I was thoroughly impressed...I still think it's the best looking mmorpg (although Rift and Lotro also have their strengths).

This tech might be the thing that puts TSW on the map. But it will take a finished game to keep it there and that's the $10,000 question:

Has Funcom learned how to ship a complete game?

@jimr9999us
FFXIV would like a word with you. If there's one thing SE did right with that, it's the graphics. And yes, that probably is the ONLY thing they really did right.

@trendscenedental
Yeah, i was only talking about games out of beta :)

@trendscenedental So your point is good graphics makes bad games? Well, you learn new things every day.

I do hope they polish it TONS more then AOC was because if not, this game is definitely NOT for me!

How great would it be if there was a D&D 3rd Edition type of OGL for MMOs? Imagine if all the effort duplicating code that already exists in other games were put into just creating content.

I'm worried about optimisation. When AoC came out my PC was several steps ahead of the Recommended specs yet the game still tried to kill my PC as hard as it could and despite 'optimisation' done in the past few months, when I went back and gave AoC a go again it was the exact same result. Excessive CPU temperatures and really choppy gameplay.

Being on the same engine and graphically similar, what are the chances of me making it into the game without needing to upgrade my rig?

At the moment I'm sat on:
i3 530 CPU @ 4GHz
4GB of RAM
Nvidia GTS250

@NyxethNullfire

Personally I'd look at your graphics card. I'm no expert but I'd suggest it maybe a little behind the curve. I think Nvidia are due to start releasing their next generation of cards sometime in the next few months. Probably worth keeping your eyes open for bargains when that happens.

@NyxethNullfire The engine has been upgraded many times since then.

@Purkit

Already under consideration. Thanks for the reminder though!

@Braiks

I last attempted to play AoC about 2 months ago which was met with the issues I described, it was effectively impossible to run the game at the time.

@NyxethNullfire
You can squeeze a lot more out of that PC by adding RAM and upgrading the Video Card. First, make sure you're running 64bit windows 7 so it can actually address the RAM then put in as much as you can afford. Toss in a top of the line Nvidia card (1gb on board VRAM minimum) from 6 months ago and you're golden.

In regards to the game engine, Dreamworld is pretty impressive. If you have a high end vid card that can max out AoC in DX10, at a decent resolution, on a quality monitor, you will be impressed. Lighting, motion quality, texture detail, draw distance; the game can really be stunningly beautiful. Then in the midst of all that you have blood and lopping of head and limbs... There really isn't any MMO out quite like AoC, because there is no other MMO engine that can pull it off like Dreamworld.

With AOC eidos forced the release early, their main goal was too have the entire thing voiced and be like the starting zone. With secret world they are free money wise at least due to money they made off AOC.

I hope they worked on multi core support and loading times, AoC is pretty bad in that regard.

When I had another go at AoC I was really impressed with the Dreamworld Engine. Its certainly looks great.

Personally I'm in two minds about TSW. The one thing I really hated about AoC was the feeling that the world was just a bunch of unconnected zones. The loading screens killed my immersion. It was a real disappointment after playing Anarchy Online. AO maybe old but the world felt connected and real to me. AoC felt like a bunch of unconnected zones. I'm hoping the travel system in TSW is elegant enough to make me believe the world is one cohesive world.

I also hope they add some of that whimsical humour AO had, I really missed that in AoC.

This is rather disappointing.
Maybe it'll be a newer version of Dreamworld.
In 3-D LOTRo is tolerable(sky's are a mess and render in front of mountains for example), Rift bad, and Age of Conan absolutely incoherent and impossible to look at.

@Liltawen People actually care about 3D?

Is this engine responsive?

I will take responsive fluid game-play >>> graphics any day, it's a killer in terms of subs.

@sandals

The AOC engine is definitely more responsive than say, SWTOR. AOC is on a Freemium model as you may already know, so you could always give it a whirl if you want an ideal of the engine (both in terms of responsiveness and graphics) that TSW should be based on.

Its a great tech demo at the least if you feel you want to see what your graphics card can do.

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 20 Comments

The Secret World's engine takes center stage

Reader Comments (22)

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 12:19AM jimr9999us said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 1:40PM trendscenedental said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 2:10PM jimr9999us said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 5:27PM Braiks said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 1:04AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 1:42AM Furdinand said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 2:00AM NyxethNullfire said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 7:28AM Purkit said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 9:15AM Braiks said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 2:48PM NyxethNullfire said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 2:49PM NyxethNullfire said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 3:43PM Deliverator said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 2:26AM Poordevil said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 4:17AM wufiavelli said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 4:38AM Dumac said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 7:44AM Purkit said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 11:25AM Liltawen said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 11:46AM Braiks said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 11:44AM sandals said

Posted: Jan 10th 2012 11:48AM Chiren said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

Trion hit with another round of layoffs [Updated]

Featured Stories

The Mog Log: Final Fantasy XIV beta phase 1 and 2 - FATEs and dungeons

Wings Over Atreia: Shugo Kingdom returns to Aion

The Road to Mordor: Six reasons LotRO's Lore-masters rock

Engadget

Joystiq

WoW

TUAW