Ark 2 is a bad idea

[caleb68]

Well i can honestly say that my experience with both Xbox and PS, backward compatability for previous consoles hasn't been their strong suit, sure while you could still play the games on xbox, you coudn't play most of them as multiplayer except via split screen.  PS was a totally different story, hardly any games were supported from ps3 to ps4, If I remember right at that time the only games it would still let me play on the ps4 were the ones I had from when i had a psp.   Sony and backward compatibility just aren't two words that seem to go together.

Now with Xbox having basically a slimmed down mobile version of windows 10, one would think that making it so that the games can be crossed over to the new xbox would be alot simpler then before, as the operating system on it will function more like a phone then a console when it comes to upgrading to the latest greatest device. but even then, looking at microsoft and backward compatibility with many of their phone applications, I wouldn't hold my breath on too many titles being able to be transferred across without some for of modification from the developers.

Now while its true these two are planned to have new consoles coming out, it doesn't mean that in the first year everyone will come running out and grab them, some will still continue to play on their current systems, 6 months to a year.  With console prices with each generation taking a rise as well, many may wait for a sale to hit before they even consider upgrading to the next console, playing for extra controllers, getting new vr equipment, etc.  By the time some people end up adding together the cost of all the equipment they currently have for theirs to replace it with the new, they find they are often spending as much as they would for a pc.

I still have my xbox 360 and ps3, along with my ps4, I haven't bought much for them and have been playing more often on the pc then on the consoles anymore.  the main reason i had gotten the consoles in the first place were my nephews, to play games with them, but they are all grown up and some of them making familes of their own now.

Keeping that all in mind, that may very well be why there are only two seasons of Genesis in the making, but who knows, perhaps the games will cross over onto the new xbox and sony will addapt a simular method, personally i wouldn't hold my breath, making you buy new games for the new consoles is how they make money.

[CyberAngel67]

12 hours ago, AngrySaltire said:

Next Generation Ark

Not entirely sure if this has been discussed before on the forums but these are just some thoughts really. With the announcement of Ark Genesis, with the first part of coming this year in December (or so its said...) and the second part next winter, obviously development of Ark is planned for the long term. This timeframe however crosses over with the advent of the next generation of consoles, with Xbox Project Scarlett looking like releasing next Christmas and the PS5 around the same time. Obviously this isnt an issue with it on Steam.

What does this mean for Ark ? For example, to my knowledge Halo Infinite will release with the next gen console but will be playable on the current generation too, at least that is my understanding. I am assuming that for Ark it will transition across to the next generation, and, again I assuming, will be playable across both generations ( I dont know the case of the PS5). Or will Ark just become unplayable on the current gen ? Or even, will it not transition across at all. Saying all that I guess its early days yet to know these things.

Furthermore I guess you could forsee that the more powerful consoles could handle alot, so could open up more possibilities for the development of Ark on consoles. 

Just a few thoughts really.

I can't vouch for Sony, but what I can say is that games that run on your Xbox One or Xbox One X, will just work on the next Xbox console.

The major difference between the previous ones has been the CPU, GPU and Operating System. Xbox this time, are sticking with the same instruction set for both CPU and GPU, just enhanced for todays market on release. The Operating System will not change, it may have a different look about it, but it will still be Windows 10 under the hood.

Microsoft have made it clear, that any game released as to run on any current system and that means the entire Xbox One family of devices, now it is not really been discussed by Microsoft, as to the name of Scarlett. But rest assured it will be in the Xbox One family of devices.

[caleb68]

12 minutes ago, CyberAngel67 said:

Microsoft have made it clear, that any game released as to run on any current system and that means the entire Xbox One family of devices.

now here's the key statement in what you said,  and if you've remembered microsoft in the past with its previous OS releases when they say "current systems" they don't mean currently developed unreleased versions, most recent recollection with that for me is windows 8 to windows 10.  If they indeed intend to make the xbox one games work on the next system, that truly will be a step forward for xbox and make the console more desirable over other consoles.

[CyberAngel67]

26 minutes ago, caleb68 said:

now here's the key statement in what you said,  and if you've remembered microsoft in the past with its previous OS releases when they say "current systems" they don't mean currently developed unreleased versions, most recent recollection with that for me is windows 8 to windows 10.  If they indeed intend to make the xbox one games work on the next system, that truly will be a step forward for xbox and make the console more desirable over other consoles.

This is what Microsoft have been so hard working on behind the scenes, why they are stick with the AMD processor. I mean the 360 was a risc based CPU, while the Original Xbox was an x86 CPU.

And Windows 8, what an abortion of an OS, just when you think they learnt their lesson with Windows ME.

In 2017, MS announced to developers that their vision for gaming is that it should just work, in other words they where saying your game any screen. So while xCloud is their next big thing in that statement. The console and PC is their next and why they are working hard behind the scenes to do the same thing.

Play Anywhere titles where supposed to be that next step and hasn't taken off as one would have expected.

But they have realized that gamers do like their libraries, they do like to play older games and have been working hard to make sure they can keep their library and play it any time they like.

Keeping the same console hardware in terms of CPU and GPU types, is a major step in that direction. As it is like a PC, you can upgrade that and still play any game, console will be no different going forward. For those old enough to remember the days of a new Windows version and games just breaking, from Windows 7 onwards they have been working hard to keep that minimal and their console will be no different now.

[Luewen]

9 minutes ago, CyberAngel67 said:

This is what Microsoft have been so hard working on behind the scenes, why they are stick with the AMD processor. I mean the 360 was a risc based CPU, while the Original Xbox was an x86 CPU.

And Windows 8, what an abortion of an OS, just when you think they learnt their lesson with Windows ME.

In 2017, MS announced to developers that their vision for gaming is that it should just work, in other words they where saying your game any screen. So while xCloud is their next big thing in that statement. The console and PC is their next and why they are working hard behind the scenes to do the same thing.

Play Anywhere titles where supposed to be that next step and hasn't taken off as one would have expected.

But they have realized that gamers do like their libraries, they do like to play older games and have been working hard to make sure they can keep their library and play it any time they like.

Keeping the same console hardware in terms of CPU and GPU types, is a major step in that direction. As it is like a PC, you can upgrade that and still play any game, console will be no different going forward. For those old enough to remember the days of a new Windows version and games just breaking, from Windows 7 onwards they have been working hard to keep that minimal and their console will be no different now.

This all is nice and dandy if its actually gonna happen. And we sure know that there were plenty of stuff said in past that never happened or worked as it was said to do. 

[CyberAngel67]

6 minutes ago, Luewen said:

This all is nice and dandy if its actually gonna happen. And we sure know that there were plenty of stuff said in past that never happened or worked as it was said to do. 

But it is happening!!

MS already stated at E3 this year, that no more BC games are being worked on because the team is busy making sure the 360 Emulator works on Scarlett.

[caleb68]

57 minutes ago, CyberAngel67 said:

But it is happening!!

MS already stated at E3 this year, that no more BC games are being worked on because the team is busy making sure the 360 Emulator works on Scarlett.

Just have to wait and see how that comes out, i remember the emulator for xbox to xbox 360, it supported some games, and like i said in the previous, no multiplayer unless it was split screen sadly, but we still had fun with some games on there

 

[CyberAngel67]

2 minutes ago, caleb68 said:

Just have to wait and see how that comes out, i remember the emulator for xbox to xbox 360, it supported some games, and like i said in the previous, no multiplayer unless it was split screen sadly, but we still had fun with some games on there

 

Yeah mainly because a lot of servers shut down. It is what it is though and hopefully going forward that will change for older games..

[Luewen]

23 hours ago, CyberAngel67 said:

But it is happening!!

MS already stated at E3 this year, that no more BC games are being worked on because the team is busy making sure the 360 Emulator works on Scarlett.

And how many times have they said they been on working stuff? And how many times it never came to fruition?

[BornSlippy]

Ark 2 Return of the pillars

[SMP]

Meh to sequels in general.  Less about making a better product and more about making another buck.

[yekrucifixion187]

40 minutes ago, BornSlippy said:

Ark 2 Return of the pillars

That's on the Dev's and an easy fix with whole new maps.

Increase the range you can build near to someone, protect player spawns and high yield resource areas, install a structure decay timer with size to a set max time so smaller structures have rapid decay, make every structure a spawn killer and count every structure placed map wide to a tribe count, it would eliminate the need for pillars and make it more likely that someone would clean up their traps and other structures afterwards. 

This of course should be PvEcentric rules. 

You'd have a few trolls who would troll the best they could but it would greatly limit their impact.

[wildbill]

We already have ARK 2, it is called Atlas.

This is really old news, where have you been, locked in a closet ?

[TheRealPerilousStew447]

this is a little off topic but i've been woundering and didn't know whereto put this so im putting it here but if i transport a dino from a save with admin commands to one with out will i still get achivments does anyone know anything about this?

[LadyoftheWoods]

Its a more complicated question than it seems. Players always have this silly notion that Devs can just wiggle their fingers and make problems magically go away but simply lack the will or desire to do so. Programming is a nasty beast. Coming from someone who tried and realized I'd rather literally beat my face into a keyboard or be chained to a chair and have to watch paint dry. Its not so much a lack of patience or ability so much as the most absolutely trivial things can make things go wrong. Its bad enough on the small scale but in a huge game like this with billions or more lines of code. Tons of variables from creatures, to players and all their stuff and all the other stuff that has to happen on the server there is no easy fix. If a fix can even be done at all without being prohibitively expensive.

 

The mod has it right in a lot of respects. Sure we want bug fixes. We want this game to work. But while the devs are busy tracking down overly complex bugs they may or may not be able to fix who's paying the bills? They might have to take down servers altogether. They might have to wipe ppls stuff. They might break other things trying to fix these things. People might ask well why didnt they make a game that works from square one? The answer is pretty simple. In most fields that are sufficiently complex you often find out about problems down the road that didn't manifest at first. Its kinda like a messed up janga. Sometimes theres that one block that can't be taken out without toppling the rest.

 

Anyone who thinks they can do better should go take a programming class. I'm not even saying to try and make a game. That would be literal orders of magnitude more complicated and frustrating. Just take maybe one or two programming classes to see how irritating the absolute basics can be and imagine how it would scale up.

 

All in all i think WC is doing pretty damn well. They have a game that is very ambitious. They make the DLC to keep their stuff going but it actually has a good bit of content to it. They don't do microtransactions or pointless fluff DLC. They don't even really do a paywall per se. Can just as well play on island or free maps without DLC and though I'm not 100% sure on this i believe you can even trade for critters from DLC you don't actually have. Compared to the utterly shady practices a lot of other companies pull, these guys have my support imperfect and all.

 

Sry i digress. As for Ark 2. Depending on the bugs it is often easier to rebuild entirely in a new engine rather than convert the game to a new engine or use the old flawed engine to fix what's broken. An interesting parallel that i can throw out there: Look at the guy who worked on DaggerXL. He tried to reverse engineer Daggerfall, improve the graphics and fix the bugs. Mind you he didn't have the source code and though it was an incredible game for its era it would be dirt simple by today's standards. He never really managed to pull it off. They could retain their graphic assets and rebuild the meat and potatos in a new engine and likely end up with something that functions better down the road.

 

Not saying they necessarily should do this just saying its not so cut and dry.

[caleb68]

25 minutes ago, LadyoftheWoods said:

Its a more complicated question than it seems. Players always have this silly notion that Devs can just wiggle their fingers and make problems magically go away but simply lack the will or desire to do so. Programming is a nasty beast. Coming from someone who tried and realized I'd rather literally beat my face into a keyboard or be chained to a chair and have to watch paint dry. Its not so much a lack of patience or ability so much as the most absolutely trivial things can make things go wrong. Its bad enough on the small scale but in a huge game like this with billions or more lines of code. Tons of variables from creatures, to players and all their stuff and all the other stuff that has to happen on the server there is no easy fix. If a fix can even be done at all without being prohibitively expensive.

lol speaking as a programmer its true, one simple misplaced character and send you searching 100's of lines of code for the problem, however, most of the ark functions are what they call blueprint driven, and a bit simpler to trace issues with, not saying you won't still spend hours looking for the problem but they are easier to trace then the base code.

Ark does have base code don't get me wrong, and some of the problems exist in it as well, and that's were going over hundreds of lines of code comes in. even when you find the problem you may be so strained from looking over code you miss it, then your back to square one, looking at code again.  Even with stuff i've done and had to backtrack for a error I've had this happen, and even missed the same error several times, sometimes having to step away for awhile and come back to it later, so that I can actually be refreshed and catch where it is.

However, here is part of the problem with ark - Some of the problems have been there sense the beginning, never resolved, and anyone who's done programing knows, when you leave one bug unchecked, and continue adding new code, you can end up with even more problems because of it.  Likewise, you fix the old bug, and because the new coding was built around it, usually can, and will cause new bugs to arrive from the coding. When you ignore bugs, both big and small, they tend to grow into larger more complex problems.

54 minutes ago, LadyoftheWoods said:

Sry i digress. As for Ark 2. Depending on the bugs it is often easier to rebuild entirely in a new engine rather than convert the game to a new engine or use the old flawed engine to fix what's broken. An interesting parallel that i can throw out there: Look at the guy who worked on DaggerXL. He tried to reverse engineer Daggerfall, improve the graphics and fix the bugs. Mind you he didn't have the source code and though it was an incredible game for its era it would be dirt simple by today's standards. He never really managed to pull it off. They could retain their graphic assets and rebuild the meat and potatos in a new engine and likely end up with something that functions better down the road.

With the fore mentioned, and the problems that are currently in ark, if a ark 2 was under progress, it would most likely be better to start fresh, Assets could be recycled and used without causing any major problems, models, textures, animations, even some of the preset blueprints. but rewriting the base coding from start, they could come up with a clean base again, and hopefully fix bugs as they arise rather then waiting till they become more complex issues to resolve.