[Dreamworld Engine] Another look at the new engine

Out of interest i logged back on the TL server to verify how was the development going, especially to verify the performances of the engine after the deactivation of the AA feature.

I was still very impressed by the test I made a couple of weeks ago, the system was smooth and the detail level was very impressive, on the average the FPS were good.

I saw many posts full of concerns here and there and it's understandable, the fear to have another beta content released on live with the followup of bugs, instability, crashes and whatever, but I must admit that even without the AA feature activated the result is pretty awesome.

First of all as usual my rig:

Intel i5 - 750 overclocked @ 3.2 GhZ
GeForce GTX 570
4 GB Ram DDR3
OS Windows 7 - 64bit


I noticed a great difference in terms of mere fps numbers, in Chosain Province the amount of FPS increased from 30 to almost 60, the overall quality seems unmodified, the surrounding is astonishing, detailed and the light/shadow management is still great.

Being entirely honest I didn't noticed any big difference between my first test and my latest test, if not for a strong increase in FPS in full DX 10 settings, which is encouraging.


If in the graphical section I dare to say that there's nothing to report (and that's a good thing from my point of view) it's a different story for the Client side.

Loadings are extremely slow and tricky, especially when you are zoning from an "Old" zone to a Kithai zone, it will take quite a while to load the area and to let you play, also, even if apparently the loading is completed as soon as you spawn in a zone you will notice NPCS and surrounding being loaded while you move.
This of course creates some issues and some mini freezes on the screen as well as major lag spikes sometimes (but not often) resulting in a crash.

Of course this has been reported on TL forums, and community is waiting for an answer to this.

Beside those client issues I'm still convinced that the development of the Dreamworld Engine is going in the right direction, and i'm still convinced it will be really appreciated when it will hit the Live Server.

I do also agree with their choice of removing AA from the client as soon as they noticed it was not performing correctly with the client.


On the downside of this thread I have to mention the fact that multithreading is not being treated in this update series (2.1) and it's not considered a focus for the staff, things this that is making me quite disappointed, in 2011 a game like AoC should manage properly the multithreading to allow a better approach to its astonishing graphics.

Patch notes on TL forums are also including a large list of fixes and tweaks to some issues in game, rebalance of some elements on the PvP side (especially about the new minigame Jhebbal Sag), and on the overall appears to be a good "starting point".

I'm still hoping that in the future we will se some more balance between classes with some more revamp hitting the ground especially for our belove and forgotten class.


That's it for today!

Till the next blog entry then!



Arcalimon




P.S.: Some screenshots taken from Khemi, enjoy!