PSA: Game is running on a dead engine.

[Jiffypop]

As a SWE, I always wondered how and why these guys were always underdelivering content that wasn't functional. Especially with such a massive team and success. The reason? They're running Helldivers 2 on Stingray, owned by Autodesk. What's the problem? Well, Stringray has been discontinued as of November 7 2018. Nearly six years it's been dead. And this is what Helldivers 2 is running on. Chances are, they're spending most of their time fixing issues that come up with the engine and trying to maintain it since of course Autodesk isn't going to help. According to the CEO, Helldivers 2 would've been approximately a few months to up to a year in development at that point. So, why didn't they just cut their losses and move to an actually supported engine? Clearly the dev team is in a constant battle with something and it looks like that something is Stingray. Obviously, it's probably way too late now, but only a year into development wouldn't have been bad at all given how poorly the game is performing now. Once again, the dev team shows their sheer incompetence.

[Singularity's Marauder]

moving a whole game onto a different engine would lose them so much money, and by the time they would be done, no one would care anymore. Everyone would move onto Mortal Kombat 7/11 or World of Warcraft: Return of Jeff Bezos.

[Jiffypop]

Originally posted by Singularity's Marauder:

moving a whole game onto a different engine would lose them so much money, and by the time they would be done, no one would care anymore. Everyone would move onto Mortal Kombat 7/11 or World of Warcraft: Return of Jeff Bezos.

Thanks for not reading the post <3

My gripe is they didn't move onto a new engine when the engine died in 2018. You know. When no one knew the game existed and therefore no one could not care about it? Unless they get some massive dedicated team to do so in parallel to what they're doing normally, moving it now would of course be a monumental task depending on what Stingray is like.

[Mechaballe]

Originally posted by Jiffypop:

As a SWE, I always wondered how and why these guys were always underdelivering content that wasn't functional. Especially with such a massive team and success. The reason? They're running Helldivers 2 on Stingray, owned by Autodesk. What's the problem? Well, Stringray has been discontinued as of November 7 2018. Nearly six years it's been dead. And this is what Helldivers 2 is running on. Chances are, they're spending most of their time fixing issues that come up with the engine and trying to maintain it since of course Autodesk isn't going to help. According to the CEO, Helldivers 2 would've been approximately a few months to up to a year in development at that point. So, why didn't they just cut their losses and move to an actually supported engine? Clearly the dev team is in a constant battle with something and it looks like that something is Stingray. Obviously, it's probably way too late now, but only a year into development wouldn't have been bad at all given how poorly the game is performing now. Once again, the dev team shows their sheer incompetence.

Too long didnt read, probably skill issue.

[OnyxTortoise]

They used the engine for their other games (Helldivers 1, Magicka), so it was something they knew. Changing the engine would also mean putting time into learning the new engine.
We don't know how much work would have been thrown into the bin if they decided to change engines.

[Singularity's Marauder]

Originally posted by Jiffypop:

Originally posted by Singularity's Marauder:

moving a whole game onto a different engine would lose them so much money, and by the time they would be done, no one would care anymore. Everyone would move onto Mortal Kombat 7/11 or World of Warcraft: Return of Jeff Bezos.

Thanks for not reading the post <3

My gripe is they didn't move onto a new engine when the engine died in 2018. You know. When no one knew the game existed and therefore no one could not care about it? Unless they get some massive dedicated team to do so in parallel to what they're doing normally, moving it now would of course be a monumental task depending on what Stingray is like.

oh... No, you can't time travel. Maybe they started development on it and didn't think it was a big deal all the way back then...

Plus, I did read the post. I guess I just missed the part when you said that it was to be made work on a new engine all the way back then... Which who knows how long this game has been in development.

And maybe they just thought they could manage. Quite arrogant of them.

[Abist Thuringiensis]

Originally posted by OnyxTortoise:

They used the engine for their other games (Helldivers 1, Magicka), so it was something they knew. Changing the engine would also mean putting time into learning the new engine.
We don't know how much work would have been thrown into the bin if they decided to change engines.

I know very little about development, but having talked with some programmers knowing when to backtrack and start something again is very important and in the long run saves much time and money to the company.

That being said, I don't know if that is true, I don't even know what engine this game runs on and I suppose doing both things has it's pros and cons

[Crystal Sky]

Originally posted by Jiffypop:

As a SWE, I always wondered how and why these guys were always underdelivering content that wasn't functional. Especially with such a massive team and success. The reason? They're running Helldivers 2 on Stingray, owned by Autodesk. What's the problem? Well, Stringray has been discontinued as of November 7 2018. Nearly six years it's been dead. And this is what Helldivers 2 is running on. Chances are, they're spending most of their time fixing issues that come up with the engine and trying to maintain it since of course Autodesk isn't going to help. According to the CEO, Helldivers 2 would've been approximately a few months to up to a year in development at that point. So, why didn't they just cut their losses and move to an actually supported engine? Clearly the dev team is in a constant battle with something and it looks like that something is Stingray. Obviously, it's probably way too late now, but only a year into development wouldn't have been bad at all given how poorly the game is performing now. Once again, the dev team shows their sheer incompetence.

payday 2 launched on a dead engine. that game is still chugging and payday 3 was dead on arrival. sometimes new engines just mean new problems.

[pseudo]

Originally posted by Jiffypop:

Originally posted by Singularity's Marauder:

moving a whole game onto a different engine would lose them so much money, and by the time they would be done, no one would care anymore. Everyone would move onto Mortal Kombat 7/11 or World of Warcraft: Return of Jeff Bezos.

Thanks for not reading the post <3

My gripe is they didn't move onto a new engine when the engine died in 2018. You know. When no one knew the game existed and therefore no one could not care about it? Unless they get some massive dedicated team to do so in parallel to what they're doing normally, moving it now would of course be a monumental task depending on what Stingray is like.

It would have been a much wiser use of their time yes. I'm likely not as experienced as you (iirc you're the one that told me it was stinkray which I did confirm is a nickname for it among gamedevs) but in my experience devs usually don't jump on the newest engine on the market if they already are comfortable with the tools they have. I imagine when Stingray went EOL, they may have thought the game wasn't going to take 6 more years of development time. Unfortunately, technology has improved quite dramatically in that time, so it looks like an even more egregious mistake in hindsight.

[Singularity's Marauder]

tbh, they did succeed in player numbers. Porting a game to a different engine even when it started being made all the way back then... Could be a huge issue. You know, how Duke Nuke Forever was? Constantly changing what it worked on and trying to become something else? With people realizing that most likely the first incarnation was the best?

Maybe that's what this is.

Tbh, Helldivers 2 is good. If they can fix the bugs and crashes, and add more content on top of it. And make this ♥♥♥♥ work, it would be a really good game. In fact I did enjoy it for more than a 100 hours, so I can't lie. It is a good game...

It's just that it chose to be live service. And live service always backfires one way or another.

[_Atr4Mør5]

Does everyone have the problem that near destroyed Hunter's Liar is a huge FPS drop?

[Jiffypop]

Originally posted by OnyxTortoise:

They used the engine for their other games (Helldivers 1, Magicka), so it was something they knew. Changing the engine would also mean putting time into learning the new engine.
We don't know how much work would have been thrown into the bin if they decided to change engines.

From the looks of it, Magicka was not made with Stingray. And well, it would've been a maximum of one year of work thrown in the bin, worst case scenario. I'm not going to pretend I know what Stringray is like, but that's not how engines tend to work. A lot of the code could easily be salvaged and taken to a new engine after spending time restructuring it. So ocne again, it's on the devs.

[Jiffypop]

Originally posted by Festina Lente:

Originally posted by OnyxTortoise:

They used the engine for their other games (Helldivers 1, Magicka), so it was something they knew. Changing the engine would also mean putting time into learning the new engine.
We don't know how much work would have been thrown into the bin if they decided to change engines.

I know very little about development, but having talked with some programmers knowing when to backtrack and start something again is very important and in the long run saves much time and money to the company.

That being said, I don't know if that is true, I don't even know what engine this game runs on and I suppose doing both things has it's pros and cons

This is true. Knowing when to cut losses and change things up is a crucial part of any engineering field. The day it was announced that Stringray would be killed (likely, actually, long before November 2018), everyone at AH should've sat down and discussed the issue. No clue what they planned the lifetime of the game to be like back then, but given their stance on the game now it's clear they should have cut out, and moved on to a different engine. Doesn't matter how familiar a team is with an engine if it's constantly breaking and having issues like we clearly have here.

[Footman]

Given how the retro market and Unix variants are doing fine it's curious nobody tries to make mods or ipdates for Stingray.

[DeMasked]

Fatshark with Vermintide / Darktide also use Stingray. This is the problem with the video game industry in that you have to constantly be updating your knowledge because old things become defunct or become replaced by new things.

[Greb]

It's not necessarily a bad thing. Overkill / Starbreeze were using a very dated engine for Payday 2, one that I think was originally developed as a racing game engine lol, and they managed to do quite a lot with it. I guess they had some talented dudes working there before the big schism tore the company apart though. Although not so talented as to fix really simple easy bugs, which I know drove some modders in the community completely insane.

Also aren't From Soft games generally dated as hell but carried hard through the design team knowing and being familiar with what they're creating, as well as phenomenal art direction and such? And Bethesda, though in the toilet now, have been slumming it with the same dated engine for years now I think? I dunno.

I'm just saying anyway, so long as the game feels good to play and is functional an old engine might not always be a problem. Plus the older it is, the more documentation there should be for common bugs, and reference materials for the devs to fall back on, I dunno.

I don't really understand anything to do with game engines honestly, but yeah, just my take on it. I reckon its more of a problem with the development team than the actual engine, personally. Either a work ethic thing, or they left B Team behind to work on Helldivers 2 while they send A team to work on a new game, or something.

I recall something where an OG coder game developer who's name escapes me, possibly from Black Isle or something, talking about how coding is a mess these days anyway. Like he could fix something in a day back in the day, but now when you ask people to do it they ask for a month...and he said it was unacceptable and they went away and came back and offered it to be done in two weeks. Something that could be done in a day apparently. I dunno.

Sad state of affairs?

Well, soon we'll have AI to do it all for us, probably