The relation between ATLAS and ARK;

[sirus a]

I'm curious about a few aspects of this game, starting with the real-world aspects. I've noticed that ARK and ATLAS like to spell their names in all capital letters like they're populating an acronym, while they share Instinct Games as a developer. Perhaps game companies haven't caught up to why serious people browse the internet without Javascript, but I've seen only the Cloudflare landing page of that developer's website.
Grapeshot and Wildcard are sisters, according to Wikipedia, but I'm hoping Grapeshot is adopted because the ARK engine is a load of steamy piss. This could be the result of limitations within the Unreal engine, but I've a feeling that "best practices" in development are the sinking weights pulling ARK to the bottom.
At the time I got into ARK( circa. 2017), the survival mechanics drew me in and the game let me down for several reasons. Chief among these was the lack of real-space between player groups, and while ATLAS promises a solution to the initial problem I need player feedback as to what's gone wrong.

How long does it take a player to circumnavigate the game world in real time?
How long does it take a player to explore the surface of an island in real time?
Has Grapeshot begun f***ing it up by giving high-speed mounts to end-game players?

I've little hope for the engine itself, but I can ask a few pointed questions:
Do mounts( i.e. ships or animals) try to move a bit without command, after a player dismounts?
Do these mounts sometimes walk through the game walls along this undesired path?
Has an animal or player become non-lootable because the game server recognizes the object in a vastly different location than the game client?

The list of niggling interactions continues ad-nauseum, though patterns indicate fundamental issues with the game engine.

Please post what y'all think about the spacing/time between and how well the engine scrapes by.

[SteelFire]

Grapeshot is a sister company to Wildcard. Founded by some of the same people who founded Wildcard, for the purpose of separating Atlas' development from Wildcard's attachment to Snail Games; Snail has no influence or asset rights regarding Atlas. Instinct is effectively a subcontractor they use, maybe for porting, localization, or whatever else they pay them to work on, they're not a controlling developer.

GS is making a lot of the same missteps that were made with Ark early on, in that they're ridiculously heavily focused on PvP and favoring alpha tribes. That said, there are some improvements over Ark in that regard, in that you effectively can't breed super critters, and critters are less vital in regards to PvP.

Circumnavigating the map... meh, who knows. It's a new map as of today, with about 20% fewer tiles, but I don't think we know if those tiles are the same size as the old ones yet. Plus, they're apparently introducing, sometime in the future, a different wind system.

Exploring an island... depends. They're different sizes. Some are almost as big as Ark's original Island map. Some are tiny.

As to glitchy movement, can't say, as I don't play on the servers. In SP, there aren't a lot of the movement glitches, nor critters phasing through walls/floors on load in, as they seem to have gotten that under control with better load-in management.

[xx]

Atlas started as a mod for Ark, created by an unofficial in house team. Given that they had achieved and their stated aim, they were spun off as a separate company and given an older copy of the ark code base to build their game.

There was claims that then Ark genesis was being worked on the a lot of atlas dev resource was redirected to it. Part of reason there has not been been an update for months till the new map etc.

[SteelFire]

Originally posted by xx:

Atlas started as a mod for Ark, created by an unofficial in house team. Given that they had achieved and their stated aim, they were spun off as a separate company and given an older copy of the ark code base to build their game.

There was claims that then Ark genesis was being worked on the a lot of atlas dev resource was redirected to it. Part of reason there has not been been an update for months till the new map etc.

That wasn't claims, GS said some of the dev team was shuffling over to work on Genesis. I suspect that's only a tiny bit of the reason Atlas development slowed and we're seeing posts about a number of new team members. Both devs seem to have high turnover, and it's pretty clear that's likely because they crunch frequently. This late evening Friday release was something that often happened with Ark too, which means they've got people working late and over the weekend to manage things and run damage control for critical fixes. Frequent weekend patches even outside a major update have been common for both games.

[Zothen]

Originally posted by SteelFire:

Circumnavigating the map... meh, who knows. It's a new map as of today, with about 20% fewer tiles, but I don't think we know if those tiles are the same size as the old ones yet. Plus, they're apparently introducing, sometime in the future, a different wind system.

Eh, what? 11x11 down from 16x16 tiles is over 50% reduction.

[Zothen]

Originally posted by SteelFire:

That wasn't claims, GS said some of the dev team was shuffling over to work on Genesis. I suspect that's only a tiny bit of the reason Atlas development slowed and we're seeing posts about a number of new team members.

To be exact: Development of Atlas was almost 100% reduced, if not even outright abandoned. The whole old "roadmap" was canceled.
The current team doesnt seem to be more than the executioner of the last will of a deceased project. Rather "keeping the emergency lights on" than progressing the project.
No surprise, because theres not much more money to make from this.

[sirus a]

So, the answer to their lineage is that Grapeshot may just be the good sister( whom is the unfortunate subject of her lesser sister). The issue with ARK development, as I see it, was that their engine couldn't scale and was likely made that way because of an obsession with appearance. It sounds like that's changed in ATLAS.

Is the game still mass-based, rather than skill-based? i.e. progression requires building up a mass of stuff, which makes it easier to get more stuff, and ultimately it is the amount of stuff which determines the outcome of a war.

[Twister]

Originally posted by Zothen:

Originally posted by SteelFire:

That wasn't claims, GS said some of the dev team was shuffling over to work on Genesis. I suspect that's only a tiny bit of the reason Atlas development slowed and we're seeing posts about a number of new team members.

To be exact: Development of Atlas was almost 100% reduced, if not even outright abandoned. The whole old "roadmap" was canceled.
The current team doesnt seem to be more than the executioner of the last will of a deceased project. Rather "keeping the emergency lights on" than progressing the project.
No surprise, because theres not much more money to make from this.

And thats tragic because everybody wants a more advacned version of assassins creed:black flag and this very well of could of been that but they flushed it right down the toilet. I really hope im wrong though and they bring this game back to life but man it needs serious work..

[sirus a]

Furthering that thought a bit more, are there wars? I've read reviews stating the difference in start and end-game power is so great that battles aren't fought so much as massacres committed.
A mass-based game with that kind of power scale is not fun.

[Zothen]

Originally posted by sirus a:

So, the answer to their lineage is that Grapeshot may just be the good sister( whom is the unfortunate subject of her lesser sister). The issue with ARK development, as I see it, was that their engine couldn't scale and was likely made that way because of an obsession with appearance. It sounds like that's changed in ATLAS.

I dont understand this?! Ark servers usually go south with 40+ players. Same with Atlas servers.
In a nutshell: Their whole core game design was build on quicksand, because there server design cant handle their concept. Same difference for both games.

[Scourn]

Originally posted by sirus a:

I'm curious about a few aspects of this game, starting with the real-world aspects. I've noticed that ARK and ATLAS like to spell their names in all capital letters like they're populating an acronym, while they share Instinct Games as a developer. Perhaps game companies haven't caught up to why serious people browse the internet without Javascript, but I've seen only the Cloudflare landing page of that developer's website.
Grapeshot and Wildcard are sisters, according to Wikipedia, but I'm hoping Grapeshot is adopted because the ARK engine is a load of steamy ♥♥♥♥. This could be the result of limitations within the Unreal engine, but I've a feeling that "best practices" in development are the sinking weights pulling ARK to the bottom.
At the time I got into ARK( circa. 2017), the survival mechanics drew me in and the game let me down for several reasons. Chief among these was the lack of real-space between player groups, and while ATLAS promises a solution to the initial problem I need player feedback as to what's gone wrong.

How long does it take a player to circumnavigate the game world in real time?
How long does it take a player to explore the surface of an island in real time?
Has Grapeshot begun f***ing it up by giving high-speed mounts to end-game players?

I've little hope for the engine itself, but I can ask a few pointed questions:
Do mounts( i.e. ships or animals) try to move a bit without command, after a player dismounts?
Do these mounts sometimes walk through the game walls along this undesired path?
Has an animal or player become non-lootable because the game server recognizes the object in a vastly different location than the game client?

The list of niggling interactions continues ad-nauseum, though patterns indicate fundamental issues with the game engine.

Please post what y'all think about the spacing/time between and how well the engine scrapes by.

conan exiles runs fine using unreal 3
Subsistance runs fine using unreal 3
Citadel runs perfect using unreal 3
Atlas runs like ♥♥♥♥ so does Ark. Whats all that tell you? Its not the engine its the morons at wildcard all being amateur's trying to make a game.

[Zothen]

Dude has no idea what a game engine actually is or how a game is build while commenting on how the game is build (or, as he imagines it).
No need to waste time commenting on that.

[sirus a]

Originally posted by Zothen:

Dude has no idea what a game engine actually is or how a game is build while commenting on how the game is build (or, as he imagines it).
No need to waste time commenting on that.

That's for sure.
I've only heard of 40+ player engagements in ARK, so my concerns were on the interaction of entities. ARK has surface level only interactions, except for a few points to make it harder for the player. ATLAS could be the same, but if the game servers properly tender locations to the game clients and respect established boundaries... meh, it's probably good enough for ARK but fails for recreating EVE.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Chaotec]

Conan is bare as hell with very limited systems
subsistance is even barer
Citadel looked like a cartoon

Conan has 9k players right now
subsistance has 332
Citadel is beyond dead
Atlas under 5k
Ark is sitting at 57k
And these are just steam numbers

So please tell me more how ♥♥♥♥ ark is

Atlas was just a test of live in game server transfers for ark 2 anyway.

For OP
I have been on 80+ servers no problem
Sometimes ragdoll errors occur with small creatures, its usually next to it so not a big deal

[sirus a]

It's funny. ARK is sometimes very immersive, but my wyvern's solid tail and wings break immersion when they push me around while appearing 5 meters away. I reckon that ATLAS uses fewer complex models or perhaps has an entirely different way to deal with them, but I'm sure that ARK has gotten better because of ATLAS development.

80+ players in an engagement would be wild, though no one has answered about the mass vs. skill basis for ATLAS. In ARK, you cannot win without a massive industry effort behind you. This is the power of the game, growing a capital base to fuel ever-more expensive conflict. It's a grind-a-thon which cannot be won without personal sacrifice. Better mounts have higher numbers, and the skill-components( stuns, bonuses, etc.) are niche only and rarely used in real combat.

As per usual, I give less than a s*** about what the render engine can do. The real world has the best render engine, and game worlds are immersive for other reasons.

Y'all have basically answered what I needed, but a few of y'all confuse memorization with intelligence. I have no way of knowing that which I do not know, and if ye judge me for learning your arbitrary definitions... I'm unconcerned.

[2ugly]

Originally posted by Twister:

Originally posted by Zothen:

To be exact: Development of Atlas was almost 100% reduced, if not even outright abandoned. The whole old "roadmap" was canceled.
The current team doesnt seem to be more than the executioner of the last will of a deceased project. Rather "keeping the emergency lights on" than progressing the project.
No surprise, because theres not much more money to make from this.

And thats tragic because everybody wants a more advacned version of assassins creed:black flag and this very well of could of been that but they flushed it right down the toilet. I really hope im wrong though and they bring this game back to life but man it needs serious work..

If only the AC devs would figure out they desperately need a 1p view for thier 3p game. RS figured it out, and DL wouldn't have been the same game in 3p. But we still have retobate devs pushing a 3p view when thier game demands 1p. AC, and JC being the top 2 contenders for the dumbest devs that still hang on to 3p, and offer no alternative.