343’s Social Stream from July 27th talks Slipspace, and mentions that it “wasn’t a complete rebuild” and that “There’s definitely still coded foundation [from Blam!].”
Earlier in the video at 24:05 its said “we got to take a step back and overhaul the engine.” (talking about Blam!) This shows us that Slipspace isn’t something new, but just more built off of old stuff. This is a rebrand of the same engine they have been using. I saw rumors about this from unverifiable sources and decided to dive in and look around, turns out this is true.
The phrase he used was ‘some foundations’… and there wasn’t a lot of stress on the word ‘some’.
He went on to say that an engineer who had worked on H5 and then looked at Slipspace would find it ‘very foreign’.
It makes sense not to rewrite every single line of code… particularly the bits that were working very well. They stress they tore down all the system that weren’t allowing them to scale. And in another interview I read they stressed that one of the main motivations for the reworking was to make life easier for the artists to add / test new assets.
And we know that the ‘engine’ contributes to the feel of the game. We’ve heard plenty of stories where developers switching engines have found it hard to recapture the feel of how their game is supposed to look and play. So building on the skeleton of Blam, which has served them well to date, makes a lot of sense.
CS:GO probably has a few bits left over from the Quake 3 source code. If it works and scales no need to throw it out. While I can’t speak to the development environment the Infinite team is facing, bits and pieces of the Blam engine made in an offhand comment aren’t something to go wild about.
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> building on the skeleton of Blam, which has served them well to date, makes a lot of sense.
But that’s not so different from what used to be done with each new game. Halo 5 doesn’t literally run on the CE version of BLAM, the engine got “gutted” and built up with each new game, BLAM is itself a skeleton which got fleshed out for each new project (except ODST which largely ran of the H3 version of the engine of course). I acknowledge that there’s a line between a “revamp” of an engine and a new engine containing some code from an older one (though where the line really is I couldn’t say) and I’m not an expert on any of this. But personally this makes me think it’s like the OP said, a rework of BLAM rebranded as Slipspace (though maybe a heavier rework than is usually done, even if I was an expert in this area I’m never getting access to the source code so I can’t know for sure) rather than a whole new engine like it getting a new name implies.
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> … personally this makes me think it’s like the OP said, a rework of BLAM rebranded as Slipspace (though maybe a heavier rework than is usually done, even if I was an expert in this area I’m never getting access to the source code so I can’t know for sure) rather than a whole new engine like it getting a new name implies.
I’ve listened to the video again.
The emphasis on the word ‘some’ suggests a bit as opposed to a lot… and ‘it’s foreign to engineers who have worked in Halo 5’ suggests a pretty major ‘revamp’. For the life of me I can’t see how this can be construed as an update to Blam.
Very hard to glass half full on this one… unless you are already in a negative mind set re: Infinite.
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> The emphasis on the word ‘some’ suggests a bit as opposed to a lot… and ‘it’s foreign to engineers who have worked in Halo 5’ suggests a pretty major ‘revamp’.
Personally I’ve learned to not take PR/marketing at face value unless the statements contain hard figures or comparisons. For example take the recent statement about Infinite that its world is “bigger than Halo 4 and 5 combined”. I don’t know 100% exactly what that entails, but I accept that Infinite literally has more square meters of playable space than 4 and 5 because they said so explicitly. “Some code” is not definitive, “it would totally look foreign even though no one who doesn’t work here will ever be able to look at it and verify that it looks foreign” is not definitive. With this studio especially I need something more concrete than suggestions. I hope Slipspace really is a new engine and based on how the physics looked in the demo I ultimately think it is, but this statement was still concerning.
> 2585548714655118;5:
> > 2533274869696927;4:
> > … personally this makes me think it’s like the OP said, a rework of BLAM rebranded as Slipspace (though maybe a heavier rework than is usually done, even if I was an expert in this area I’m never getting access to the source code so I can’t know for sure) rather than a whole new engine like it getting a new name implies.
>
> I’ve listened to the video again.
>
> The emphasis on the word ‘some’ suggests a bit as opposed to a lot… and ‘it’s foreign to engineers who have worked in Halo 5’ suggests a pretty major ‘revamp’. For the life of me I can’t see how this can be construed as an update to Blam.
>
> Very hard to glass half full on this one… unless you are already in a negative mind set re: Infinite.
jump into the 24:00 minute mark, and notice his use of the word “overhaul.” Its definitely suggestive of using Blam! as the core of the engine. 343 has a record of not exactly being the most… #HuntTheTruthful about their marketing. It’s a totally normal process for an engine to be reworked from game-to-game. It’s not like its the same engine from CE at this point, many additions and changes were made over the years, but marketing as a whole new engine when its just a revised old engine isn’t inspiring.
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> > 2585548714655118;5:
> > > 2533274869696927;4:
> > > … personally this makes me think it’s like the OP said, a rework of BLAM rebranded as Slipspace (though maybe a heavier rework than is usually done, even if I was an expert in this area I’m never getting access to the source code so I can’t know for sure) rather than a whole new engine like it getting a new name implies.
> >
> > I’ve listened to the video again.
> >
> > The emphasis on the word ‘some’ suggests a bit as opposed to a lot… and ‘it’s foreign to engineers who have worked in Halo 5’ suggests a pretty major ‘revamp’. For the life of me I can’t see how this can be construed as an update to Blam.
> >
> > Very hard to glass half full on this one… unless you are already in a negative mind set re: Infinite.
>
> jump into the 24:00 minute mark, and notice his use of the word “overhaul.” Its definitely suggestive of using Blam! as the core of the engine. 343 has a record of not exactly being the most… #HuntTheTruthful about their marketing. It’s a totally normal process for an engine to be reworked from game-to-game. It’s not like its the same engine from CE at this point, many additions and changes were made over the years, but marketing as a whole new engine when its just a revised old engine isn’t inspiring.
But even this is just a reflection of your mindset (and conversely mine).
To me, an ‘overhaul’ is a complete and thorough procedure. If you overhaul a car engine… you completely take it apart, test everything, and replace/fix anything that isn’t up to scratch. It’s not some simple tinkering.
I don’t know crap about building game engines apart from its really really hard to do, and they are often built on top of older versions of engines.
Example: Valves Source 2 engine took 5 or so years to develop. Source 2 is built on top of Source 1, which is in itself built on top of GoldSrc, which is a heavily modified version of the Quake Engine (which would eventually officially become ID Tech).
GoldSrc introduced exciting new things like face animations, unscripted physics objects and modern swimming to games. Reusing, and renovating old software is standard. Point is, rewriting existing code creates redundany.
I’m certain that a lot of Blam! still exists in Slipspace. Areas that would have been renovated would be like the world rendering, where an open world with dozens of animals and entities need to always be active; or as 343 keep saying, the new sound engine.
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> I don’t know crap about building game engines apart from its really really hard to do, and they are often built on top of older versions of engines.
>
> Example: Valves Source 2 engine took 5 or so years to develop. Source 2 is built on top of Source 1, which is in itself built on top of GoldSrc, which is a heavily modified version of the Quake Engine (which would eventually officially become ID Tech).
> GoldSrc introduced exciting new things like face animations, unscripted physics objects and modern swimming to games. Reusing, and renovating old software is standard. Point is, rewriting existing code creates redundany.
>
> I’m certain that a lot of Blam! still exists in Slipspace. Areas that would have been renovated would be like the world rendering, where an open world with dozens of animals and entities need to always be active; or as 343 keep saying, the new sound engine.
Eh I wouldn’t really compare Valve to 343. Seems pretty insulting for Valve who we all know is a fantastic developer.
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> > 2533274882881665;9:
> > I don’t know crap about building game engines apart from its really really hard to do, and they are often built on top of older versions of engines.
> >
> > Example: Valves Source 2 engine took 5 or so years to develop. Source 2 is built on top of Source 1, which is in itself built on top of GoldSrc, which is a heavily modified version of the Quake Engine (which would eventually officially become ID Tech).
> > GoldSrc introduced exciting new things like face animations, unscripted physics objects and modern swimming to games. Reusing, and renovating old software is standard. Point is, rewriting existing code creates redundany.
> >
> > I’m certain that a lot of Blam! still exists in Slipspace. Areas that would have been renovated would be like the world rendering, where an open world with dozens of animals and entities need to always be active; or as 343 keep saying, the new sound engine.
>
> Eh I wouldn’t really compare Valve to 343. Seems pretty insulting for Valve who we all know is a fantastic developer.
People don’t really understand how software development works. Game engines are complex beasts that these days have millions and millions of lines of code. When you need new engine features, you don’t just throw everything away, and start from scratch, because there is probably plenty of code in the old engine that doesn’t need to change and is usable as is, or with some modification.
People in this thread have brought up the Quake engine, which branches into tons of other engines on which lots of games that you’ve probably heard of are built. The other big one from the 90’s is of course the Unreal Engine that everyone has heard of, built originally for the game Unreal Tournament. And of course, everything is built on Unreal Engine. If you take the naive attitude that no engine is “new” unless it starts from scratch, then you’ll run into the conclusion that most of the games you play run on game engines designed in the 90’s, and almost every game you play probably runs on a 10 year old engine. That doesn’t stop people from admiring the beauty of the latest Unreal Engine demo.
Which is all to say, Slipspace engine being built from the Halo 5 engine is a complete nothing burger. Not just in the sense that that’s how it usually works, but also in the sense that the source here is a two year old stream. The information was already out there. It wasn’t a secret. Everybody knew. Why are we talking about it now?
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> 343’s Social Stream from July 27th talks Slipspace, and mentions that it “wasn’t a complete rebuild” and that “There’s definitely still coded foundation [from Blam!].”
>
> Social Stream Timestamp
>
> Earlier in the video at 24:05 its said “we got to take a step back and overhaul the engine.” (talking about Blam!) This shows us that Slipspace isn’t something new, but just more built off of old stuff. This is a rebrand of the same engine they have been using. I saw rumors about this from unverifiable sources and decided to dive in and look around, turns out this is true.
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