Purpose of this blog

Dmitry Yudo aka Overlord, jack of all trades
David Lister aka Listy, Freelancer and Volunteer

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

[WG] Wargaming-BigWorld Deal

Wargaming, publisher of the spectacularly successful multiplayer title World of Tanks, has acquired Australian online-game software maker BigWorld for $45 million.

Full text here.

Hopefully, this will enable us to integrate this middleware to our games better in future. It surely can be regarded as technological breakthrough.

30 comments:

  1. i dont know much about game engines and server software and stuff, but i gues this is very good news. however i gues it will take some time before we can see the fruit it brings?

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    1. For sure it will take some time, huge improvements don't happen all of sudden at once.

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  2. Future Q&A posting...

    Q: Where is client side multi core support?.
    A: Not coming; BW/Umbra's code is a mess and we can't be bothered with fixing it.

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    1. Thanks, for the pattern for future canned reply. ;)

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  3. Today Bigworld and tomorrow the (big) World :P

    but nice one ;)

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  4. "Hopefully"

    good god almighty! you went and bought for 45mil USD the producer of the world's shityest engine instead of licensing one of the many engines out there than are proven and able to handle large scale environments, complex physics and objects

    bwhahhahaa

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    1. If only those "many engines out there" were roughly as good at network scalability and holding really high loads (CCUs).

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    2. geeez man, I can name an engine that can handle 256 simultaneous connections (players) and it's a FPS

      and and BTW, how much money will WG have to sink into this so the engine will be on par with WoT's real needs? another 45mil?

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    3. zMe uL you are really smart(ass), its surely not just about how good or bad the engines out there are, its about wargaming being a lot more independent, and btw can you name one of those engines? you talking about planetside 2? sure... i can see the lag, it will be laggy for sure... battlefield 3? lag... tribes ascend? lag... i have played countless fps and none compares in terms of lag free to counter-strike, and nothing beats a lag/problem free online competitive game no matter how good it looks.

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    4. True what Adérito says, besides the system in these fps games is different. Mostly I mean the spotting system, as in those fps games everything that is within draw distance is shown on the screen while in this game there are constant checks for spotting. Depending on distance there are checks every few seconds and on every check there are calculations that take into account the view range of spotting tank, camouflage value of spotted tank and bushes.

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    5. zmeul,

      the thing is we need the engine that is capable of hundreds of thousands connections to the server with thousands of concurrent areans, and this engine is really good at both.

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  5. Overlord..really?....You post sth. where nobody can say something bad about WG? ...seems your vacation were tooooo good..have to talk with SerB :P

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    1. Dont listen to him :P Not everybody (like me) understands something from "network scalability and holding really high loads" so...we just trust you with investing in good engines ;) But..cant you buy the new Frostbite engine also? THAT would be cool ;) Full destroyable buildings...shell holes in the ground..and such stuff :D

      But another question: Now there you bought the Big World (whatever) engine could you please give us players the map editor? Or a programm where we can modell your tanks? Its just for us and the most dont want to see community maps and stuff ingame but it would be cool for US to have and work with it :) Please consider that :)

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    2. Either way all such stuff (maps and tanks) is server-side, thus it will be of very little use.

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  6. An interesting move. I hope WG makes it a priority to get multi-core support going now that they have full control of BigWorld. :)

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  7. Lots of flack ... its there money more or less. I see it as eventual good news that the engine for which the game is based on is now in the hands of the developers of the game. Some day in the future tweaks and changes to this engine should prove productive.

    As to other engines etc ... sure there's a lot of better engines out there BUT the game [and content] wasn't made using those engines and conversion of the material to a new engine would be horrendous and complicated to say the least.

    For now we have to accept the limitations placed on the gaming experience by the game engine used. In time we should see changes that could improve the core game play of WoT.

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  8. I think it's kind of funny that Victor compares the BW engine to the Crytech engine.

    That's like comparing a small rock to the moon.

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  9. Huh? I smell progress? Sounds interesting. So WG can now improve/fix this engine in any direction they or we(the players) need?

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  10. Hey Overlord, I just am curious about the middleware. Can you give me an example perhaps of something that would improve from the acquisition? I understand that owning the engine would reduce the cost of development, but what exactly would the middleware improve in the game?

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    Replies
    1. Plenty of things can be done to make the engine more suitable for our games:

      - full multi-core support (even though Umbra interferes with that in WoT)
      - facilitate the research on bigger maps and bigger battles (more tanks)
      - facilitate research on larger calculation range ("spotting range" in WoT)
      - improve the calculation of multiple shells/bullets in WoWP, where the load is much higher in WoT because of quick-firing guns
      etc

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  11. "Hopefully, this will enable us to integrate this middleware to our games better in future. It surely can be regarded as technological breakthrough."

    Are you saying the big world creators were holding back on letting you integrate it in a way you wanted it to be? Maybe this is exactly what they wanted WG to do. Maybe I should start up a company to make a engine, hope a game gets big around it then starve them of support just enough so they ponder about buying me for millions.

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    1. Not exactly. We were one of the users of their software (even though the biggest user) and all our requests were to go through long consideration / implementation procedure. Now, being a part of the single company, it should take less time.

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  12. Finance fact and declaration of independance from WG. Nice to see the company evolution.

    Now, Overlord, place for the good old blog who "leech" interresting infos like new physics. Cause i have enough to have infos from russian website (for example : wot-news.com) to get the newest info from the company.
    Come on, you are working for them, be faster than fan website...

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    Replies
    1. I have changed the format. No leaks here anymore. :)

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    2. Dang, too bad for us. Keep the good job.

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  13. Hello ovi
    Will this game ever run on multicore processors? Because right now i have good graphic card and quad core CPU. The trouble is, that the quad core has only 1.6 GHz which is enough for playing lates games (prototype 2, Crysis 2) but since WoT only takes it as a single core i get ping around 10 and deteriorating with each patch... You really should make it use multicore processors otherwise i wont be able to play soon, and i payed a lot for this :(

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