[TERA PC & Console] En Masse is closing, but TERA lives on! We will continue to support TERA PC (NA) and TERA Console until service is transferred. Stay tuned for more information.
[TERA Console] The Grotto of Lost Souls update (v85) is now live! Read the patch notes here: https://bit.ly/TERACon_v85
[TERA PC] The 64-bit update (v97) is now live. Check out all the changes delivered on August 11 here: https://bit.ly/tera64_patchnotes
[TERA PC & CONSOLE] Summerfest Part 2: The Beach Bash is on from August 11 until September 1! Participate in event activities to earn tokens redeemable for costumes, consumables, mounts, and more! Details: https://bit.ly/tera_sf20
Comments
PS4 is by far not a PC.
Porting this poorly and extensively modified nearly a decade old UE3 title (counting from the earliest preview screenshots) to PS4+UE4 is enormous undertaking. It practically requires rewriting majority if not the whole client on the way to UE4 as well.
So can s390. It has memory and cpu too. Look - almost a PC ! And while PS4 is certainly closer to PC, the devil is in details.
Start over with near everything besides assets. They will be coding new game, not porting exisitng one. They can as well take and port it to any other modern engine, won't make that much of a difference in the amount of work required.
From a purely technical point of view, the proposal is insane. But, good luck to BHS. They have been failing for half a decade+ with near everything, whether technical or meritorical. One more fail won't make a difference
It has never been easier to cross-compile a game between console platforms than it is today. PS4 uses an x86-64 processor and uses a variant of an AMD graphics card similar to those sold for PC use. It's, again, more similar than it has ever been in the past. Of course I'm not saying it's a drop-in replacement, but the days of it being a completely different architecture that required an entirely different way of thinking are past.
It's porting the game functionality, not the engine. Indeed, there is no direct upgrade path from UE3 to UE4, but there are more people who have done it, so at least there's some expertise to draw on.
At worse, it's like creating a new game using TERA's current assets and functionality as a baseline. Obviously that's a big project, but again, I don't see that they have much choice. Trying to get the current engine to work on consoles is definitely a non-starter. They also already have teams working on new UE4 projects anyway, so their odds of failing this are no higher than trying to launch a new game with some other unproven IP. They're not just going to keep living off of TERA in its current form forever.
I extremely doubt they're doing a port to UE4.
Considering they're already done with the port(beta type completion) and are currently holding testing at EME's HQ(Started August first I believe).
So they went from looking for someone mid may, assuming they got someone right away..Bringing them up to speed
They had June and July todo a port. With their team size and only hiring one person. Nope, No way they could do a proper UE4 port in two months.
I'll bet gold it's still using UE3. (Which runs on both xbox one and PS4). And if you really want to get technical...Sure they could also just be using a simple UE4 wrapper so they could claim it's running UE4.
But lets get real.
Small team size, hired one person to lead the port.
Plus working on new sorc animations and skills(and other classes/skills yet unseen), plus another content patch in the pipeline....
They recomplied the game in UE3 for consoles, fixed what they needed to fix so it would work.
THEN, Flash does not run native on any present console. Any tera player can tell you the biggest issue with Tera's optimization is the flash rendered UI.
^ That's what the bulk of this port was, Designing a new UI for the consoles. Which will also greatly help the performance of the game..I'd wager if done right..It'd run pretty damn well on consoles..
EDIT: Apparently They've just recently opened up scaleform to xbox one and ps4. Neat info.
With that info, and having being told that we wont see any improvements on the PC version(was mentioned in developer interviews)
I change my stance and say it's just a straight port to console, no real back end changes(except MAYBE a UE4 wrapper) and they spent those two months doing bug fixes and simplifying the UI for consoles.
Well, they already announced previously (end of the last year) that T2 is a version of TERA being developed for mobile devices on UE4. I guess we don't really know yet what they mean by that -- it may actually have zero relation to TERA at all except be set in the same world. Perhaps they'll just use UE4 on mobile, and then try to extend the cobbled-together UE3 version to work on consoles by reworking the UI.
That being said, I don't think there's any suggestion that the session they had in August was done with any sort of port in hand. It was just a research meeting to get feedback, as far as I know. At best they may have had some sort of early proof-of-concept. They also just released an email survey seeking general preference info from console players (like what other console MMOs do you play, what do you like about them, etc.). So they are definitely not that far into development at all; all signs suggest that it's still in the planning phases at this point. Even if they did hire someone two months ago, it's impossible they'd have anything in beta state already. It makes a lot more sense to be at the "gathering requirements" phase.
I'm just going off what they said in that thread.
http://forums.enmasse.com/tera/discussion/4725/seeking-volunteers-for-user-testing-session-focus-group#latest
Which was both a testing session and a focus group.
To me that speak that they had a port in hand, (maybe not a 100% possibly just say N.Arun area and a dungeon). Then the focus group section more for "How can we make the UI better" and "How can we make the game controller feel more reactive" type things.
Well, more likely would be to just have it be the PC version with mock-up controller UI, and hand someone an Xbox controller plugged into the PC. (Or heck, just get feedback on the UI that's in the game already.) That's a lot faster/easier to do if you need to mock something up; no need to even have a dev kit at that early stage.
Then again theres also a huge skill gap in TERA compared to ffxiv
Well if that happens, I may actually come back to the game, getting tired of tab targeters anyway.
True, some of XIVs content requires absolute intimate knowledge of your class, how to gear it, and how to play it to be able to produce the needed maximum results required to clear said content, as well as the skill, memorization and reaction time to get thru the content, far moreso than TERA. Hence why alot of FFXIV FCs *Guilds* usually has their top groups consisting of primarily PC players. Especially with the extra abilities you get from the expansion, a Keyboard and Mouse user will always outperform a Console controller playing user of equal skill. Hell, I outdpsed a excellent Ninja whos on console, that played Ninja for an entire year, with my Ninja that I only messed around with for a month, simply because I have the advantage of WTFast, and a Razor Epic Naga Mouse with Anansi keyboard. Thus I have no need to shuffle thru Hot Bars like a console player has to, to get to my next needed skill.
But that's in a game that was really built with console/controller play in mind. TERA as it stands now certainly wasn't (even though it's technically possible to some degree), so it will need a lot of adjustments in order to get to the point where they would be equally capable even in a majority of cases.
Players who use a gamepad make more effort to do well against KB+mouse players, so any pro player using a gamepad in a PC game is just wasting his true potential. I personally keep to gamepads because not only am I used to it for the long time at them, but because I also prefer casual couch gaming because knowing I'll still be a bad player on a KB+ mouse, I feel I don't need to up my game from casual level. I simply don't complain.
i prefer gamepad for car video game, fighting game like stree fighter
They can do well, but they will never be as optimal as a KB and Mouse user. Due to the severe limitations. Its how it is.
TERA though, is so much more simplistic, that I would love to play it with a controller.