PSO2's engine?

[Nitro Vordex]

I remember reading that the engine was rather old, circa 2008. I can't find the link or article to prove that though. Does anybody have a link for that, or has worked with the game to know what engine it is?

[untrustful]

Google search yields talk of it using an old game engine (hedgehog engine?) but I get no dates.

[Kokurokoki]

A lot of games these days are made with engines nearly decades old.

Halo 5 still runs on the same engine used to make Halo 1 according to the devs, it's just been massively improved but I believe the source code has always been the same.

Not sure how old the PSO2 engine is, but I remember people saying that it was the same engine used in PSU on the PSP.

[TaigaUC]

I thought PSO2's engine was developed in-house. Whatever it is, it looks and feels old and outdated.
Visually, it can't compare to games like B&S and TERA, which were developed in 2011 (before PSO2). Those games use engines like Unreal and CryEngine.
Mabinogi Heroes (Vindictus), which was released in 2010, uses a modified version of Valve's Source engine, and also looks better than PSO2.

But PSO2 not looking great isn't just an engine issue.
It's clearly designed for lower-end machines, or for compatibility with Vita. It does not feel very optimized.
Texture size in general seems inconsistent, and environment textures don't seem very high-res. Last I checked, their compression also looked awful.
The 3d models are generally low poly, and characters sometimes have strange anatomy issues.
Characters seem to have less skeletal bones than other games (especially in the hands).
Facial expressions are also simple, and the physics have minimal collision (eg. hair doesn't collide with body).
Mabinogi Heroes has PSO2-ish physics, but they at least put simple collision volumes on the body to minimize hair going through the body.
PSO2 doesn't seem to care as much about that. Although, the flip side is we get lots more fun accessories.

One thing that really shits me is they couldn't be bothered putting proper collision on My Room items.
That stuff is not hard to do. Some engines like Unreal come with automatic mesh-based collision.
Although, the last time I checked, automatic collision tends to make you get stuck on the edges of those objects.

[Skornedemon]

Spoiler!

I thought PSO2's engine was developed in-house. Whatever it is, it looks and feels old and outdated.
Visually, it can't compare to games like B&S and TERA, which were developed in 2011 (before PSO2). Those games use engines like Unreal and CryEngine.
Mabinogi Heroes (Vindictus), which was released in 2010, uses a modified version of Valve's Source engine, and also looks better than PSO2.

But PSO2 not looking great isn't just an engine issue.
It's clearly designed for lower-end machines, or for compatibility with Vita. It does not feel very optimized.
Texture size in general seems inconsistent, and environment textures don't seem very high-res. Last I checked, their compression also looked awful.
The 3d models are generally low poly, and characters sometimes have strange anatomy issues.
Characters seem to have less skeletal bones than other games (especially in the hands).
Facial expressions are also simple, and the physics have minimal collision (eg. hair doesn't collide with body).
Mabinogi Heroes has PSO2-ish physics, but they at least put simple collision volumes on the body to minimize hair going through the body.
PSO2 doesn't seem to care as much about that.

Almost everything you just listed is why pso2 is quite optimized. A computer from 2005 can run it pretty decent. Even on max graphics PSO2 is a pretty game.

Understand it from a game development perspective.

You can have up to 12 players, all with HIGHLY customizable looks,from accessories(also models) to colors to mags to whatever.

Those up to 12 players can do a ton of different attacks,all of which generate effects. Some more than others. Those 12 players are generally DECENTLY synced with one another.

Outside of JUST the players, PSO2 can have a ton of mobs. All of which can be infected(more effects),have various attacks all of which also generate effects. Going to bosses... they're generally much higher poly count, and can be inside these huge mob pits(looking at you atrocious ocean). Ive seen up to 6 bosses on the map at once,while the huge mob pit was going on.(3 rock bears,fang banther/banshee,and varda soma).

Going to textures, while not 4k textures or something silly like that, they're roughly 256x256(background) or greater(foreground), depending.

And all of this,can run on a Vita. While PSO2 isn't graphically up to par with,say,Black Desert, it does it's job just as well of not better than others. Also nearly any PC can run the darn thing.

Black Desert you need quite the rig to even run it,and even then, you're going to lag. Quality over Quanitity, the never ending battle.

TL;DR : PSO2 is pretty optimized and holds its own for the type of game it is and for how much stuff is usually happening in the game.

[landman]

I wish lightning and weather effects could give it more realism, Magatsu is too bright compared to the nighty opening. Stage design also lack realism, it's obviously the price to pay to have randomly generated maps, but in some natural environments it works worse than others (rivers usually form... in a valley, not in a mesh). And field of view should be improved... I don't care if breakable trees that respawn appear when I'm close enough for them to spawn, but why can't I see that huge structure that's permanent on the Ruins map unless I'm about to reach it? map is not generated on the go... only spawnable entities.

[EvilMag]

considering fingers don't bend and feet look like shit I'm convinced its running on the Sonic Adventure engine.

[Zyrusticae]

Gotta note here that asset quality (including shaders) have very little to do with the engine and everything to do with the game's hardware target (in this case, the PS Vita and low-end laptops with integrated graphics). They could have used the same engine to push WAY more polygons and more complex shaders. There's nothing stopping them from doing so from a technical perspective. What is stopping them is, obviously, the cost of losing those customers that are playing on low-end machines.

Now, as technology has advanced quite a bit since the game's initial launch, it is possible for them to do a bit of a shader overhaul the way Aion did. And the nice thing about shader overhauls is that it can be completely optional, especially if most of the shaders don't affect the actual assets. Better motion blur (Crysis-level, at least), better lighting and shadowing, more particle effects, and so on and so forth, are all possible without touching any of the low-end machines, simply by making them options rather than a part of the baseline.

But, in all honesty, they're probably not gonna bother. They're just too damn cheap to do something like that.

[Mattykins]

I wouldn't even care that much if GameGuard didn't block shader injectors and stuff. :T It also irks me that there's apparently software that can edit textures (hence the nude patch) but there aren't any high-res texture mods. Fuck, I can't stand looking at some of the surfaces.

[Zyrusticae]

Ah, don't remind me. Friggin' Gameguard and its unnecessarily draconian injection prevention.

If only someone could figure out why Radeonpro works undetected and got it to work with Reshade... that would be nice...