Editing Phoenix engine
The edit can be undone. Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then publish the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
Latest revision | Your text | ||
Line 21: | Line 21: | ||
Circa 2005, around the same time [[Ensemble Studios]] was shipping ''[[Wikipedia:Age of Empires III|Age of Empire 3]]'', Ensemble employee Angelo Laudon was experimenting with a prototype of Ensemble's previous game, ''[[Wikipedia:Age of Mythology|Age of Mythology]]'', that allowed the previously [[Wikipedia:Personal computer|PC]]-only game to be played with a controller "without too much friction". This prototype would come to form the basis of Ensemble's next project after the release of ''Age of Empires III'', known as ''[[Phoenix (Ensemble pitch)|Phoenix]]'', which would be a real-time strategy game released on the [[Xbox 360]].{{Ref/Site|Id=RG|URL=https://sites.google.com/site/richgel99/|Site=Rich Geldreich|Page=Halo Wars|D=21|M=01|Y=2022}} | Circa 2005, around the same time [[Ensemble Studios]] was shipping ''[[Wikipedia:Age of Empires III|Age of Empire 3]]'', Ensemble employee Angelo Laudon was experimenting with a prototype of Ensemble's previous game, ''[[Wikipedia:Age of Mythology|Age of Mythology]]'', that allowed the previously [[Wikipedia:Personal computer|PC]]-only game to be played with a controller "without too much friction". This prototype would come to form the basis of Ensemble's next project after the release of ''Age of Empires III'', known as ''[[Phoenix (Ensemble pitch)|Phoenix]]'', which would be a real-time strategy game released on the [[Xbox 360]].{{Ref/Site|Id=RG|URL=https://sites.google.com/site/richgel99/|Site=Rich Geldreich|Page=Halo Wars|D=21|M=01|Y=2022}} | ||
Before the Phoenix engine ever entered development, Ensemble initially attempted to port the ''Age of Empire 3''{{'}}s iteration of the [[ageofempires:Bang Engine|Bang! engine]], an older, PC-exclusive engine originally created for ''Age of Mythology''.{{Ref/Site|URL=http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/ageofmythology/news.html?sid=2680346|Site=GameSpot|Page=Ensemble Studios interview|D=06|M=03|Y=2009}} Engineers [[Rich Geldreich]] and [[Billy Khan]] spent around 3 months in 2005 porting the engine from PC to [[Xbox 360]], in what Geldreich described as "the most painful and mind numbing task [he] ever did [at Ensemble]". Ultimately, it was a waste of time, as while the game was made to run and the [[Wikipedia:Windows API|Win32]] networking backend was rewritten for the Xbox 360 to allow for multiplayer on the console, the game's performance was incredibly poor, averaging between only 3-8 [[Wikipedia:Frame rate|frames per second]], and load times were as long as 5 minutes due to a slow, custom [[Wikipedia:Interpreter (computing)|interpreter]] used by the script processor | Before the Phoenix engine ever entered development, Ensemble initially attempted to port the ''Age of Empire 3''{{'}}s iteration of the [[ageofempires:Bang Engine|Bang! engine]], an older, PC-exclusive engine originally created for ''Age of Mythology''.{{Ref/Site|URL=http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/ageofmythology/news.html?sid=2680346|Site=GameSpot|Page=Ensemble Studios interview|D=06|M=03|Y=2009}} Engineers [[Rich Geldreich]] and [[Billy Khan]] spent around 3 months in 2005 porting the engine from PC to [[Xbox 360]], in what Geldreich described as "the most painful and mind numbing task [he] ever did [at Ensemble]". Ultimately, it was a waste of time, as while the game was made to run and the [[Wikipedia:Windows API|Win32]] networking backend was rewritten for the Xbox 360 to allow for multiplayer on the console, the game's performance was incredibly poor, averaging between only 3-8 [[Wikipedia:Frame rate|frames per second]], and load times were as long as 5 minutes due to a slow, custom [[Wikipedia:Interpreter (computing)|interpreter]] used by the script processor compoment of the map generator.{{Ref/Reuse|RG}} | ||
Geldreich attributed the poor performance to the significant difference in target hardware between the original target platforms of the Bang! engine and the Xbox 360. While he praised the engine itself, particularly its resilience with respect to corrupted, modified or deleted data, which helped significantly with the 360 port, and its random map generation, it was fundamentally designed for single-threaded [[Wikipedia:x86|x86]] systems with a large amount of [[Wikipedia:Random-access memory|RAM]] and a [[Wikipedia:Virtual memory|virtual memory]] system. These specifications differed significantly from those offered by the Xbox 360, which had an [[Wikipedia:Out-of-order execution#In-order processors|in-order]] [[Wikipedia:PowerPC|PowerPC]] [[Wikipedia:Central processing unit|CPU]], limited RAM, no virtual memory and no built-in [[Wikipedia:Hard disk drive|hard drive]].{{Ref/Reuse|RG}} | Geldreich attributed the poor performance to the significant difference in target hardware between the original target platforms of the Bang! engine and the Xbox 360. While he praised the engine itself, particularly its resilience with respect to corrupted, modified or deleted data, which helped significantly with the 360 port, and its random map generation, it was fundamentally designed for single-threaded [[Wikipedia:x86|x86]] systems with a large amount of [[Wikipedia:Random-access memory|RAM]] and a [[Wikipedia:Virtual memory|virtual memory]] system. These specifications differed significantly from those offered by the Xbox 360, which had an [[Wikipedia:Out-of-order execution#In-order processors|in-order]] [[Wikipedia:PowerPC|PowerPC]] [[Wikipedia:Central processing unit|CPU]], limited RAM, no virtual memory and no built-in [[Wikipedia:Hard disk drive|hard drive]].{{Ref/Reuse|RG}} |