Mavericks: Proving Grounds pushing into the Battle Royale Game Market

[triplegunner]

https://www.gamebyte.com/new-400-player-battle-royale-game-absolute-insanity/

Summary of the article:
There's a studio called Automaton Games who are creating a battle royale game that allows 400 concurrent players to play on a 12 kilometer map. The developers are claiming that there will be random dynamic events, like wild fire, happening throughout the map. This game supposedly is set to be released in 2018 and it is still unsure if its PC exclusive. The performance of this game is still questionable as PUBG had many issues like with lag and transportation.

 

From the article: "Lag could be another issue caused by so many people joining into one game. Both fps and connection issues could be affected by so many people joining the game and dropping into the same location." 

 

Personal Input about the game:
Apparently, they're using cryoengine as the game's base engine to create this game. Personally, I can see this going very, very wrong. A lot of triple A titles normally have large operational budgets to make their games. Automaton Games is a relatively new studio and I'm questioning if they even have a budget to even do what they're claiming. 

I am very skeptical if this game would even run smoothly because I see a few issues with the claims that these developers are trying to claim... Here's a list of the major issues I think they're going to have: 

 

1. Consumer's Hardware performance

-> They're claiming to run 400 people on a map that is created using cryoengine... This obviously is going to create a lot of frame rate issues. 

2. Lag

-> FPS and internet issues will definitely be a major problem with this game. Given with the other factors within this list, I can see this being the major issue... 

3. Server hosting (devs perspective)

-> The amount of bandwidth needed to host 400 players concurrently is definitely going to be tough. I think that people will definitely complain about connectivity issues... 

4. Operational costs...

-> With what they've claimed, I don't think operational cost is going to cheap for them. This may overwhelm them in the long run. 

5. The processing of details in the map

-> PUBG had to remove a lot of details out because it was decreasing frame rates drastically... Automaton Games says they have a solution to this problem. However, I disagree because if they did, other game developers would have jumped onto this solution already... Lastly... there's way too much computation going on in the background just to make this run for what they're claiming...
 

I've also linked Mavericks: Proving Grounds Developer Talk PC Gamer video above that goes into more detail of how the game is going to be.

 

 

[Imbellis]

Quote

1. Consumer's Hardware performance

-> They're claiming to run 400 people on a map that is created using cryoengine... This obviously is going to create a lot of frame rate issues. 

2. Lag

-> FPS and internet issues will definitely be a major problem with this game. Given with the other factors within this list, I can see this being the major issue... 

3. Server hosting (devs perspective)

-> The amount of bandwidth needed to host 400 players concurrently is definitely going to be tough. I think that people will definitely complain about connectivity issues... 

4. Operational costs...

-> With what they've claimed, I don't think operational cost is going to cheap for them. This may overwhelm them in the long run. 

5. The processing of details in the map

-> PUBG had to remove a lot of details out because it was decreasing frame rates drastically... Automaton Games says they have a solution to this problem. However, I disagree because if they did, other game developers would have jumped onto this solution already... Lastly... there's way too much computation going on in the background just to make this run for what they're claiming...

1

1) There are ways to get around that problem. I'd guess pinging a player every couple seconds while they're farther than a KM should be fine.

5) I wouldn't worry about the detail too much - there are tons of games that are well optimized and able to show detailed environment for a huge area. The question I have to ask is if they'll put in the time to make it optimized.

 

As far as 2,3, and 4 - you have major points.

[Blademaster91]

Up to 400 players over a 12km map? A battle royale game would take days unless its somehow faster paced than pubg.

[triplegunner]

22 minutes ago, Imbellis said:

1) There are ways to get around that problem. I'd guess pinging a player every couple seconds while they're farther than a KM should be fine.

5) I wouldn't worry about the detail too much - there are tons of games that are well optimized and able to show detailed environment for a huge area. The question I have to ask is if they'll put in the time to make it optimized.

 

As far as 2,3, and 4 - you have major points.

Hey Imbellis! I like your points. Here's some thoughts from my perspective: 

1) Pinging can take up quite a bit of network processes. PUBG had the rubber banding issue because their alignment code wasn't working properly. In some games, you see characters walk into one direction and then the next. That's an issue with pinging. The server tries to do guess work where your character is when its lagging. This in short causes issues. 
 

5) I agree with you there. From a CS standpoint, the more elements you have, the more you have to compute. They're pushing for pretty darn heavy concurrent dynamic events within the map. It would definitely be interesting to see how they deal with multi-processing. 

[captain cactus]

Large numbers sound great on paper, until you realise No Man's Sky did the same and we know how that turned out.

 

Bigger isn't always better in games. This is one of those times.

[daned33]

Interesting read regarding this

 

https://venturebeat.com/2017/09/18/automaton-raises-10-million-for-survival-game-where-1000-players-fight-in-12-square-kilometers/

 

Turns out they've already got 10 million usd in funding for their game. 

 

And they use SpatialOS from Improbable, "to provide the technological backbone that makes it easy for small developers to create massive online simulated worlds." 

 

Seems like they're using a backend that might actually work