Hello there! Without entering in the same old discussions of the problems of the game engine: Is there any plan in the near future of giving some new technology to it? For example FSR, or some improvements like WoW have done in the past years.

This game is awesome, almost 10 years playing but we all know that a lot of people still cant experience the "full" experience of enjoying a wz or and 16m ops in full graphics without a dip in fps to 15/20. What a i can recommend to get a more smooth experience is to have a strong single-core perfomance CPU, it doesnt matter if its AMD or Intel.

Anyway, i would like to know if there's at least an announcement about this or not, or if the plans for the future of SWTOR doesnt include something like this. Pretty sure that something like this (and an upgrade in the vainillia textures/sets) will give the game a HUGE boost in the playerbase.

What a i can recommend to get a more smooth experience is to have a strong single-core perfomance CPU, it doesnt matter if its AMD or Intel.

Actually, it does matter quite a bit. Current AMD processors can handle the game much better than current Intel processors, as described in this thread.

Hello there! Without entering in the same old discussions of the problems of the game engine:

If that was what you intended you would have sent a PM to one of the Dev's not posted here on the forums. If a topic is started here, player's will discuss it, including such old discussions already mentioned about it in older threads.

Is there any plan in the near future of giving some new technology to it? For example FSR, or some improvements like WoW have done in the past years.

Never played WoW, So since you say they have improved there engine, have there been any posts since then with any issues for players who don't have high performance gaming PC's?

This game is awesome, almost 10 years playing but we all know that a lot of people still cant experience the "full" experience of enjoying a wz or and 16m ops in full graphics without a dip in fps to 15/20. What a i can recommend to get a more smooth experience is to have a strong single-core perfomance CPU, it doesnt matter if its AMD or Intel.

Certainly cannot argue about this, This game does struggle in large groups, which is but one reason ( not the main one however) that i don't do them. I have done the Ossus op's boss fights, when they first game out, and yes, the lag is just all kinds of bad.

Anyway, i would like to know if there's at least an announcement about this or not, or if the plans for the future of SWTOR doesnt include something like this. Pretty sure that something like this (and an upgrade in the vainillia textures/sets) will give the game a HUGE boost in the playerbase.

A huge boost? Will it?

This is a quote from a Google site

"

We’ve curated this list of MMO games for low-end PCs that still stand half a chance of running on that potato you call a computer. Some of these games might be a little older and they might not have the shiniest graphics, but they are all active, and many of them are still receiving updates, patches and new content."

To me this says that while newer computers/gaming computers will be fine with a new engine, older computers won't be. So I will ask again, has anyone posted any issues with WoW new engine?

If the answer is yes, players with older computers have issues, then I hope this game stays with the one we have. If the answer is no-one had issues then OK,

Whatever happens about a new engine, it's really only an answer the Dev's can give, not us players.

The answer is to have a new server whose game's code base supports a high-end game client with all the graphical updates anyone's ever wanted (DX12 / 64-bit client / high-res textures, etc.) and let everyone on old machines continue to trod along on the existing servers.

Problem #1 with that answer: it would be disruptive to guilds. The haves who want great graphics would move to the new server, and the have-nots running 15-year-old computers would remain behind on the older servers with the older code base.

Problem #2 with that answer: keeping game content / features / updates in sync between two different code bases. Maybe the old servers would simply go into maintenance mode and everything going forward on the high-spec server.

Even with issues, I'd still vote for a such a server.

I suspect BW makes incremental changes to the engine all the time. It's their own Hero-frankenengine after all.

As for large changes such that would be required for FSR? not a chance.

The answer is to have a new server whose game's code base supports a high-end game client with all the graphical updates anyone's ever wanted (DX12 / 64-bit client / high-res textures, etc.) and let everyone on old machines continue to trod along on the existing servers.

If the separation of responsibilities between the client and the server is correct (that's a *big* if), it should be possible for them to drop in a replacement client that works better than the current one without modifying the server code.

As noted, that's a big "if", but even if the separation isn't quite correct, it should still be possible to substitute a new client., but it wouldn't be quite as efficient.

If the separation of responsibilities between the client and the server is correct (that's a *big* if), it should be possible for them to drop in a replacement client that works better than the current one without modifying the server code.

 

As noted, that's a big "if", but even if the separation isn't quite correct, it should still be possible to substitute a new client., but it wouldn't be quite as efficient.

The point of a different server is that there'd be no mismatch between players experiencing the game in DX9 versus more advanced rendering.

With everyone segregated to either a DX9 server OR a DX12+ server, everyone would see the same content the same way.

Especially for the PvP players, separate servers ensures there'd never be a situation where people playing on a server supporting both clients could bellyache that the DX12 players can squeeze out a few more frames per second than the DX9 players, and as we know, frames win games.

Regarding graphics, there's no 1:1 quick flip between DX9 and above, and the conversion is more work than I think most people appreciate.

The DX9 code path doesn't support multi-threaded rendering, and as any modder who went through the hell of updating their Skyrim graphical mods from the 32-bit to the 64-bit of Skyrim knows there's also a host of geometry and graphical issues (updated shader models just for starters). DX10 and higher uses a completely different state object model from DX9. The fixed rendering pipeline that existed prior to DX10 does not translate to the programmable rendering pipeline that came later.

The result would be a completely separate game download for people playing SWTOR on DX12+ versus what we currently play on (DX9). It really would be a replatforming.

Also, the different shader models, hair / armor / weapons / skin types etc. would look different between the different implementations of the game. People absolutely hated how the updated textures and lighting looked when Everquest 2 tried to go from DX9 to DX10 (and for many more profound technical reasons, Sony failed and reverted to DX9 and that was the first and last attempt).

And finally, a separate server for DX12+ offers Bioware the opportunity to take advantage of more efficient rendering techniques to add features that the DX9 game will never have - day / night cycles, weather cycles, etc., which could play into the game.

Not saying that a DX9 game can't have day/night cycles (Everquest 2 has them), but the way Bioware implemented SWTOR, some of the "light sources" are actually localized decals, not an actual light source, and worse, some "light" is actually painted onto objects. Far more efficient to let a new lighting model in a DX12+ game do all that work, but that requires a thorough revamp of the lighting model (and object textures).

An example of localized decals faking light in SWTOR are the projections of light around the rotunda near the senate tower. Those aren't splashes of light on the grass. Those lights aren't projecting directly onto the grass. Those swathes of light are decals (2-dimensional panes) with alpha blending.

The point of a different server is that there'd be no mismatch between players experiencing the game in DX9 versus more advanced rendering.

Just like today there's no mismatch between players on 2011 potatoes that can barely manage Medium and 2021 top-range rigs, I guess...

With everyone segregated to either a DX9 server OR a DX12+ server, everyone would see the same content the same way.

Set your client to 2011 potato mode and see what difference it makes. This is an irrelevance.

Especially for the PvP players, separate servers ensures there'd never be a situation where people playing on a server supporting both clients could bellyache that the DX12 players can squeeze out a few more frames per second than the DX9 players, and as we know, frames win games.

The more I look at comments on PvP, the more I'm inclined to suspect there's an explicit throttle involved to reduce the difference between the potatoes and the 2021 rigs. With the addition of Warzone POs, I've unbent a little - I do enough to fill my POs for the week, then stop - and I noticed that while I'm in the spawn area, I get normal fps, but as soon as I exit into the actual map, my fps drops from 130+ to 45-50. (Er, yeah, the people who say you can't get better than 30 fps in Warzones are talking out of their collective fundamental orifices.)

Regarding graphics, there's no 1:1 quick flip between DX9 and above, and the conversion is more work than I think most people appreciate.

And yet there are games (er, MMORPGs, some of them) with a toggle between e.g. DX9 and DX11...

The result would be a completely separate game download for people playing SWTOR on DX12+ versus what we currently play on (DX9). It really would be a replatforming.

Given that there are games with toggles to enable DX11 or DX12 vs not-those-things, I'd say a separate client is not needed.

Also, the different shader models, hair / armor / weapons / skin types etc. would look different between the different implementations of the game. People absolutely hated how the updated textures and lighting looked when Everquest 2 tried to go from DX9 to DX10 (and for many more profound technical reasons, Sony failed and reverted to DX9 and that was the first and last attempt).

Yeah, because there's no difference in appearance between the current SWTOR "Low" and "Ultra", right?

And finally, a separate server for DX12+ offers Bioware the opportunity to take advantage of more efficient rendering techniques to add features that the DX9 game will never have - day / night cycles, weather cycles, etc., which could play into the game.

Re: Day/night and weather: GW2 is also resolutely DX9, and yet it has both variable weather *and* day/night.

And, curiously, SWTOR *does* have some instances of variable weather. On DK, it's sometimes raining, sometimes *about to* rain, and sometimes it just stopped.

Not saying that a DX9 game can't have day/night cycles (Everquest 2 has them), but the way Bioware implemented SWTOR, some of the "light sources" are actually localized decals, not an actual light source, and worse, some "light" is actually painted onto objects. Far more efficient to let a new lighting model in a DX12+ game do all that work, but that requires a thorough revamp of the lighting model (and object textures).

More accurate to say that it would more *accurate* to let the lighting model do the work, since decals require essentially no compute resources regardless of anything.

An example of localized decals faking light in SWTOR are the projections of light around the rotunda near the senate tower. Those aren't splashes of light on the grass. Those lights aren't projecting directly onto the grass. Those swathes of light are decals (2-dimensional panes) with alpha blending.

Tatooine has examples, too - some of the shadows of scenery are clearly painted on the ground below (they show up at arbitrary distance), while other shadows are actually calculated (they show up only when you're close enough).

Yeah, because there's no difference in appearance between the current SWTOR "Low" and "Ultra", right?

That analogy does not apply at all across implementations of DX.

The first difference between DX9 and DX12 would be the very obvious lack of texture seams across boundaries of light. When you enter a tunnel on Yavin, the lighting quality inside versus outside the tunnel is abrupt, right at the entrance. That abruptness is caused from two different lighting models exposed next to each other for the player to see. In a world with only ambient light, and no forced lighting model to simulate a given environment, the light from outside the tunnel would spill inside and radiate into the tunnel to a certain depth. No seam. The only difference would be texture differences (the texture of stones/cave moss inside the tunnel versus the texture of flora outside).

The second would be ambient light itself. How light can scatter in DX12 is vastly different than DX9. For any move to a single ambient light source (or for some planets, two) the "quality of the air" would be visibly different.

The third is how transparency and anti-aliasing is treated by a graphics card in DX9 versus DX12. DX9 does not support the mostly recently introduced anti-aliasing techniques, so for people whose cards support them, the DX12 temporal aliasing effects would be a frame rate changer.

More accurate to say that it would more *accurate* to let the lighting model do the work, since decals require essentially no compute resources regardless of anything.

The efficiency gained is that the developers do not to expend the labor of crafting and positioning decals to achieve the same (mostly likely better) result in DX12 of simply letting light fall where it will.

Even with DX12, secondary point and specular lighting is still required in some cases because the resulting darkness for some interiors is too dark for playability to rely on a single ambient light source (a sun, or even a couple of suns), but tossing those in place is still far and away less work than hand-crafting decals to emulate lightfall.

I would really like to expand my own opinion in this subject in the same way i can do it in my native language (spanish) but im pretty sure i will end up messing my point. Thanks all for your opinions....

But you all now what we need? We need some light from Bioware in this subject, i dont think a dev will lose their job if they give some "official" answer about this old subject and will also stop all those lies and comments without foundations that we all have been reading all these years.

And yet there are games (er, MMORPGs, some of them) with a toggle between e.g. DX9 and DX11...

Given that there are games with toggles to enable DX11 or DX12 vs not-those-things, I'd say a separate client is not needed.

Rendering engines are completely different between DX9 and everything that followed it. Those games have implemented something called a swapchain, and most likely, crafted their textures in such a way as to be sharable across DX9 and DX+ and is not at all easy (frighteningly laborious to do for a game that's already past 40GB) to pull off. For example, what appears to be stochastic sampling in SWTOR to achieve adaptive screen space ambient occlusion had to be shoe-horned in, because DX9 does not natively support it. It's an extant API call to a different API, so I can only guess that those API calls were kludged onto the SWTOR's API, the result being something less than a perfect achievement of it. Kudos to Bioware for getting as far as they did.

But you all now what we need? We need some light from Bioware in this subject, i dont think a dev will lose their job if they give some "official" answer about this old subject and will also stop all those lies and comments without foundations that we all have been reading all these years.

Not sure about the lies, but if you want to stop comments, DreadTechSavant said it best, don't post on a forum where doing so invites comments. Approach the devs directly with private messages.

The first difference between DX9 and DX12 would be the very obvious lack of texture seams across boundaries of light. When you enter a tunnel on Yavin, the lighting quality inside versus outside the tunnel is abrupt, right at the entrance. That abruptness is caused from two different lighting models exposed next to each other for the player to see. In a world with only ambient light, and no forced lighting model to simulate a given environment, the light from outside the tunnel would spill inside and radiate into the tunnel to a certain depth. No seam. The only difference would be texture differences (the texture of stones/cave moss inside the tunnel versus the texture of flora outside).

 

The second would be ambient light itself. How light can scatter in DX12 is vastly different than DX9. For any move to a single ambient light source (or for some planets, two) the "quality of the air" would be visibly different.

 

The third is how transparency and anti-aliasing is treated by a graphics card in DX9 versus DX12. DX9 does not support the mostly recently introduced anti-aliasing techniques, so for people whose cards support them, the DX12 temporal aliasing effects would be a frame rate changer.

But so what? That's all client-side stuff, and the less-good version is the price you pay for not being able / willing / etc. to switch to a DX12+ system. There's still no reason to separate DX9 players from DX12 players. Other MMORPGs with DX9 / DXhigher switches still put everyone on the same servers. So long as the thing that's blue looks blue for everyone, and the thing that's red looks red, who cares if I see it by DX12+RayTracing and my neighbour sees it by DX9?

If there's a dynamic light-source (moving glowy projectile, for example), the server tells the client "draw a glowy projectile" and the client draws it the way it can. If that means it's just a blob whose colours are 100%-self (so it glows brightly even in the dark), and doesn't cast any light, on DX9 in Low, so be it. (After all, dynamic light sources aren't cheap to do. No way a 33 MHz 386/486 hybrid could calculate them on the main CPU like Elder Scrolls: Arena did for me back in 94...)

But you all now what we need? We need some light from Bioware in this subject, i dont think a dev will lose their job if they give some "official" answer about this old subject and will also stop all those lies and comments without foundations that we all have been reading all these years.

It would have to be a *really* official answer, not a "official" (in quotes, implying that it's only sort-of official, at best) one.

The efficiency gained is that the developers do not to expend the labor of crafting and positioning decals to achieve the same (mostly likely better) result in DX12 of simply letting light fall where it will.

OK, fair enough. Development efficiency is a thing, for sure, but you should have *said* that you meant developer-time efficiency.

Well, except that until they can kill the DX9 client, they'll still have to do all that DX9 work.

The answer is to have a new server whose game's code base supports a high-end game client with all the graphical updates anyone's ever wanted (DX12 / 64-bit client / high-res textures, etc.) and let everyone on old machines continue to trod along on the existing servers.

 

Problem #1 with that answer: it would be disruptive to guilds. The haves who want great graphics would move to the new server, and the have-nots running 15-year-old computers would remain behind on the older servers with the older code base.

 

Problem #2 with that answer: keeping game content / features / updates in sync between two different code bases. Maybe the old servers would simply go into maintenance mode and everything going forward on the high-spec server.

 

Even with issues, I'd still vote for a such a server.

Problem #3: SWToR game engine is a 2008 version of a Beta copy of a Highly Modified Hero Engine that runs under DirectX9c.

To make SWToR work on a new modern engine would require a complete rewrite of the game code, redesign of ALL the texture maps and Character animations and a total redesign of ALL graphics and Cinematic Scenes.

Though I would LOVE to see the game on an upgraded engine. I highly doubt that it will ever happen. Though I wont say never... Hell could freeze over.... Who knows.

There will never be an update to the engine. It’s never going to happen. At this point I think we need to accept that fact and realise if this was any other IP, the game would have been shuttered long ago. EA don’t want to reinvest in the game and are trying to squeeze the last bit of profit from it by running it on an oily rag.

They won’t even give the team enough resources to fix the bugs or release content that’s bug free. Then they don’t give them resources to fix the new content either.

Does anyone really expect EA are going to give Bioware enough funds and resources to port to another engine or improve this one. The amount of man power to do that is phenomenal and so is the cost. EA are not going to do it unless Disney gives them a bunch of money and says remake the game. And we know that’s not going to happen because Disney’s already brought other companies onboard to make future open world SW games that don’t involve EA because they’ve seen how badly EA has dropped the ball with the SW IP.

Swtor has a limited time frame remaining. When these new games are released, it will be shuttered if it hasn’t already been. The same thing happened to SWG. We should all prepare ourselves that this is what’s going to happen with swtor.

Swtor has a limited time frame remaining. When these new games are released, it will be shuttered if it hasn’t already been. The same thing happened to SWG. We should all prepare ourselves that this is what’s going to happen with swtor.

I'm fairly confident SWOTR's continued existence has absolutely nothing to do with a time frame as much as a set of conditions.

I remember playing Matrix Online when the sun set on that game, and was sort of shocked to read recently where at the time it only had 500 active players.

SWTOR is slightly different in that it's more than just a body count of players, as some people drop serious money on the cartel market (in the $80 - $300 dollar range for some of my guildies), so for SWTOR, I suspect EA will eventually release a quarterly shareholder's report declaring the game's projected EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) no longer falls in line with share holder expectations, and announces the game's sunset date.

So it's more about the money than the calendar.

What's interesting is that Everquest 1 began in 1999, which I still log into occasionally despite the eye-bleed low-quality graphics, and EQ2 which started in 2004. Played that just the other day. Those two games have gone through at least 3 owners, morphing from Sony Online Games to Daybreak Games which was bought out just recently by Enad7.

Those games are practically devoid of players yet still running, so it'd be interesting to know what's keeping those alive. Edit: Those games also have online stores, but is that enough, I wonder?

Windows 11 - 32-bit PCs won't be able to install it.

The only reason they shut down SWG was SWTOR - that game had very few players towards the end but they otherwise would have kept it running. SWTOR is getting lots of money from the cartel market, way more than it costs to maintain it. Especially with the recent success of the shows and the lists of imminent new ones coming out, getting rid of a successful SW game seems very unlikely any time soon.

Windows 11 - 32-bit PCs won't be able to install it.

 

The only reason they shut down SWG was SWTOR - that game had very few players towards the end but they otherwise would have kept it running. SWTOR is getting lots of money from the cartel market, way more than it costs to maintain it. Especially with the recent success of the shows and the lists of imminent new ones coming out, getting rid of a successful SW game seems very unlikely any time soon.

History lesson:

Why SWG Died: https://www.cinemablend.com/games/Why-Star-Wars-Galaxies-Shutting-Down-33425.html

There will never be an update to the engine. It’s never going to happen. At this point I think we need to accept that fact and realise if this was any other IP, the game would have been shuttered long ago. EA don’t want to reinvest in the game and are trying to squeeze the last bit of profit from it by running it on an oily rag.

 

They won’t even give the team enough resources to fix the bugs or release content that’s bug free. Then they don’t give them resources to fix the new content either.

 

Does anyone really expect EA are going to give Bioware enough funds and resources to port to another engine or improve this one. The amount of man power to do that is phenomenal and so is the cost. EA are not going to do it unless Disney gives them a bunch of money and says remake the game. And we know that’s not going to happen because Disney’s already brought other companies onboard to make future open world SW games that don’t involve EA because they’ve seen how badly EA has dropped the ball with the SW IP.

 

Swtor has a limited time frame remaining. When these new games are released, it will be shuttered if it hasn’t already been. The same thing happened to SWG. We should all prepare ourselves that this is what’s going to happen with swtor.

I really wish I could disagree with this. I really do.

But Trixie is 100% correct. The engine will NEVER be updated or upgraded. The game simply is what it is, for as long as EA can milk a buck from it. Thankfully EA's days are numbered, so those potential games now under development outside EA's control will be the real future for SW in games.

I loved SWtoR, but it's time is coming to an end.

May the force serve us all well in the future.

History lesson:

 

Why SWG Died: https://www.cinemablend.com/games/Why-Star-Wars-Galaxies-Shutting-Down-33425.html

Nothing Smedley says can or should ever be taken at face value from any historian, he just didn't want to talk in that interview (or couldn't, legally) and his statement shut some people up.

Nothing Smedley says can or should ever be taken at face value from any historian, he just didn't want to talk in that interview (or couldn't, legally) and his statement shut some people up.

But we do know that SWG was contractually shuttered to make way for swtor. That’s on record from other sources too. (And no I’m not going to go find them). So there is no reason that can’t happen with swtor once it’s contractual period is up and another game is ready to launch.

But we do know that SWG was contractually shuttered to make way for swtor. That’s on record from other sources too. (And no I’m not going to go find them). So there is no reason that can’t happen with swtor once it’s contractual period is up and another game is ready to launch.

Yes, I'm not contradicting that in any way. I firmly believe SWTOR will keep going -until- there's something to replace it (and I doubt that there is anything being seriously worked on to do that). MMOs in general are easy/cheap to maintain and this one in particular is probably still making a lot of money from its cartel market. A couple years ago someone was bragging about this being a billion $ revenue game and it still gets listed on just about everyone's "top active mmos list" even if it's not at the top of them.