Treyarch have recently come under fire for their choice of game engine. Whilst the likes of Crysis and Battlefield sport recently developed game engines, Black Ops 2 is based on the same system that was being used in 2005.
Black Ops Community Manager David Vondehaar was quick to respond, stating that the engine has evolved significantly since it was first released. He went on to say that rival developers have failed to deliver the 60 frames per second that makes Call of Duty titles feel smoother and more fast paced than the likes of Halo or Battlefield.
He continued: “And we can make it beautiful – that’s through years and years of working with the engine, improving upon it and improving the pipeline and improving our approach, our lighting renderin… people like to talk about the engine, but the truth of the matter is that this isn’t like something that was invented six years ago. At this point that engine doesn’t resemble anything like any engine – we’ve ripped out the UI system, the rendering and the lighting are all new, the core gameplay systems are all new.”
Vondehaar concluded with “I never really understood. [Black Ops 2] runs at 60 and it’s gorgeous. What exactly is there to be upset about with the engine?”
My thoughts on the Call of Duty game engine
I have two real issues with Call of Duty. The first is specific to Treyarch titles, although I can only base this on experience of the original Black Ops. On anything less than a perfect connection it is almost impossible to snipe effectively as bullets would literally go missing. I have on occasion stood behind an oblivious enemy player, fired 2 consecutive bullets into their back (whilst hard scoping!!) only for them to turn around and knife me in the face, which brings me to my second gripe: panic knifing.
What better way to describe panic knifing than an animated GIF? The problem was most notable in Modern Warfare 2 thanks to the Commando perk, which would allow panic knifing to take place from one end of the map to another, although it existed in Black Ops as well as Modern Warfare 3.
Hopefully Treyarch have managed to solve the problem by removing the ability to knife by simply squeezing down on the left joystick, however I’ll reserve judgement until 13th November, 2012.
