Frostbite Engine game engine from EA Digital Illusions CE.
The first game, released on Frostbyte – Battlefield Bad Company, console exclusive. the game, that laid the foundation for the engine on the PC, became the Battlefield Bad Company 2, published in 2010 year.
The modified engine was called Frostbite 2. game, released on this engine, became Battlefield 3. Electronic Arts powerfully promoted the new version of the engine and the new Battlefield. According to PR people, the game supported real time lighting, destruction, HDR Audio. By the way, worth saying, that the engine was not developed by EA themselves, and bought by them in 2006 year studio DICE. And if the same Unreal Engine became open to all developers, then Frostbite became closed, available for use only within the publisher’s company.
Frostbite Game Engine: technologies
Because. closed engine, there is no information from the developers themselves. But there are reviews from other game developers, who had to deal with the brainchild of Dice. So, in the book Jason Schreyer “Blood, sweat and pixels. The other side of the video game industry” talks about BioWare’s experience with Frostbite.
Exploring the possibilities of a new engine is both exciting and humiliating
Posted by studio head Aarin Flynn on the BioWare blog in September 2012 of the year
Dragon Age: Inquisition from BioWare was developed on the engine of the Swedish company. And then a number of problems arose.. First of all, the Battlefield engine did not have all the necessary tools. It has been well adapted to first-person shooters., but with RPG games it was different.
If the engine is like a car factory, then in 2012 year, When did the development of “Inquisition” begin?, the Frostbite engine was like a car factory without an assembly line.
From book “Blood, sweat and pixels”.
Frostbite Game Engine: minuses
So, Frostbite Engine game engine did not imply a third-person view, as well as the ability to quickly save. These functions had to be written from scratch. Almost two years were spent on their creation and adaptation. Secondly, the engine lacked automatic technology update technology. Developers had to literally manually copy new files to the original frostbyte directory. It took a lot of time and effort. Designers also worked in abnormal conditions.
“Having reached the in-game dialogue, i opened my tools at the same time, and then, barely reaching the end of the line, very quickly pressed the “pause” button, because otherwise I would have to play until the next line. Then I had to add animation. At the same time, I dropped everything two or three times, as everything fell apart, and I had to start all over again. This was the worst tool experience of my life.
From the memoirs of John Epler, in-game video director.
And while the Frostbite team at DICE was supporting the designers, answering their questions and correcting mistakes, but, her options were limited.. There was also the time difference: between Sweden and Edmonton, she was eight hours. If one of the BioWare designers had a question for DICE this afternoon, the answer came only the next day.
Frostbite Game Engine: pros
Only the artists remained in the black. With such a powerful toolkit, they got the opportunity to create really colorful detailed landscapes.
Backgrounds were created by artists faster, than any other aspect of the game. For a long time, there was a joke among the developers of the project: we made a fantastic screenshot generator, because they could walk on all levels and do nothing. You could take great photos.
Lead Artist Ben McGrath
Conclusion
As a result, Dice made the engine, perfect for the Battlefield series, but not suitable for most other genres of games due to the lack of the necessary tools. However, BioWare studio experience shows, that with great desire and due patience, any engine can be adapted for different tasks.