COMMUNITY - FORUMS - SOULBORN ENGINE
Overall Status of the Engine

So, I am honestly not trying to be be one of those people constantly harping on "when will we get details", but the more I think about the Soulborn Engine, the more concerned I get.

What is the status of this driving force behind the game.

Is the development done? Are they just starting? How far along are they? How easy is it to integrate that huge list of features Caspian mentioned in the SoE?

Without the Soulborn Engine, from what I understand, we don't have a game. All this other stuff is great, and they could get everything we ever wanted implemented, but if we don't have this - we don't have a game.

So, did I simply miss something in an old DJ, and this thing is already done and spinning along fine? Or, is there the possibility that while everything else looks great, CoE still falls on it's face because the Soulborn Engine can't do what it needs to do?

I mean, it's a pretty big deal, right?

Edit:

Sorry, I should have ended my post title with a question mark for clarity...


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8/10/2017 1:47:24 PM #1

I seem to recall some info a while back saying that the engine was something that had been worked on long before CoE was announced.

Might be wrong though


8/10/2017 1:53:06 PM #2

Posted By DavanOrdanska at 09:47 AM - Thu Aug 10 2017

I seem to recall some info a while back saying that the engine was something that had been worked on long before CoE was announced.

Might be wrong though

I do recall that something saying that work had started on it long ago, but I haven't seen anything that gives any indication as to where it is now.

EDIT:

This is what is in the Wiki:

"The Soulborn Engine is the engine which drives many of the primary game mechanics of Chronicles of Elyria.[1]

Dynamic Story[edit | edit source]

In Chronicles of Elyria the story evolves depending on the actions taken by the players. The engine will also control the distribution of Talents to those who may become integral to the story. The Soulborn Engine will also present players with choices and scenarios based upon their affinity and decisions."


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8/10/2017 2:13:07 PM #3

Caspian said long ago that he'd been tinkering on it for something like 12 years prior to CoE being created. In an early Q&A he claimed it was basically done. We've never seen it however, so of course there's always been speculation. I've always been a big proponent of them putting together a small demo of some of how it works. I'm sure he had to make some sort of debug screen to test it while he was making it. Otherwise how would he know if what he had functioned? I'd be interested to see that.


8/10/2017 3:09:39 PM #4

I think the only way they'd be able to show us the progress of the engine would be to show a demonstration of a PC and NPC interaction over the course of time but I wouldn't sweat it really. Hopefully we will get something like that when they come around to showing more gameplay mechanics.


UDL

8/10/2017 4:29:18 PM #5

Yeah could be quite tricky to give a demonstration because the changes made by the engine would necessarily have take place over a period of time.


8/10/2017 5:14:24 PM #6

Yeah, I understand it is tricky to show us the "status" of the engine, without having the actual game to show it in action.

However, it is a lot to take on faith. ;)


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8/10/2017 6:09:27 PM #7

What I've always assumed that the Devs would be operating the engine to some extent anyway. I doubt it would be a black box that just does it thing without further input. Surely its more of an interface that the Devs could use to manually a specific Talent or x Talents for example.


8/10/2017 7:11:20 PM #8

Posted By StaalBurgher at 2:09 PM - Thu Aug 10 2017

What I've always assumed that the Devs would be operating the engine to some extent anyway. I doubt it would be a black box that just does it thing without further input. Surely its more of an interface that the Devs could use to manually a specific Talent or x Talents for example.

I'm sure there will be some amount of Dev input, they've talked about "adjusting the dials" in certain situations, but at the same time, Caspian has said that he looks forward to not knowing in advance who will have talents, etc. which leads me to believe that it will do a lot on its own as well. Especially since your destiny will be tied to the alignment of the stars at your birth, and every single player having scenarios presented to them based on their destiny, alignment, and choices. I'm very curious to see how it plays out. It is one of the mechanics that will be tested in ElyriaMUD, so we'll see it then if not before.


Shieldwall Strong!

8/15/2017 2:19:56 PM #9

There is a lot of bold claims about the Soulbourne Engine and I really hope that every single one is true and more but this is not the first or last time we will hear about a game claiming revolutionary ground breaking AI.

Anyhoo, I think that the SBE will be just fine running the world itself. I am sure it has all sorts of built in balancing features or fates to keep things in check or balance out the destruction and unpredictablity the PCs throw into the system.

Any and all actions you take play out like a choose your own adventure book. So it can somewhat predict your patterns of play to account for such things.

But then you have the overall story going on which keeps things moving and prevents the game from getting stale as it throws completely random things at the world.

But like with any sorftware or system you cannot account for everything and anythings so a little intervention is required to make the SBE purr like a kitten. Not to mention impromptu GM events are always awesome.


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8/15/2017 3:18:11 PM #10

The Soulborn Engine is more of a "behind the scenes" type of engine. it's not really something you'll see, but you'll see it's effects.

If you compared CoE to something like a D&D game, the soulborn engine is the dungeon master and the dice rolls, the game world and setting is the UE4 Engine.

So you could say, the UE4 Engine is the game, and the Soulborn Engine tells the UE4 Engine what to do. Currently the Soulborn Engine would be capable of telling the UE4 Engine what to do, however stuff needs to be made before it can show us that visually.... and the visual aspect of that would be generated by the UE4 Engine.

So i think the OP is kind of getting the two different engines mixed up slightly, as the Soulborn Engine technically can't be seen.