Funcom Q4 Financial Report - New ETA for the map and other details you may have missed

I think the budget increase for Dune is actually good news for conan exiles as well. I am assuming they will use unreal engine for both the conan expansion as well as the Dune survival game, which means they can share a lot of improvements, systems, netcode etc and apply them to both projects, im just not sure if the conan expansion has to stay on the same old unreal version as vanilla, do you have any clue if they can have the expansion on a updated unreal similar to Dune?

Unlikely to see a new engine version for the expansion. I’m not making that assumption because I have some sort of insider knowledge or something. I’m saying that based on business practices in the industry, and from basic understanding of game development as a whole. You definitely won’t see the original map use “the current version of the engine”, with the expansion using a “new version.” That’s a logistical nightmare, not even the biggest of the biggest studios out there would do that. If they were going to use a completely new engine version, it would be a sequel.

Systems are all interconnected together, you change one single thing by changing engine versions, you could than spend months getting everything talking together again.

You are correct that they are going to use UE4 for Dune. That’s been mentioned several times in the financial streams that they are taking what they learned from making Conan Exiles and applying that to Dune so that Dune is bigger and better. And it’s listed as a hiring requirement on their job website for many months now :stuck_out_tongue:

Dune I highly suspect will be on a newer engine (why wouldn’t it be? Especially on a much bigger budget), but Conan is probably going to stay where it’s at. That’s just basic economics with game development in general. It’s very expensive and time consuming to update engines, and you almost never see it in an established game. The exceptions are things that have a massive following, like a World of Warcraft and it’s millions of subscribers.

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Makes sense, thanks for clarifying

Will Dune also have nudity option like how Conan exiles ?
Don’t get wrong , I like normal portrayed nudity . Hoping no censorship plz

Thanks for the info @TheLOLxd2 good job man.

As to all the speculations and what not, I am very excited and for me whatever comes is a insta buy. My main issue in recent months is the lack of dev streams! I just want a crumb of wtf is going on. Even if its not expansion related or whatever. I NEED A STREAM OF DEVS!!! :drooling_face:

:metal: :smiling_imp:

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Maybe, maybe not. But nudity is kinda built into Conan lore, with lots of scantily clad people in Howard’s books, whereas Herbert’s Dune series didn’t try to sell with sexual themes. A strong, tough barbarian could survive Hyborian Age deserts for some time, but a person on Arrakis without full body protection would die in a matter of hours.

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Dude, it’s also going to be survival game , it should have nudity option .
Look at other games like Rust and SCUm has it .
Nudity works in Conan Not just because of Conan lore thing because it’s also survival crafting themed game . Conan exiles isn’t the first game to have nudity .

Relax. Kapoteeni acknowledges the possibility.
I think you may get ‘partial nudity’, but it may not include sexually oriented nudity. There might be a quote of the developers somewhere saying that Dune will not have the same kind of nudity Conan Exiles has, but I haven’t looked for it yet - it could be in one of the streams itself instead of in an article.

Although I’m not a hardcore Dune or Conan fan, it should be said that fans of Dune are probably more excited for the Spice than for nudity. After all, the game is focused on Dune fans and will be based of off the movies (which I don’t think will go all out on the nudity
).

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Here’s a crazy idea: maybe starting in your birthday suit is not the only way to have a game belong in the survival genre :wink:

Seriously, anyone who has read any of the Dune books knows that the survival aspect in the Dune setting does not include cobbling together your survival gear from rocks, sticks and plants. Pick any setting from Dune universe and they’ll all share one thing in common: being naked means it’s too late for any survival techniques, because you’re going to die.

Now, that doesn’t mean the game shouldn’t have an option for nudity. It just means you should call a spade a spade and say “I like having a nudity option” instead of trying to sell it as a necessary feature for a survival game genre :smiley:

Not if you use the voice and make somebody give you their stillsuit.

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This is a fantastic point. When using other’s source material, it’s about being true to that material. Conan is sword and sorcery which anyone who knows the art of Boris Vallejo and Frank Frazetta should be familiar with the sexualized nature of the genre. Dune on the other hand is a messiah story, and while not completely prudish (Lady Jessica is a concubine afterall), it wasn’t about looking sexy in a stillsuit (although she did in the movie
 but I don’t think many will argue for the David Lynch version to be canonized, as cool as I thought it was). So while you can undoubtedly remove a stillsuit where you would be naked underneath, being a svelt toned, well endowed character is not really essential to the presentation of Dune. One of the things I hope Dune does with body types is allow being extremely overweight, since Baron Harkonnen wasn’t exactly a gym addict


Map “expansion” is the right choice! Glad to hear it!

We won’t have to worry about nearly as many new “stuck spots” or “floating trees”.

We won’t have to start building our bases all over again.

Player base and communities won’t be split up.

We can maintain a level of “expertise” from veteran players that are able to help new players. Rather than everything being new.

There has been too much work on dungeons and stuff to throw it all away.

Horrah for a map expansion!

P.S. Please make an Anarchy Online 2. A legit masterpiece. If you can dump 50m into Dune, maybe you can do it for Anarchy Online 2
 and make your own cash cow like WoW did.

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Three months without a stream or an announcement is pretty bad. I know that the Funcom stock buyout is going on but you would expect them to be able to tease some stuff. It’s very disappointing.

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Ummm
 am I the only one who read this part:

I mean, they literally said “we’re slapping a different name on this and that’s all”. Nobody said anything about whether it’s going to be on separate servers or not, or any other details.

So “overweight” shape option idea is ok .

While option to take off whole clothes to actual naked (with censor option ) is bad ?!

What ?!

Neither @darthphysicist nor I said nudity is “bad”. By the way, did you also send him an angry DM like you sent me? :wink:

We get it, you like nekkid toons. There’s nothing wrong with that, a lot of us like them too. Next time, feel free to just say so, instead of coming up with silly reasons and then blowing up at people who are discussing the source material behind the game :stuck_out_tongue:

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No you’re not the only one, heh. And I am quite sure that it does not mean “expanding the current map”, I think it means they’re trying to convey that this will be more than your typical DLC pack, thus they’re labeling it an Expansion (capital E). Just like games used to do (and still do, by the way) before everything had the “DLC” label slapped on it.

grumble grumble

Which everyone was cool with, except nowadays people think they’re owed everything for free. Now get off my lawn, dagnabbit!

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Nudity on Dune is not okay - not because of modesty, but because the coriolis winds of Arrakis blowing sand at you at 800 km/h will strip flesh from your bones in a matter of moments. It’s going to be bad in a survival game if you don’t survive.

Also, when writing his Conan stories, Robert E. Howard knew that he was more likely to sell to the publisher if his stories contained some boobage, and he had his mother’s hospital bills to pay. That’s why we have plentiful boobage associated with Conan.

Frank Herbert wrote about social and ecological climate in a far future galaxy with a religious and cultural background that narrowed human thinking. It’s not about what is good or bad or acceptable, it’s about what the Dune books’ theme was. Sexual themes did not play such a major role in Dune as they did in Conan, and the games should ideally reflect the themes from the lore in which they are based. So violence, gore and nudity for Conan; and environmental consciousness and and oppressive political and religious culture for Dune.

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I didnt say it was bad. I was trying to say that the way the nudity is presented is important. Dongs to the knees and enormous jugs? Not really Dune-y.

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Hah. They can make “Nudity: Full” an option on character creation, then as soon as the game starts, you get a popup: “Unfortunately, your character had an unhealthy obsession with exposed flesh and is now a dried husk. Create new character? Yes/No”.

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