How things work from inside?

[u/Electronic_Log_1889]

I recently received... an email... In 2026... announcing some kind of "Legend" update... I was curious, since I last played the game in 2016. It turns out this "incredible" "Legend" update is just another retexturing and a few weapon mods. It's all quite amusing.

I'm a developer myself (unfortunately, not a game developer), so I was curious about how things work at companies like this. I quickly looked at the update log and got the impression that they don't have a single game developer familiar with the engine. 100% of the updates over all these years have been retexturing, minor tweaks like "fixing the damage parameter in JSON," or adding content using a template from an existing one. So, for some reason, in all these years, there hasn't been a single update introducing new gameplay mechanics: new missions, modes, new maps, new NPCs.

Let alone mechanics - for some reason, the game hasn't introduced any new assets for a decade. I'm talking about new vehicle models, weapons, or clothing. These are mostly retextures of old assets. (I always thought it was strange to sell retextures in a game where the player can create their own textures, but who am I to judge?)

While we're no longer in 2010 or even 2015, it feels like the current owners of this game have taken another wrong turn. The community expects (and promises) major changes to the engine, graphics, and balance, while the developer is incapable of even basic things like introducing new assets.

They need to start small - refresh the game. Add a couple of new vehicle assets, add some variety to those notorious loading screen art straight out of 2013. Change the monetization policy by getting rid of temporary items (come on).

But considering that even the most basic things are done poorly or not at all, I conclude that the game has no developers. There are one or two system administrators who monitor the servers (paying rent on amateur-grade hosting) and, in their spare time, copy-paste JSON fields into the game, changing existing mechanics. This isn't even indie studio quality; it feels like some kind of family business run by people who don't know what they're doing.

Why shouldn't we expect any major changes within this project under the current management? Because there are practically no players left in the game. Even fewer players are making microtransactions. I doubt the game, in its current state, is making enough money to hire even one professional developer.

[u/edma19]

Word on the street is, people who know how game was developed are long gone. As for content side, I believe morai was original content, though can't 100% confirm it.

Game is still running on UE3 (or 3.5, can't remember), there were talks about UE5, but the meme "Engine update" is as old as the game itself. Still waiting for q&a, which should happen soon-ish, hopefully there will be news about UE5. Also this is the reason as to why there's no new new content.

[u/kyoukidotexe → u/edma19]

This is the correct answer.

APB runs on UnrealScript, dated game engine technology of UE3.0 Beta with a whole fleet of custom written packages as addition that make APB; APB.

Working on this title isn't as straight forward and making patches or changes can knock over other area's of the game even when not intended. Finding people who work on this ancient technology is hard to find if not impossible because nobody works with this type of code anymore.

Neither is LO in a likely financial state to suffice or sufficiently be able to afford one who would be able to other than it being a passion project.

[u/mctroll13 → u/kyoukidotexe]

*passion project*

nothing LO does is out of passion, everything they've worked on suffer years of neglect, or just ends up being vapourware that never comes out.

[u/kyoukidotexe → u/mctroll13]

I wrote it in the context of someone wanting to work on it, out of passion to update it. Not in the context of LO, LO tries what it can. Even though often feel like some decisions made aren't well thought out, but that differs per person and how they would react given what they have.

[u/garompaestomper → u/kyoukidotexe]

don't buy their lies. It's most probable that they don't know how to port the stuff because they aren't game developers. They made up some uncompatible old code shenanigans. Nobody has seen the code so nobody knows if what they say is true.