ArenaNet, the development studio behind Guild Wars 2, has announced that it will replace its current library for running a web browser inside the game, CoherentUI, with Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF). In a blog post, Senior Engine Programmer Ben Dunkin explained that the upgrade is part of ArenaNet’s efforts to modernize its codebase and ensure that it meets emerging security standards.
According to Dunkin, the upgrade to CEF will offer several advantages over CoherentUI, including improved performance and support for the latest tools and standards. It will also provide more options to improve performance further, if required. Dunkin notes that the change should be transparent to players and that they will not see many visible differences immediately after the change.
However, Dunkin says that the upgrade will help the development team work more efficiently by eliminating some of the limitations they faced with CoherentUI. He shares examples of the Guild Wars 2 website displayed in both libraries, showing that CEF provides more accurate displays and allows the team to develop UI faster. The team has also seen a significant improvement in loading time, with CEF taking just 6.99 milliseconds to load the Trading Post, compared to CoherentUI’s 19.241 milliseconds.
ArenaNet initially released the upgrade to CEF on March 14 but rolled it back due to some issues that were discovered. The team has since addressed the issues and added mitigations. Dunkin notes that the upgrade is mission-critical, and the team has extensively tested it on various hardware and software configurations. However, given the thousands of configurations used by players, the team cannot test every scenario. Therefore, they will be monitoring the system closely and rolling back the release promptly if any issues arise.
In conclusion, Dunkin says that the upgrade to CEF is a necessary step to ensure the continued success of Guild Wars 2. While there may be some disruptions during the rollout, the team believes that the benefits outweigh the potential issues.