Game engine & physics

[StormFront]

Deus Ex 3 Engine Revealed

I just dont understand...

Actually THIS link might be of more interest.

Still a dumb idea....

[Xcom]

Thanks for posting.

[StormFront]

Originally Posted by Xcom

Thanks for posting.

'S'aright. Interested to see what others think of this though. Not exactly my "engine of choice", but at least it is free I suppose...

[Techguy]

Well, that answers a question I had in another thread. Didn't expect that. At least we can more or less expect DX3 to look/run better than IW did

[Kneo24]

It makes sense to me. If other current projects in the company are using that engine, why not use it across the board? It makes it easier to swap coders around when necessary. It may not be the best choice for engines, but it does save the company costs in other areas. As long as they can do what they need to do with this engine, then I don't see any problem using it.

[StormFront]

Originally Posted by Kneo24

It makes sense to me. If other current projects in the company are using that engine, why not use it across the board? It makes it easier to swap coders around when necessary. It may not be the best choice for engines, but it does save the company costs in other areas. As long as they can do what they need to do with this engine, then I don't see any problem using it.

It makes fiscal sense, sure. Not having to shell out for your starter engine is a great idea. The only obvious concern is that the engine is very limited and, flatly, a little bit sucky going by what it has done so far.

Tomb Raider: Legend may have saved the TR franchise, but as a PC game it was a nightmare. Hideously unoptimised, a massive resource hog and, flatly, a lot less good lookng than its counterparts.

Sure they have stated that they will be "developing" the engine, which is a good sign, but they only have 2 years to knock this game together, so I find myself wondering....

[brambi]

Originally Posted by Xcom

Thanks for posting.

I really appreciate it, that you read all the posts here and listen to people.

[RÆPËR]

I heard they are using the crystal engine because it is the in house engine for eidos, and they want to develop it more. I would love to see DX3 be more than just a "test game." I would rather see the new unreal engine, rendering is unbelievable. Another option would be the Source engine (by Valve) because it already has amazing physics programmed into it. According to the Montreal Eidos website, they are looking for a physics programmer, wouldn't it be cheaper and quicker to just buy rights to the Source engine from Valve?

[StormFront]

Originally Posted by RÆPËR

I heard they are using the crystal engine because it is the in house engine for eidos, and they want to develop it more. I would love to see DX3 be more than just a "test game." I would rather see the new unreal engine, rendering is unbelievable. Another option would be the Source engine (by Valve) because it already has amazing physics programmed into it. According to the Montreal Eidos website, they are looking for a physics programmer, wouldn't it be cheaper and quicker to just buy rights to the Source engine from Valve?

Not to be an arse, but there are already 2 or 3 threads discussing this - did we need a third?

Anyway, even if you have an "out fo the box" physics SDK, you still need a physics programmer to deploy it.

Liscensing UEng3 costs something in the region of $250,000 so a programmer is definetly cheaper than that. As for Source: I cannot express how glad I am that they did not use that stinking piece of crap. The engine is utterly bereft of any useful features and is still to this day incapabable of rendering anything aproaching a large scale environment. Crystal is a FAR better choice than Source: Hell the Minesweeper engine is a better choice than Source...

[Dave W]

The advantage with Source is that it'd be easy to customise it. Although the SDK tools are on par with the original Deus Ex (i.e. a complete arse to use - compiling models in Source is horrible.) But yes, the renderer is terrible (normal and specular maps just don't work well). It wouldn't be bad at rendering Deus Ex-like levels though - typically human structures which is heavily reliant on BSP.

[WhatsHisFace]

Originally Posted by StormFront

Not to be an arse, but there are already 2 or 3 threads discussing this - did we need a third?

Anyway, even if you have an "out fo the box" physics SDK, you still need a physics programmer to deploy it.

Liscensing UEng3 costs something in the region of $250,000 so a programmer is definetly cheaper than that. As for Source: I cannot express how glad I am that they did not use that stinking piece of crap. The engine is utterly bereft of any useful features and is still to this day incapabable of rendering anything aproaching a large scale environment. Crystal is a FAR better choice than Source: Hell the Minesweeper engine is a better choice than Source...

Thank you. All this time I thought I was the only one who didn't have dreams powered by the Source engine. Even when it released in the wake of Farcry and Doom 3, it was garbage. It's seen enhancements over time, but not the overhaul it needs.

Anyway, the Crystal engine with an all-new renderer and some Montreal-enhancements ought to be fine. Project Snowblind forged a decent base for Deus Ex to be built on.

[minus0ne]

Originally Posted by StormFront

Deus Ex 3 Engine Revealed

I just dont understand...

Actually THIS link might be of more interest.

Still a dumb idea....

Why is it a dumb idea? Please explain the reasoning behind your opinion. I seriously don't see how licensing a perfectly customizable, well-performing 'engine' is a bad decision. Here's why;

- They won't have to spend half the production cycle building an engine from the ground up. But they still have a great degree of control over expanding the engine for DX3. They can start making the game right now.
- It's an in-house engine. The devs know it in-and-out.
- TRL looked pretty stunning (and that was developed on an special build of this engine, just as EM will make a special version of it for DX3)

It's like some people don't know the difference between the engine and the game content. The engine does NOT dictate the use of first/third person, it doesn't dictate the locations (or types of locations, perhaps only in size) and they can basically augment it as they see fit. I'm glad they didn't go for UE3 or Source; Source was what brought a FP-RPG (!) like VTMB down, UE3 is totally unproven (unless you actually believe Gears of War for PC is a good game, there's a reason Epic got sued by a devhouse because UE3 didn't deliver in the slightest). I highly doubt they chose this engine so Eidos can benefit from it in future projects (that would not make fiscal sense).

[StormFront]

Originally Posted by minus0ne

Why is it a dumb idea? Please explain the reasoning behind your opinion. I seriously don't see how licensing a perfectly customizable, well-performing 'engine' is a bad decision. Here's why;

- They won't have to spend half the production cycle building an engine from the ground up. But they still have a great degree of control over expanding the engine for DX3. They can start making the game right now.
- It's an in-house engine. The devs know it in-and-out.
- TRL looked pretty stunning (and that was developed on an special build of this engine, just as EM will make a special version of it for DX3)

It's like some people don't know the difference between the engine and the game content. The engine does NOT dictate the use of first/third person, it doesn't dictate the locations (or types of locations, perhaps only in size) and they can basically augment it as they see fit. I'm glad they didn't go for UE3 or Source; Source was what brought a FP-RPG (!) like VTMB down, UE3 is totally unproven (unless you actually believe Gears of War for PC is a good game, there's a reason Epic got sued by a devhouse because UE3 didn't deliver in the slightest). I highly doubt they chose this engine so Eidos can benefit from it in future projects (that would not make fiscal sense).

And it's also like some people don't know how to, you know, READ THE ENTIRE THREAD.

Look around this has been discussed a lot and in good depth. Don't turn up late to a thread and just quote the first post, you look daft...

EDIT: No I had to add more, your post is just so stunningly idiotic:

- Yes, they will have to spend a lot of the production cycle building the engine up as they have already said they will do this. Again: READ.
- It's not an in house engine really as this Dev team just got damned well hired so they have never used it before. Again: READ
- TRL may have looked good but it performed like a rabid, 2 legged dog. The most powerful, bleeding edge machines of the time could not run it. It took an armful of patching and an entire generation of tech before TRL was even viable.
- One thing we agree on: SOURCE sucks...
- UE3 is far from unproven. Again if you'd wind yer neck in and look around for a moment you would see that there are alot of games using UEng 3 and all are doing very well. The idiots who tried to sue EPIC have yet to manage to make a case, but hey: don;t let mere facts stand in the way of badly written rhetoric

[minus0ne]

Originally Posted by StormFront

And it's also like some people don't know how to, you know, READ THE ENTIRE THREAD.

Look around this has been discussed a lot and in good depth. Don't turn up late to a thread and just quote the first post, you look daft...

In good depth? LMAO, sorry but that's just not true. I browsed through the thread. I don't see how I can't comment on the first post, or how that makes me look daft (see if I care). You barely mentioned the points above (if at all) and still haven't given much of an argument to support your opinion (although your last edited post is finally going somewhere).

Originally Posted by StormFront

EDIT: No I had to add more, your post is just so stunningly idiotic:

- Yes, they will have to spend a lot of the production cycle building the engine up as they have already said they will do this. Again: READ.

I meant as opposed to building an engine from the ground up, I thought that was clear

Originally Posted by StormFront

- It's not an in house engine really as this Dev team just got damned well hired so they have never used it before. Again: READ

It's in-house because it's an Eidos studio. In-house also means it's free. We still don't know exactly who's working on it, as they've only hired less than half the people that'll be working on it (and they can easily hire people who have experience with this engine).

Originally Posted by StormFront

- TRL may have looked good but it performed like a rabid, 2 legged dog. The most powerful, bleeding edge machines of the time could not run it. It took an armful of patching and an entire generation of tech before TRL was even viable.

Actually it played nicely on my 3.2Ghz (P4!) and x1900xtx machine, granted, with the "next-gen" setting turned off (and still looked very nice). But that was not to blame on the engine, but on the coders who modified the engine. This dev team can learn from their mistakes (!) and build a proper customized engine (also, this team will have DOUBLE the time the TRL devs had, that also means more thorough bug testing and QA).

Originally Posted by StormFront

- One thing we agree on: SOURCE sucks...

Good

Originally Posted by StormFront

- UE3 is far from unproven. Again if you'd wind yer neck in and look around for a moment you would see that there are alot of games using UEng 3 and all are doing very well

Far from unproven? Heh. There have been a few console games (which are bug free because well, all the hardware is the same ), but if the PC games so far are an indication, UE3 sucks for PC (or at the very least, is pretty hard to get right for devs). BioShock was extremely bug ridden as was Gears of War. What made BioShock a good game despite this, had nothing to do with the engine, but with the art direction and solid (though repetitive) gameplay
and decent story. UT3 is developed by Epic themselves, so yeah, that'd be embarrassing if they didn't manage to utilize their own engine properly. Please name me all these supposed UE3 licensed success stories, because I can't find them.

Originally Posted by StormFront

The idiots who tried to sue EPIC have yet to manage to make a case, but hey: don;t let mere facts stand in the way of badly written rhetoric

Idiots? Right, well at least they're successful idiots then. They were the first to license the engine, and then had to wait more than a year to actually get their hands on it, contrary to their contract. Also, UE3 promised more than it could deliver. And they're not the first or last devhouse to criticize Epic for UE3, it seems only Epic knows its secrets and doesn't share them easily (even to licensees). Proclaiming your opinion as fact doesn't make it so, you know. And licensing UE3 doesn't guarantee a good game, in fact, it doesn't seem to help at all.

[StormFront]

Originally Posted by minus0ne

Far from unproven? Heh. There have been a few console games (which are bug free because well, all the hardware is the same ), but if the PC games so far are an indication, UE3 sucks for PC (or at the very least, is pretty hard to get right for devs). BioShock was extremely bug ridden as was Gears of War. What made BioShock a good game despite this, had nothing to do with the engine, but with the art direction and solid (though repetitive) gameplay
and decent story. UT3 is developed by Epic themselves, so yeah, that'd be embarrassing if they didn't manage to utilize their own engine properly. Please name me all these supposed UE3 licensed success stories, because I can't find them.

Ahh... now I see the problem. You either don't have the machine to run UEng 3 or you are simply listening to the hype on the whiny forum boards out there.
UEng 3 games:
-Bioshock - Without doubt one of the worst games I have ever played, but technically speaking it ran flawlessly, all features maxed, DX10 enabled, 1600x1200, frame limiter maxed solid.
-UT3 - Actually the most buggy UENG3 release so far. In D10 thereis a lot of hitching in certain maps but that aside it runs perectly, again at max DX10 details
-Gears of War - Not one single problem to be seen. Max detail and resolution, DX10 enabled. Flawless.
-Monster Madness:Battle for Suburbia - Very weak game but has zero performance or compatability problems.
-Rainbow Six: Vegas - Again not a good game, but no performance problems.
-Blacksite: Area 51 - Hard to believe this uses UENg3 given it is so butt ugly, but bad game aside, it again runs flawlessly.
-MOH:Airbourne - Again zero issues.

And these are just the games that I have played that use the engine. Don't just listen to hype from people with crap hardware and no technical skills. Their problems are entirely their own.

I'm not even gonna list the console games that use it (Mostly 'cos could care less about them) so look here

Originally Posted by minus0ne

Idiots? Right, well at least they're successful idiots then. They were the first to license the engine, and then had to wait more than a year to actually get their hands on it, contrary to their contract. Also, UE3 promised more than it could deliver. And they're not the first or last devhouse to criticize Epic for UE3, it seems only Epic knows its secrets and doesn't share them easily (even to licensees). Proclaiming your opinion as fact doesn't make it so, you know. And licensing UE3 doesn't guarantee a good game, in fact, it doesn't seem to help at all.

Again, listening to hype. A company that completely dropped the ball, realised they could not deliver as promised so found someone else to take the blame.

Go look at how that case is doing. Go on...

Facts are, oddly, far more useful than hype touted by whinging people....

[WhatsHisFace]

Originally Posted by StormFront

-Bioshock - Without doubt one of the worst games I have ever played, but technically speaking it ran flawlessly, all features maxed, DX10 enabled, 1600x1200, frame limiter maxed solid.

You're going to hell.

[minus0ne]

Originally Posted by StormFront

Ahh... now I see the problem. You either don't have the machine to run UEng 3 or you are simply listening to the hype on the whiny forum boards out there.

I don't visit "whiny forum boards" save for this one and TTLG. DX forums, on average, seem a little less low-brow than most gaming forums (yes, that's complementing your excellent tastes in games ). I already mentioned my machine's specs and BioShock ran well (fps wise), except for the CTDs and general buggedness that plagued gameplay (save often became my mantra). Granted, I have an ATI card, which seemed to cause more problems than nVidia owners, but hey, lots of people have ATI cards. Congratulations on your flawless playthrough, but just have a look at the patch changelogs and see what sort of crap others like me had to go through. And I doubt you played BioShock on release since there were tons of gameplay bugs EVERYONE had to suffer. Even on 'next-gen' hardware there were major issues (like the Vista/DX10 audio stuttering bug and the lack of widescreen support).

Also, by your reasoning, it's perfectly fine for DX3 to run crap on anything but the absolute latest hardware, which isn't something most DX players are looking forward to.

Originally Posted by StormFront

UEng 3 games:
-Bioshock - Without doubt one of the worst games I have ever played, but technically speaking it ran flawlessly, all features maxed, DX10 enabled, 1600x1200, frame limiter maxed solid.

And without VSync I'm sure it all looked like utter crap

Originally Posted by StormFront

-UT3 - Actually the most buggy UENG3 release so far. In D10 thereis a lot of hitching in certain maps but that aside it runs perectly, again at max DX10 details

I wouldn't know, but don't you think it's saying something if they can't properly code their own engine?

Originally Posted by StormFront

-Gears of War - Not one single problem to be seen. Max detail and resolution, DX10 enabled. Flawless.

Well now I know you're full of it.

Originally Posted by StormFront

-Monster Madness:Battle for Suburbia - Very weak game but has zero performance or compatability problems.
-Rainbow Six: Vegas - Again not a good game, but no performance problems.
-Blacksite: Area 51 - Hard to believe this uses UENg3 given it is so butt ugly, but bad game aside, it again runs flawlessly.
-MOH:Airbourne - Again zero issues.

Luckily I wouldn't know as I haven't played them, but you're not exactly selling your own argument here (crap game - but.. - crap game - but..).

Originally Posted by StormFront

And these are just the games that I have played that use the engine. Don't just listen to hype from people with crap hardware and no technical skills. Their problems are entirely their own.

Again, do you even know the difference between gamebreaking BUGS and incompatability with common hardware (both serious issues you know).

Originally Posted by StormFront

I'm not even gonna list the console games that use it (Mostly 'cos could care less about them) so look here

Same here (with the not caring). At the risk of repeating myself, I don't care how UE3 performs on consoles since it's all the same hardware (and is no indication of how it performs on PCs).

Originally Posted by StormFront

Again, listening to hype. A company that completely dropped the ball, realised they could not deliver as promised so found someone else to take the blame.

So my opinion/view is hype and yours is fact. How very convenient

Originally Posted by StormFront

Go look at how that case is doing. Go on...

I'm not passionate enough about internet discussion to fly to the US and wait for a verdict, but you seem to have plenty of time, be my guest.

Originally Posted by StormFront

Facts are, oddly, far more useful than hype touted by whinging people....

..

Originally Posted by StormFront

My, you crack yourself up, little buddy.

[Necros]

Originally Posted by StormFront

-Bioshock - Without doubt one of the worst games I have ever played, but technically speaking it ran flawlessly, all features maxed, DX10 enabled, 1600x1200, frame limiter maxed solid.

First of all, I think it's a good game though not as good as I hoped it would be. I didn't have many problems, only a few, it crashed once or twice too but no really major problems. But others did have issues with it, so I guess you were amongst the lucky ones.

-UT3 - Actually the most buggy UENG3 release so far. In D10 thereis a lot of hitching in certain maps but that aside it runs perectly, again at max DX10 details

Well, there were a few minor bugs but calling it the most buggy release is just dumb.

-Gears of War - Not one single problem to be seen. Max detail and resolution, DX10 enabled. Flawless.

Yeah, like minus0ne said, you're full of it. It was a very buggy game that crashed for a lot of people and had many issues. But I have to say it was very well optimized and ran great on my old rig too (I've upgraded it a bit since then, it had a Celeron CPU running @ 2,8GHz, 6600GT and 768MB RAM).

-Rainbow Six: Vegas - Again not a good game, but no performance problems.

It was a good tactical shooter, though not as complex as the earlier versions but good nonetheless. I don't remember big bugs but it had some small issues and I think the optimization could've been better.

-MOH:Airbourne - Again zero issues.

Maybe this game had the least problems but it had some, though again minor stuff. And it looked like crap, so no wonder why it ran well.

You didn't mention Stranglehold which also looked like crap and had a lot of bugs too. I haven't played with Blacksite yet but I think I can agree with you on that...
On the other hand there's Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway which will be the best looking UE3 game so far, it's just beautiful.

I like UE3 a lot and I would have loved to see DX3 using that tech but after seeing screens from TR:U I'm not worried, this engine will be great too. And the guys at EM are perfectly capable to improve on it too, so I don't see why we shouldn't be happy.

On the Silicon Knights issue I agree with you however. I think that company is just trying to blame Epic for their incompetence. Randy Pitchford (head of Gearbox) said: "I've seen some of the stuff on the internet about the problems and I don't know if these developers are maybe new, or not used to using other people's technology or if they've gotten too many inexperienced developers or they're just cry-babies." I think something like this is the truth, it's one thing to have the tech, you have to know how to use it, how to work with it. And it just doesn't make sense to me why Epic would hold stuff back from the others, they aren't that stupid...

[guru7892]

ok, I know I heard its the same one you guys used for tomb raiders something and what-not (sorry, never got into tomb raider), but what is it? why are you using it? what are the planed tech implimentations? (any third party engines like havok or physX)

also what engine did you derive your Tomb Raider engine from (or did you make it ground up?)

I mean if Carmack gonna talk smack about mega-textures, UE3 is gonna boast high-poly actors and static meshes, and Valve gonna rail on about shaders and facial animations...

(although you arn't really going commercial with your engine, so I can't blame you for not talking, I also can't balme you for signing an NDA (if you did jsut say so))

[Xcom]

This is from Crystal's website:

We believe that next gen technology coupled with strong tools support is the key to building next gen games. Crystal Dynamics employs a common next generation engine across the studio, supporting game specific additions and specializations. Here are a couple of our guiding principals we follow:

Powerful Tools: As the content requirements for game teams are increasing dramatically, the need for powerful tools to streamline workflow is key. Our goal for tools is to provide data driven solutions with minimized iteration time. For many resources this includes live editing on all target platforms.

Game Focused: Engine features are driven by existing game teams needs. Our shared technology group works directly with the internal game teams on a day to day basis. Philosophically we are a studio working on multiple games, rather than separate games using shared technology.

Almost all of our technology is developed in house, with a current focus on XBox 360, and Playstation 3 technology. Here is a sampling of some notable features:

• Streaming: Asynchrous streaming of all resources is fully supported, allowing entire worlds to be traversed without loading screens.
  
• Rendering: A lot of development is going on for next gen rendering including full dynamic lighting, shadowing, and shader work.
  
• Physics: Our robust in house physics system supports a wide range of features including full rigid body dynamics with multiple constraint types, boyancy, and vehicles, among other things.
  
• Animation: The animation system is data driven and supports many features including multiple simulatious blends and interpolation, cloth simulation, IK solutions, and a data driven way to support higher order animation states.
  
• Audio: We have many powerful features in audio, including physics driven sound, dynamic music systems, and multiple simultaneous audio streams.
  
• AI: Some of the notable features of our AI include a robust path planning system which can be automatically generated from world mesh, and an advanced scripting system for scripting nearly any part of the world.
  
• Cinematics: We support a highly interactive cinematic system for authoring detailed cinematics realtime using in game assets in combination with streaming cinematic data.

[WhatsHisFace]

The recent Tomb Raider games were developed with the PS2 as the lead platform. Don't take the visuals out on the engine, it's the PS2's fault.

[gamer0004]

@Xcom: thanks for the information.
The engine sounds quite good, although this is purely marketing, of course.

[G.A.Pster]

Hmm, frankly I think it’s a mistake to use it.
......
But, I don’t really know much about engines I’m just basing my opinions on the TR games.

[RedFeather1975]

I am not familiar with the Tomb Raider game in question, but if this engine can support physics and collision well enough to facilitate emergent game play in DX3, it's fine by me.

[DXeXodus]

Incase you are scared that the Crystal Dynamics engine falls short graphically:











http://www.gamersyde.com/news_6957.html

And they are tweaking this engine specifically for DX3. So I'm happy.