Game engine & physics

[dark_angel_7]

Yeesh. CD's engine is very capable and powered Tomb Raider Anniversary which was actually a decent game for the PC. Sure it might not be a fully powered next-gen game but graphics arent everything and its time people realized that.

[Smoke Screen]

Well,hatepostings aside,my guess why they choose this engine has pure
economical reasons. Why spending another couple hundred grant for a
licence if a adaptable engine is inhouse available ? Why not spend the money
on a longer devtime and finetuned content ?
Im sure they have thought this through and the suits gave them an ok not
because "it was cool to smoke blow and have a nice conversation".
Im not a pro,they are. We didnt even know what this game is about. Its called
DX3 ok,but thats it. We will see what the devteam has in mind in a couple month i guess.

[Kneo24]

Originally Posted by Red

Vsync eliminates horizontal "choppiness" (tearing?) of the image. That happens mostly when the gameplay framerate is different from the refresh rate of the monitor.

That "choppiness" is easier to spot on CRT monitors, while the phenomena is quite subtle on LCD monitors.

Yeah... That just supports my whole "you only enable VSYNC when you need to" statement.

[minus0ne]

Originally Posted by StormFront

Just typed a reply to you but you are not worth getting banned for, son. You are an ignorant troll with no knowledge of games, programming or PC hardware and are just looking for fight so you can get a little Internet HardMan chubby on.

Looking for a fight? I was arguing the dev team had their reasons for choosing this engine. You obviously can't stand people with opposing views, and take internet discussion far too personally. If you can't reply to my post without getting yourself banned then your time on this forum will most likely be short-lived. Have fun adding people to your 'ignore list'.

Originally Posted by Dave W

I played it one day before release (in the UK anyway, 2 days or so after US release). I went through all of it, didn't notice any gameplay bugs at all and thourougly enjoyed the game. So sorry, but no.

OT: Not everyone, maybe. Speaking from personal experience, I didn't enjoy my first playthrough that much (especially the false widescreen resolutions, which didn't scale FOV at all, that got old fast), though it was a fun game, I'll give you that. My point however was, that the engine doesn't make or break the game. The CD engine doesn't limit the devs in making a great game, and had they chosen UE3 it would not have guaranteed a good game.

Originally Posted by Kneo24

It sounds like to me that you aren't quite sure of exactly what VSync does. (*Hint:* People only enable it if they have to.)

Hint: I was being sarcastic. And semi-offended/jealous that though he had a smooth playthrough, he disliked the game . I thought the smiley was pretty obvious.

And I'm still not convinced why it's OK for any game to only be bug-free on anything but the very latest hardware (which seems to be what SF is implying). Granted there's a limit to where a game can be scaled back to, but reality shows the large majority of gamers are on average not in possession of the very latest hardware, so devs should keep this in mind.

[Smoke Screen]

Originally Posted by minus0ne

And I'm still not convinced why it's OK for any game to only be bug-free on anything but the very latest hardware (which seems to be what SF is implying). Granted there's a limit to where a game can be scaled back to, but reality shows the large majority of gamers are on average not in possession of the very latest hardware, so devs should keep this in mind.

Indeed. However,i guess its probably the other way round to put the player
under pressure to buy some new hardware: You wanna play that game ? Well,than buy this and buy that too....
In fact,the meaning of "stricly next-gen" means exactly that i fear. I guess we
are lucky if we see a DirectX9-Renderpath in DX3 - for old Hardware.

[Red]

I doubt that project which is planned for release in 2 years from now would include D3D9 render-path... Although the engine is tuned to it and it could be done. But somehow I feel that the domination of DirectX 9c is coming to an end.

On the other hand, since the game will be multiplatform, it's very possible that it'll be backwards compatible with current renderers.

[the resolute girl]

----
seeing how Mafiasoft Vista performs I would say DX9 isn't done yet. Even Carmack says there is absolutely no incentive apart from staying on the "cutting edge" (aka marketing wise) to invest in DX10 rendering paths. Crysis showed that the limitations for the DX9 path were artificialy planted (I suspect MS + EA) and can be disabled anytime.
-----
about the engine:
I DO care what engine they use, it has at least to be able to do the following things:

- weather (would be nice)

- dynamic shadows (stealth play !!!!)

- a good sound engine
(I want proper sound propagation across rooms and a properly mixed soundtrack to it, not what Bioshock did, how could they get awards for that mess regarding sound)

- animation, ragdoll, blending, body awareness
(Thief3 struggled and failed. Chronicles of Rid and Crysis show you how it's DONE: body awareness. see your hands and feet. have animations for grabbing and add melee to it.I DON'T WANNA BE A FLOATING TORSO like in Bioshock)

- skills, talents, experience, attributes, .....
(If you wanna see a very, very, very good menue design, integration and skill system that hides behind flawless action see TheWitcher, for me they pulled it off. it's RPG and Action in one)

- decide for or against cutscenes/flashbacks
and then STAY with it. either do the interactive Valve cutscenes (can be good) or just go for plot advancing little movies. But if you mix them together you better take care they have a consistent design and look.

- upgrades, mods, combinations, choices
the choices I do in a game and "how" i play it should not only be reflected in the story but missions, locations, NPCs, equipment as well. I want the game to have replay value, give us hidden caches, easter eggs and the incentive to either retry a section or play the whole game again just 'cause we want find that special side-mission you only get if you choose to ........ (insert awesome cyberpunk story here)

I can certainly say that if you go the Bioshock - route (dumbing down, cutting away much loved systems in favor of mentally challenged gamers, no real replay value and a rushed finale with 2 endings which seemed tagged on)
you will maybe make some hype and get some money but you won't revive the franchise. That's enough from a business perspective but if you wanna establish a good name for your company and a loyal following for your game, you should go for the

Witcher/DeusEx1/SystemShock/BaldursGate/Fallout depth of story, gameplay and features......

- another thing: ONE of the most famous things of DX1 for me was that you could solve almost EVERY mission without killing anyone. I wanna see that extended from stealth action gameplay to diplomacy and social "skill". meaning if you are a bloody murderer, ppl will be intimidated or just run away. I wanna have the possibility to lie to ppl as well.

How you wanna achieve a good DX3 in a short amount of time is a riddle to me, I mean TheWitcher has replay value for 6 runthroughs at least and CDPR had 4 years to finish it.

good luck !!!

[Red]

Originally Posted by the resolute girl

How you wanna achieve a good DX3 in a short amount of time is a riddle to me

Well, they already have the kickstart by not having to build game engine from scratch. I believe that the team is competent enough to make a very good game.

Although, still, 2 years might be a bit too short timespan to do that... I hope that they will receive extra time (from Eidos) to finetune the game, rather than releasing an unfinished/unstable/bugful game.

[Smoke Screen]

Originally Posted by Red

I doubt that project which is planned for release in 2 years from now would include D3D9 render-path... Although the engine is tuned to it and it could be done. But somehow I feel that the domination of DirectX 9c is coming to an end.
On the other hand, since the game will be multiplatform, it's very possible that it'll be backwards compatible with current renderers.

It better is,cause D3D10 also means Vista,and simply put Vista sucks big time.
But well,probably,hopefully, with Service Pack x it gets much better in two years.

the resolute girl@: ACK. 2nd that.

[van_HellSing]

About body awareness - for some strange reason, it actually takes me out of the game when I look down and see my character's feet. It sort of reminds me that I'm supposed to have this external, in-game body, that I'm playing a character, not being the character, kind of posessing the body. Strangely enough, seeing my character's hands i.e. holding a weapon doesn't do that, neither does playing third person perspective games (in tpp, it's more like, say, watching a movie and identifying yourself with the main character).

Same goes for shadows. In Thief: DS it was strange and awkward to see my characters shadow, especially that it was bound to the view cam, so the torso stayed level while I moved around.

[minus0ne]

Originally Posted by Red

I doubt that project which is planned for release in 2 years from now would include D3D9 render-path... Although the engine is tuned to it and it could be done. But somehow I feel that the domination of DirectX 9c is coming to an end.

On the other hand, since the game will be multiplatform, it's very possible that it'll be backwards compatible with current renderers.

Actually a lot of critically acclaimed devs are questioning the wisdom of developing for DX10, as resolute girl already said, John Carmack being one of the better known ones;
http://www.dailytech.com/John+Carmac...rticle5665.htm

Originally Posted by Carmack

Those in awe of the potential offered by DX10 may want to hold off on that shiny graphics card purchase, as Carmack says that there isn’t a huge need for new hardware just yet, as current hardware is more than adequate. “All the high-end video cards right now -- video cards across the board --are great nowadays,” he said. “Personally, I wouldn’t jump at something like DX10 right now. I would let things settle out a little bit and wait until there’s a really strong need for it.”

Those wishing to take the plunge into DX10 will also have to do so while upgrading to Windows Vista. Carmack, however, isn’t all that excited about upgrading to the new OS: “We only have a couple of people running Vista at our company. It’s again, one of those things that there is no strong pull for us to go there. If anything, it’s going to be reluctantly like, ‘Well, a lot of the market is there, so we’ll move to Vista.’”

Carmack then said that he’s quite satisfied with Windows XP, going as far to say that Microsoft is ‘artificially’ forcing gamers to move to Windows Vista for DX10. “Nothing is going to help a new game by going to a new operating system. There were some clear wins going from Windows 95 to Windows XP for games, but there really aren’t any for Vista. They’re artificially doing that by tying DX10 so close it, which is really nothing about the OS ... They’re really grasping at straws for reasons to upgrade the operating system. I suspect I could run XP for a great many more years without having a problem with it,” he said.

There really isn't a whole lot of difference between D3D9 and D3D10. Crysis has shown that they actually had to artificially downgrade the D3D9 version to make the 'difference' with D3D10 noticeable (and lots of "DX10" features were perfectly doable in D3D9). And, as you say, they're developing cross-platform (the 360 runs a modded DX9) so they actually have to make it compatible with DX9 hardware.

Originally Posted by the resolute girl

- another thing: ONE of the most famous things of DX1 for me was that you could solve almost EVERY mission without killing anyone.

Agreed. Not every game has to glorify/glamorize guns and killing, especially not a game of DX caliber (heh). Though hopefully this time the devs will discriminate between going all-stealth (avoiding all enemies), semi-stealth (only knocking out enemies) and killing enemies. Killing enemies will probably be rewarding and easy as it is in most games - in the sense that it doesn't require much planning (like observing patrol routes) and usually rewards the player with ammo or a weapon or item. Only knocking out enemies shouldn't be interpreted as killing them (as it was in DX1) by the game script, but should take more time/planning however still reap a reward. All-stealth is the hardest and most time consuming (also because you'll have to do without the extra ammo/items and find alternative routes as you won't get as many keys).

Originally Posted by the resolute girl

I wanna see that extended from stealth action gameplay to diplomacy and social "skill". meaning if you are a bloody murderer, ppl will be intimidated or just run away. I wanna have the possibility to lie to ppl as well.

I don't want a social feat/skill (ie like you have a swimming skill), but I think I don't understand what you mean. Do you mean some sort of reputation system or some kind of 'alignment' system ala Fable?

Originally Posted by the resolute girl

How you wanna achieve a good DX3 in a short amount of time is a riddle to me, I mean TheWitcher has replay value for 6 runthroughs at least and CDPR had 4 years to finish it.

2 years is anything but a short amount of time, especially for games, and especially these days. Longer production cycles are only practical for smaller games (and smaller dev teams), but they usually tend to hurt more than help for larger games. Once the proof of concept stage has been passed it shouldn't take more than a year to have a working alpha version with 90% of the game content in place (placeholder elements included), otherwise it's bound to become an aimless and flawed game (many a devhouse went bust during the dotcomboom in trying to make these 5 year production 'supergames'). I wouldn't put The Witcher on par with Deus Ex though, and aside from both being a type of rpg, they don't have much in common. It might be very much replayable, but that's just one of the things that made DX great game, and producing that quality doesn't necessarily hinge on a 4 year production cycle.

[the resolute girl]

I meant a kind of dynamic reputation system not only regarding Factions (like: neutral, friendly, hostile.....maybe something more original) but other NPCs/game characters as well and additionaly inside conversations as well.
example:

you are in district R of town, it is controlled by Faction B
you arrested/lied to/killed(?) Person X
you are neutral to Faction A

now you meet Person Y on the street.
His the brother/employee/apostle of Person X (see above)

now numerous variables come into play for this character:

faction status is neutral ->
faction reputation is neutral ->
can engage in talk, maybe sell/buy something

Person Y has social ties to Person X you killed/arrested/lied to ->
this gives you negative social reputation with him to different extents

say lied to -> he can lie as well or just don't tell you anything or argue
say arrested -> he could try to alert your enemies to your location
say killed -> if it's possible he could try to engage in combat or threaten you, he could try to alert your enemies

BUT since the faction status is still neutral he has to give you faction services if necessary, say buy/sell stuff.
if faction status would be friendly but your social reputation would be bad other combinations get unlocked and so on....

further surroundings and environment should come into play. please no combat/no-combat zones. If I wanna do bad stuff to civilians I should be able to but the game should offer consequences for these actions. But NPCs should act "logical" meaning if you engage in a fight they will try to stay alive, no matter if it's forbidden or not. Further someone out to kill you could wait as long as you are in the presence of law enforcement or with help. This means that above conversation could happen in YOUR territory and therefore the NPC maybe would talk to you, out of fear of you. And he would maybe threaten you but not start a fight.

Alignment.....don't know exactly how you mean it but if there are factions in the game I would like to see a little more complex mechanics like described above where I could have troubles with Organization X but because I helped one of their minions already 2 times and he's not a very high ranking officer he will still be neutral/friendly to me....

...and so on and so on...

Problem with Bioshock was they did not take the brilliant but clunky systems of SS2, refined and mutated them into an up to date version, they've just CUT them. If you wanna make a good DX3 game you must take what DX1 had an make it BETTER, not cut it away, like in......too many buttons, let's have everything context-sensitive. So stealth, conversations, skills, inventory, ammo types, alignment, reputation, story choices and endings, maybe even social skill (much talking - better responses), environmental interaction apart from shootin' stuff (hacking, stealing (?), ...). AFTER you did the skeleton and the basics you can concentrate on the feeling of shootin' and combat AI which seems to be the only thing that matters nowadays.

Not that I didn't like mining obstacle courses for the NSF or shooting tranquil darts in their lazy patrolling buttocks but I want this game to set itself apart. And sloppy execution of gameplay is bad even if your story and visuals are awesome (BioShock).

well, happy new year EIDOS + message board

[-=fox=-]

(...) knocking out enemies shouldn't be interpreted as killing them (as it was in DX1) by the game script, but should take more time/planning however still reap a reward.

Yeah, that bugged me too.

All-stealth is the hardest and most time consuming (also because you'll have to do without the extra ammo/items and find alternative routes as you won't get as many keys).

I'd like to have the ability/skill to pick pockets.

[Harakiribert]

Originally Posted by -=fox=-

I'd like to have the ability/skill to pick pockets.

That's interesting. I would need to get into melee range and then depending on the skill level you have a certain percentage of finding items.

But on the other hand you must take care that you don't put too much RPG in DX3.

[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...

[GundamXXX]

Totally ruined one of my posts in another thread this news :|

Why...why use a free engine from wich Tomb Raider has come or going to come? Tomb Raider engines were never that good! ... I simply cant get my head around it :P

I mean might aswell go for the Serious 2 Engine used for Serious Sam 2!

I think they should have gone with UE or Source, maybe even Crytek Engine.... *drools of UE*



EDIT: After goin through the thread more I came to the conclusion people are bloody stupid
"Epic cant even manage their own engine"
How stupid can you get? Its a BRAND NEW engine on a BRAND NEW Operating System (Vista) on a BRAND NEW DirectX (being 10)
I mean you people do know that DX9 and DX10 arent even closely related right? Its like saying all the Final Fantasy's are sequals!
Just because the UE2 is great doesnt mean everything went of a great start. The first game on the UE2 license (Devestation I believe) sucked. Bugs etc etc UT2k3 sucked (maybe not many bugs but it wasnt what anyone expected) and was made by Epic but every other game was good after the first few failures. Bug free and beautifull graphics and no problems with them. I could run the games on my old pc!

So before whining about engines. First learn, then practice, then learn what you practice, then think, then practice what you thought about and learn it and only THEN open your mouth. Because ignorance isnt a bliss, its a common malfunction




And also "Its an in-house engine" is no excuse in my opinion. I wouldnt be surprised if the UE are the most common engines around thus the new dev's would very likely have some experience in it

[gamer0004]

I'm no expert on DirectX, but there's not THAT much difference between DX10 and 9. Sure, it can use quite a few new functions, and it might me a bigger difference than between other DX's (I do not know that exactely). But not that much difference.
Anyway, why would you want the Crytek engine? The only good thing about that is the jungle and the physics. But I don't need physics that are that good. I think they made a good decision. Like I said, I'm no expert on engines, but there are some advantages (like rendering open environments well I believe? And it saves a lot of money, of course).
One thing is sure, however: it's better than making a new engine :P

[Necros]

Yeah, the Crytek engine? Come on... That needs really strong PCs and it's not that special. I mean I'm sure UE3 will look just like that or better soon. And also the most important thing is the design, just look at BioShock for example, it doesn't have the best graphics but it's very beautiful anyway because of the artists work. Now check out Crysis, lot's of effects and sharp textures. Cool but not that beautiful.

And the physics will be very good in the new TR engine, so I wouldn't worry about that, also from what I've seen/read so far, it's gonna look great, so with some extra work from Eidos Montreal we won't have to worry about this part of the game.

[Smoke Screen]

Originally Posted by Necros

Now check out Crysis, lot's of effects and sharp textures.

Well,most of Crysis eyecatching looks are simply multilayered shaders.
It looks awfull in "Low" with no shaders but best textures. In fact i fear
the whole game was designed to advertise NVidia Triple-SLI....

[Kneo24]

Right now, there isn't much of a difference between DX9 and DX10. However, I think 10.1 or 10.2 might bring new things to the table, so we'll see then. However, to take advantage of that stuff, you'll need a video card that supports 10.1, etc...

[GundamXXX]

Actually DX10 and 9 and very diffrent, wich is the reason why it cant run on a system without Vista. Simple.

And I just used the Crytek engine as an example because face it, its one of the best out there, Necros just because the graphics in Crysis arent good doesnt mean the engine is bad, just means we dont have the machines to run it yet

And the only thing we may have an advantage on is that as far as I know the Tomb Raider engine isnt card based (i.e. UE = Nvidia Crytek = Nvidia Source = Ati etc) wich is a good thing

But if its up to me just do the UE2 engine so I can run it on my crappy pc

[-=fox=-]

I've just began to play around with Sandbox 2 (CryEngine2) and whoever said this enigne is bad or Crysis graphics weren't good just made a fool out of himself. Sandbox 2 is a bit buggy at the moment but apart from that it's plain awesome. I can't say if it's the best engine available but it's definatley top notch and the devs keep supplying us with great tutorials for it.

[Kneo24]

Just because you state that DX9 and DX10 are very different doesn't make it so. The backend, yes, but visually, currently there is little difference (as shown by Crysis).

And the only reason you need Vista to run DX10 is because M$ decided to lock it out of the older OS's. I'm sure it wouldn't be much work for M$ to allow DX10 to work with XP, but if they did that, people wouldn't have a reason to buy their POS OS that they call Vista.

[GundamXXX]

the visuals dont depend on DX10 but more on the graphiccard
I have DX10 but a crap onboard gfxcard.
And the reason why they differ is because DX10 isnt a newer version of DX9 but because its a totally, new, built from the ground up version and XP doesnt have the power to run it

And I do agree on the last bit omewhat.. Vista sucks :P

[Kneo24]

http://www.tweakguides.com/Crysis_5.html - copy and paste the link and scroll to the bottom (tweakguide doesn't allow hot-linking).

The screenshots show that the differences between DX9 and DX10 are very small. The guy is using an 8800GTS, hardly a crappy card.