The early success of the Unreal Engine 3 - incredible

[Plumb_Drumb]

Originally posted by suibhne
Lithtech is now called Gamebryo. It's used widely, including 1st-person and 3rd-person games. I don't know about any future FPS's planned for the engine - the only upcoming 1st-person title I'm aware of is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and that's basically an RPG - but it's still a heavily-licensed engine.

thanks! :up:

[legacy-Xipher]

Originally posted by TseTse

i DO think unreal is behind on outdoors stuff. that goes for rendering and dev tools.

MM, say like
[shot]http://www.unrealtechnology.com/screens/TerrainEditing.jpg[/shot]

Originally posted by TseTse
likewise, you need to have more outdoor fog options including the ability to produce fog layers (i.e. have a "top" or "bottom" effect from outside)

Similar to say
[shot]http://www.unrealtechnology.com/screens/Groundfog1.jpg[/shot]

[legacy-TseTse]

no for the texturing.

yes on the fog layer (i forgot about those pics, thanks)

but it still needs to handle distance fog more naturally... and such fog layers need to work in LARGE outdoor landscapes as well (perhaps they do)

as for the texture-by-slope, i dont see it there...

what im talking about is the ability to automatically apply a texture (i.e. make an alpha) by slope. if you look even at old engines like torque/tribes2 you could apply a texture by a slope and have extremely natural looking terrains instantly.

it's very simple math and programming compared to all the other stuff they have going on.

with today's gaming being more and more focused on outdoors, im saying they need to pull up these tools a but more to keep in state of the art (torque/tribes2 have been around since 2001).

ued itself needs more robust heightfield generation tools and texture operations.

[legacy-Xipher]

I see what you mean, basicly if the slope is fairly steap, it can automaticly apply a rock face to it (that about the idea?)

Just read some of the list above the screenshot for the terian editing shot I found, whas this

• realtime terrain editing tools allowing artists to elevate terrain, paint alpha layers onto terrain to control layer blending and decoration layers, collision data, and displacement maps.

[legacy-TseTse]

Originally posted by Xipher
I see what you mean, basicly if the slope is fairly steap, it can automaticly apply a rock face to it (that about the idea?)

yep.

in tribes2, for example, you can take 4 textures and give them all a range of slope to cover. you can then even independently change heightmaps using all kinds of sophisticated weathering operations and algorythms. you can edit the terrain heightfield by hand... and the textures would still map properly and realistically based on the sloping.

thus, any very steep slope could get a specific rock texture, and blend into a grassy texture at the top while blending into another texture at the lower angles.

for devs trying to make realistic outdoors terrains, this is a no brainer option since it cuts down on SO MUCH TIME and makes for instantly dazzling realistic terrains. you could still hand edit textures, but having a base done by such formulas really, realyl helps.

Originally posted by Xipher
[*]realtime terrain editing tools allowing artists to elevate terrain, paint alpha layers onto terrain to control layer blending and decoration layers, collision data, and displacement maps.[/list]

ill be happy when terrain will auto-occlude and render very smoothly in the distance (with nice distance fog instead of popping terrain against the sky box)

[legacy-AgentZero]

Renegade check ur pm.
SRY FOR OT

[Boksha]

Originally posted by TseTse
check csports.net and gamespy. outdoors, large scale environments are the norm now... not tightly zoned bsp areas.

Where exactly are you looking? The top 4 games (Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, RtCW:ET and MOHAA) are all pretty much small scale tactical shooters. Te get a feel for it, the engines those games run on (Q2 and Q3 engine derivatives) have pretty much the same support for large outdoor environments as the UE2 (much less, when it comes to the current #1, Counter-Strike, which runs on the Q2 engine IIRC)

[The_Deacon]

Assuming CS still runs on the engine HL used, it's a derivative of the original Quake engine.

Regarding terrain occlusion, I don't think it's particularly optimal since it'd be occluding on a per poly basis. That's why the anti-portal approach was used for UE2.x. Much faster to oclcude using very low poly approximations than it is to occlude using the terrain polys. Whether UE3 has some better methods employed is something we don't yet know. I can think of one or two ways that might work out, but I'm sure Epic are way ahead anyway

[legacy-TseTse]

Originally posted by Boksha
Where exactly are you looking? The top 4 games (Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, RtCW:ET and MOHAA) are all pretty much small scale tactical shooters. Te get a feel for it, the engines those games run on (Q2 and Q3 engine derivatives) have pretty much the same support for large outdoor environments as the UE2 (much less, when it comes to the current #1, Counter-Strike, which runs on the Q2 engine IIRC)

im talking about the new games rolling out every month. most new FPS are not tight, indoors tactical shooters. and there is a LOT more going on than just FPS.

if you dont see the landscape has changed, im not really interested in debating it.

epic is in business of making tech and selling it. the market is adapting and just offering indoor bsp optimization isnt gonna be sufficient.

heck, count the growth of MMOs... (and notice UE is a major player now)

[Boksha]

Originally posted by TseTse
im talking about the new games rolling out every month. most new FPS are not tight, indoors tactical shooters. and there is a LOT more going on than just FPS.

That wasn't my question, really. My question was "Where do you look?".

Anyway, you have a point about MMORPGs, but the current incarnations of the UE have plenty of power for those in a graphical sense. If you want to suit MMORP type games, you'd probably be better off adjusting the netcode and code efficiency/redundancy (the current approach to player control would probably be WAY too CPU intense to support thousands of players on one server) to suit that.

[legacy-squoibymox]

Originally posted by IndySkies
I'd rather they stay afloat from producing/selling great games.

Indy :bulb:

I'd think they'd need at least ONE fully complete game in order to really hawk the game engine.

And somehow I think that just might be.........Unreal Tournament!

People talk of the game dying - but I'd love to see the actual sales numbers...

Just because the online scene isn't what it was years ago doesn't mean the game wasn't a success...

All this development money has to be coming from somewhere...

Maybe from some product like, oh......... Unreal Tournament?

[legacy-Devon]

Hold your horses guys, a new game has just been announced that will use the Doom 3 engine. Stop considering it dead.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/04...s_6121740.html

[placebo]

HAHAHA, and it's by 3Drealms! "This one won't take that long, guys, we promise!"

[legacy-TseTse]

Originally posted by Boksha
That wasn't my question, really. My question was "Where do you look?".

Anyway, you have a point about MMORPGs, but the current incarnations of the UE have plenty of power for those in a graphical sense. If you want to suit MMORP type games, you'd probably be better off adjusting the netcode and code efficiency/redundancy (the current approach to player control would probably be WAY too CPU intense to support thousands of players on one server) to suit that.

umm, i watch fileplanet, game dev and general game new sites for what's going on. for stats i mostly rely on csports.net (gamespy at times, too).

boksha, have you made many large outdoor maps for unreal? i have. in fact, that's about all ive done with UED (ut2k, unreal2 and tribes). it's problematic.

i have also done level design in tribes, torque and battlefield. ive poked around with the crytek thing too. i LOVE unreal, but this is the big weakness by far.

what im talking about it how unreal as ive seen so far handles basic rendering and optimization. it's roots are in smaller scale bsp stuf, where antiportals and zones could take care of most optimization needs. outdoors optimization is an ENTIRELY different beast.

there's no reason the tools couldnt be better. there's no reason the occlussion couldnt be revamped to better suit outdoors oriented games. there's no reason the distance fog and terrain rendering couldnt be tweaked to be more subtle and state-of-the-art.

it wouldnt take much, perhaps besides whatever is involved with making terrain properly occlude within reason (that would do more for FPS than anything else). i suspect that is tricky, but things behind a huge mountain just should NOT render and mappers shouldnt be putting a gazillion volumes/antiportals all over under terrains.

my two cents...

[legacy-Xipher]

Originally posted by TseTse
umm, i watch fileplanet, game dev and general game new sites for what's going on. for stats i mostly rely on csports.net (gamespy at times, too).

boksha, have you made many large outdoor maps for unreal? i have. in fact, that's about all ive done with UED (ut2k, unreal2 and tribes). it's problematic.

i have also done level design in tribes, torque and battlefield. ive poked around with the crytek thing too. i LOVE unreal, but this is the big weakness by far.

what im talking about it how unreal as ive seen so far handles basic rendering and optimization. it's roots are in smaller scale bsp stuf, where antiportals and zones could take care of most optimization needs. outdoors optimization is an ENTIRELY different beast.

there's no reason the tools couldnt be better. there's no reason the occlussion couldnt be revamped to better suit outdoors oriented games. there's no reason the distance fog and terrain rendering couldnt be tweaked to be more subtle and state-of-the-art.

it wouldnt take much, perhaps besides whatever is involved with making terrain properly occlude within reason (that would do more for FPS than anything else). i suspect that is tricky, but things behind a huge mountain just should reneder and mappers shouldnt be putting a gazillion volumes/antiportals all over under terrains.

my two cents...

I am guessing they will be optimized as well, seeing that untill ONS and Assult, we didn't even HAVE these large outdoor levels really. Now that Epic is looking at this Conquest gametype, Im sure outdoor, and terrian rendering/tools will get some attention. The reason why I think UT200X didn't have these, is look at UT2003s gametypes, how often did you have a map that needed terrian on a massive scale. The updates for UT2004 I don't think will be near the changes/updates Epic will make/have made for UE3.