kat@Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:35 pm :
Post screenshots in this topic to keep everything in one place. Images posted to the forums should be 640 width or under (link out to later images).



desmasic@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 1:00 am :
Just wanted to post that 3D Gamers section has all of the screenies for QW you can view online >> http://www.3dgamers.com/screenshots/gam ... rritoryqw/


They are available in high res in their download section. So you can download and post them here if you must.

You can delete this post if I am just supposed to post the pics and not links :?



KoRnScythe@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 2:18 am :
Even though this relates to the previous post that desmasic made, take a look at this screenshot:
http://www.3dgamers.com/screenshots/gam ... qw/460145/

Minus the slightly noticeable low-polygon terrain, this has to be the best screenshot I've seen so far. The large mountains in the background, the very soft looking trees, the distant fogging and cloudy blue skies - I'm amazed.

After all the times gamers insulted the Doom3Engine for the slight inability to render outside areas, this actually looks far better than Half-Life 2 and Far Cry. I'm really impressed so far, and now I'm really looking forward to this.



MaxiM@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 8:30 am :
Agreed! I have this screenshot set as wallpaper since i saw it. It's uber-sweet (but there's a much metter ss on shacknews) :twisted:



pbmax@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 2:56 pm :
KoRnScythe wrote:
Minus the slightly noticeable low-polygon terrain...


the engine renders the terrain "brute force all the way to the horizon". in other words, the engine doesn't mess with terrain lod so a low poly mesh is to be expected.

nonetheless, it renders outdoor scenes very well. this is why someone needs to make a sp game with it!



TelMarine@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 7:17 pm :
just watched the video presentation from quakecon, this game looks so sweet it is unbelievable. Can't wait for the public beta.



butmunch@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 10:00 pm :
TelMarine wrote:
just watched the video presentation from quakecon, this game looks so sweet it is unbelievable. Can't wait for the public beta.


Could you please post a link to the video presentation from quakecon. PREEEEEEETY PLEASE. Been trying to find something for a while now without any luck :(



Zombie13@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 10:50 pm :
http://www.planetquake4.net/download.php?op=fileid&from=ros&lid=2333

Z



ensiform@Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 2:31 am :
http://www.planetquake4.net/images/Quak ... Wars_1.jpg

Isn't the blue icon above the dude's head from Enemy Territory? :oops:



butmunch@Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 7:55 am :
ensiform wrote:
http://www.planetquake4.net/images/QuakeCon%2006%20An%20Inside%20Look%20at%20QuakeWars_1.jpg

Isn't the blue icon above the dude's head from Enemy Territory? :oops:


Yeah now thats a sight for sore eyes. That sign is the spawn protection sign from the original et :D



Tron@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 7:21 am :
http://pc.ign.com/articles/732/732657p1.html

A nice preview of a map we've only seen a couple of screenshots of before (the snowy one).

Goes through all the objectives etc for the level while showing off a couple of new screenshots. :)



ensiform@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 5:51 pm :
ooo command map like rtcw and et :)



KoRnScythe@Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2006 6:11 pm :
Believe it or not, this is the first time I've come across/looked at this screenshot. It's a few months old, but...

http://media.pc.ign.com/media/748/74837 ... 90217.html

... if that isn't the coolest damn-me-to-hell screenshot I've seen from Quake Wars, I'm a lunatic and the world just stopped spinning. This just keeps making my mouth water.



Phobos@Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 8:08 pm :
Many of these screenshots are old, but I just did a few searches and realized I was ignoring something: The sheer atmosphere of this game is going to be incredible! It just struck me upon remembering the night time jeep in the first QW trailer, and seeing one of these screenshots, and the snow... it's just going to be amazing, and it never hit me till now.

Screenshots that inspired me to post this:

http://www.herrks-base.de/et_quakewars/etqw_12.jpg

http://www.enemyterritory.com/_swf/_images/ss/full/etqw_jetty_launch.jpg

http://images.macologist.org/news/etquakewars/Valley_Shot02.jpg

http://cerberus.gamershell.com/screenshots/8324/208231_full.jpg



desmasic@Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 2:49 am :
Maybe it's just me, but the first QW trailer was and still is the best video I have seen for this game. Everything else so far shows more glitches than features.. maybe it's just obvious to me as a modder and not to others.. but still.

I hope they create a kick ass trailer like Quake4 had before release (I believe QW deserves a trailer like that more than Quake4 did). :twisted:

Oh and if you don't already know, there's new profile stuff on their site. Some heavy updates going on over there. GOGOGO!



bkt@Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 5:55 am :
That high density foliage looks damn good. To me it makes it really look alive, I really hope there's some dense forrest areas to look forward to, as i think combat in those areas would be brilliant.



Sebultura@Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 10:01 am :
Take a look at this forum for news shots: http://www.enemyterritory.fr/forums/index.php?showtopic=7660



zeh@Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 11:49 am :
With the few 'new' screenshots showing up, it's important to read these comments, specially RosOne's one:

http://www.theredstuff.com/enemy_territ ... rthplaying



Arklon@Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 11:15 pm :
A couple new screenshots at WorthPlaying. And it should be pretty obvious that they're real Splash Damage screenshots.



Phobos@Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 11:31 pm :
Wow... the more and more atmospheres I see the more and more I look forward to playing the game!!



Phobos@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:14 am :
port66 wrote:
its was a joke. better if it was interactive like this weird app
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/images/ ... water1.jpg


Real time water physics or displacement is at least half a decade away (for being featured in live-rendering gaming anyways).

All they are now are flat polygons with an animated texture, a displacement map, or some other method with layers of shaders to add the reflections/refraction effects.



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:28 am :
wouldnt know. dont care much for gfx http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?option= ... &Itemid=55
if gfx made a game i`d be looking at oil paintings down my local art gallery



rich_is_bored@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 4:27 am :
port66 wrote:
if gfx made a game i`d be looking at oil paintings down my local art gallery


... and throwing darts at them? :)



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 5:12 am :
Phobos wrote:
Real time water physics or displacement is at least half a decade away (for being featured in live-rendering gaming anyways).
All they are now are flat polygons with an animated texture, a displacement map, or some other method with layers of shaders to add the reflections/refraction effects.


metroid prime & mario sunshine looks pretty damn good to me. things bobbed on the waves/ripples, you had mass vs the water, shape of the object affected how the water reacted, along with mass, velocity, etc.

all that matters is that is LOOKS real. who cares if it IS real. :)



GUNJAM@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:03 pm :
Holy shit, is that AQ2?



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:55 pm :
waste some cpu. and save some not having to have 400.000 entities for splash.fx`s



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:20 pm :
i feel the same way about 3d. Why waste 1,000,000 poly's looking nice when Myst can look just as good... in 1997. :shock:



6th Venom@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:27 pm :
Sprites rules. :wink:



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:51 pm :
sprited & fonts. straight up green on black background. :D



6th Venom@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:54 pm :
Tape is loading... :lol:



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 3:25 pm :
READ ERROR



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 7:20 pm :
boogie boogie. muahahahahaha muaha muahahahahahaha

every model, every effect. every projectile is spawned as a entity. and every part of a model.
you can use

Code:
idEntity* self = gameLocal.entities[ renderEntity.entityNum ];


on every class page except vehicleParts.cpp

http://www.blender.org/



goliathvt@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:28 am :
Wow, extremely crappy water physics running on the Quake 2 engine. Not impressed. Well, a little bit by the grenades exploding in the water and the ripple effect making its way down the channel... but other than that, it's just not worth it as a feature for a modern game.



port66@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 3:53 am :
back of the boat waves are in quake 2 engine RIP. still not in idtech4 and no doubt wont be in idtech5. all the mainstream engines are scared to add water phyics outside on nintendo and who ever made waverace



rich_is_bored@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:53 am :
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.

I mean, you have to find a sweet spot where the density of each mesh is high enough to match the detail present in the rest of the scene and yet not so dense that it has a serious impact on performance. IMHO, the graphical bar has been set way too high for soft body physics to be considered anything other than a luxury.

Maybe a few years down the road graphics will have stagnated long enough for general processing power to catch up and then developers can start wasting cycles on extras like soft body pools of water.



BNA!@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 10:12 am :
rich_is_bored wrote:
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.

I mean, you have to find a sweet spot where the density of each mesh is high enough to match the detail present in the rest of the scene and yet not so dense that it has a serious impact on performance. IMHO, the graphical bar has been set way too high for soft body physics to be considered anything other than a luxury.

Maybe a few years down the road graphics will have stagnated long enough for general processing power to catch up and then developers can start wasting cycles on extras like soft body pools of water.


At this point we should all hop over to the "Nvidia acquires Ageia" thread :)
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21146



The Happy Friar@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:54 pm :
rich_is_bored wrote:
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.


that's why in a game Like Zelda:Windwaker or TF2 it would fit perfect. The graphical style already compliments slightly surreal water. To bad everybody is trying to make things look like a bombed out WW2 European city.... :(



port66@Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 4:44 pm :
water will be nothing to dust/smoke particles staying in bounds of the world. a corridor with another alongside
any why aint there no spoilers



The Happy Friar@Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 5:01 pm :
if you can do soft particles in the air you can do them in water. same thing, water just deform's poly's while air doesn't.



Phobos@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:14 am :
port66 wrote:
its was a joke. better if it was interactive like this weird app
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/images/ ... water1.jpg


Real time water physics or displacement is at least half a decade away (for being featured in live-rendering gaming anyways).

All they are now are flat polygons with an animated texture, a displacement map, or some other method with layers of shaders to add the reflections/refraction effects.



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:28 am :
wouldnt know. dont care much for gfx http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?option= ... &Itemid=55
if gfx made a game i`d be looking at oil paintings down my local art gallery



rich_is_bored@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 4:27 am :
port66 wrote:
if gfx made a game i`d be looking at oil paintings down my local art gallery


... and throwing darts at them? :)



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 5:12 am :
Phobos wrote:
Real time water physics or displacement is at least half a decade away (for being featured in live-rendering gaming anyways).
All they are now are flat polygons with an animated texture, a displacement map, or some other method with layers of shaders to add the reflections/refraction effects.


metroid prime & mario sunshine looks pretty damn good to me. things bobbed on the waves/ripples, you had mass vs the water, shape of the object affected how the water reacted, along with mass, velocity, etc.

all that matters is that is LOOKS real. who cares if it IS real. :)



GUNJAM@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:03 pm :
Holy shit, is that AQ2?



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:55 pm :
waste some cpu. and save some not having to have 400.000 entities for splash.fx`s



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:20 pm :
i feel the same way about 3d. Why waste 1,000,000 poly's looking nice when Myst can look just as good... in 1997. :shock:



6th Venom@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:27 pm :
Sprites rules. :wink:



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:51 pm :
sprited & fonts. straight up green on black background. :D



6th Venom@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:54 pm :
Tape is loading... :lol:



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 3:25 pm :
READ ERROR



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 7:20 pm :
boogie boogie. muahahahahaha muaha muahahahahahaha

every model, every effect. every projectile is spawned as a entity. and every part of a model.
you can use

Code:
idEntity* self = gameLocal.entities[ renderEntity.entityNum ];


on every class page except vehicleParts.cpp

http://www.blender.org/



goliathvt@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:28 am :
Wow, extremely crappy water physics running on the Quake 2 engine. Not impressed. Well, a little bit by the grenades exploding in the water and the ripple effect making its way down the channel... but other than that, it's just not worth it as a feature for a modern game.



port66@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 3:53 am :
back of the boat waves are in quake 2 engine RIP. still not in idtech4 and no doubt wont be in idtech5. all the mainstream engines are scared to add water phyics outside on nintendo and who ever made waverace



rich_is_bored@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:53 am :
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.

I mean, you have to find a sweet spot where the density of each mesh is high enough to match the detail present in the rest of the scene and yet not so dense that it has a serious impact on performance. IMHO, the graphical bar has been set way too high for soft body physics to be considered anything other than a luxury.

Maybe a few years down the road graphics will have stagnated long enough for general processing power to catch up and then developers can start wasting cycles on extras like soft body pools of water.



BNA!@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 10:12 am :
rich_is_bored wrote:
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.

I mean, you have to find a sweet spot where the density of each mesh is high enough to match the detail present in the rest of the scene and yet not so dense that it has a serious impact on performance. IMHO, the graphical bar has been set way too high for soft body physics to be considered anything other than a luxury.

Maybe a few years down the road graphics will have stagnated long enough for general processing power to catch up and then developers can start wasting cycles on extras like soft body pools of water.


At this point we should all hop over to the "Nvidia acquires Ageia" thread :)
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21146



The Happy Friar@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:54 pm :
rich_is_bored wrote:
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.


that's why in a game Like Zelda:Windwaker or TF2 it would fit perfect. The graphical style already compliments slightly surreal water. To bad everybody is trying to make things look like a bombed out WW2 European city.... :(



port66@Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 4:44 pm :
water will be nothing to dust/smoke particles staying in bounds of the world. a corridor with another alongside
any why aint there no spoilers



The Happy Friar@Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 5:01 pm :
if you can do soft particles in the air you can do them in water. same thing, water just deform's poly's while air doesn't.



kat@Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:35 pm :
Post screenshots in this topic to keep everything in one place. Images posted to the forums should be 640 width or under (link out to later images).



desmasic@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 1:00 am :
Just wanted to post that 3D Gamers section has all of the screenies for QW you can view online >> http://www.3dgamers.com/screenshots/gam ... rritoryqw/


They are available in high res in their download section. So you can download and post them here if you must.

You can delete this post if I am just supposed to post the pics and not links :?



KoRnScythe@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 2:18 am :
Even though this relates to the previous post that desmasic made, take a look at this screenshot:
http://www.3dgamers.com/screenshots/gam ... qw/460145/

Minus the slightly noticeable low-polygon terrain, this has to be the best screenshot I've seen so far. The large mountains in the background, the very soft looking trees, the distant fogging and cloudy blue skies - I'm amazed.

After all the times gamers insulted the Doom3Engine for the slight inability to render outside areas, this actually looks far better than Half-Life 2 and Far Cry. I'm really impressed so far, and now I'm really looking forward to this.



MaxiM@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 8:30 am :
Agreed! I have this screenshot set as wallpaper since i saw it. It's uber-sweet (but there's a much metter ss on shacknews) :twisted:



pbmax@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 2:56 pm :
KoRnScythe wrote:
Minus the slightly noticeable low-polygon terrain...


the engine renders the terrain "brute force all the way to the horizon". in other words, the engine doesn't mess with terrain lod so a low poly mesh is to be expected.

nonetheless, it renders outdoor scenes very well. this is why someone needs to make a sp game with it!



TelMarine@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 7:17 pm :
just watched the video presentation from quakecon, this game looks so sweet it is unbelievable. Can't wait for the public beta.



butmunch@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 10:00 pm :
TelMarine wrote:
just watched the video presentation from quakecon, this game looks so sweet it is unbelievable. Can't wait for the public beta.


Could you please post a link to the video presentation from quakecon. PREEEEEEETY PLEASE. Been trying to find something for a while now without any luck :(



Zombie13@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 10:50 pm :
http://www.planetquake4.net/download.php?op=fileid&from=ros&lid=2333

Z



ensiform@Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 2:31 am :
http://www.planetquake4.net/images/Quak ... Wars_1.jpg

Isn't the blue icon above the dude's head from Enemy Territory? :oops:



butmunch@Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 7:55 am :
ensiform wrote:
http://www.planetquake4.net/images/QuakeCon%2006%20An%20Inside%20Look%20at%20QuakeWars_1.jpg

Isn't the blue icon above the dude's head from Enemy Territory? :oops:


Yeah now thats a sight for sore eyes. That sign is the spawn protection sign from the original et :D



Tron@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 7:21 am :
http://pc.ign.com/articles/732/732657p1.html

A nice preview of a map we've only seen a couple of screenshots of before (the snowy one).

Goes through all the objectives etc for the level while showing off a couple of new screenshots. :)



ensiform@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 5:51 pm :
ooo command map like rtcw and et :)



KoRnScythe@Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2006 6:11 pm :
Believe it or not, this is the first time I've come across/looked at this screenshot. It's a few months old, but...

http://media.pc.ign.com/media/748/74837 ... 90217.html

... if that isn't the coolest damn-me-to-hell screenshot I've seen from Quake Wars, I'm a lunatic and the world just stopped spinning. This just keeps making my mouth water.



Phobos@Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 8:08 pm :
Many of these screenshots are old, but I just did a few searches and realized I was ignoring something: The sheer atmosphere of this game is going to be incredible! It just struck me upon remembering the night time jeep in the first QW trailer, and seeing one of these screenshots, and the snow... it's just going to be amazing, and it never hit me till now.

Screenshots that inspired me to post this:

http://www.herrks-base.de/et_quakewars/etqw_12.jpg

http://www.enemyterritory.com/_swf/_images/ss/full/etqw_jetty_launch.jpg

http://images.macologist.org/news/etquakewars/Valley_Shot02.jpg

http://cerberus.gamershell.com/screenshots/8324/208231_full.jpg



desmasic@Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 2:49 am :
Maybe it's just me, but the first QW trailer was and still is the best video I have seen for this game. Everything else so far shows more glitches than features.. maybe it's just obvious to me as a modder and not to others.. but still.

I hope they create a kick ass trailer like Quake4 had before release (I believe QW deserves a trailer like that more than Quake4 did). :twisted:

Oh and if you don't already know, there's new profile stuff on their site. Some heavy updates going on over there. GOGOGO!



bkt@Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 5:55 am :
That high density foliage looks damn good. To me it makes it really look alive, I really hope there's some dense forrest areas to look forward to, as i think combat in those areas would be brilliant.



Sebultura@Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 10:01 am :
Take a look at this forum for news shots: http://www.enemyterritory.fr/forums/index.php?showtopic=7660



zeh@Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 11:49 am :
With the few 'new' screenshots showing up, it's important to read these comments, specially RosOne's one:

http://www.theredstuff.com/enemy_territ ... rthplaying



Arklon@Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 11:15 pm :
A couple new screenshots at WorthPlaying. And it should be pretty obvious that they're real Splash Damage screenshots.



Phobos@Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 11:31 pm :
Wow... the more and more atmospheres I see the more and more I look forward to playing the game!!



sxotty@Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 4:06 pm :
Gabrobot wrote:
The Happy Friar wrote:
wonder if STALKER could be re-done in this. :)


That would be awesome, although I'm hoping RTCW2 will sort of be like a better version of STALKER what with the whole non-linear thing.


I would be pleased, but I doubt it. It would be completely out of character.



Gabrobot@Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 7:41 pm :
sxotty wrote:
I would be pleased, but I doubt it. It would be completely out of character.


Out of character of what? RtCW was moving in the direction of large environments you can explore anyway, so this seems like a logical progression. In any case, of the little information released about RtCW2, they have consistently emphasized that the whole game is one single huge world instead of distinct levels, and that objectives will not be "Point A to Point B" indicating that it'll be pretty non-linear. Of course we don't know how far it'll go, but considering that's really the only thing they've said about it, it appears that's the core design step they're taking with it.



pbmax@Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 7:59 pm :
sxotty wrote:
Gabrobot wrote:
The Happy Friar wrote:
wonder if STALKER could be re-done in this. :)


That would be awesome, although I'm hoping RTCW2 will sort of be like a better version of STALKER what with the whole non-linear thing.


I would be pleased, but I doubt it. It would be completely out of character.


raven is also becoming a cookie-cutter video game factory caring little about the games themselves and more about the bottom line. its quite sad really.

a TON of talented people have left raven over the past few years only to be replaced with younger less experienced people. i'm not exagerating either, a lot of people have left.



Gabrobot@Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 11:52 pm :
pbmax wrote:
raven is also becoming a cookie-cutter video game factory caring little about the games themselves and more about the bottom line. its quite sad really.

a TON of talented people have left raven over the past few years only to be replaced with younger less experienced people. i'm not exagerating either, a lot of people have left.


Sadly that's true...I'm hoping for the best, but to be honest I won't really get excited until I see something. I recall Todd Hollenshead making a comment about Quake 4 having extremely disappointing sales figures, and that they were taking definite steps to prevent things like that from happening in the future. So hopefully id's influence will turn Raven's development practices around and get them away from the corporate process they currently employ.



GUNJAM@Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 12:41 am :
I thought Quake 4 was really good :z



Arklon@Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 1:20 am :
GUNJAM wrote:
I thought Quake 4 was really good :z
The pace wasn't fast enough for a Quake game. As for the multiplayer, that's the result of a game developer listening too much to their "hardcore" fans. (Bethesda Softworks did the same thing with Oblivion, and look how it turned out: the game only tried to address fan complaints and suggestions and ditched everything else; hell, some of the fixes for the things people complained about actually made the problem worse, such as level scaling... the Law of Unintended Consequences in its full glory.)



Zenix@Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 2:38 am :
Q4 wasn't perfect, but it's one of the best first person shooters I've ever played (and I've played a lot).

The main complaint I had with SP, was that it didn't resemble Q2 enough (mainly in weapon and enemy design).

MP was essentially Q3 MP, though I personally preferred most of the Q4 maps (especially the CTF ones).

But that's all completely off topic :)



Mordenkainen@Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 3:17 am :
Gabrobot wrote:
pbmax wrote:
raven is also becoming a cookie-cutter video game factory caring little about the games themselves and more about the bottom line. its quite sad really.

a TON of talented people have left raven over the past few years only to be replaced with younger less experienced people. i'm not exagerating either, a lot of people have left.


Sadly that's true...I'm hoping for the best, but to be honest I won't really get excited until I see something. I recall Todd Hollenshead making a comment about Quake 4 having extremely disappointing sales figures, and that they were taking definite steps to prevent things like that from happening in the future. So hopefully id's influence will turn Raven's development practices around and get them away from the corporate process they currently employ.


Both of you surely know that Raven is wholly owned by Activision, right? There's not much id Software can do, aside perhaps from strongarming Acti into changing its own (Raven's) practices lest they lose id as a developer to competing publishers.

Personally, I wasn't impressed by Q4 (though perhaps that's because I never did like the Strogg universe created with Quake 2) however I still felt it was a good game, if too short. I think the problem with Q4 was two-fold:

1) The DOOM3 engine. Both real limitations and ignorance in the game community buried this game from the start. Before it was released every Q4 story/screenshot that appeared in Blues, The Shack, Ve3D, etc. had comments like "looks like D3, too dark, too plastiky, too whatever". It's obvious id Software had a part to play here with their (mis)management of the engine itself or rather, properly educating people on the benefits of it. Take FEAR and RIDDICK as examples, pretty much the same type of engine and look as D3 but people still rave how FEAR looks great (and it does, if you ignore the repetitive map design, but so does D3).

2) The game felt unfocused. It was single player and multiplayer, MP was a copy of Q3, single player didn't really offer anything new with the exception of a few scenes. Change the name and it becomes just another shoot-'em-up game. The same can't be said of DOOM 3. This is undoubtedly subjective though.

It also didn't help that Q4 was the lemon in the XBOX 360's first batch of games, which gave the game a terrible reputation which I believe spilt onto the PC version. Even though it was released a year and some months after D3, there were precious little advances in engine technology, yes we got better ambient lighting but D3 used so little of the original there's no chance to compare the two. Q4 also cut some D3 features like MP IK, shadow casting torch (unless you play in Ultra) and per poly hit detection (for MP). In many ways Q4 is a step down from D3.

I also question id's decision to bow down to the H4RDC0R3!!!11!!(one)!! crowd with providing bright skins and forceambient lighting, etc. Before all of those you could actually see Quake 4 on Gamespy's MP stat page. Now you don't. Q4 is beaten by Q2 in this case. I know I stopped playing Q4 mp a while ago. It's also frustrating that id is taking so long to release final patches for Q4. I got a map ready to go just waiting for the newest patch to go final to see if they finally fixed ladders in MP.

So anyway, I think my point is that the Raven guys probably have less responsability on the game's outcome than you guys are saying. The textures were top notch, the audio was great, nice motion capture, diverse maps, etc. ie what Raven as a developer could do I think they delivered; it's the rest that was either poorly planned or the victim of some bad management decisions. IMO, both Activision and id had final say on both the logistics and game direction respectively, which is what doomed the game.



Gabrobot@Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 4:02 am :
Mordenkainen wrote:
Both of you surely know that Raven is wholly owned by Activision, right? There's not much id Software can do, aside perhaps from strongarming Acti into changing its own (Raven's) practices lest they lose id as a developer to competing publishers.


Yeah I know...I'd actually say that's the main reason for Raven's slipping. I've seen it happening over time. As a fan of the original Jedi Knight I followed the development of Jedi Knight II with great anticipation. I personally think it turned out great and Raven did some great work on it. Jedi Academy on the other hand, while good as an expansion type game, was starting to show the side effects of Raven's corporate development practices. Jedi Outcast had a reasonably sized team, whereas for Jedi Academy they went in favor of hiring a shit load of people and it showed. The game had tons of new content and the modding abilities were greatly enhanced, but it just felt kinda soulless.

I don't think you can discount id Software's power over the development of games they're overseeing. id Software is still very much independent of Activision...for example Carmack's cell phone games are published by EA. I also recall Carmack mentioning a while back that they hadn't started showing their new game around to different publishers yet indicating that they weren't set on having Activision publish the game. I'm sure Activision doesn't want to lose a lucrative deal with id Software. In that context it seems like giving id Software the power to closely control Raven's development process on id Software games seems pretty reasonable.

In any case, I forgot to mention that I have reason to believe based on some of the people Raven hired late in and after Quake 4's development that they've changed tack. One of them is an old school mapper who can do all aspects of mapping instead of only doing part of it (I think that having too many people working on the same map stiffles creativity), and the other is known for his innovative use of the Quake 3 engine and Q3map2 to do natural environments. So I'm hoping that Raven is taking some much needed steps back as far as their development process goes and is focusing on a smaller but more skilled dev team for RtCW2.

Oh, and I do think id Software is certainly responsible to some extent for not overseeing Quake 4 better...I get the impression Quake Wars is being handled somewhat differently, with id Software taking a more hands on role (such as developing some of the major technology like the bot AI). Quake 4 felt very much like Raven was left to do their own thing with the engine, and they just went for the quick and easy solutions that they already knew how to do (for example tearing out much of the scripting stuff and hard coding it instead). And I know for a fact that this is the sort of thing they do...they admitted to doing it in Jedi Outcast. Much of the increased mod support in Jedi Academy was simply them going back and changing their rushed hard coded stuff into more versatile script systems.

EDIT: Oh, and I do have to praise Raven on the AI system in Quake 4. I was sure before hand that they were just going to take their waypoint system from their earlier games and stick it in the Doom 3 engine and completely tear out the AAS stuff. I was very much surprised at how much work they put into the AI system and that they integrated into Doom 3's existing system...it's uber easy to work with, especially compared with the pain-in-the-ass system they used in their Quake 3 engine games. It's just a pity they didn't actually really use it in Quake 4. Thankfully it looks like it's getting a second chance with RtCW2. :)



abbaon@Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 7:50 am :
http://www.gamershell.com/news/38602.html

Image

Image

:)

Edit: Their bloom is really just perfect.



aaa111@Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 1:56 pm :
This are the new one:
http://www.enemyterritory.com/images/ss ... _fight.jpg
http://www.enemyterritory.com/images/ss ... efight.jpg
http://www.enemyterritory.com/images/ss ... _of_it.jpg



jcdenton22@Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 7:52 pm :
These are some screenies from the old build that we(atleast I) didnt get to see before:
Screen 1
Screen 2
Screen 3

You can notice how there was some distance fog and how different were those muzzleflashes & particle effects etc. The bloom-contrast was weird and the trees did not cast shadows :shock:.



Sebultura@Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 9:03 pm :
Guys, I couldn't resist launching the game and look closely at that wonderful water in the beta:

Image

Image

We don't even see the borders of it, making this kind of "sharp edges" we usually see in these cases :shock:



pbmax@Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 9:52 pm :
jcdenton22 wrote:
These are some screenies from the old build that we(atleast I) didnt get to see before:


wow. that snow pic looks pre megaTexture.



=NoMercy=@Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 3:33 pm :
You're right, the water just...ends...so awsome! I can't wait for this game :evil:



Zombie13@Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 6:46 am :
pbmax wrote:
a TON of talented people have left raven over the past few years only to be replaced with younger less experienced people. i'm not exagerating either, a lot of people have left.


Just to straighten your facts up a bit there. Raven is a good developer and it has made a good name for itself over the years (except maybe one or two games, which isn't bad). It's the publisher and associating companies that can force a developer into releasing shit on the shelves.

But it is sad that so many awesome peeps from Raven have buggered off. At least the new companies they're at will benefit from their skill set. :)



jcdenton22@Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 7:19 pm :
pbmax wrote:
jcdenton22 wrote:
These are some screenies from the old build that we(atleast I) didnt get to see before:


wow. that snow pic looks pre megaTexture.


Yeah, it seems so, but it was an older version of MT. The current version packs more details in MT with absolutely no need of fogging. Did you notice the second pic? That guy with binocular is almost floating in air :lol:. That's what happens when you disable IK for performance reasons...

Sebultura wrote:
...
...
We don't even see the borders of it, making this kind of "sharp edges" we usually see in these cases :shock:


That looks awesome! I still remember those hard edges on water that were evident in that Geforce 8800 launch trailer. I was yelling about the edges on water as well as the hard edges on the particles as they(particles) clipped with the game-world. I think they have fixed both. I see a soft particle option in the settings menu, but my geforce 6600 doesnt show the particles well so cant really comment their soft particle implementation...



port66@Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 1:13 am :
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r86/ ... ater01.jpg

looks crap



BNA!@Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 8:54 am :
port66 wrote:
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r86/Sebultura/water01.jpg

looks crap


you realize you're posting decade old shots from the public beta?

If your purpose is to establish yourself as the new board conscience (as a fair share of your posts indicate) I'd say please go easier and spare us posts like the one above - rather post something worthwhile and helpful if and where you can.

Thanks in advance.



port66@Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 2:10 pm :
its was a joke. better if it was interactive like this weird app
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/images/ ... water1.jpg



Phobos@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:14 am :
port66 wrote:
its was a joke. better if it was interactive like this weird app
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/images/ ... water1.jpg


Real time water physics or displacement is at least half a decade away (for being featured in live-rendering gaming anyways).

All they are now are flat polygons with an animated texture, a displacement map, or some other method with layers of shaders to add the reflections/refraction effects.



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:28 am :
wouldnt know. dont care much for gfx http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?option= ... &Itemid=55
if gfx made a game i`d be looking at oil paintings down my local art gallery



rich_is_bored@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 4:27 am :
port66 wrote:
if gfx made a game i`d be looking at oil paintings down my local art gallery


... and throwing darts at them? :)



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 5:12 am :
Phobos wrote:
Real time water physics or displacement is at least half a decade away (for being featured in live-rendering gaming anyways).
All they are now are flat polygons with an animated texture, a displacement map, or some other method with layers of shaders to add the reflections/refraction effects.


metroid prime & mario sunshine looks pretty damn good to me. things bobbed on the waves/ripples, you had mass vs the water, shape of the object affected how the water reacted, along with mass, velocity, etc.

all that matters is that is LOOKS real. who cares if it IS real. :)



GUNJAM@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:03 pm :
Holy shit, is that AQ2?



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:55 pm :
waste some cpu. and save some not having to have 400.000 entities for splash.fx`s



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:20 pm :
i feel the same way about 3d. Why waste 1,000,000 poly's looking nice when Myst can look just as good... in 1997. :shock:



6th Venom@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:27 pm :
Sprites rules. :wink:



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:51 pm :
sprited & fonts. straight up green on black background. :D



6th Venom@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:54 pm :
Tape is loading... :lol:



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 3:25 pm :
READ ERROR



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 7:20 pm :
boogie boogie. muahahahahaha muaha muahahahahahaha

every model, every effect. every projectile is spawned as a entity. and every part of a model.
you can use

Code:
idEntity* self = gameLocal.entities[ renderEntity.entityNum ];


on every class page except vehicleParts.cpp

http://www.blender.org/



goliathvt@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:28 am :
Wow, extremely crappy water physics running on the Quake 2 engine. Not impressed. Well, a little bit by the grenades exploding in the water and the ripple effect making its way down the channel... but other than that, it's just not worth it as a feature for a modern game.



port66@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 3:53 am :
back of the boat waves are in quake 2 engine RIP. still not in idtech4 and no doubt wont be in idtech5. all the mainstream engines are scared to add water phyics outside on nintendo and who ever made waverace



rich_is_bored@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:53 am :
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.

I mean, you have to find a sweet spot where the density of each mesh is high enough to match the detail present in the rest of the scene and yet not so dense that it has a serious impact on performance. IMHO, the graphical bar has been set way too high for soft body physics to be considered anything other than a luxury.

Maybe a few years down the road graphics will have stagnated long enough for general processing power to catch up and then developers can start wasting cycles on extras like soft body pools of water.



BNA!@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 10:12 am :
rich_is_bored wrote:
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.

I mean, you have to find a sweet spot where the density of each mesh is high enough to match the detail present in the rest of the scene and yet not so dense that it has a serious impact on performance. IMHO, the graphical bar has been set way too high for soft body physics to be considered anything other than a luxury.

Maybe a few years down the road graphics will have stagnated long enough for general processing power to catch up and then developers can start wasting cycles on extras like soft body pools of water.


At this point we should all hop over to the "Nvidia acquires Ageia" thread :)
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21146



The Happy Friar@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:54 pm :
rich_is_bored wrote:
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.


that's why in a game Like Zelda:Windwaker or TF2 it would fit perfect. The graphical style already compliments slightly surreal water. To bad everybody is trying to make things look like a bombed out WW2 European city.... :(



port66@Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 4:44 pm :
water will be nothing to dust/smoke particles staying in bounds of the world. a corridor with another alongside
any why aint there no spoilers



The Happy Friar@Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 5:01 pm :
if you can do soft particles in the air you can do them in water. same thing, water just deform's poly's while air doesn't.



Gabrobot@Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:38 pm :
The Happy Friar wrote:
trailers are low res, that particular show is 2048x1356. I could NOT find another ariel shot that shows mostly ground. The only shot I found similar was this shot that looks to be the same area from ~3/06. But it looks like the thing that mostly changed is the model of the mountains/terrain (if they are the same area). I don't see any "extra" detail besides the fact that you're up in the air looking down & see more terrain & everything looks sharper because you're farther away (can't see the anti-aliasing done to the textures).

The lighting looks like it has more contrast (which would make colors brighter/darker) but that's it.


No, look...I took pics from the high res trailer and compared them with the new screens scaled down to the same size...there's no doubt it's more detailed, even taking into account compression in the video.

Old:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_5.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_4.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_1.jpg

New:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/Flying_Escort_resize.jpg


Old:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_3.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_2.jpg

New:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/Strogg_Base_resize.jpg


The devs weren't kidding when they said they planned on improving the graphics in the last stretch of development...those last couple comparison shots really emphasize the difference. :)



Arklon@Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:43 pm :
Mordenkainen wrote:
Dinky wrote:
Why does it crash at 4096, do you know? If you think it's a VRAM problem I could try it, my card has 768mb which isn't too common yet, maybe it won't crash for me?


Not a vram problem but buffer limit allocation problem. Most older video cards only support up to 2048^2 buffers. The GF6+ and the X1xx+ support up to 4096. (I think the GF8 supports 8192^2 but don't quote me on that).
No, even if your video card supports 4096x4096 textures, it will crash, one of my friends tried it with a 7950GX2 and it didn't work.



Arklon@Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:52 pm :
jcdenton22 wrote:
This problem can be solved, if they would make bump maps to cast and receive shadows. That way, low poly models would cast shadows as if they were ultra high poly.
Shadow volumes are geometry based, and, as such, add geometry to the scene (it's not conventionally rasterized, but uses precious bandwidth and CPU cycles). Therefore, it's not really possible for bump maps (and transparency maps, too) to shadow.



Phobos@Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 11:17 pm :
Gabrobot wrote:
The Happy Friar wrote:
trailers are low res, that particular show is 2048x1356. I could NOT find another ariel shot that shows mostly ground. The only shot I found similar was this shot that looks to be the same area from ~3/06. But it looks like the thing that mostly changed is the model of the mountains/terrain (if they are the same area). I don't see any "extra" detail besides the fact that you're up in the air looking down & see more terrain & everything looks sharper because you're farther away (can't see the anti-aliasing done to the textures).

The lighting looks like it has more contrast (which would make colors brighter/darker) but that's it.


No, look...I took pics from the high res trailer and compared them with the new screens scaled down to the same size...there's no doubt it's more detailed, even taking into account compression in the video.

Old:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_5.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_4.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_1.jpg

New:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/Flying_Escort_resize.jpg


Old:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_3.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_2.jpg

New:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/Strogg_Base_resize.jpg


The devs weren't kidding when they said they planned on improving the graphics in the last stretch of development...those last couple comparison shots really emphasize the difference. :)


It's obvious that some of those screenshots are low-quality-jpeg impaired, but at the same time, you can still clearly see the difference in texture detail on the newer shots.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 1:37 am :
Gabrobot wrote:
The devs weren't kidding when they said they planned on improving the graphics in the last stretch of development...those last couple comparison shots really emphasize the difference. :)


those shots, yeah, but the screen shot I posted from 8/3/06 didn't look low res like that. Screen shots could have everything turned WAY up but they lowered quality (or maybe not) to record those videos at full speed.



Gabrobot@Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 2:38 am :
The Happy Friar wrote:
those shots, yeah, but the screen shot I posted from 8/3/06 didn't look low res like that. Screen shots could have everything turned WAY up but they lowered quality (or maybe not) to record those videos at full speed.


It's more than just settings...look at the last two images in my post...the road isn't just more detailed, the lines painted on it are completely different. If you compare every aspect of the MegaTexture it looks like they revamped it. And they already said they were going to do that, so it's not unexpected or anything...I'm just glad they actually did go and do that.



Mordenkainen@Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 3:29 pm :
Arklon wrote:
No, even if your video card supports 4096x4096 textures, it will crash, one of my friends tried it with a 7950GX2 and it didn't work.


Odd, then again, this is bethesda to which reading a text file may be more than enough to expose bugs. :P



jcdenton22@Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 7:39 pm :
Arklon wrote:
jcdenton22 wrote:
This problem can be solved, if they would make bump maps to cast and receive shadows. That way, low poly models would cast shadows as if they were ultra high poly.
Shadow volumes are geometry based, and, as such, add geometry to the scene (it's not conventionally rasterized, but uses precious bandwidth and CPU cycles). Therefore, it's not really possible for bump maps (and transparency maps, too) to shadow.


My bad. What was thinking when I posted that. Thanks for correcting me. :)



Gabrobot@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 4:22 am :
More new screens from Quake Wars Center:

http://www.quakewarscenter.com/

Image

God, I love the MegaTexture tech! :D



Dinky@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 5:03 am :
Gabrobot wrote:
More new screens from Quake Wars Center:

http://www.quakewarscenter.com/

Image

God, I love the MegaTexture tech! :D


WOW!



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 5:09 am :
wonder if STALKER could be re-done in this. :)



Hostyle@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 7:59 am :
I wonder how it looks from close range.



Arklon@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 1:15 pm :
Hostyle wrote:
I wonder how it looks from close range.
http://www.quakewarscenter.com/cpg148/albums/userpics/10001/valleyls3.jpg
Much better than before.

They should rerender the E3 2006 trailer.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 2:16 pm :
Arklon wrote:
They should rerender the E3 2006 trailer.


use those machines to finish the game instead. :)



Gabrobot@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 6:47 pm :
The Happy Friar wrote:
wonder if STALKER could be re-done in this. :)


That would be awesome, although I'm hoping RTCW2 will sort of be like a better version of STALKER what with the whole non-linear thing.



Rayne@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 8:22 pm :
The Happy Friar wrote:
wonder if STALKER could be re-done in this. :)



Since Stalker is 100% realtime lighting and Quake wars got prebaked stuff, I can't see the point.

To be honest, I really can't see a thing in QW that looks better than Stalker ... :D



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 11:52 pm :
Most of the memory usage/slowdown in Stalker comes from textures. megatexture (according to everyone @ SD & id) solved this. So, basically, you could up the detail and/or higher performance. That would mean more area to explore in Stalker.



Gabrobot@Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 5:57 am :
Rayne wrote:
Since Stalker is 100% realtime lighting and Quake wars got prebaked stuff, I can't see the point.


The only reason the lighting is baked into the MegaTexture is to avoid multiple 300-400MB MegaTextures for each level. You could still go and use a MegaTexture normal map and have it lit in real-time, you'd just be dealing with twice the file size.



Mordenkainen@Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 3:42 pm :
Gabrobot wrote:
Rayne wrote:
Since Stalker is 100% realtime lighting and Quake wars got prebaked stuff, I can't see the point.


The only reason the lighting is baked into the MegaTexture is to avoid multiple 300-400MB MegaTextures for each level. You could still go and use a MegaTexture normal map and have it lit in real-time, you'd just be dealing with twice the file size.


That's not the only reason but yeah, Rayne's comment is ignoring the fact that the use of MT is strictly optional and that normal-mapped surfaces are still in use in the engine.



goliathvt@Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 11:36 am :
Just ordered my new rig in anticipation of this puppy. I was going to wait another month but the good ol' tax refund came my way so... heh. I can't wait to get this game to see what's under the hood, what makes it tick. It looks like a lot of modding fun.



Phobos@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:14 am :
port66 wrote:
its was a joke. better if it was interactive like this weird app
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/images/ ... water1.jpg


Real time water physics or displacement is at least half a decade away (for being featured in live-rendering gaming anyways).

All they are now are flat polygons with an animated texture, a displacement map, or some other method with layers of shaders to add the reflections/refraction effects.



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:28 am :
wouldnt know. dont care much for gfx http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?option= ... &Itemid=55
if gfx made a game i`d be looking at oil paintings down my local art gallery



rich_is_bored@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 4:27 am :
port66 wrote:
if gfx made a game i`d be looking at oil paintings down my local art gallery


... and throwing darts at them? :)



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 5:12 am :
Phobos wrote:
Real time water physics or displacement is at least half a decade away (for being featured in live-rendering gaming anyways).
All they are now are flat polygons with an animated texture, a displacement map, or some other method with layers of shaders to add the reflections/refraction effects.


metroid prime & mario sunshine looks pretty damn good to me. things bobbed on the waves/ripples, you had mass vs the water, shape of the object affected how the water reacted, along with mass, velocity, etc.

all that matters is that is LOOKS real. who cares if it IS real. :)



GUNJAM@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:03 pm :
Holy shit, is that AQ2?



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:55 pm :
waste some cpu. and save some not having to have 400.000 entities for splash.fx`s



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:20 pm :
i feel the same way about 3d. Why waste 1,000,000 poly's looking nice when Myst can look just as good... in 1997. :shock:



6th Venom@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:27 pm :
Sprites rules. :wink:



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:51 pm :
sprited & fonts. straight up green on black background. :D



6th Venom@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:54 pm :
Tape is loading... :lol:



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 3:25 pm :
READ ERROR



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 7:20 pm :
boogie boogie. muahahahahaha muaha muahahahahahaha

every model, every effect. every projectile is spawned as a entity. and every part of a model.
you can use

Code:
idEntity* self = gameLocal.entities[ renderEntity.entityNum ];


on every class page except vehicleParts.cpp

http://www.blender.org/



goliathvt@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:28 am :
Wow, extremely crappy water physics running on the Quake 2 engine. Not impressed. Well, a little bit by the grenades exploding in the water and the ripple effect making its way down the channel... but other than that, it's just not worth it as a feature for a modern game.



port66@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 3:53 am :
back of the boat waves are in quake 2 engine RIP. still not in idtech4 and no doubt wont be in idtech5. all the mainstream engines are scared to add water phyics outside on nintendo and who ever made waverace



rich_is_bored@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:53 am :
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.

I mean, you have to find a sweet spot where the density of each mesh is high enough to match the detail present in the rest of the scene and yet not so dense that it has a serious impact on performance. IMHO, the graphical bar has been set way too high for soft body physics to be considered anything other than a luxury.

Maybe a few years down the road graphics will have stagnated long enough for general processing power to catch up and then developers can start wasting cycles on extras like soft body pools of water.



BNA!@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 10:12 am :
rich_is_bored wrote:
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.

I mean, you have to find a sweet spot where the density of each mesh is high enough to match the detail present in the rest of the scene and yet not so dense that it has a serious impact on performance. IMHO, the graphical bar has been set way too high for soft body physics to be considered anything other than a luxury.

Maybe a few years down the road graphics will have stagnated long enough for general processing power to catch up and then developers can start wasting cycles on extras like soft body pools of water.


At this point we should all hop over to the "Nvidia acquires Ageia" thread :)
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21146



The Happy Friar@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:54 pm :
rich_is_bored wrote:
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.


that's why in a game Like Zelda:Windwaker or TF2 it would fit perfect. The graphical style already compliments slightly surreal water. To bad everybody is trying to make things look like a bombed out WW2 European city.... :(



port66@Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 4:44 pm :
water will be nothing to dust/smoke particles staying in bounds of the world. a corridor with another alongside
any why aint there no spoilers



The Happy Friar@Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 5:01 pm :
if you can do soft particles in the air you can do them in water. same thing, water just deform's poly's while air doesn't.



kat@Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:35 pm :
Post screenshots in this topic to keep everything in one place. Images posted to the forums should be 640 width or under (link out to later images).



desmasic@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 1:00 am :
Just wanted to post that 3D Gamers section has all of the screenies for QW you can view online >> http://www.3dgamers.com/screenshots/gam ... rritoryqw/


They are available in high res in their download section. So you can download and post them here if you must.

You can delete this post if I am just supposed to post the pics and not links :?



KoRnScythe@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 2:18 am :
Even though this relates to the previous post that desmasic made, take a look at this screenshot:
http://www.3dgamers.com/screenshots/gam ... qw/460145/

Minus the slightly noticeable low-polygon terrain, this has to be the best screenshot I've seen so far. The large mountains in the background, the very soft looking trees, the distant fogging and cloudy blue skies - I'm amazed.

After all the times gamers insulted the Doom3Engine for the slight inability to render outside areas, this actually looks far better than Half-Life 2 and Far Cry. I'm really impressed so far, and now I'm really looking forward to this.



MaxiM@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 8:30 am :
Agreed! I have this screenshot set as wallpaper since i saw it. It's uber-sweet (but there's a much metter ss on shacknews) :twisted:



pbmax@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 2:56 pm :
KoRnScythe wrote:
Minus the slightly noticeable low-polygon terrain...


the engine renders the terrain "brute force all the way to the horizon". in other words, the engine doesn't mess with terrain lod so a low poly mesh is to be expected.

nonetheless, it renders outdoor scenes very well. this is why someone needs to make a sp game with it!



TelMarine@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 7:17 pm :
just watched the video presentation from quakecon, this game looks so sweet it is unbelievable. Can't wait for the public beta.



butmunch@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 10:00 pm :
TelMarine wrote:
just watched the video presentation from quakecon, this game looks so sweet it is unbelievable. Can't wait for the public beta.


Could you please post a link to the video presentation from quakecon. PREEEEEEETY PLEASE. Been trying to find something for a while now without any luck :(



Zombie13@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 10:50 pm :
http://www.planetquake4.net/download.php?op=fileid&from=ros&lid=2333

Z



ensiform@Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 2:31 am :
http://www.planetquake4.net/images/Quak ... Wars_1.jpg

Isn't the blue icon above the dude's head from Enemy Territory? :oops:



butmunch@Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 7:55 am :
ensiform wrote:
http://www.planetquake4.net/images/QuakeCon%2006%20An%20Inside%20Look%20at%20QuakeWars_1.jpg

Isn't the blue icon above the dude's head from Enemy Territory? :oops:


Yeah now thats a sight for sore eyes. That sign is the spawn protection sign from the original et :D



Tron@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 7:21 am :
http://pc.ign.com/articles/732/732657p1.html

A nice preview of a map we've only seen a couple of screenshots of before (the snowy one).

Goes through all the objectives etc for the level while showing off a couple of new screenshots. :)



ensiform@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 5:51 pm :
ooo command map like rtcw and et :)



KoRnScythe@Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2006 6:11 pm :
Believe it or not, this is the first time I've come across/looked at this screenshot. It's a few months old, but...

http://media.pc.ign.com/media/748/74837 ... 90217.html

... if that isn't the coolest damn-me-to-hell screenshot I've seen from Quake Wars, I'm a lunatic and the world just stopped spinning. This just keeps making my mouth water.



Phobos@Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 8:08 pm :
Many of these screenshots are old, but I just did a few searches and realized I was ignoring something: The sheer atmosphere of this game is going to be incredible! It just struck me upon remembering the night time jeep in the first QW trailer, and seeing one of these screenshots, and the snow... it's just going to be amazing, and it never hit me till now.

Screenshots that inspired me to post this:

http://www.herrks-base.de/et_quakewars/etqw_12.jpg

http://www.enemyterritory.com/_swf/_images/ss/full/etqw_jetty_launch.jpg

http://images.macologist.org/news/etquakewars/Valley_Shot02.jpg

http://cerberus.gamershell.com/screenshots/8324/208231_full.jpg



desmasic@Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 2:49 am :
Maybe it's just me, but the first QW trailer was and still is the best video I have seen for this game. Everything else so far shows more glitches than features.. maybe it's just obvious to me as a modder and not to others.. but still.

I hope they create a kick ass trailer like Quake4 had before release (I believe QW deserves a trailer like that more than Quake4 did). :twisted:

Oh and if you don't already know, there's new profile stuff on their site. Some heavy updates going on over there. GOGOGO!



bkt@Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 5:55 am :
That high density foliage looks damn good. To me it makes it really look alive, I really hope there's some dense forrest areas to look forward to, as i think combat in those areas would be brilliant.



Sebultura@Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 10:01 am :
Take a look at this forum for news shots: http://www.enemyterritory.fr/forums/index.php?showtopic=7660



zeh@Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 11:49 am :
With the few 'new' screenshots showing up, it's important to read these comments, specially RosOne's one:

http://www.theredstuff.com/enemy_territ ... rthplaying



Arklon@Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 11:15 pm :
A couple new screenshots at WorthPlaying. And it should be pretty obvious that they're real Splash Damage screenshots.



Phobos@Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 11:31 pm :
Wow... the more and more atmospheres I see the more and more I look forward to playing the game!!



sxotty@Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 4:06 pm :
Gabrobot wrote:
The Happy Friar wrote:
wonder if STALKER could be re-done in this. :)


That would be awesome, although I'm hoping RTCW2 will sort of be like a better version of STALKER what with the whole non-linear thing.


I would be pleased, but I doubt it. It would be completely out of character.



Gabrobot@Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 7:41 pm :
sxotty wrote:
I would be pleased, but I doubt it. It would be completely out of character.


Out of character of what? RtCW was moving in the direction of large environments you can explore anyway, so this seems like a logical progression. In any case, of the little information released about RtCW2, they have consistently emphasized that the whole game is one single huge world instead of distinct levels, and that objectives will not be "Point A to Point B" indicating that it'll be pretty non-linear. Of course we don't know how far it'll go, but considering that's really the only thing they've said about it, it appears that's the core design step they're taking with it.



pbmax@Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 7:59 pm :
sxotty wrote:
Gabrobot wrote:
The Happy Friar wrote:
wonder if STALKER could be re-done in this. :)


That would be awesome, although I'm hoping RTCW2 will sort of be like a better version of STALKER what with the whole non-linear thing.


I would be pleased, but I doubt it. It would be completely out of character.


raven is also becoming a cookie-cutter video game factory caring little about the games themselves and more about the bottom line. its quite sad really.

a TON of talented people have left raven over the past few years only to be replaced with younger less experienced people. i'm not exagerating either, a lot of people have left.



Gabrobot@Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 11:52 pm :
pbmax wrote:
raven is also becoming a cookie-cutter video game factory caring little about the games themselves and more about the bottom line. its quite sad really.

a TON of talented people have left raven over the past few years only to be replaced with younger less experienced people. i'm not exagerating either, a lot of people have left.


Sadly that's true...I'm hoping for the best, but to be honest I won't really get excited until I see something. I recall Todd Hollenshead making a comment about Quake 4 having extremely disappointing sales figures, and that they were taking definite steps to prevent things like that from happening in the future. So hopefully id's influence will turn Raven's development practices around and get them away from the corporate process they currently employ.



GUNJAM@Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 12:41 am :
I thought Quake 4 was really good :z



Arklon@Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 1:20 am :
GUNJAM wrote:
I thought Quake 4 was really good :z
The pace wasn't fast enough for a Quake game. As for the multiplayer, that's the result of a game developer listening too much to their "hardcore" fans. (Bethesda Softworks did the same thing with Oblivion, and look how it turned out: the game only tried to address fan complaints and suggestions and ditched everything else; hell, some of the fixes for the things people complained about actually made the problem worse, such as level scaling... the Law of Unintended Consequences in its full glory.)



Zenix@Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 2:38 am :
Q4 wasn't perfect, but it's one of the best first person shooters I've ever played (and I've played a lot).

The main complaint I had with SP, was that it didn't resemble Q2 enough (mainly in weapon and enemy design).

MP was essentially Q3 MP, though I personally preferred most of the Q4 maps (especially the CTF ones).

But that's all completely off topic :)



Mordenkainen@Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 3:17 am :
Gabrobot wrote:
pbmax wrote:
raven is also becoming a cookie-cutter video game factory caring little about the games themselves and more about the bottom line. its quite sad really.

a TON of talented people have left raven over the past few years only to be replaced with younger less experienced people. i'm not exagerating either, a lot of people have left.


Sadly that's true...I'm hoping for the best, but to be honest I won't really get excited until I see something. I recall Todd Hollenshead making a comment about Quake 4 having extremely disappointing sales figures, and that they were taking definite steps to prevent things like that from happening in the future. So hopefully id's influence will turn Raven's development practices around and get them away from the corporate process they currently employ.


Both of you surely know that Raven is wholly owned by Activision, right? There's not much id Software can do, aside perhaps from strongarming Acti into changing its own (Raven's) practices lest they lose id as a developer to competing publishers.

Personally, I wasn't impressed by Q4 (though perhaps that's because I never did like the Strogg universe created with Quake 2) however I still felt it was a good game, if too short. I think the problem with Q4 was two-fold:

1) The DOOM3 engine. Both real limitations and ignorance in the game community buried this game from the start. Before it was released every Q4 story/screenshot that appeared in Blues, The Shack, Ve3D, etc. had comments like "looks like D3, too dark, too plastiky, too whatever". It's obvious id Software had a part to play here with their (mis)management of the engine itself or rather, properly educating people on the benefits of it. Take FEAR and RIDDICK as examples, pretty much the same type of engine and look as D3 but people still rave how FEAR looks great (and it does, if you ignore the repetitive map design, but so does D3).

2) The game felt unfocused. It was single player and multiplayer, MP was a copy of Q3, single player didn't really offer anything new with the exception of a few scenes. Change the name and it becomes just another shoot-'em-up game. The same can't be said of DOOM 3. This is undoubtedly subjective though.

It also didn't help that Q4 was the lemon in the XBOX 360's first batch of games, which gave the game a terrible reputation which I believe spilt onto the PC version. Even though it was released a year and some months after D3, there were precious little advances in engine technology, yes we got better ambient lighting but D3 used so little of the original there's no chance to compare the two. Q4 also cut some D3 features like MP IK, shadow casting torch (unless you play in Ultra) and per poly hit detection (for MP). In many ways Q4 is a step down from D3.

I also question id's decision to bow down to the H4RDC0R3!!!11!!(one)!! crowd with providing bright skins and forceambient lighting, etc. Before all of those you could actually see Quake 4 on Gamespy's MP stat page. Now you don't. Q4 is beaten by Q2 in this case. I know I stopped playing Q4 mp a while ago. It's also frustrating that id is taking so long to release final patches for Q4. I got a map ready to go just waiting for the newest patch to go final to see if they finally fixed ladders in MP.

So anyway, I think my point is that the Raven guys probably have less responsability on the game's outcome than you guys are saying. The textures were top notch, the audio was great, nice motion capture, diverse maps, etc. ie what Raven as a developer could do I think they delivered; it's the rest that was either poorly planned or the victim of some bad management decisions. IMO, both Activision and id had final say on both the logistics and game direction respectively, which is what doomed the game.



Gabrobot@Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 4:02 am :
Mordenkainen wrote:
Both of you surely know that Raven is wholly owned by Activision, right? There's not much id Software can do, aside perhaps from strongarming Acti into changing its own (Raven's) practices lest they lose id as a developer to competing publishers.


Yeah I know...I'd actually say that's the main reason for Raven's slipping. I've seen it happening over time. As a fan of the original Jedi Knight I followed the development of Jedi Knight II with great anticipation. I personally think it turned out great and Raven did some great work on it. Jedi Academy on the other hand, while good as an expansion type game, was starting to show the side effects of Raven's corporate development practices. Jedi Outcast had a reasonably sized team, whereas for Jedi Academy they went in favor of hiring a shit load of people and it showed. The game had tons of new content and the modding abilities were greatly enhanced, but it just felt kinda soulless.

I don't think you can discount id Software's power over the development of games they're overseeing. id Software is still very much independent of Activision...for example Carmack's cell phone games are published by EA. I also recall Carmack mentioning a while back that they hadn't started showing their new game around to different publishers yet indicating that they weren't set on having Activision publish the game. I'm sure Activision doesn't want to lose a lucrative deal with id Software. In that context it seems like giving id Software the power to closely control Raven's development process on id Software games seems pretty reasonable.

In any case, I forgot to mention that I have reason to believe based on some of the people Raven hired late in and after Quake 4's development that they've changed tack. One of them is an old school mapper who can do all aspects of mapping instead of only doing part of it (I think that having too many people working on the same map stiffles creativity), and the other is known for his innovative use of the Quake 3 engine and Q3map2 to do natural environments. So I'm hoping that Raven is taking some much needed steps back as far as their development process goes and is focusing on a smaller but more skilled dev team for RtCW2.

Oh, and I do think id Software is certainly responsible to some extent for not overseeing Quake 4 better...I get the impression Quake Wars is being handled somewhat differently, with id Software taking a more hands on role (such as developing some of the major technology like the bot AI). Quake 4 felt very much like Raven was left to do their own thing with the engine, and they just went for the quick and easy solutions that they already knew how to do (for example tearing out much of the scripting stuff and hard coding it instead). And I know for a fact that this is the sort of thing they do...they admitted to doing it in Jedi Outcast. Much of the increased mod support in Jedi Academy was simply them going back and changing their rushed hard coded stuff into more versatile script systems.

EDIT: Oh, and I do have to praise Raven on the AI system in Quake 4. I was sure before hand that they were just going to take their waypoint system from their earlier games and stick it in the Doom 3 engine and completely tear out the AAS stuff. I was very much surprised at how much work they put into the AI system and that they integrated into Doom 3's existing system...it's uber easy to work with, especially compared with the pain-in-the-ass system they used in their Quake 3 engine games. It's just a pity they didn't actually really use it in Quake 4. Thankfully it looks like it's getting a second chance with RtCW2. :)



abbaon@Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 7:50 am :
http://www.gamershell.com/news/38602.html

Image

Image

:)

Edit: Their bloom is really just perfect.



aaa111@Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 1:56 pm :
This are the new one:
http://www.enemyterritory.com/images/ss ... _fight.jpg
http://www.enemyterritory.com/images/ss ... efight.jpg
http://www.enemyterritory.com/images/ss ... _of_it.jpg



jcdenton22@Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 7:52 pm :
These are some screenies from the old build that we(atleast I) didnt get to see before:
Screen 1
Screen 2
Screen 3

You can notice how there was some distance fog and how different were those muzzleflashes & particle effects etc. The bloom-contrast was weird and the trees did not cast shadows :shock:.



Sebultura@Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 9:03 pm :
Guys, I couldn't resist launching the game and look closely at that wonderful water in the beta:

Image

Image

We don't even see the borders of it, making this kind of "sharp edges" we usually see in these cases :shock:



pbmax@Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 9:52 pm :
jcdenton22 wrote:
These are some screenies from the old build that we(atleast I) didnt get to see before:


wow. that snow pic looks pre megaTexture.



=NoMercy=@Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 3:33 pm :
You're right, the water just...ends...so awsome! I can't wait for this game :evil:



Zombie13@Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 6:46 am :
pbmax wrote:
a TON of talented people have left raven over the past few years only to be replaced with younger less experienced people. i'm not exagerating either, a lot of people have left.


Just to straighten your facts up a bit there. Raven is a good developer and it has made a good name for itself over the years (except maybe one or two games, which isn't bad). It's the publisher and associating companies that can force a developer into releasing shit on the shelves.

But it is sad that so many awesome peeps from Raven have buggered off. At least the new companies they're at will benefit from their skill set. :)



jcdenton22@Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 7:19 pm :
pbmax wrote:
jcdenton22 wrote:
These are some screenies from the old build that we(atleast I) didnt get to see before:


wow. that snow pic looks pre megaTexture.


Yeah, it seems so, but it was an older version of MT. The current version packs more details in MT with absolutely no need of fogging. Did you notice the second pic? That guy with binocular is almost floating in air :lol:. That's what happens when you disable IK for performance reasons...

Sebultura wrote:
...
...
We don't even see the borders of it, making this kind of "sharp edges" we usually see in these cases :shock:


That looks awesome! I still remember those hard edges on water that were evident in that Geforce 8800 launch trailer. I was yelling about the edges on water as well as the hard edges on the particles as they(particles) clipped with the game-world. I think they have fixed both. I see a soft particle option in the settings menu, but my geforce 6600 doesnt show the particles well so cant really comment their soft particle implementation...



port66@Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 1:13 am :
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r86/ ... ater01.jpg

looks crap



BNA!@Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 8:54 am :
port66 wrote:
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r86/Sebultura/water01.jpg

looks crap


you realize you're posting decade old shots from the public beta?

If your purpose is to establish yourself as the new board conscience (as a fair share of your posts indicate) I'd say please go easier and spare us posts like the one above - rather post something worthwhile and helpful if and where you can.

Thanks in advance.



port66@Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 2:10 pm :
its was a joke. better if it was interactive like this weird app
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/images/ ... water1.jpg



Phobos@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:14 am :
port66 wrote:
its was a joke. better if it was interactive like this weird app
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/images/ ... water1.jpg


Real time water physics or displacement is at least half a decade away (for being featured in live-rendering gaming anyways).

All they are now are flat polygons with an animated texture, a displacement map, or some other method with layers of shaders to add the reflections/refraction effects.



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:28 am :
wouldnt know. dont care much for gfx http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?option= ... &Itemid=55
if gfx made a game i`d be looking at oil paintings down my local art gallery



rich_is_bored@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 4:27 am :
port66 wrote:
if gfx made a game i`d be looking at oil paintings down my local art gallery


... and throwing darts at them? :)



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 5:12 am :
Phobos wrote:
Real time water physics or displacement is at least half a decade away (for being featured in live-rendering gaming anyways).
All they are now are flat polygons with an animated texture, a displacement map, or some other method with layers of shaders to add the reflections/refraction effects.


metroid prime & mario sunshine looks pretty damn good to me. things bobbed on the waves/ripples, you had mass vs the water, shape of the object affected how the water reacted, along with mass, velocity, etc.

all that matters is that is LOOKS real. who cares if it IS real. :)



GUNJAM@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:03 pm :
Holy shit, is that AQ2?



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:55 pm :
waste some cpu. and save some not having to have 400.000 entities for splash.fx`s



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:20 pm :
i feel the same way about 3d. Why waste 1,000,000 poly's looking nice when Myst can look just as good... in 1997. :shock:



6th Venom@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:27 pm :
Sprites rules. :wink:



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:51 pm :
sprited & fonts. straight up green on black background. :D



6th Venom@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:54 pm :
Tape is loading... :lol:



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 3:25 pm :
READ ERROR



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 7:20 pm :
boogie boogie. muahahahahaha muaha muahahahahahaha

every model, every effect. every projectile is spawned as a entity. and every part of a model.
you can use

Code:
idEntity* self = gameLocal.entities[ renderEntity.entityNum ];


on every class page except vehicleParts.cpp

http://www.blender.org/



goliathvt@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:28 am :
Wow, extremely crappy water physics running on the Quake 2 engine. Not impressed. Well, a little bit by the grenades exploding in the water and the ripple effect making its way down the channel... but other than that, it's just not worth it as a feature for a modern game.



port66@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 3:53 am :
back of the boat waves are in quake 2 engine RIP. still not in idtech4 and no doubt wont be in idtech5. all the mainstream engines are scared to add water phyics outside on nintendo and who ever made waverace



rich_is_bored@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:53 am :
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.

I mean, you have to find a sweet spot where the density of each mesh is high enough to match the detail present in the rest of the scene and yet not so dense that it has a serious impact on performance. IMHO, the graphical bar has been set way too high for soft body physics to be considered anything other than a luxury.

Maybe a few years down the road graphics will have stagnated long enough for general processing power to catch up and then developers can start wasting cycles on extras like soft body pools of water.



BNA!@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 10:12 am :
rich_is_bored wrote:
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.

I mean, you have to find a sweet spot where the density of each mesh is high enough to match the detail present in the rest of the scene and yet not so dense that it has a serious impact on performance. IMHO, the graphical bar has been set way too high for soft body physics to be considered anything other than a luxury.

Maybe a few years down the road graphics will have stagnated long enough for general processing power to catch up and then developers can start wasting cycles on extras like soft body pools of water.


At this point we should all hop over to the "Nvidia acquires Ageia" thread :)
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21146



The Happy Friar@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:54 pm :
rich_is_bored wrote:
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.


that's why in a game Like Zelda:Windwaker or TF2 it would fit perfect. The graphical style already compliments slightly surreal water. To bad everybody is trying to make things look like a bombed out WW2 European city.... :(



port66@Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 4:44 pm :
water will be nothing to dust/smoke particles staying in bounds of the world. a corridor with another alongside
any why aint there no spoilers



The Happy Friar@Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 5:01 pm :
if you can do soft particles in the air you can do them in water. same thing, water just deform's poly's while air doesn't.



Gabrobot@Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:38 pm :
The Happy Friar wrote:
trailers are low res, that particular show is 2048x1356. I could NOT find another ariel shot that shows mostly ground. The only shot I found similar was this shot that looks to be the same area from ~3/06. But it looks like the thing that mostly changed is the model of the mountains/terrain (if they are the same area). I don't see any "extra" detail besides the fact that you're up in the air looking down & see more terrain & everything looks sharper because you're farther away (can't see the anti-aliasing done to the textures).

The lighting looks like it has more contrast (which would make colors brighter/darker) but that's it.


No, look...I took pics from the high res trailer and compared them with the new screens scaled down to the same size...there's no doubt it's more detailed, even taking into account compression in the video.

Old:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_5.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_4.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_1.jpg

New:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/Flying_Escort_resize.jpg


Old:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_3.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_2.jpg

New:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/Strogg_Base_resize.jpg


The devs weren't kidding when they said they planned on improving the graphics in the last stretch of development...those last couple comparison shots really emphasize the difference. :)



Arklon@Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:43 pm :
Mordenkainen wrote:
Dinky wrote:
Why does it crash at 4096, do you know? If you think it's a VRAM problem I could try it, my card has 768mb which isn't too common yet, maybe it won't crash for me?


Not a vram problem but buffer limit allocation problem. Most older video cards only support up to 2048^2 buffers. The GF6+ and the X1xx+ support up to 4096. (I think the GF8 supports 8192^2 but don't quote me on that).
No, even if your video card supports 4096x4096 textures, it will crash, one of my friends tried it with a 7950GX2 and it didn't work.



Arklon@Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:52 pm :
jcdenton22 wrote:
This problem can be solved, if they would make bump maps to cast and receive shadows. That way, low poly models would cast shadows as if they were ultra high poly.
Shadow volumes are geometry based, and, as such, add geometry to the scene (it's not conventionally rasterized, but uses precious bandwidth and CPU cycles). Therefore, it's not really possible for bump maps (and transparency maps, too) to shadow.



Phobos@Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 11:17 pm :
Gabrobot wrote:
The Happy Friar wrote:
trailers are low res, that particular show is 2048x1356. I could NOT find another ariel shot that shows mostly ground. The only shot I found similar was this shot that looks to be the same area from ~3/06. But it looks like the thing that mostly changed is the model of the mountains/terrain (if they are the same area). I don't see any "extra" detail besides the fact that you're up in the air looking down & see more terrain & everything looks sharper because you're farther away (can't see the anti-aliasing done to the textures).

The lighting looks like it has more contrast (which would make colors brighter/darker) but that's it.


No, look...I took pics from the high res trailer and compared them with the new screens scaled down to the same size...there's no doubt it's more detailed, even taking into account compression in the video.

Old:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_5.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_4.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_1.jpg

New:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/Flying_Escort_resize.jpg


Old:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_3.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_2.jpg

New:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/Strogg_Base_resize.jpg


The devs weren't kidding when they said they planned on improving the graphics in the last stretch of development...those last couple comparison shots really emphasize the difference. :)


It's obvious that some of those screenshots are low-quality-jpeg impaired, but at the same time, you can still clearly see the difference in texture detail on the newer shots.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 1:37 am :
Gabrobot wrote:
The devs weren't kidding when they said they planned on improving the graphics in the last stretch of development...those last couple comparison shots really emphasize the difference. :)


those shots, yeah, but the screen shot I posted from 8/3/06 didn't look low res like that. Screen shots could have everything turned WAY up but they lowered quality (or maybe not) to record those videos at full speed.



Gabrobot@Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 2:38 am :
The Happy Friar wrote:
those shots, yeah, but the screen shot I posted from 8/3/06 didn't look low res like that. Screen shots could have everything turned WAY up but they lowered quality (or maybe not) to record those videos at full speed.


It's more than just settings...look at the last two images in my post...the road isn't just more detailed, the lines painted on it are completely different. If you compare every aspect of the MegaTexture it looks like they revamped it. And they already said they were going to do that, so it's not unexpected or anything...I'm just glad they actually did go and do that.



Mordenkainen@Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 3:29 pm :
Arklon wrote:
No, even if your video card supports 4096x4096 textures, it will crash, one of my friends tried it with a 7950GX2 and it didn't work.


Odd, then again, this is bethesda to which reading a text file may be more than enough to expose bugs. :P



jcdenton22@Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 7:39 pm :
Arklon wrote:
jcdenton22 wrote:
This problem can be solved, if they would make bump maps to cast and receive shadows. That way, low poly models would cast shadows as if they were ultra high poly.
Shadow volumes are geometry based, and, as such, add geometry to the scene (it's not conventionally rasterized, but uses precious bandwidth and CPU cycles). Therefore, it's not really possible for bump maps (and transparency maps, too) to shadow.


My bad. What was thinking when I posted that. Thanks for correcting me. :)



Gabrobot@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 4:22 am :
More new screens from Quake Wars Center:

http://www.quakewarscenter.com/

Image

God, I love the MegaTexture tech! :D



Dinky@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 5:03 am :
Gabrobot wrote:
More new screens from Quake Wars Center:

http://www.quakewarscenter.com/

Image

God, I love the MegaTexture tech! :D


WOW!



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 5:09 am :
wonder if STALKER could be re-done in this. :)



Hostyle@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 7:59 am :
I wonder how it looks from close range.



Arklon@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 1:15 pm :
Hostyle wrote:
I wonder how it looks from close range.
http://www.quakewarscenter.com/cpg148/albums/userpics/10001/valleyls3.jpg
Much better than before.

They should rerender the E3 2006 trailer.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 2:16 pm :
Arklon wrote:
They should rerender the E3 2006 trailer.


use those machines to finish the game instead. :)



Gabrobot@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 6:47 pm :
The Happy Friar wrote:
wonder if STALKER could be re-done in this. :)


That would be awesome, although I'm hoping RTCW2 will sort of be like a better version of STALKER what with the whole non-linear thing.



Rayne@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 8:22 pm :
The Happy Friar wrote:
wonder if STALKER could be re-done in this. :)



Since Stalker is 100% realtime lighting and Quake wars got prebaked stuff, I can't see the point.

To be honest, I really can't see a thing in QW that looks better than Stalker ... :D



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 11:52 pm :
Most of the memory usage/slowdown in Stalker comes from textures. megatexture (according to everyone @ SD & id) solved this. So, basically, you could up the detail and/or higher performance. That would mean more area to explore in Stalker.



Gabrobot@Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 5:57 am :
Rayne wrote:
Since Stalker is 100% realtime lighting and Quake wars got prebaked stuff, I can't see the point.


The only reason the lighting is baked into the MegaTexture is to avoid multiple 300-400MB MegaTextures for each level. You could still go and use a MegaTexture normal map and have it lit in real-time, you'd just be dealing with twice the file size.



Mordenkainen@Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 3:42 pm :
Gabrobot wrote:
Rayne wrote:
Since Stalker is 100% realtime lighting and Quake wars got prebaked stuff, I can't see the point.


The only reason the lighting is baked into the MegaTexture is to avoid multiple 300-400MB MegaTextures for each level. You could still go and use a MegaTexture normal map and have it lit in real-time, you'd just be dealing with twice the file size.


That's not the only reason but yeah, Rayne's comment is ignoring the fact that the use of MT is strictly optional and that normal-mapped surfaces are still in use in the engine.



goliathvt@Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 11:36 am :
Just ordered my new rig in anticipation of this puppy. I was going to wait another month but the good ol' tax refund came my way so... heh. I can't wait to get this game to see what's under the hood, what makes it tick. It looks like a lot of modding fun.



kat@Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:35 pm :
Post screenshots in this topic to keep everything in one place. Images posted to the forums should be 640 width or under (link out to later images).



desmasic@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 1:00 am :
Just wanted to post that 3D Gamers section has all of the screenies for QW you can view online >> http://www.3dgamers.com/screenshots/gam ... rritoryqw/


They are available in high res in their download section. So you can download and post them here if you must.

You can delete this post if I am just supposed to post the pics and not links :?



KoRnScythe@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 2:18 am :
Even though this relates to the previous post that desmasic made, take a look at this screenshot:
http://www.3dgamers.com/screenshots/gam ... qw/460145/

Minus the slightly noticeable low-polygon terrain, this has to be the best screenshot I've seen so far. The large mountains in the background, the very soft looking trees, the distant fogging and cloudy blue skies - I'm amazed.

After all the times gamers insulted the Doom3Engine for the slight inability to render outside areas, this actually looks far better than Half-Life 2 and Far Cry. I'm really impressed so far, and now I'm really looking forward to this.



MaxiM@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 8:30 am :
Agreed! I have this screenshot set as wallpaper since i saw it. It's uber-sweet (but there's a much metter ss on shacknews) :twisted:



pbmax@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 2:56 pm :
KoRnScythe wrote:
Minus the slightly noticeable low-polygon terrain...


the engine renders the terrain "brute force all the way to the horizon". in other words, the engine doesn't mess with terrain lod so a low poly mesh is to be expected.

nonetheless, it renders outdoor scenes very well. this is why someone needs to make a sp game with it!



TelMarine@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 7:17 pm :
just watched the video presentation from quakecon, this game looks so sweet it is unbelievable. Can't wait for the public beta.



butmunch@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 10:00 pm :
TelMarine wrote:
just watched the video presentation from quakecon, this game looks so sweet it is unbelievable. Can't wait for the public beta.


Could you please post a link to the video presentation from quakecon. PREEEEEEETY PLEASE. Been trying to find something for a while now without any luck :(



Zombie13@Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2006 10:50 pm :
http://www.planetquake4.net/download.php?op=fileid&from=ros&lid=2333

Z



ensiform@Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 2:31 am :
http://www.planetquake4.net/images/Quak ... Wars_1.jpg

Isn't the blue icon above the dude's head from Enemy Territory? :oops:



butmunch@Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 7:55 am :
ensiform wrote:
http://www.planetquake4.net/images/QuakeCon%2006%20An%20Inside%20Look%20at%20QuakeWars_1.jpg

Isn't the blue icon above the dude's head from Enemy Territory? :oops:


Yeah now thats a sight for sore eyes. That sign is the spawn protection sign from the original et :D



Tron@Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 7:21 am :
http://pc.ign.com/articles/732/732657p1.html

A nice preview of a map we've only seen a couple of screenshots of before (the snowy one).

Goes through all the objectives etc for the level while showing off a couple of new screenshots. :)



ensiform@Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 5:51 pm :
ooo command map like rtcw and et :)



KoRnScythe@Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2006 6:11 pm :
Believe it or not, this is the first time I've come across/looked at this screenshot. It's a few months old, but...

http://media.pc.ign.com/media/748/74837 ... 90217.html

... if that isn't the coolest damn-me-to-hell screenshot I've seen from Quake Wars, I'm a lunatic and the world just stopped spinning. This just keeps making my mouth water.



Phobos@Posted: Sun Oct 15, 2006 8:08 pm :
Many of these screenshots are old, but I just did a few searches and realized I was ignoring something: The sheer atmosphere of this game is going to be incredible! It just struck me upon remembering the night time jeep in the first QW trailer, and seeing one of these screenshots, and the snow... it's just going to be amazing, and it never hit me till now.

Screenshots that inspired me to post this:

http://www.herrks-base.de/et_quakewars/etqw_12.jpg

http://www.enemyterritory.com/_swf/_images/ss/full/etqw_jetty_launch.jpg

http://images.macologist.org/news/etquakewars/Valley_Shot02.jpg

http://cerberus.gamershell.com/screenshots/8324/208231_full.jpg



desmasic@Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 2:49 am :
Maybe it's just me, but the first QW trailer was and still is the best video I have seen for this game. Everything else so far shows more glitches than features.. maybe it's just obvious to me as a modder and not to others.. but still.

I hope they create a kick ass trailer like Quake4 had before release (I believe QW deserves a trailer like that more than Quake4 did). :twisted:

Oh and if you don't already know, there's new profile stuff on their site. Some heavy updates going on over there. GOGOGO!



bkt@Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 5:55 am :
That high density foliage looks damn good. To me it makes it really look alive, I really hope there's some dense forrest areas to look forward to, as i think combat in those areas would be brilliant.



Sebultura@Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 10:01 am :
Take a look at this forum for news shots: http://www.enemyterritory.fr/forums/index.php?showtopic=7660



zeh@Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 11:49 am :
With the few 'new' screenshots showing up, it's important to read these comments, specially RosOne's one:

http://www.theredstuff.com/enemy_territ ... rthplaying



Arklon@Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 11:15 pm :
A couple new screenshots at WorthPlaying. And it should be pretty obvious that they're real Splash Damage screenshots.



Phobos@Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 11:31 pm :
Wow... the more and more atmospheres I see the more and more I look forward to playing the game!!



sxotty@Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 4:06 pm :
Gabrobot wrote:
The Happy Friar wrote:
wonder if STALKER could be re-done in this. :)


That would be awesome, although I'm hoping RTCW2 will sort of be like a better version of STALKER what with the whole non-linear thing.


I would be pleased, but I doubt it. It would be completely out of character.



Gabrobot@Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 7:41 pm :
sxotty wrote:
I would be pleased, but I doubt it. It would be completely out of character.


Out of character of what? RtCW was moving in the direction of large environments you can explore anyway, so this seems like a logical progression. In any case, of the little information released about RtCW2, they have consistently emphasized that the whole game is one single huge world instead of distinct levels, and that objectives will not be "Point A to Point B" indicating that it'll be pretty non-linear. Of course we don't know how far it'll go, but considering that's really the only thing they've said about it, it appears that's the core design step they're taking with it.



pbmax@Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 7:59 pm :
sxotty wrote:
Gabrobot wrote:
The Happy Friar wrote:
wonder if STALKER could be re-done in this. :)


That would be awesome, although I'm hoping RTCW2 will sort of be like a better version of STALKER what with the whole non-linear thing.


I would be pleased, but I doubt it. It would be completely out of character.


raven is also becoming a cookie-cutter video game factory caring little about the games themselves and more about the bottom line. its quite sad really.

a TON of talented people have left raven over the past few years only to be replaced with younger less experienced people. i'm not exagerating either, a lot of people have left.



Gabrobot@Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 11:52 pm :
pbmax wrote:
raven is also becoming a cookie-cutter video game factory caring little about the games themselves and more about the bottom line. its quite sad really.

a TON of talented people have left raven over the past few years only to be replaced with younger less experienced people. i'm not exagerating either, a lot of people have left.


Sadly that's true...I'm hoping for the best, but to be honest I won't really get excited until I see something. I recall Todd Hollenshead making a comment about Quake 4 having extremely disappointing sales figures, and that they were taking definite steps to prevent things like that from happening in the future. So hopefully id's influence will turn Raven's development practices around and get them away from the corporate process they currently employ.



GUNJAM@Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 12:41 am :
I thought Quake 4 was really good :z



Arklon@Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 1:20 am :
GUNJAM wrote:
I thought Quake 4 was really good :z
The pace wasn't fast enough for a Quake game. As for the multiplayer, that's the result of a game developer listening too much to their "hardcore" fans. (Bethesda Softworks did the same thing with Oblivion, and look how it turned out: the game only tried to address fan complaints and suggestions and ditched everything else; hell, some of the fixes for the things people complained about actually made the problem worse, such as level scaling... the Law of Unintended Consequences in its full glory.)



Zenix@Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 2:38 am :
Q4 wasn't perfect, but it's one of the best first person shooters I've ever played (and I've played a lot).

The main complaint I had with SP, was that it didn't resemble Q2 enough (mainly in weapon and enemy design).

MP was essentially Q3 MP, though I personally preferred most of the Q4 maps (especially the CTF ones).

But that's all completely off topic :)



Mordenkainen@Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 3:17 am :
Gabrobot wrote:
pbmax wrote:
raven is also becoming a cookie-cutter video game factory caring little about the games themselves and more about the bottom line. its quite sad really.

a TON of talented people have left raven over the past few years only to be replaced with younger less experienced people. i'm not exagerating either, a lot of people have left.


Sadly that's true...I'm hoping for the best, but to be honest I won't really get excited until I see something. I recall Todd Hollenshead making a comment about Quake 4 having extremely disappointing sales figures, and that they were taking definite steps to prevent things like that from happening in the future. So hopefully id's influence will turn Raven's development practices around and get them away from the corporate process they currently employ.


Both of you surely know that Raven is wholly owned by Activision, right? There's not much id Software can do, aside perhaps from strongarming Acti into changing its own (Raven's) practices lest they lose id as a developer to competing publishers.

Personally, I wasn't impressed by Q4 (though perhaps that's because I never did like the Strogg universe created with Quake 2) however I still felt it was a good game, if too short. I think the problem with Q4 was two-fold:

1) The DOOM3 engine. Both real limitations and ignorance in the game community buried this game from the start. Before it was released every Q4 story/screenshot that appeared in Blues, The Shack, Ve3D, etc. had comments like "looks like D3, too dark, too plastiky, too whatever". It's obvious id Software had a part to play here with their (mis)management of the engine itself or rather, properly educating people on the benefits of it. Take FEAR and RIDDICK as examples, pretty much the same type of engine and look as D3 but people still rave how FEAR looks great (and it does, if you ignore the repetitive map design, but so does D3).

2) The game felt unfocused. It was single player and multiplayer, MP was a copy of Q3, single player didn't really offer anything new with the exception of a few scenes. Change the name and it becomes just another shoot-'em-up game. The same can't be said of DOOM 3. This is undoubtedly subjective though.

It also didn't help that Q4 was the lemon in the XBOX 360's first batch of games, which gave the game a terrible reputation which I believe spilt onto the PC version. Even though it was released a year and some months after D3, there were precious little advances in engine technology, yes we got better ambient lighting but D3 used so little of the original there's no chance to compare the two. Q4 also cut some D3 features like MP IK, shadow casting torch (unless you play in Ultra) and per poly hit detection (for MP). In many ways Q4 is a step down from D3.

I also question id's decision to bow down to the H4RDC0R3!!!11!!(one)!! crowd with providing bright skins and forceambient lighting, etc. Before all of those you could actually see Quake 4 on Gamespy's MP stat page. Now you don't. Q4 is beaten by Q2 in this case. I know I stopped playing Q4 mp a while ago. It's also frustrating that id is taking so long to release final patches for Q4. I got a map ready to go just waiting for the newest patch to go final to see if they finally fixed ladders in MP.

So anyway, I think my point is that the Raven guys probably have less responsability on the game's outcome than you guys are saying. The textures were top notch, the audio was great, nice motion capture, diverse maps, etc. ie what Raven as a developer could do I think they delivered; it's the rest that was either poorly planned or the victim of some bad management decisions. IMO, both Activision and id had final say on both the logistics and game direction respectively, which is what doomed the game.



Gabrobot@Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 4:02 am :
Mordenkainen wrote:
Both of you surely know that Raven is wholly owned by Activision, right? There's not much id Software can do, aside perhaps from strongarming Acti into changing its own (Raven's) practices lest they lose id as a developer to competing publishers.


Yeah I know...I'd actually say that's the main reason for Raven's slipping. I've seen it happening over time. As a fan of the original Jedi Knight I followed the development of Jedi Knight II with great anticipation. I personally think it turned out great and Raven did some great work on it. Jedi Academy on the other hand, while good as an expansion type game, was starting to show the side effects of Raven's corporate development practices. Jedi Outcast had a reasonably sized team, whereas for Jedi Academy they went in favor of hiring a shit load of people and it showed. The game had tons of new content and the modding abilities were greatly enhanced, but it just felt kinda soulless.

I don't think you can discount id Software's power over the development of games they're overseeing. id Software is still very much independent of Activision...for example Carmack's cell phone games are published by EA. I also recall Carmack mentioning a while back that they hadn't started showing their new game around to different publishers yet indicating that they weren't set on having Activision publish the game. I'm sure Activision doesn't want to lose a lucrative deal with id Software. In that context it seems like giving id Software the power to closely control Raven's development process on id Software games seems pretty reasonable.

In any case, I forgot to mention that I have reason to believe based on some of the people Raven hired late in and after Quake 4's development that they've changed tack. One of them is an old school mapper who can do all aspects of mapping instead of only doing part of it (I think that having too many people working on the same map stiffles creativity), and the other is known for his innovative use of the Quake 3 engine and Q3map2 to do natural environments. So I'm hoping that Raven is taking some much needed steps back as far as their development process goes and is focusing on a smaller but more skilled dev team for RtCW2.

Oh, and I do think id Software is certainly responsible to some extent for not overseeing Quake 4 better...I get the impression Quake Wars is being handled somewhat differently, with id Software taking a more hands on role (such as developing some of the major technology like the bot AI). Quake 4 felt very much like Raven was left to do their own thing with the engine, and they just went for the quick and easy solutions that they already knew how to do (for example tearing out much of the scripting stuff and hard coding it instead). And I know for a fact that this is the sort of thing they do...they admitted to doing it in Jedi Outcast. Much of the increased mod support in Jedi Academy was simply them going back and changing their rushed hard coded stuff into more versatile script systems.

EDIT: Oh, and I do have to praise Raven on the AI system in Quake 4. I was sure before hand that they were just going to take their waypoint system from their earlier games and stick it in the Doom 3 engine and completely tear out the AAS stuff. I was very much surprised at how much work they put into the AI system and that they integrated into Doom 3's existing system...it's uber easy to work with, especially compared with the pain-in-the-ass system they used in their Quake 3 engine games. It's just a pity they didn't actually really use it in Quake 4. Thankfully it looks like it's getting a second chance with RtCW2. :)



abbaon@Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 7:50 am :
http://www.gamershell.com/news/38602.html

Image

Image

:)

Edit: Their bloom is really just perfect.



aaa111@Posted: Sun May 20, 2007 1:56 pm :
This are the new one:
http://www.enemyterritory.com/images/ss ... _fight.jpg
http://www.enemyterritory.com/images/ss ... efight.jpg
http://www.enemyterritory.com/images/ss ... _of_it.jpg



jcdenton22@Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 7:52 pm :
These are some screenies from the old build that we(atleast I) didnt get to see before:
Screen 1
Screen 2
Screen 3

You can notice how there was some distance fog and how different were those muzzleflashes & particle effects etc. The bloom-contrast was weird and the trees did not cast shadows :shock:.



Sebultura@Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 9:03 pm :
Guys, I couldn't resist launching the game and look closely at that wonderful water in the beta:

Image

Image

We don't even see the borders of it, making this kind of "sharp edges" we usually see in these cases :shock:



pbmax@Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 9:52 pm :
jcdenton22 wrote:
These are some screenies from the old build that we(atleast I) didnt get to see before:


wow. that snow pic looks pre megaTexture.



=NoMercy=@Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 3:33 pm :
You're right, the water just...ends...so awsome! I can't wait for this game :evil:



Zombie13@Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 6:46 am :
pbmax wrote:
a TON of talented people have left raven over the past few years only to be replaced with younger less experienced people. i'm not exagerating either, a lot of people have left.


Just to straighten your facts up a bit there. Raven is a good developer and it has made a good name for itself over the years (except maybe one or two games, which isn't bad). It's the publisher and associating companies that can force a developer into releasing shit on the shelves.

But it is sad that so many awesome peeps from Raven have buggered off. At least the new companies they're at will benefit from their skill set. :)



jcdenton22@Posted: Sat Jul 14, 2007 7:19 pm :
pbmax wrote:
jcdenton22 wrote:
These are some screenies from the old build that we(atleast I) didnt get to see before:


wow. that snow pic looks pre megaTexture.


Yeah, it seems so, but it was an older version of MT. The current version packs more details in MT with absolutely no need of fogging. Did you notice the second pic? That guy with binocular is almost floating in air :lol:. That's what happens when you disable IK for performance reasons...

Sebultura wrote:
...
...
We don't even see the borders of it, making this kind of "sharp edges" we usually see in these cases :shock:


That looks awesome! I still remember those hard edges on water that were evident in that Geforce 8800 launch trailer. I was yelling about the edges on water as well as the hard edges on the particles as they(particles) clipped with the game-world. I think they have fixed both. I see a soft particle option in the settings menu, but my geforce 6600 doesnt show the particles well so cant really comment their soft particle implementation...



port66@Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 1:13 am :
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r86/ ... ater01.jpg

looks crap



BNA!@Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 8:54 am :
port66 wrote:
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r86/Sebultura/water01.jpg

looks crap


you realize you're posting decade old shots from the public beta?

If your purpose is to establish yourself as the new board conscience (as a fair share of your posts indicate) I'd say please go easier and spare us posts like the one above - rather post something worthwhile and helpful if and where you can.

Thanks in advance.



port66@Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 2:10 pm :
its was a joke. better if it was interactive like this weird app
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/images/ ... water1.jpg



Phobos@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:14 am :
port66 wrote:
its was a joke. better if it was interactive like this weird app
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/
http://www.cam-direct.co.uk/ltk/images/ ... water1.jpg


Real time water physics or displacement is at least half a decade away (for being featured in live-rendering gaming anyways).

All they are now are flat polygons with an animated texture, a displacement map, or some other method with layers of shaders to add the reflections/refraction effects.



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:28 am :
wouldnt know. dont care much for gfx http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?option= ... &Itemid=55
if gfx made a game i`d be looking at oil paintings down my local art gallery



rich_is_bored@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 4:27 am :
port66 wrote:
if gfx made a game i`d be looking at oil paintings down my local art gallery


... and throwing darts at them? :)



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 5:12 am :
Phobos wrote:
Real time water physics or displacement is at least half a decade away (for being featured in live-rendering gaming anyways).
All they are now are flat polygons with an animated texture, a displacement map, or some other method with layers of shaders to add the reflections/refraction effects.


metroid prime & mario sunshine looks pretty damn good to me. things bobbed on the waves/ripples, you had mass vs the water, shape of the object affected how the water reacted, along with mass, velocity, etc.

all that matters is that is LOOKS real. who cares if it IS real. :)



GUNJAM@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:03 pm :
Holy shit, is that AQ2?



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:55 pm :
waste some cpu. and save some not having to have 400.000 entities for splash.fx`s



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:20 pm :
i feel the same way about 3d. Why waste 1,000,000 poly's looking nice when Myst can look just as good... in 1997. :shock:



6th Venom@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:27 pm :
Sprites rules. :wink:



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:51 pm :
sprited & fonts. straight up green on black background. :D



6th Venom@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:54 pm :
Tape is loading... :lol:



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 3:25 pm :
READ ERROR



port66@Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2008 7:20 pm :
boogie boogie. muahahahahaha muaha muahahahahahaha

every model, every effect. every projectile is spawned as a entity. and every part of a model.
you can use

Code:
idEntity* self = gameLocal.entities[ renderEntity.entityNum ];


on every class page except vehicleParts.cpp

http://www.blender.org/



goliathvt@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:28 am :
Wow, extremely crappy water physics running on the Quake 2 engine. Not impressed. Well, a little bit by the grenades exploding in the water and the ripple effect making its way down the channel... but other than that, it's just not worth it as a feature for a modern game.



port66@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 3:53 am :
back of the boat waves are in quake 2 engine RIP. still not in idtech4 and no doubt wont be in idtech5. all the mainstream engines are scared to add water phyics outside on nintendo and who ever made waverace



rich_is_bored@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 7:53 am :
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.

I mean, you have to find a sweet spot where the density of each mesh is high enough to match the detail present in the rest of the scene and yet not so dense that it has a serious impact on performance. IMHO, the graphical bar has been set way too high for soft body physics to be considered anything other than a luxury.

Maybe a few years down the road graphics will have stagnated long enough for general processing power to catch up and then developers can start wasting cycles on extras like soft body pools of water.



BNA!@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 10:12 am :
rich_is_bored wrote:
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.

I mean, you have to find a sweet spot where the density of each mesh is high enough to match the detail present in the rest of the scene and yet not so dense that it has a serious impact on performance. IMHO, the graphical bar has been set way too high for soft body physics to be considered anything other than a luxury.

Maybe a few years down the road graphics will have stagnated long enough for general processing power to catch up and then developers can start wasting cycles on extras like soft body pools of water.


At this point we should all hop over to the "Nvidia acquires Ageia" thread :)
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=21146



The Happy Friar@Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 1:54 pm :
rich_is_bored wrote:
That's because the graphical capacity of today's games has usurped physics to the point where the inclusion of soft body deformable meshes would break continuity.


that's why in a game Like Zelda:Windwaker or TF2 it would fit perfect. The graphical style already compliments slightly surreal water. To bad everybody is trying to make things look like a bombed out WW2 European city.... :(



port66@Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 4:44 pm :
water will be nothing to dust/smoke particles staying in bounds of the world. a corridor with another alongside
any why aint there no spoilers



The Happy Friar@Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 5:01 pm :
if you can do soft particles in the air you can do them in water. same thing, water just deform's poly's while air doesn't.



Gabrobot@Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:38 pm :
The Happy Friar wrote:
trailers are low res, that particular show is 2048x1356. I could NOT find another ariel shot that shows mostly ground. The only shot I found similar was this shot that looks to be the same area from ~3/06. But it looks like the thing that mostly changed is the model of the mountains/terrain (if they are the same area). I don't see any "extra" detail besides the fact that you're up in the air looking down & see more terrain & everything looks sharper because you're farther away (can't see the anti-aliasing done to the textures).

The lighting looks like it has more contrast (which would make colors brighter/darker) but that's it.


No, look...I took pics from the high res trailer and compared them with the new screens scaled down to the same size...there's no doubt it's more detailed, even taking into account compression in the video.

Old:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_5.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_4.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_1.jpg

New:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/Flying_Escort_resize.jpg


Old:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_3.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_2.jpg

New:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/Strogg_Base_resize.jpg


The devs weren't kidding when they said they planned on improving the graphics in the last stretch of development...those last couple comparison shots really emphasize the difference. :)



Arklon@Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:43 pm :
Mordenkainen wrote:
Dinky wrote:
Why does it crash at 4096, do you know? If you think it's a VRAM problem I could try it, my card has 768mb which isn't too common yet, maybe it won't crash for me?


Not a vram problem but buffer limit allocation problem. Most older video cards only support up to 2048^2 buffers. The GF6+ and the X1xx+ support up to 4096. (I think the GF8 supports 8192^2 but don't quote me on that).
No, even if your video card supports 4096x4096 textures, it will crash, one of my friends tried it with a 7950GX2 and it didn't work.



Arklon@Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:52 pm :
jcdenton22 wrote:
This problem can be solved, if they would make bump maps to cast and receive shadows. That way, low poly models would cast shadows as if they were ultra high poly.
Shadow volumes are geometry based, and, as such, add geometry to the scene (it's not conventionally rasterized, but uses precious bandwidth and CPU cycles). Therefore, it's not really possible for bump maps (and transparency maps, too) to shadow.



Phobos@Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 11:17 pm :
Gabrobot wrote:
The Happy Friar wrote:
trailers are low res, that particular show is 2048x1356. I could NOT find another ariel shot that shows mostly ground. The only shot I found similar was this shot that looks to be the same area from ~3/06. But it looks like the thing that mostly changed is the model of the mountains/terrain (if they are the same area). I don't see any "extra" detail besides the fact that you're up in the air looking down & see more terrain & everything looks sharper because you're farther away (can't see the anti-aliasing done to the textures).

The lighting looks like it has more contrast (which would make colors brighter/darker) but that's it.


No, look...I took pics from the high res trailer and compared them with the new screens scaled down to the same size...there's no doubt it's more detailed, even taking into account compression in the video.

Old:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_5.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_4.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_1.jpg

New:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/Flying_Escort_resize.jpg


Old:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_3.jpg
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/old_2.jpg

New:
http://myweb.students.wwu.edu/conroyg/quakewarscompare/Strogg_Base_resize.jpg


The devs weren't kidding when they said they planned on improving the graphics in the last stretch of development...those last couple comparison shots really emphasize the difference. :)


It's obvious that some of those screenshots are low-quality-jpeg impaired, but at the same time, you can still clearly see the difference in texture detail on the newer shots.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 1:37 am :
Gabrobot wrote:
The devs weren't kidding when they said they planned on improving the graphics in the last stretch of development...those last couple comparison shots really emphasize the difference. :)


those shots, yeah, but the screen shot I posted from 8/3/06 didn't look low res like that. Screen shots could have everything turned WAY up but they lowered quality (or maybe not) to record those videos at full speed.



Gabrobot@Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 2:38 am :
The Happy Friar wrote:
those shots, yeah, but the screen shot I posted from 8/3/06 didn't look low res like that. Screen shots could have everything turned WAY up but they lowered quality (or maybe not) to record those videos at full speed.


It's more than just settings...look at the last two images in my post...the road isn't just more detailed, the lines painted on it are completely different. If you compare every aspect of the MegaTexture it looks like they revamped it. And they already said they were going to do that, so it's not unexpected or anything...I'm just glad they actually did go and do that.



Mordenkainen@Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 3:29 pm :
Arklon wrote:
No, even if your video card supports 4096x4096 textures, it will crash, one of my friends tried it with a 7950GX2 and it didn't work.


Odd, then again, this is bethesda to which reading a text file may be more than enough to expose bugs. :P



jcdenton22@Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 7:39 pm :
Arklon wrote:
jcdenton22 wrote:
This problem can be solved, if they would make bump maps to cast and receive shadows. That way, low poly models would cast shadows as if they were ultra high poly.
Shadow volumes are geometry based, and, as such, add geometry to the scene (it's not conventionally rasterized, but uses precious bandwidth and CPU cycles). Therefore, it's not really possible for bump maps (and transparency maps, too) to shadow.


My bad. What was thinking when I posted that. Thanks for correcting me. :)



Gabrobot@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 4:22 am :
More new screens from Quake Wars Center:

http://www.quakewarscenter.com/

Image

God, I love the MegaTexture tech! :D



Dinky@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 5:03 am :
Gabrobot wrote:
More new screens from Quake Wars Center:

http://www.quakewarscenter.com/

Image

God, I love the MegaTexture tech! :D


WOW!



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 5:09 am :
wonder if STALKER could be re-done in this. :)



Hostyle@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 7:59 am :
I wonder how it looks from close range.



Arklon@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 1:15 pm :
Hostyle wrote:
I wonder how it looks from close range.
http://www.quakewarscenter.com/cpg148/albums/userpics/10001/valleyls3.jpg
Much better than before.

They should rerender the E3 2006 trailer.



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 2:16 pm :
Arklon wrote:
They should rerender the E3 2006 trailer.


use those machines to finish the game instead. :)



Gabrobot@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 6:47 pm :
The Happy Friar wrote:
wonder if STALKER could be re-done in this. :)


That would be awesome, although I'm hoping RTCW2 will sort of be like a better version of STALKER what with the whole non-linear thing.



Rayne@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 8:22 pm :
The Happy Friar wrote:
wonder if STALKER could be re-done in this. :)



Since Stalker is 100% realtime lighting and Quake wars got prebaked stuff, I can't see the point.

To be honest, I really can't see a thing in QW that looks better than Stalker ... :D



The Happy Friar@Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2007 11:52 pm :
Most of the memory usage/slowdown in Stalker comes from textures. megatexture (according to everyone @ SD & id) solved this. So, basically, you could up the detail and/or higher performance. That would mean more area to explore in Stalker.



Gabrobot@Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 5:57 am :
Rayne wrote:
Since Stalker is 100% realtime lighting and Quake wars got prebaked stuff, I can't see the point.


The only reason the lighting is baked into the MegaTexture is to avoid multiple 300-400MB MegaTextures for each level. You could still go and use a MegaTexture normal map and have it lit in real-time, you'd just be dealing with twice the file size.



Mordenkainen@Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 3:42 pm :
Gabrobot wrote:
Rayne wrote:
Since Stalker is 100% realtime lighting and Quake wars got prebaked stuff, I can't see the point.


The only reason the lighting is baked into the MegaTexture is to avoid multiple 300-400MB MegaTextures for each level. You could still go and use a MegaTexture normal map and have it lit in real-time, you'd just be dealing with twice the file size.


That's not the only reason but yeah, Rayne's comment is ignoring the fact that the use of MT is strictly optional and that normal-mapped surfaces are still in use in the engine.



goliathvt@Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 11:36 am :
Just ordered my new rig in anticipation of this puppy. I was going to wait another month but the good ol' tax refund came my way so... heh. I can't wait to get this game to see what's under the hood, what makes it tick. It looks like a lot of modding fun.