S.T.A.L.K.E.R. E3 Report: Part 2

Mad Max RW · Post by **Mad Max RW** » Sat May 17, 2003 2:49 pm

[ -> N/A]

<html><body>Redrick of <A HREF=http://www.oblivion-lost.com/ target=_blank>Oblivion-Lost</A> posted his <A HREF=http://board.oblivion-lost.com/viewtopic.php?t=323 target=_blank>second report</A> from this year’s E3. He goes into detail about NPC AI and touches on the physics engine. Here’s a bit on world simulation:<blockquote>One of the things we spend a lot of time talking about but not showing is the simulation of the world. The idea is to make the game as open ended as possible. GSC is planning to have very few things ( 5-8 ) that are scripted and that can be done in any order. The rest is all generated on the fly. Monsters, NPCs, artifacts, anomalies will be in different places all the time. It will be a different gaming experience every time. This game will have something for everyone. You can play this as an FPS and shoot everything and everyone. You can play this as an RPG, explore the zone, make friends, join factions. You can play it as a stealth game by sneaking around. It should be noted that if you play it as an FPS you will have a hard time: one of the other main goals of the game is extreme realism. If you kill everyone you see, then pretty soon the NPCs that ran away will tell others about you. You will be shot at as soon as someone recognizes you.</blockquote>In related news, <A HREF=http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/stalk ... 28344.html target=_blank>Gamespot</A> has their own <A HREF=http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/stalk ... 28344.html target=_blank>S.T.A.L.K.E.R. preview</A> based on what they saw at E3.</body></html>

PiP · Post by **PiP** » Sun May 18, 2003 4:53 pm

I recommend seeing the whole report: whole lotta goodies (maybe too wordy at times, still worth reading for the info it contains)
Does anyone have a clue about Stalker's performance on Radeons Vs GFs of similar price? I asked that on oblivion-lost, maybe Redrick will find out.

Mad Max RW · Post by **Mad Max RW** » Sun May 18, 2003 5:01 pm

They made a deal with NVidia to allow more features and other stuff nobody will notice to appear only on their cards.

PiP · Post by **PiP** » Sun May 18, 2003 6:05 pm

thanks, this is usuful info, but I mean things like frame rate: I hear Radeons 9800pro sucked in Doom3 tests (10fps!), but it might be merely due to the drivers not being appropriate yet. (hopefully!) I'd hate to see Radeons experience similar problems in Stalker

though (bout D3): "An ATI spokesman said the results were colored by the fact that Nvidia was so heavily involved in the reviews." from http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... aphics_dc=
(after a while) I've found better results: http://www6.tomshardware.com/graphic/20 ... 00-11.html

Spazmo · Post by **Spazmo** » Sun May 18, 2003 6:09 pm

Tom's is full shit. They horribly biased in favor of AMD and NVIDIA. There are a number of far more reliable hardware sites.

Red · Post by **Red** » Mon May 19, 2003 4:21 am

Mad Max RW wrote:They made a deal with NVidia to allow more features and other stuff nobody will notice to appear only on their cards.

That's fucking gay if you ask me... Even though I have an NVidia. Making specials for a single card doesn't really help anyone.

As for radeon, there's a problem with the Catalyst 3.4 drivers taken down it's FPS for some reason. If we use older drivers (I don't rememebr if it's 3.2 or 3.3) then it works dandee with only the NV31 beating it.

axelgreese · Post by **axelgreese** » Mon May 19, 2003 4:22 am

it helps your e-pen0s

PiP · Post by **PiP** » Mon May 19, 2003 10:21 am

HeadHunter from oblivion-lost has repied me this way:
It won't suck on ATI cards. The only difference is, that there will be some features that will be more advanced on nVidia's GeForce FX cards. Here is the very list:

High precision and ps2.0 for
1. Deferred shading
2. Volumetric effects (fog and mist, lighting)
3. Soft shadows
4. High quality bump-mapping
5. High quality HDR lighting (addressing overbright or over-dark)
6. Frame buffer post-processing and photoshop-like effect (complex filters)
7. sRGB gamma correction on texture sampling
8. Multiple textures and complex calculations contributing to each final pixel
9. Native scientific instructions
vs2.0
1. Much more constants
2. Much more instructions per shader
3. Native scientific instructions
4. Branches
Asynchronous notifications - there is a number of interesting asynchronous queries that could be made on driver status. One of them is “occlusion” query which can be used to greatly improve rendering time for such complex scenes as used in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

GeForce FX cards will probably a bit faster. But you needn't extra buy a GeForce FX if you've already got the Radeon 9700.