S.T.A.L.K.E.R. In 2004?

EvoG · Post by **EvoG** » Fri May 23, 2003 2:52 am

Glad to have you aboard Red.

Megatron, no this is not an FPS 'forum', but arguably this, and ones regarding FPS's are "FPS Threads. As for being on the project, aside from the joke, what are you asking? I understood the game still had a long way to go in the 'meat' department.

Comparative Anatomy of Doom3 and HalfLife 2:

The one clear distinction that I've read many a people talk about is the realtime lighting and shadowing in Doom3, and of course the abundance of bumpmapping, which seems to qualify their statments that Doom has superior graphics. Half Life on the other hand chose to tone down the dynamic lighting, go with the much more subtle and immersive global illumination. As for the bumpmapping, its VERY hard to notice in the video, even the direct feed, but EVERYTHING has bumpmapping on it, but to varying, and more realistic, degrees.

The source engine is a bonified DX9 whore of an engine ( a good thing ). COMPLEX pixel and vertex shaders abound. This is how they are able to achieve refraction and true frenel reflection for example. Having arbitrary geometry assignment of shaders makes this even more wild, which is why they were able to have the water shader on the 'water man' standing in front of ( and refracting ) the fire.

Understand first why outdoor graphics engines are still relatively difficult, then realize all that Valve achieved with theirs. Most engines seperate the two on some level, making for clearly distinct feels, but here they are one and the same...truly seamless. I also understood, while watching the interview movie with Gabe and their lead tech guy, that Source has an intimate connection with Softimage XSI, which for the initiated, leads to incredible control of the art that goes into the game. Working with custom editors like UED or Worldcraft can be a bitch, so for those that prefer to work with the big programs, from what they said, you can get a WYSIWYG connection between XSI and Source, so you can work on getting your materials, shaders and mapping looking just right with professional tools. I assume I dont' have to mention the much lauded character animation system, with wav file lipsych matching(G man intro) and intelligent IK(Strider scene).

Oh well, guess thats enough. I could go on to mention the merits of the first game in expectation of this ones story or go on about the world interaction, but the movies do a much better job.

Cheers

swordinstone · Post by **swordinstone** » Fri May 23, 2003 1:49 pm

Maya has a plug-in called "active X" to help your crap out of maya and into unreal... mainly animated objects (characters and such).

STALKER looks like its turning out to be a "morrowind with guns"... which believe me, is not a bad thing. The game play and setting will be much more important than graphical apperance and physics. AI will still be pretty important tho.

As for Doom3 vs HL2, well, they are 2 different fish in some ways. Doom is able to offer the real time lighting and shadows because of typically shorter view distances; less to render, the prettier it is. HL2 is still going to be using Sky Boxes and LOD switching a lot heavier than Doom3... mainly because of the enourmous outdoor arenas... no one could really run that if it had real time lighting and shadows like Doom. Personally, I'm much more excited about HL2, cos the content it is offering is so much more interesting than doom. Doom looks like a play through it once or twice single player game, with not much beyond that and its pretty visuals (this game will have much more noticable scripting of events than HL2 will). HL2 looks like a rollercoater ride I will be riding untill im dizzy...

The AI looks like it is going to make each time you play through the game a slightly different experiance...based on your decisions. But it is still a story based game, so that will only go so far. The other thing that is so exciting about HL2, is what it is offering to the mod community. Its going to be easier than ever to make some bad ass games. Look at all the small companies that are getting paid to make games now that they have made a not for profit mod. To me, that is incredible... I think we are going to see those numbers double if not triple after HL2 is released and the modders get thier hands on it.

EvoG · Post by **EvoG** » Fri May 23, 2003 9:50 pm

swordinstone wrote:Maya has a plug-in called "active X" to help your crap out of maya and into unreal... mainly animated objects (characters and such).

'Actor-X', but close enough.

ActiveX is that Microsoft COM controller.

Just so you know...while HL2 will be LOD'ing a lot, everyone uses LOD's including DOOM3 and everyone uses skyboxes. For the most part, as long as we have textured skies versus procedurally generated ones, we will be using sky boxes. Doom3, though they haven't really shown us anything yet, apparently does vast outdoor areas as well. One of the demonstrators from last year was talking about how you could be in space, facing mars, and fly all the way into and through the 'atmosphere' and straight into the facility on the planet surface. Sounds very neat, but I haven't heard anything mentioned beyond that.

Cheers

Mr Carrot · Post by **Mr Carrot** » Sat May 24, 2003 12:36 am

The fact they a. havnt shown us yet and b. said they are tying to be more resident evil then doom3 gives us a hint that it will be shat.

axelgreese · Post by **axelgreese** » Sat May 24, 2003 1:10 am

Mr Carrot wrote:The fact they a. havnt shown us yet and b. said they are tying to be more resident evil then doom3 gives us a hint that it will be shat.

that doom3 will shit?

I don't know, AvP2, particuallarly the marine campaign, is one of my favorite games. Scarry games are pretty cool.

Red · Post by **Red** » Sat May 24, 2003 1:11 am

I wouldn't exactly put it that way when speaking about John Carmack...

Mr Carrot · Post by **Mr Carrot** » Sat May 24, 2003 1:18 am

Camack = fantastic engine bloke, shit game design.

Red · Post by **Red** » Sat May 24, 2003 1:25 am

Yeah, never said the opposite. Doesn't change my statement though.

Mr Carrot · Post by **Mr Carrot** » Sat May 24, 2003 1:26 am

emphasising your statement yo, id trying to make a decent sp game, dommed to fail (exucuse the pun).

Red · Post by **Red** » Sat May 24, 2003 1:49 am

id has the luck of having it's own momentum. Even if the game sucks (playwise) it'll still be a great game. Unlike IPLY, id doesn't have a huge roster of useless marketing people to pay, nor do they need to do much of anything to get shelf space...

Is that a good thing? Well, yes and no. It's good for technology as most people look at his engines for the latest technology standard. Gaming wise there's been little gained for quite a bit. Given I don't see FPSs as there being much interesting hapenning game wise in the first place.

Since the release of the original doom, Carmack had a slant for "scary" games though. Looking back at the original, there's nothing which came close to being in a dark room hearing the weird pink besities breathe and stomp whilst you know they're near. He's aiming to recreate such an effect - and though it's notcertain to succeed, I diverge on yout opinion that it's bound to fail.

Mr Carrot · Post by **Mr Carrot** » Sat May 24, 2003 11:42 am

I think stalker has the best engine, it might not look as good as doom 3 or have the supar a1 physics of HL but it has a persistent game world with far larger levels.......... its like OFP but good looking.