Outcast

Bleusilences · Post by **Bleusilences** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 8:46 pm

Does anyone ever played this game?

EvoG · Post by **EvoG** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 10:22 pm

Yes, it rocks, ulukai

Cheers

Bleusilences · Post by **Bleusilences** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 11:38 pm

Do you have it in french or english?

EvoG · Post by **EvoG** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 11:41 pm

English, and no you can't have it.

Bleusilences · Post by **Bleusilences** » Sun Feb 29, 2004 12:31 pm

I have it in french with the guide(it came in the same package.). Is it just me or the A.I was quite good for it's time and there a ton of fun stuff to do. I.E I like to attack patrols in the big city.

Foldy · Post by **Foldy** » Sun Feb 29, 2004 5:22 pm

It's an amazing game.

The sequel was supposedly shaping up to be shit, so I s'pose it's a good thing that it got cancelled.

Jeff · Post by **Jeff** » Sun Feb 29, 2004 5:45 pm

come again?

Myrrdin · Post by **Myrrdin** » Sun Feb 29, 2004 8:28 pm

What the heck happened to voxel technology anyway? I had to play it again for a bit when I read this thread, and I bet that it would look very closely as nice as most games today if it was possible to just pump up the resolution to 1024x768 or something. Everything looks so smooth and soft in some way. Is it a pain in the ass to work with voxels compared to "regular" 3d, or was it in some way the gfx-card shuysters who supressed the use of voxels?

EvoG · Post by **EvoG** » Sun Feb 29, 2004 9:16 pm

Can't hardware accelerate voxels through your vid card, at least not the way they(vid cards) are designed. This could've mattered years ago...but today, with today's poly counts, meh, we don't need them, though personally I think voxels are cool.

Cheers

Bleusilences · Post by **Bleusilences** » Mon Mar 01, 2004 1:07 pm

Voxel are used for special effect like fog and shadows.

Franz Schubert · Post by **Franz Schubert** » Mon Mar 01, 2004 2:30 pm

Wtf does Voxel stand for? (Pixel = Picture Element, etc.)

Jeff · Post by **Jeff** » Mon Mar 01, 2004 3:12 pm

volume element... it's liek a 3d pixel w00t!

Forty-six & Two · Post by **Forty-six & Two** » Mon Mar 01, 2004 4:10 pm

http://www.outcast-thegame.com

Hmm. Strange game. I remember seeing it on the shelves a few years ago. DidnÃƒâ€šÃ‚Â´t look very appetizing though. Strange game.

iohkus · Post by **iohkus** » Mon Mar 01, 2004 4:46 pm

I WANT TO BE YOUR DADDY, OOOH OOOH!
DON'T WANT TO BE YOUR CADDY, OOH OOH!

CloudNineGT · Post by **CloudNineGT** » Mon Mar 01, 2004 4:57 pm

I was waiting for that.

Phias · Post by **Phias** » Mon Mar 01, 2004 8:25 pm

The wait is over, but how long you waited for that, I'll never know or ask.

Why do these things happen?

iohkus · Post by **iohkus** » Mon Mar 01, 2004 8:35 pm

because i'm hardk0r3. and i want to be your daddy... oooh ooh!

but really, you can count on me to make shit happen at DAC

Kashluk · Post by **Kashluk** » Mon Mar 01, 2004 8:37 pm

Yay, Outcast is a great game. It's a shame it never got as popular as it should've... The story is good, dialogue is great and the atmosphere is amazing.

And yeah, I saw those screenshots of Outcast2, and sure it looked pretty (though they dumbed... voxels or whatever you call them and used "traditional" 3D-graphics), but it seems they stripped the last bits of annoying things like *story* from it and turned it into a full-scale mainstream FPS.

About voxels: I remember reading from some magazine that the developers wanted to use 'em for two reasons - because it looked real cool and because it didn't demand much (if any at all) from the graphics accelerator. Voxels were something strange as if they only needed processing power?? So they opposed the new wave of games that revolved around better and more expensive 3D- accelerator cards by making a game that could be run with an old and cheap card but still look good? That memory's a bit shady though, because Outcast was released like 5 years ago?

EvoG · Post by **EvoG** » Mon Mar 01, 2004 9:04 pm

Bleusilences wrote:Voxel are used for special effect like fog and shadows.

Voxels are essentially what Gimp said...a 3D pixel used to draw your 3D world (and characters ). Fog is merely a clipping trick unrelated to voxels, and shadows are either precomputed textures used as your second texture pass, or they're realtime like Spinter Cell or Doom3 (or DXIW ).

Just to add though, voxels CAN be shadowed (we merely darken the 'in-shadow' voxels ), but otherwise they're not related directly either.

Voxels, fog and shadows work together to generate the final image you see, but thats about it.

...and Kash...wtf are you talking about!?

Kash insanely wrote:Voxels were something strange as if they only needed processing power??

...um...only? Thats everything! Thats like saying "your car ONLY needs its engine to drive!?"

I assume you meant, 'only need the cpu to process them versus a 3D accelerator card', which is true, but moreso, voxels were in fact NOT accelerated by 3D cards so it was moot.

The only beneft (at the time) is that we got organic environments that looked kinda purty over the current state of polygonal environments, but they never got to a point where they could be fully realised (they were still rather pixel-y when we last saw them ) The guy who built the BUILD engine ( Duke Nukem, Blood, Shadow Warrior ) made a voxel engine for those interested (you can download it)

http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm

Phias · Post by **Phias** » Mon Mar 01, 2004 9:10 pm

They cause slowdown on even the best computers. I recall Delta Force 2 ran very sluggishly for my PC, which was at the time a very powerful machine. I think it was used to sell to people who didn't own 3D cards, but since everyone has them now, Voxels are an unnecesarry part of a game.

1997, called by many as the dawn of 3D accelerated gameplay, was full of such games. 3D cards were, at the time, very expensive and a pain to install. Getting the right drivers was also a chore, so developers planned a graphical engine/system/technique that offered brilliant envirnonment and geographical effects without the need of a 3D Card. One of Outcast's marketing "things" was that it did not require 3D Hardware.

Commanche 3(? could be 2, not sure) was the earliest Voxel Game I'm familiar with, but I'm positive more existed before, or Voxels were used to some extent before '97.

Edit: Commanche 2. The third, I believe, was direct3D compliant and non-voxel. Delta Force: Land Warrior was the first non-voxel DF, didn't gain as much praise as voxelated DF.