Far Cry SDK released

[jayhova]

Far cry beats the hell out of every video card around. However bear in mind that this means that it will still look nice in 3 years when everyone is using a Geforce12 and DirectX 11. I've seen this thing running in 64bit mode with the latest card and Farcry was ungodly. The map demoed for me was 30+miles across. I don't care what anyone says the graphics on FC are kickass but are very videocard dependant. GPUs now have more transistors than a P4 so it's pretty obvios where the the future of computing is going.

As far as support is concered I can only speak to what I have seen. The farcry website has it's own section dedicated to mods. There is also a forum section dedicated to mods. I have seen the developers personally answer questions in the forum. Other than this I can't really say.

 

[2_SeeK_U]

Far cry beats the hell out of every video card around. However bear in mind that this means that it will still look nice in 3 years when everyone is using a Geforce12 and DirectX 11. I've seen this thing running in 64bit mode with the latest card and Farcry was ungodly. The map demoed for me was 30+miles across. I don't care what anyone says the graphics on FC are kickass but are very videocard dependant. GPUs now have more transistors than a P4 so it's pretty obvios where the the future of computing is going.

As far as support is concered I can only speak to what I have seen. The farcry website has it's own section dedicated to mods. There is also a forum section dedicated to mods. I have seen the developers personally answer questions in the forum. Other than this I can't really say.

I have to agree, just because farcry runs "slow" on todays base level hardware, doesn't mean its a bad engine. Its not just the graphics that l'm talking about either, the bot ai, the physics, the map maker even, its all very amazing! Download that movie l posted somewhere... (l'll find it again if you can't find it) and take alook at that. Just the depth of view was amazing for me.
Anyway, l think far cry's developers took a great approach to a new engine, even epics new engine is taking the same approach. They're focusing on pushing the boundries of game development, and not really concerning about the end requirements of the game. This might be a good thing for us in terms of hardware anyway, l mean, in my view, it is the games that push computer hardware along, because l know l don't need a 64 bit processor or a 9600xt to do word processing!!

 

[Arethusa]

And pushing's fine, but my point here has never been that it's too demanding so much as it's demanding without giving results that justify it, while Doom 3 does. And while I realize I am in something of a dangerous minority here, I feel it's worth waiting a little longer for Half-Life 2 to see how it holds up. The engine, at least from videos, looks rather astounding, and no one can deny that Half-Life does not exactly want for community and player base.

 

[(SDS)benmcl]

I know this is a Far Cry thread but the question has been posed. At the moment my only concern is Steam and how they handle mods. I know I have asked a simular question before but.

How exactly will Valve using Steam handle an Infiltration mod. I have read a lot of rumours so if someone knows the facts please...

 

[Arethusa]

Presumably, the same way Steam handles mods with Half-Life right now. At least int heory, Half-Life 2 is supposed to have more or less the same mod structure as Half-Life, which I can personally attest to as quite a bit more pleasant than any system I've ever messed with in any Unreal based game (the one exception being that I do like mutators, even if they do have a very string and appreciably dangerous tendency to screw things up in terms of community division). Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine. The rumors about being forced to pay for mods, etc, are probably mostly rumors, but even as much as I'll advise considering Half-Life 2, it would be simple hubris, blind faith, or at least plain stupid to completely ignore those possible dangers.

In short, who the **** knows, at the moment.

 

[jayhova]

To me the graphics of an engine are amost a non-issue with the exception of realistic concealment. The real question to me is what engine will provide the most realistic military simulator.

I play extensivly offline. This means that one of the things I really want is a good AI that will provide an adequate challange. This also means that it is possible to create sceanarios that are not player vs player but rather situations where a small group is required to infiltrate somewhere and accomplish some mission in a players vs AI scenario.

 

[chuckus]

I play extensivly offline. This means that one of the things I really want is a good AI that will provide an adequate challange. This also means that it is possible to create sceanarios that are not player vs player but rather situations where a small group is required to infiltrate somewhere and accomplish some mission in a players vs AI scenario.

I'm like you when it comes to offline play but I've come to realize that offline play was never (and I'm presuming never will be) a priority for SS. I think a good single player map is more dependant on the map maker than it is on the game designers. Yes the AI plays a big role but the design of the map as well as the mappers devotion to the bots' performance are even more important factors here.

 

[Hadmar]

And pushing's fine, but my point here has never been that it's too demanding so much as it's demanding without giving results that justify it, while Doom 3 does.

How does Doom 3 perform when it renders this

instead of this?

 

[(SDS)benmcl]

And that defines the problem at the moment because I have yet to see anyone upload a map along the same lines as the Far Cry shot. Until someone with some skill, skill enough to do any optimizing and such, attempts it we don't know. I have suspicions and heard rumours but nothing I can trust.

Edit: As far as I can see people are doing one of two things, planning fairly extensive mods and maps that will take awhile before we see anything or remaking Doom maps.

 

[jayhova]

I'm like you when it comes to offline play but I've come to realize that offline play was never (and I'm presuming never will be) a priority for SS. I think a good single player map is more dependant on the map maker than it is on the game designers. Yes the AI plays a big role but the design of the map as well as the mappers devotion to the bots' performance are even more important factors here.

Well this is my point in the AI dept. Since the AI intuitivly knows what it can hide behind, how to flank, etc. there is not as much need for the mapmaker to determain the behavior of bots.

 

[Arethusa]

Hadamar, I realize that Doom 3 hasn't been pushed to handle big vistas yet, and until that happens, we've got little idea of how it'll do, but it is worth pointing out that, so far, Doom 3 does, far and away, and infinitely better job of handling indoor environments and more advanced effects. Loosely, it is possible to infer that it'll probably handle outdoor environs comparably, though I realize that it's sufficiently complicated as to not be worth guessing.

Source, on the other hand, reportedly runs fantastically (note: this is from people testing CS: Source, not Valve people hyping their engine).

 

[Nukeproof]

If I recall the current state of INF on UT99 correctly, it's not really indoors or urban where the engine is lagging the most... ratswamp and pankisis whatever (I tend to forget the correct name) are rare example of good 'nature' feeling in INF.

Urban areas, where everything is more or less rectangular are quite decent in 2.9 ... It's the huge outdoor maps where the current engine is lagging badly.

The playermoddel is sticking out like a sore thumb with the limited shape of landscape and flora. That's where farcry really rocks, I haven't seen anything with better 'nature feel & visuals' that is currently available.

And on hardware requirements: FarCry looks actually a lot better and runs smother on my mid range system (Athlon XP@2800 + Ti4200 128) than DOOM 3.

FC everything on max. settings (without AA and Ani Filtering) 1024x768 around 40 fps
DOOM 3 medium (without AA and Ani Filtering) 800x600 around 40 fps

I don't wan't to know what kind of slightshow I would get on D3 rendering huge outdoor maps

 

[yurch]

The thing that everyone fails to consider is that farcry has basically no lighting whatsoever once you get outside. The game is built around a detail reduction system, doom3 really doesn't seem to be the same way. Obviously farcry is going to be more 'conductive' to rendering outside areas, simply because it constantly cuts detail from the scene until it runs.

Whether or not doom3 can do these scenes depends on how much detail you can cut from the engine when making outdoor areas.

Apples and oranges, people.

 

[Crowze]

Nuke, the problem is that your system is unbalanced towards the CPU, and Doom 3 is more GPU-dependant. They run about the same for me, Athlon XP 2500+, Radeon 9700.

I took a screenie of a semi-outdoor area in Doom 3, seemed to handle it quite well. I'm not sure how well it would handle more open areas, though, and looking at it the terrain isn't particularly detailed there. There's also the vegetation in Far Cry, but it's not much to speak of since the areas with lots of it brought my far-from-low-end rig to it's knees.

I think UT2004 is a nice balance, with other redeeming features as well.

EDIT: Attach the screenie, fool.

 

[Nukeproof]

The thing that everyone fails to consider is that farcry has basically no lighting whatsoever once you get outside.

I'm not sure if it is actually considered 'real lighting', but when you (in FC) walk underneath a tree you will see shadows from the palmtree leaves on your weapon and realise your view beeing darker when entering shadows.

On the Hardware side: My Laptop with (not much more powerful but more modern DX9) Radeon 9600 and a slower a AMD 2500+ is slower in both FC and DOOM 3 than the Desktop.

 

[Turin_Turambar]

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/33584

Far Cry sdk 1.1 released. Yeah, i know: ??? something about AI and support for Maya.

 

[PadreScout]

Presumably, the same way Steam handles mods with Half-Life right now. At least int heory, Half-Life 2 is supposed to have more or less the same mod structure as Half-Life, which I can personally attest to as quite a bit more pleasant than any system I've ever messed with in any Unreal based game (the one exception being that I do like mutators, even if they do have a very string and appreciably dangerous tendency to screw things up in terms of community division). Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine. The rumors about being forced to pay for mods, etc, are probably mostly rumors, but even as much as I'll advise considering Half-Life 2, it would be simple hubris, blind faith, or at least plain stupid to completely ignore those possible dangers.

In short, who the **** knows, at the moment.

I play the original HL with mods extensively. CS and The specialist mostly. I know I know, I sometimes enjoy some fantasy with my " reality", if you can call it that. It's still fun! 3rd party mods ARE supported by steam. Heres how it works. You have to run HL (or HL2 if it operates the same) at least once, to get it to fire up al the configs, and whatnots the mod will need from the engine to work properly. One achieved most mods have self installations that shoot them striaght to all the correct spots. (i think htis dir. strucute is right)
valve/steam/steamapps/*yourusername*/*the games engine*/ mod folder.
You can play it whenever, works great. I've installed.. oh.. Not a lot, maybe 4 or 5 3rd party halflife mods and I've never had any trouble getting them to run first try. Concerning having to pay to play mods, yeah, you do, with 2 of them CS and DOD. Those are however Valve supported softeware now and I dunno, you pay for those two. the others like as mentioned before: The Specialist, Action HalflLife, NaturalSelection, Rallycar-something .... lots and lots of them.... are all free. Steam even includes a list of the most popular HL mods in steams game browser, complete with links to the games site so you can grab it fast. In my experience with Steam and HL .. now HL2 and mods, its very user friendly, convenient and overall a decent deal. It of coarse has its problems like any huge complex piece of software situated on the net ( the built in chat program will hardly ever connect) but as far as " keeping me from playing my games" type errors. I've had those, I think maybe once.. twice at the most in a year of use. Don't let people scare ya away.

 

[SaraP]

From the screenshots I've seen, Far Cry looks very yummy. I'll find out for myself soon -- NewEgg's sending me a free copy with my new Athlon 64 2800+ and nForce3 250 Gb mobo.

 

[PadreScout]

Yeah, FarCry is very pretty. I need to go buy that one again too. Yall wouldnt believe how manygames I lose at LAN parties ( its insane) . One of these days I'lllearn not to bring them. but well. You always need a OS and a few of your fave games at a LAN in case of spontanious system disasters. Last time I played that I had a little 9600XT. Now I've got something.. slightly better. I'm cuious about how full tilt I can make that bad boy.

 

[Strokes]

?

What about Battlefield 2 as an engine when it comes out?