Future Engine: Half Life 2? Yay? Nay?

[cracwhore]

Half-Life 2.

Has anybody even thought of Half-Life 2 for INF?
1)The playerbase will be much larger than any other game.
2)The physics engine is incredible.
3)It will be out this summer or this X-mas (hopefully....jinx..).
4)Half Life 2 will actually be a fun game, whereas most people would only buy something like UT2k4 or FarCry strictly for INF.
5)The sound engine will rock on Half Life 2.

That's my suggestion. Either that, or wait another year and use the UnrealEngine3 (which looks like the Half Life 2 engine + some bonus points).

Speaking of using engines that aren't out...

Beppo: If you emailed somebody at Epic games or at Valve and gave them a link to this page, showing them that you are working on a serious total-conversion mod, would they release a development kit to you guys so that it could be ready around time of release for the retail game? INF could be as big as Counter-Strike is with more players and a more appealing engine. I'm sure you realize this. I have yet to find better gameplay than what's offered in 2.9.

So, are you guys at least considering HL2 as a possible engine?

 

[(SDS)benmcl]

At the moment when it is released is anyones guess. Don't listen to Valve because they have been lying about it for sometime.

Steam sucks and the more they try to fix it the worse it gets.

Valve has been treating their community like **** for some time. I just hope its not being considered.

 

[ravens_hawk]

I agree HL2 would be cool for INF, just think with the physics and materials engine, you could shoot an M203 at a fence and have it do something semi-realistic, like send shrapnel everywhere, not just put a decal on the fence. However IMHO the shortcomings of HL2 far out weigh the advantages. A) I'd rather the team be able to start now if they so chose, rather then "When it’s done" (WRT HL2) B) There have been, and continue to be, issues with steam, and the netcode, wither or not that will be fixed with HL2 is anyone’s guess, so the devil you know... C) I'm sure we'd like to keep the number of machines that can play INF to a maximum, and HL2 I don't think would help. Consider that it will take a mid to high end machine just to play it, imagine what'd it take to play that INF style. I know my crappy 800Mhz Athlon can play some simple mods for UT4, so I'm sure once I get it upgraded it'd be fine for INF.

 

[yurch]

Has anybody even thought of Half-Life 2 for INF?

I think by now, yes.
1) An assumption, but a fair one.
2) Another assumption. We don't even know how it works! (hell, it might not exist online, or be largely scripted!)
3) Assumption!
4) Extreme AAassumption! I'm hoping as much as you are, but there's nothing saying it'll be any good.
5) eh?

So, are you guys at least considering HL2 as a possible engine?

Why not? But, I'll belive it when I see it. Sorry, but it really is pretty rediculous to speculate opon this sort of thing. Miracle engines rarely turn out to be what anyone hopes for.

 

[[C22]-Mort]

Anybody remember all the hype about the "Red Faction" engine and the subsequent dissapointment of reality

But surely the logical thing would be to stick with Epic and the unreal engine, whenever a new version is released there would be a logical progression of code and a greater percentage of compatible code, or is that just crazy talk!

 

[Psychomorph]

Pro Unreal Engine:
- allready exist
- the devs have their experience with that
- needs not to high machines
- after some time development UT2 engine would run fine on near every (even not so new) machine (and I think that is very important, UT2 has a good enough look, and good engine posibilites, so the most important point is now, playability)
- I own UT2004 allready

Contra Unreal Engine:
- don´t know, maybe there is something?


Pro New Engine like HL2:
- new enigene, looks good
- can have some things which are btter than UT2 Engine

Contra New Engine:
- since the devs aren´t that experienced with that engine, it could take years untill next INF (and I think that is the most improtant point. It will take with a new unreal engine long enought, but with a new one even longer)
- can be crap as hell (lag, technology, bad support from the original dev company, the game can be forgotten by a wide player fraction (ok not HL2) and and and)

 

[Nukeproof]

Well the first thing that struck me when playing FarCry was:

INF would be extremely sweet on this Engine. All the photorealistic plants beeing moved by the wind, the smoth terrain aso.

I didn't know the decision for the next gen engine was not set in stone with UT2004. I think Crytek is pushing hard to gain a modding community and the sandbox editor is already looking sweet.

A big advatage I see in FarCry: it is already way closer to what INFILTRATION is aiming for than UT

- leaning, proning, with propper hit detection, visability, netcode ect. is already included
- it has a decent system for stamina and movement speeds.
- an scoped aiming/breathing hold breath system is already implemented
- the reduction in FOV when aiming seems quite nice to me
- realistic maps are already avaible
- it has very good AI for an 'realism shooter' (although no real bots yet)
- it has objective based multiplayer gametype
- it does use realistic weapons so they could be tweaked and used as a starting point (to be replaced later)

So all this together with awesome graphics and the availability make FarCry IMHO a very good choice. An enjoyable early beta of INF-FarCry might see the light of the day a lot earlier than an UT2004 based version.

Anything not yet released (there are quite a lot promising HL2, DOOM3, Stalker, Unreal3...) isn't really worth waiting for. HL2 should be out for almost a year by know, so never listen to the marketing guys

 

[Psychomorph]

Yup, good ponts.

 

[crazyjohn]

I haven't been to impressed with hl2, 4 texture passes per pixel in an attempt for ati to clog up the pipeline on the fx series cards. And the hl2 demo video showing the physics was a high poly rendering engine they made to play to show a more polished game. Valve is kinda cheap and hl2 will have its ass handed to it when quake4 is finished. Unreal 3 is about 2-3 times the quality visual and physics wise and epic didn't cheat when they showed it off.

 

[Crowze]

*sigh* not another one.

Get your head screwed on properly. I'd imagine the team will want to get to work on it very soon, and that's not exactly going to be possible with HL2/Doom3/etc.. Currently I'd lean towards the UT2004 engine - familiar platform, multiple OS support, good peformance/requirements.

 

[(SDS)benmcl]

Well just spent some time in the FarCry modding forums concerning the SDK. Wow, what a mess.

 

[Blitzschlag]

Far Cry also has good peformance/requirements. I hope to see it on that engine in the future, but i can also play it with UT2k4 Engine no Prob for me. Although FC would come nearer to waht INF is: " as realistic as possible but also playable"

So i agree to Nukeproofe's arguments.

 

[(SDS)benmcl]

There is no point jumping to an engine without support. UBI has been messing about with the SDK. Look at what happen to the SDK for Raven Shield. UBI and Valve do have a track record. A bad one.

 

[Blitzschlag]

What do u mean without Support?

 

[(SDS)benmcl]

Well at this time there is no SDK. Although people have been begging for some idea when the SDK will be released their is only a vague announcement about legal matters. Also mention of the police raid.

When they ask for some basic info need to develope their own import export tools there is silence. Some have managed to piece some stuff together with info the community itself has figured out but nothing official. Also there was supposed to be an SDK for Raven Shield I believe it was and that was some time ago, (a year I think) and still nothing.

Guys over there are shelving their mod ideas or moving to another engine, UT2K4 seems to be the choice. http://www.farcry.ubi.com/forum.php

Thats what I mean about support.

Despite what the total screw up of the UT2K4 release of SE Epic/Atari responed to the communuity. They post and support their community.

As for the the mess called Half Life 2. Well when people out and out lie about the progress of their product, and thats exactly what they did, you have to question weither you want to spend an enormous amount of your time with the change that they totally screw things up. Not to mention the vague release dates. I hear they are having a conference in June or July to show off their SDK. Then there is Steam.

As for Doom 3, it looks interesting but concerned about the netcode or lack of. I haven't seen much info on the game or engine.

Far Cry and Half Life 2 do looking promising. Even messed with the Sandbox editor. Right now though they are only promises.

Edit: Typo central

 

[Psychomorph]

Ahhh yes, good that you say it... that FC is from Ubi, cuz Ubi is the worst gaming company I know. They have a bad support, bad coded games. No, plz not an Ubi game for Infiltration, that would be a mess.
I spand in the Raven Shield forum much time, only critizism on the code and support.
Plz, every game, but not an Ubi crap.

 

[Nukeproof]

Ahhh yes, good that you say it... that FC is from Ubi, cuz Ubi is the worst gaming company I know. They have a bad support, bad coded games. No, plz not an Ubi game for Infiltration, that would be a mess.
I spand in the Raven Shield forum much time, only critizism on the code and support.
Plz, every game, but not an Ubi crap.

Ubi is the Publisher not the developer. They don't put any code or content into FC. Crytec is the developer.

 

[Psychomorph]

Ok, then just Support there

 

[AlmostAlive]

Most of the engine speculations are just that. Speculations. The level of detail information needed to make a mod is still far away for most of the mentioned engines, with the exception of UT2004.

Making mods means you can't really start doing any major development until the game is actually released and you have all the info on possibilities and restrictions within the engine you want to use. All the engines mentiomed here might be great for Infiltration. We won't know until all info and the game itself is released.

 

[tomcat ha]

too be honest i would like to see it with the OFP2 engine just cause ofp2 is going to be 1337