What do you think the new engine should be? [Poll]

[-Snakebite-]

At the moment there are two main viable choices, UT2004 and HL2. Doom 3 would be a nightmare, unless you want a pistols only game, in which case it would be great

UT2004 - can do distances well, has decent sound positioning and resonable netcode. On the other hand, its not popular. There is nobody playing it, or the mods made for it.

HL2 - Nice engine, a lot of players, great netcode (probably the best available) and resonable sound. The main advantage of this engine is the netcode and the larger player base. A larger player base should not be underestimated.

My personal vote is for HL2, for the reasons above. However, the team may find it easier to work on UT2004.

Anyone, lets just hope a new version gets released. Perhaps make an alpha test version for people to take a look at? Sorry, I'm just being hopeful.

 

[Logan6]

Well, just played HL2 for the first time. It was decent, but I wasn't that impressed. Sucked memory like crazy. Graphics are kind of weird and blurry. I actually missed the UT graphics . Hope we just port INF to UT2004 and get on with it.

 

[cracwhore]

Blurry graphics?

Missed UT?

Jesus...you really are something...

Just so gamers here that haven't played the game don't get a bad impression of what I consider to be a masterpiece of an engine (and game): What kind of rig are you running?

 

[-Snakebite-]

Well, just played HL2 for the first time. It was decent, but I wasn't that impressed. Sucked memory like crazy. Graphics are kind of weird and blurry. I actually missed the UT graphics . Hope we just port INF to UT2004 and get on with it.

If its blurry you must have problems with your machine, if you aren't sure, check out screenshots on the web. It shouldnt be blurry.

 

[Nukeproof]

I have to admit that HL2 somehow failed to impress me or live up to the mega hype. Steam crap makes it impossible to resell the game or by it second hand.

I don't doubt that it is a solid choice but not that outstanding.

 

[Logan6]

The graphics are there, I guess you wouldn't say blurry, but very drawn looking, like with pen and ink. They just kept messing with my eyes. Things seem to be heading away from the graphics of quake 3 ( which I consider to be the best so far ) which depends mostly on lighting, i.e. how it is normally in nature. Now its like everythings trying to be drawn in and lighting has gotten strange. There doesn't seem to be any true lighting in the games anymore and I find that unrealistic. New games seem to be either total darkness or total light. Another weird thing, I guess my radeon card couldn't handle, were that things 5 feet from me were being clipped until I was almost right on them. Like the pole barriers at the start of the game when you first get out into the open. Yet other things you could see far away. Strange. My hard drive was running like crazy because the game was sucking about 600 meg of memory to run. My machine has 256 meg. They say this game can run on low end machines, DONT YOU BELIEVE IT. One transition of the map took like 10 minutes to load. And these are tiny maps.

I also couldn't tell how a map in HL2 would be in INF because the maps are so tiny. Each time you move, it seems to be to another tiny map, which you then have to explore to get to the exit and to the next tiny map. Gamewise HL2 sucks. I didn't see any point to it. It was like they were scared to let you explore any part of the map, which raises my suspicions about the true ability of the engine.

As for my computer specs:

Pentium 2.0 ghz
Radeon 64 Mb card
Video at 1024x768

i.e. a mid range machine

My pick for the next inf would be a souped up Quake III engine, where the developers expanded how big the maps could be to the size of the ones UT can use. Of course that would probably take at least a 3 ghz machine to run (probably more ) and a week of compiling to light

 

[AlmostAlive]

Actually, many would consider that a low end rig these days. You are right at the minimum requirements for the latest games, HL2 included.

 

[Psychomorph]

I agree with Logan on the bit of painted HL2. It is optiacally one of the most realistic engines, of course, and that is what I always look at, but it is not that awesome.
The texture resolution is bad, I turned it up and it still looked unclear, I find the UT2004 textures better.
The levels also looked a bit to clorful. Imagine all those surroundings in real life, take photos and compare with HL2. You would notice a difference. The sunny places in HL2 looked ok, I think realistic, but where is no sun, they are to colorful and I hate it (in all games).


They are only 2 engines I can think of, that gave me 90% realistic feel, Rebellion's 'Alien versus Predator' Engine and ID's 'Doom3' Engine.
I love AVP and the engine made it AVP in real therms.
Doom 3 is my most hated game ever, but it is the f#ckin best engine+texturing I can think of. Sadly not a good option for INF (not now I guess).


Byside the two I loved Medal of Honor: Alliend Assault's engine a lot, it also gave a very realistic feel.
Not sure about Pacific Assault, while it is part of the MoH tradition with it's realistic feel, I have still many problems with it.
It is very buggy. It runs on low options worse than HL2 on full on my PC and is buggy. The slodiers run very artificial, they slide over stones. If I fire from cover and clearly see the target 1cm from the covercorner, I always hit the corner.
I find it bad coded. It has some very awesome features like the blurry shaking thing if you fire a heavy recoiled weapon, the model details are huge, but all this eyecandy can´t be used to have 100% clear game (which is the most important in a MP game).

I would wish to have MoHA for INF3, but this engine has some bad options which let me vote against it

Also it is clearly visible, that it is based on the Q3 engine anyway. It has the 'pak' directories, and if it is not the Doom3 engine those paks belong to Q3, no matter what the Developers say that it is their own engine.
The trees look even worse than MoHAA and very Q3 like.

Oh and Steam sucks hard.


My vote goes to UT2004, as long the SS team make their own more realistic textures. I vote for UT2004, cuz AA:O is my dream of INF. While it is not that realistic looking it still creates a serious military atmosphere.

If SS go for HL2 ok, not bad, but they should limit the steam crap. Updating the steam programm every start (which can take long if the server are overused) is bad enough, but seeing that in INF (mutator terror mutating to steam terror, muahahaha) will drive me nuts.

Pacific Assault could be a good vote, but I think UT2004 can look better and PA is buggy.

Doom3, well better not, even if developing INF takes 2 years, I doubt Doom3's capabilities for a good MP with huge maps.


The real and serious disadvanatge to UT2004 (Doom3 aswell) is, that near everything must be moddeled and skinned. They are no (real) trees, and realistic textures. PA and HL2 has.

Maybe thats why SWAT4 is an engine to think about? Would like to know the opinion of the devs, since SWAT4 demos are out.

@Q3 for INF:
A very updated and pretty much completely new Q3 engine could be ok, MoHA is the case, but PA requires same power like HL2 or other new engines, lol. And a Q3 looking Q3 engine is definitely a very bad option.

 

[Philophobos]

As for my computer specs:

Pentium 2.0 ghz
Radeon 64 Mb card
Video at 1024x768

i.e. a mid range machine

Are you fucking kidding me? Maybe, just maybe with four times as much RAM and a video card at least one generation of video cards better than yours, maybe then your machine would be considered mid-range.

 

[Psychomorph]

lol

 

[(SDS)benmcl]

Guys please stop confusing Engine with game. They are different. You can have the greatest engine in the world but if make lousy textures and use poor lighting at a design level don't blame the engine.

The same argument was made against Far Cry.

I want to hear from level designer I trust that has tried to make a realistic level with good textures and lighting. If that person says it can't be done then we may make a fair judgment.

Take a look at Ut, Ut2K3, UT2K4. When that game was released people did not jump up and down saying you can't make realistic levels (judge them at the time of their release). If they did they certainly forgot to tell Angle Heart.

 

[yurch]

The texture resolution is bad, I turned it up and it still looked unclear, I find the UT2004 textures better.

HL2's engine supposedly supports textures of a resolution somewhere around 2-4 times as high as the textures HL2 is currently using. Of course, it'd probably be on three DVD's if it did that. Try using the anistropic filtering option to see if it cleans it up a bit.

I've been modding HL2 a bit now and I'm liking what I'm seeing so far.

 

[Psychomorph]

I've been modding HL2 a bit now and I'm liking what I'm seeing so far.

I also liked what I saw playing HL2 . The policy of Valve is a shame, sure I understand the reasons, but don´t like em as a customer, who feels of buying 80% for the full price. But it is a nice piece of work anyway, pushed a bit the whole HL2 story, but not bad anyway.

So the Revolver with ironsight was you modification?

P.S. I didn´t meant that HL2 can´t handle good textures, but that it just actually has not so good textures. Sure modders can include their own, highrez textures.


If it is not to hard yurch, as a modder could you kinda name reasons, or facts of what is so good, or better in HL2, or even worse than UT2004. Just to give us 'noobs' some info, so we can decide a bit better than now, or just imagine the capabilities?

 

[MP_Duke]

Unreal Engine 3.0

 

[cracwhore]

Doom 3.

Yes, I can't wait to spend $50 on the 'UnrealEngine3' game so, seven months later, I can pay $50 again - for the game I was supposed to get in the first place...

Astounding logic!

 

[yurch]

So the Revolver with ironsight was you modification?

Yes.

If it is not to hard yurch, as a modder could you kinda name reasons, or facts of what is so good, or better in HL2, or even worse than UT2004. Just to give us 'noobs' some info, so we can decide a bit better than now, or just imagine the capabilities?

It's harder to pick up, due to the needing of an outside compiler and the C++, but it's far more powerful. I think the netcode would lend itself more to a realism game, which, of course, is about accuracy, not dodging.

 

[Crowze]

I have to disagree there yurch, from what I've seen so far, HL2's netcode tends to make a hell of a lot of guesses for a lot of things, and many times doesn't get it right (e.g. fairly large anomalies between where someone is actually shooting and where other people see them to be shooting).

Plus, it's still missing a lot of features that UT2004 offers, such as map and kick voting, although apparently they are doing things to correct that (and if not I'm sure SS can come up with their own system if needed).

However, as a community modder I don't like what I see in HL2 at all: inflexibility. As far as I can see, they're going out of their way to prevent 'unofficial' modders creathing anything at all that will work alongside other mods. I've yet to see an equal to UT2004's mod and mutator system for this.

The community shouldn't be too much of an issue. Inf's community is small, and whichever engine it goes to it will remain reasonably small (as if the average CS player would even think about playing it...). That's part of what makes Inf what it is.

 

[(SDS)benmcl]

yurch what compiler do you recommend? Are there any free ones out there? I may be interested in looking at the engine and such but I got to start from scratch.

Thanks.

 

[Psychomorph]

Seems the opinions are splitted very much.

My most MP games were based on the Unreal engine (except CS, AVP2, SWAT3 and Rogue Spear), and I´m on 56k most of my life (of course I had DSL some time). And I can say, that I could play those games on 56k very good. The first days UT2003 was released I tried an MP game and hell, it felt like offline playing. I played Deathball with near no problems. UT and Unreal. The older Americas Army games I played on 56k and enjoyed.

I palyed also more often INF2.87 on 56k and had near no problems. Can't remember INF2.9, is some time ago I could join a server (ahh, the good INF2.87 Rav2 times ).

I tried CS the first day I bought HL2 and it had the worsed lag I ever had in my life. It was 100 times worse than AVP2 and Rogue Spear (that are infamous for a crap netcode). And it as a server near my location with few players .
Can´t tell whats up with the HL2 code now, cuz it´s not possible to load 40min Steam update, plus 180min CS update and the full HL2 MP download (as I understood? or not? confused with HL2).

 

[Derelan]

Concept art of the new INF engine: