I know that a number of threads have been brought up in regards to the subject of the future engine for INF.
Personally myself I feel that the FarCry / Crytek engine is the best choice for the format in which Infiltration has seemingly strived to be. Please correct me if I’m wrong, BUT it seems that Infiltration is a squad based game falling under a military Special Forces Unit. No direct unit seems to be named, BUT it is military. Military units are bound by the Geneva Convention so that limits ammunition types but not firearms types. INF is the most accurate simulation for firearms usage in this type of scenario that I have ever seen. The true use of iron sights and the method in which the system is implemented is almost seamless. Obviously members of this board don’t really need to read my thoughts on the game as it is.
This post is an attempt to make points and justifications as to why I think the Crytek engine should be the choice for INF3.
Obviously everyone has seen farcry and are well aware of its capabilities. I’m doing some research as well as making my own comments on what I think would be possible with this engine. As well as outlining some game-type ideas that could truly change the face multiplayer gaming. Well maybe not change the face of, considering that the Battle Field series did an excellent job of this, but it could defiantly create some very unique scenarios that would be hard to beat.
The environment is very responsive to the player. The physics engine is excellent, and is very real to life. Although Farcry is set in the future, and its story line is somewhat far-fetched it is very hard to dispute the capabilities of the engine. Unfortunately my machine is not capable of providing very good screenshots of the games capabilities, but I will try none the less.
Here is a couple in game screenshots to help show what FC is capable of on lower end machines. I’m running an Athlon 2500 with 512 megs of ram, and an ATI 128meg 9200.
http://www.performancescene.net/fc/FarCry0000.jpg
http://www.performancescene.net/fc/FarCry0001.jpg
http://www.performancescene.net/fc/FarCry0002.jpg
http://www.performancescene.net/fc/FarCry0003.jpg
This gives you the basic idea of what farcry looks like in game for those who have not seen it.
It also gives an idea of the sheer viewable area that you command in the farcry engine. Obviously not every map HAS to have water, but it shows you that it wouldn’t be that difficult to make a forest in Washington State, or the desert in Iraq. A small island that is under attack. A ocean going vessel taken over by rebels. These are just to name a few simple ideas that would seem very easy to implement in the farcry engine. I’ve only played with the map editor a little bit, but with some work I think that just about anything is possible. You CAN import your own models into the map, so a good mapper that builds something for a map in 3dsmax or what have you would be able to create seamless integration with the map itself. The editor allows you to test the map inside of the editor so its much easier to get the feel of the map that your looking for. Again I do not have enough experience with the farcry editor to truly know the extents of its capabilities. Though from the demonstration videos I’ve watched it’s truly amazing.
Here is a link to the stats of the Crytek engine, though admittingly Crytek could have jazzed it up a bit.
http://www.crytek.de/technology/index.php?sx=cryengine
I myself am just working on some high-poly models of the hk53 for something to do, then I’m going to make a low-poly version for INF2.9. I’ve been seriously considering building a mod for farcry, BUT I think that FC would be an excellent choice for the new INF.
I do not believe that people here fully appreciate the immense maps and game play that would be possible using FC. You could have maps where the bad guys have time to setup defense and the opposing force takes a minute or two just to hike it into the base. The level of realism that would be able to be achieved in FC boggles my mind. Imagine having 2 or 3 squads on one team with different objectives.
For example we’ll imagine that we have squads per team(as I have no idea the network capability of FC).
The setting for this scenario would be that of drug lords airport in Columbia or some such thing. Alpha teams job would be to get in and neutralize the tower and guard staff, while bravo team needs to move 3 fuel trucks to different parts of the runway, then attach explosives to them, detonating them, putting the runway out of commission. Obviously the bad dude’s job would be to stop them.
The “good guys” would be dropped into a landing zone about a click away from the airport. The time it would take them to hump it into the base would be adequate for the bad-dudes to setup a defense. Once they had reach the outside perimeter of the airport this would be set as the new spawn point for reinforcements. In this case the bad guys would have a barracks or whatever that contained weapon ammunition and grenades and such. Another interesting thing to add to the map is that maybe the initial starting point for the good guys could be randomly anywhere on that one click, so that the bad dudes would have to cover 360 degrees until such a time as they know where the attacking force is coming from. This way it could not be easily setup and make it to difficult for the good guys.
I realize that just about any other engine out there should be able to pull this off, but it is my opinion that FC could really give INF a huge amount of depth.
Just my $0.02… I was going to state more, but I think the idea is here, and I think that FC speaks for itself.