What is left

[MathZeus]

What things can be improved in U2 or any games that follow so that they are not far from reality?

My opinion:
1. Sky: In outdoor levels the sky should actually be located infinitely far. When you shoot a razor upwards it shouldn't come back to you.
2. Water: It should react more like water. When you shoot on it or someone falls into water there should be waves around. And refraction should not be neglected.
3. Bullets should leave signs on walls and bodies (see quake ]|[, kingpin) and of course some classes (books, chairs etc.) must be destroyable.

I hope to see those in U2. What are your opinions?

 

[Deathwing]

All very good things, but they would significantly increase the strain on the system it's all being played on.

 

[ChrisToth.hu]

Uhm...

1. It's already "fixed" because there is no problem at all. The sky's height is only a matter of level design. You can place CloudZoneInfos under the fake backdropped ceiling and then you won't see projectiles exploding or coming back.

2. Waterrings? Already done...the same effect can be created with projectiles like when you jump into water, again with a little extra time of level design.
Refraction? Think about system resources...

3. Bullets leave decals on walls (Have you turned them off?) and pain skins can be used (with some coding tho) because the engine supports dynamic texture usage on models.

 

[NeoNite]

Mathzeus

Ever heard of a game called serious sam?

anyway, visit

http://www.croteam.com

and read through the 56 excellent features of the serious engine.

Ps return to wolfenstein has many objects which can be destroyed am i right? You can ever destroy an entire bridge (if you have the firepower ...)

Evolution or evilution.. ?

 

[Metakill]

Water refraction

Water Refraction is an absolute must and anyone who says its too much of a strain on the system hasn't taken Data Structures. I started a discussion about this earlier. It is definitely possible.

Waves? well the ripples are easy enough, but waves would require a complete physical model of liquids in gravity. Hmmm..., actually I think this could be done by making the water surface into a grid mesh, where each vertex could move and stretch.

UT does have weapon decals. And in Unreal, you can destroy lots of objects: chairs, barrels, vases, windows, even statues.

 

[NeoNite]

well about waves in the water..

i'v seen this in these add-ons for games:

opposing force: yep, the water surface moves (there are ripples). Check out the moving water, at the beginning of the game, when you're in that big canyon.

nehahra for quake: you can enable this thru a console command. (since half life uses the modified quake engine, read quake1 engine

 

[ChrisToth.hu]

No...I'm not talking about the waves...
But to calculate the reflection of the surroundin area on the rippling water surface. It is possible but the necessary hardware is just getting into the stores now...

 

[dinwitty]

i like your sig chris

like the other unreal games I presume you can backward the detail, so reflections as above can be an option.

 

[ChrisToth.hu]

Thanx...

Simple flat reflections are possible. I'm talking about a "rippling reflection". That would be realistic but would need some decent hardware...

(Looks like it's hard to understand me...)

 

[NeoNite]

oh just go and take a dip in some real water there.. ripples .. waves... all you'll ever need..!

(i'm also complicated, sometimes i don't understand what the hell i'm talking about......)

This is all so.. unreal...

 

[MathZeus]

Surfaces

And there's another thing. All those poly counts etc. Sure it will be a great improvement this "hundredfold increase for environments" but can't a real sphere or curved surface be constructed? OK I know the answer is no, but why?

 

[Serpico_TC|PuF]

Didn't the quake 3 engine boast about 'true' curved surfaces.

And there was an option in the unreal console...dont know if it did anything or not

Again, engines aren't my thing.

As for all the true water characteristics...yeah...all very nice but soon forgotten when playing...unless the game is dull...which I hope it aint

Make it real up to a point...but theres no point redesigning and making whole new physics engines to cope with it...time verses the impact of the effect.

Plus I only have a voodoo 3 3k...

-Serpico

 

[NeoNite]

time to upgrade kef

Anyway, i guess you and me are both different gamers
I like gameplay and i also like the special effects and graphics etc. very much. i mean, it'd be kinda silly if computer games would stop evolving.

BUt don't worry kef, i know what you mean (for the record) damn how do you put that smiley with the big grin in your message? :S

know what? unreal warfare for you, unreal2 for me how about that?

 

[Serpico_TC|PuF]

Originally posted by NeoNite
know what? unreal warfare for you, unreal2 for me how about that?

Sounds good to me. Shame that Unreal Warfare aint going to show up till well after U2 tho.

Oh, and the big grin is a ':' and a 'D'

-Serpico

 

[dinwitty]

I would not expect Uwarfare to hit till after 64 bit CPUs get here, and maybe new op systems

 

[NeoNite]

tnx kef

Actually, i do like mp games, don't take me wrong here i'd like playing a game in the likes of unreal warfare heh..
ok enough smileys..

And yes, i bet those games will need some decent HORSEPOWER meaning a FIne pc with a damn fine graphics card etc... upgrading.. upgrading.. :S

 

[Metakill]

Well, just like all the current games, these advanced physical features should be optional. And I think the amount of realism completely changes the psychology of your game when you play. Water was for hundreds of millenia an alien environment for homo sapiens, and making it more realistic would certainly create a greater feeling of danger diving into the depths.

BTW: does anybody know if these games are using floating point math? 'cuz fixed point math can make it hundreds of times faster, esp. if coprocessor supports it. There are many techniques to lower the amount of calculations taking place, such as drastically reducing unnoticable details in the distance (I think U2 does this), having a lower poly-count version of map features when frame-rates drop, etc. I think much higher levels of efficiency and realism can still be reached without another generation of upgrading.

 

[dinwitty]

I know the Uengine pulls accuracy down to around 0.0000001% or so
If it sets its accuracy at only one point, IE 7-8 digitis%, it will be fixed.
I dont think it needs heavy floating calcs.
It would take lots more time to calc that.
I have not seen values running in the 8*10E12^4 range

 

[Metakill]

Oh yeah...

I almost forgot, curvature of perspective. This is the effect that what we percieve as straight lines, are actually curved. Well, in reality (or at least for all practical purposes) the lines are straight, but are eyes see them as curves, which our brains then convince us are actually straight, which they actually are (I hope).

Now If that made any sense at all then don't try the following experiment:
Stand on a railroad platform facing the opposite side of the tracks, straight tracks preferrably. The tracks should look perfectly straight to you. Now turn your head right and look down the path of the tracks. Notice they are all converging in an upward angle.
Next, turn your head to the left, and they are also converging in an upward angle in the opposite direction. In fact the tracks define a huge smile shaped curve.

Now try this experiment: try to stand as perfectly as you can on a single point on the ground and rotate in a complete circle. Notice that the geometry of your view barely changes at all. In fact, if you could look through a single eye that remained perfectly above a point on the ground and spun in a complete circle, the geometry of the view (discounting moving objects) would not change at all.

Now try doing this in any 3-D Viewpoint program. Notice all the lines change as they wrap onto and off of the screen. If you increase your field of view in UT by typing FOV 120 in the console, this effect becomes drammatically pronounced (and can make you very dizzy).

It is the fact that we actually see straight lines as curves that allow us to see a complet 360` vista as a static image.
If the renderer could translate the straight lines in the game map into curves as our eyes would actually see them, the straight line-fish eyed effect would be gone.

I will go so far as to say that we will not have created a true visual virtual reality until we achieve this (well, of course we can do it now, but the calculations are ponderous). Kudos to whovever pulls it off in real-time on a PC first. Or if somebody already has, congrats!

 

[Metakill]

Oh and another thing...

Shadows. That is, silhouettes created by objects in front of a light source, rather than just areas of darker ambient lighting.

This could be computationally expensive, but would probably be the most dramatic increase in realism of any effect, especially in dark match games, as the shadows would shift and stretch as you shine your searchlight around. This would also create superb possibilities in level design.