| Aphex July 22, 2001, 08:54 AM |
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Ok, thi is Dani speaking. First of all, thank you very much for the comments, impressing you guys is really an honor for us. Let's see if I can make any sense:
All pics were taken on a P2 with a GeFORCE2. Most of the coding was done with a TNT2, and yes, moving to the GeFORCE gave us a speed kick (almost doubled). The reason for this I guess is better handling from the driver of VA's. All the stuff about a P2 not being able to deliver data to a G2 blah blah is false: moving from a TNT2 to a G2 on a P2 makes the demo QUITE faster. Still, the game is designed for P3 600 or so. The Geforces allow us to have high-res textures and register combiners, which is one of the key factors to deliver photo-realism on a PC.
About the terrain, we can do more or less everything as long as it's 2D and a half (no vertical walls, no flyovers). We do all that with additional layers on top of the terrain engine. The demos are flat, yes, we agree. Keep in mind our goal is to concentrate on the visual experience, not the tech side. So, terrain often yields triangles to other rendering stages to ensure the whole thing makes sense. I hope to be able to send some pics with rougher maps though. The result is somehow like Tribes II terrain-wise, only that we have better texturing and put more funny stuff on top of the land ;-)
Phil: yes, we are the Gamasutra guys. Expect 3rd installment of my column by mid-August, covering the "from demo to engine" process and some random thoughts on making great games. I have also applied to talk about game studio creation at GDC'2002... we'll see if the Gods favor me.
About the Riven/modeling side, I have the great pleasure to have 3 of the best modelers I have ever met in my team (cheers to them all from here!!!! We did it guys!!!!). Their work simply leaves our tech behind. Besides, we share a common vision and, yes, Riven is part of it. Still, those images are only a tiny part of the vision. If I were you, I'd have some kleenex ready: we are gonna do it even better ;-)
Zed Zeek: yes, The pic you point to is not quite right. Z-ordering is WRONG there, showing our BSPs, quadtrees, portals and other gimmicks need some more working. Keep in mind we are still testing, so there's many problems arising (although we are happy with the results so far)
Joe Ante: Ok, the answer is NO, i cannot give you all the funny details, but here's some ideas:
- terrain (and distance) is a good culler for large areas, which can be precalc'ed: hills blocking the view, etc.
- smaller, close to the viewer areas can somehow be processed with a finer algorithm which works on a object-level.
Another issue is memory footprints: we have about 1M trees maybe, so all this culling algo has to work with references and not objects themselves.
That's it. I will post another answer if there's more questions. Just thank you very much for your comments (especially criticisms). It is a pleasure to discuss stuff with you guys.
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