samm

I think it will be a great gaming experience once the consumer version is out Will certainly affect games' visual design because people will simply see it differently from what they know from a monitor (size of the world and its virtual inhabitants, as well as their visual details etc) and cause a new need for more potent graphics hardware. May be still a bit too unwieldy for some years, but once some combination with a google-glass-project-alike in even smaller, using projectors directly aiming on the eye, it's going to be the end of monitors as we know them.

While in Chain-Shot-Mode, aim for the heads - as soon as you've either used up the maximum number of shots or time's up, the shots are fired. If you miss, it may be because time is not entirely frozen, you have to take enemy motion into consideration a tiny bit. To be able to switch ammo types, you first need different types of ammo for the current weapon Open the screen to change your weapon (as you can always take to of them with you on a mission). You can change ammo in that screen by selecting the ammo type you want, just like switching from an ability like chain shot to some other ability like shadow operative, or switching gadgets etc.

* There are more possiblities out there than PhysX and Bullet * PhysX multithreading and availability in meaningful compiled form is (was?) highly limited, read first post * There *is* multithreading support in Bullet (at least there's a demo applications / code for it) * You can compile Bullet yourself, optimizing it for any specs available * Bullet provides OpenCL-support, useful on any system using a more or less recent graphics cards or integrated GPUs in AMD and Intel processors, as opposed to hardware acceleration only vor nVidia-GPUs * Bullet is open source, so feel free to change it to fit your particular needs, instead of being a proprietary closed source crutch That said, I'm not advocating to use Bullet - just not to use PhysX in the state it is described in the first post

Point is, he already did (cause the people to do) so

Has the angry dwarf even read any of the links or seen the video from the initial post? This man Aaron Swartz voiced very, very valid concerns of people vs. companies & government, freedoms for which each and every one will have to fight on their own because there is no lobby on their side, no financial benefit to be gained by supporting them. So this guy who's telling others what they might otherwise have fatally and irrevocably overlooked, gets in the way of government and companies. Or at least these institutions think so. Which is enough to make them want to get rid of him. One individual, put under constant pressure by them - can you really call him a weakling for that? The most ridiculous ways of criminalizing were applied, and I think we all know what even comparatively baseless mobbing by co-workers or -students can do to a person. So how much worse will the effect be if the same tactics are applied in the big scale, by multinationals and the government? 50 years in prison, financial ruin, personal and professional isolation they would afflict upon him for a bad joke of a "reason" should leave him cool? This man surely was no weakling. He folded under pressure that would, in my opinion, have served as a valid reason for more drastic measures than suicide. Being part of the architects of much of what the Internet is now just makes him stand out from a crowd suffering similar fates. There's no value in playing the tough guy regarding his suicide. It just makes anyone doing that a sorry little self-righteous ignorant.

Hm, not really informed, let me elaborate. I don't mean to sound mean or scholarly, there are just pretty incorrect statements here that only serve to confuse, so I'll try to correct some things. No, it is not. PhysX is a (now nVidia owned and developed) physics middleware. Depending on its implementation, its library's functionalities can be accelerated by executing them on nVidia GPUs (Ageias cards are no longer supported afaik). This statement is wrong - and pretty confusing, even if the context explains what you mean to say here That's just how the Borderlands 2 devs (or possibly the nVidia dev-relations-team) have chosen to implement it. Each and every single of these effects could be calculated on the CPU as well, it would just be too computation intensive to make this a useful alternative, so they've restricted these higher settings to GPU physics. This does *not* mean that the PhysX engine is not used when it's not GPU accelerated, it just means that certain effects that you described so vividly (thanks for that, entertaining :D ) are not enabled unless there's GPU acceleration available. And this again brings me to the point of this topic: If the PhysX-library included with Unity in the version used for P:E is still crippled when used executed on CPU alone - purposefully so, I dare say - in that it is heavily relying on x87 and does not use more than one core and that one core in a most ineffective manner, then: Will the devs stil go ahead and use this libary, or can and will they update it - provided it has improved since the initially posted realworldtech article - or replace it with something more flexible? Now this really has nothing to do whatsoever with the topic at hand

[edit] put the following into spoiler-tags, as it's quite off topic. sorry for that! Bok's rig, 2013 as pretty as always Nice to see you're also still using a dedicated sound card, tis a dying breed of computer accessory, and I really whish it weren't so... Can't abide the onboard stuff with its sorry EM-shielding, complete lack of sound processing, and refuse to stop playing the old games still profiting not only from the superior parts compared to the few cents an onboard codec is worth, which is noticable in any game, but also can use the processing power.

This topic is actually about what physics engine they will use and why some would be a less than optimal choice - rather than about "what to use a physics engine for"

Oh, risky purchase there with the OCZ Vertex 2... It's not only OCZ Ram that craps out, you know http://www.hardware..../881-7/ssd.html

As I've heard that some version(s? all?) of Unity 3D come with PhysX as a physics engine, I assume this is going to be used. Possibly for things like collision, cloth, spells and water, maybe leaf movement, ray casting or whatever. The point is, that this physics library is very badly coded, in some older versions at least, see here: http://www.realworldtech.com/physx87/ It's a lengthy read, but the bottom line is that nVidia used to really "de-optimize" the code to run awfully bad on CPUs, not using any features of modern CPUs in terms of instruction sets (instead relying on deprecated x87) nor making any use of multiple cores. So my question is: Is this still true for the version of Unity used here, that it comes with this relic of bad software? If so, does P:E make any use of it at all? If so, would it be possible to upgrade to a more recent version of PhysX (if it has improved since), or even switch the physics engine?

Mmmmh yeah Relaxing, surreal, intense - heard Amplifier being called "stoner" music, wonder why... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIcEn-nj1XM

If still relevant for anyone, the Anti-Aliasing-Problems were no longer existent for my AMD-card. I used some 12.11 beta Catalyst and was able to force SGSSAA without nasty side effects like dialogue or inventory models disappearing.

Thank you for your feedback, Mr. Bell It is very encouraging to hear such words from a developer working on this title Listening fatigue and the ever present (in many examples contemporarily produced music) "loudness war" leading to dynamic range compression is also always a good theme to make listeners aware of. Regarding other examples of good audio (disregarding compression artifacts etc), additionally to the ones mentioned previously (IWD 1, PS:T, Prey) Chronicles of Riddick comes to mind as well as other stealth action games like Thief 3. Contrary to other mentions here in this thread, I considered the "bustling city" sound effects of BG2 often somewhat disconnected to what actually was there in terms of visible content. Such, hm, gaps don't really add to a feeling of connection to the game world. This is not true for very minimalistic/old games, where there is nothing to see other than still images of the environment for example, and sound is really a substitute instead of an effect of existing game objects.

Hell no. Sure hope they're not going to waste any resources on multiplayer aspects. Maybe in some other game in the future, but not on this project - resources are relatively scarce and decent network implementation seems difficult enough judging by many games - and that's not even considering that multiplayer would have to make sense in game terms (i.e. integrated into the story, or leave the story weak like in Diablo, MMOs and similar).

Relieved to hear that

If it will support "4K" like the current PS supports 1080p, *yaaaaaaawn* is all I'm going to say about the PS4. One should never take a console as a benchmark for a PC anyway, plus it's completely irrelevant to the issue of how Obsidian is going to solve the storage issue they apparently face with this game.

And the consumers may have moaned a bit and subsequently not changed their ways. It has to hurt really hard before anything changes the masses' mind in that matter, too bad climate change such a slow process that's only gradually felt. So if anything was to change *fast*, there's nothing else to do than1. to educate people, hoping they get aware of their surroundings and gain the ability to re-think their own behaviour 2. take political measures like said taxes, to the extreme. No one is going to do that (in a democracy for fear of not getting re-elected, in a dictatorship, well, a dictator does as he pleases anyway and usually that's not about the earth as a whole....) So moderate taxes combined with some propaganda is all one can expect. And yes, it *is* always better than doing nothing. To resign or to ignore is the way to certain doom, comfortable lazyness on the shoulders of whoever comes after us.

Corrupted to the core, that bastard. How many times has he been drawn to court by now? And how many times *should* he have been sentenced already? Slightly more often than your average politician I'd wager... Well, let's see if he manages to create his intended crusade against the "dictatoriship of judges" how he calls it. It seems he hasn't changed / created enough laws while he was in office after all.

Just to clarify, I don't want to stress the importance of *multichannel* sound! Every game has that by now, it's a feature for the checklist and I don't care that much except in shooters. In a 2D-game one can still make nice use of the three front speakers for speech, effects, environment and interface sounds, and surround channels for environmental sound. But as mentioned, that is not really my point or only a part of it: I meant to stress the *quality* of sound that has been degrading lately. Poor use of multichannel is part of the problem but not the key issue. Again, it's not (just) positioning that I'm talking about. Thank you for mentioning Unity, because my current example of a good game with poorly implemented sound, Endless Space, is based on Unity. Just serves to intensify my plea to the devs not to neglect sound Oh, thanks for mentioning Maybe I'll give it a shot then ( ), because this really sounds ( ) good. Now that AMD graphics cards allow for SGSSAA on OpenGL again, I think the decision is made

Sargallath: last line of your sig has me worrying, did you receive an update from Fionavar?

Dear Obsidianites! For people whose first reaction would be "TL;DR": please developers, make the game sound immersive with regards to effects, environmental and positional audio. Draw us in, let us truly *feel* the world you create for us. Use IWD or PS:T as examples, or, beyond our RPG-ers' noses, Prey or Battlefield 2. For people with enough time to read: Parts of what made the IE games, most notable the Black Isle ones, so immersive and rich in atmosphere was sound. And by sound I'm not only referring to the soundtrack, voice acting and spell effects, I'm mainly talking about the environment. If your characters walk on snow, you want to hear that. If a town is quiet and friendly, you want to hear that. Dripping water and steps echoing in caves, howling winds and cracking branches, rustling leaves and barely audible breathing in a forest at night, the single candle lighting a room. Listen to Icewind Dale with EAX enabled, or to Prey, to take a different genre, with OpenAL at full level - it just sounds beautiful and sets the player right into the world. Environmental audio quality is currently on a steep decline, worst current example (not counting console ports) is Endless Space: As soon as the CPU is busy, sound stutters. There are only five or so concurrent layers of sound and as soon as there are more, there's audible popping and distortion or sound effects just not being rendered. Or compare Battlefield 3 with Battlefield 2 - worlds of difference in sound quality! The many layers and clear positioning is gone, replaced by some lackluster software solution from the shelf in the hopes that users of onboard sound will not notice that anyway and the graphics will distract from sound. Let me tell you: They don't distract sufficiently, the hearing sense is left wanting more. So my plea to the developers: Please respect the capability of current hardware, use OpenAL for example if you need to decouple things from the CPU if the gamers' hardware allows for it, I don't care for the actual technology you use but: *please* make us feel right in the game, at home and comfortable, afraid, tense, relaxed, connected to the game's individual sound signature (think Planescape's spell learining sound effect) - immersed.

Volourn: Exactly :D Hitler is totally representative of the average European*! Btw Volourn, vote on the poll and make North America proud Foonie: Indeed, the guy who killed Hitler was created by the same people as Hitler himself. Reason to be proud to be a European xD *He actually isn't. Surprise. People here are just as stupid as they are everywhere.

It is a percentage of the *profits* that would go into other projects. They would still get to keep far, far more - percentage wise - than they would with a publisher, and they would support other games to be released without the backing of money-mongering hypocrites of publishers. So definitely yes: Kicking it forward is a great initiative and deserves all the support it can get. It also strengthens bonds between game developers - they get in touch with each other and exchange ideas as well as solid financial support. See Notch's activities for example. Perfect recipe for a better tomorrow of serious gamers free of industrial oversight by artless locusts.

I like your avatar, NateOwns. That said, take it easy guys. Obsidian is already investing a lot more into PR for this game then for any of their big money productions. You cannot seriously expect them to keep the fans fed on a daily basis. Takes a lot of time, return value of zero, or even negative if they commit to things too fast they cannot keep in the end. Like the timing of the promised update, lol.

Yes, seems quite confounding to some - to me, those two subjects were just what interested me the most What I do? Jobwise, I'm no longer at uni, I've finished last year, and been working as a programmer since (before that, I have been doing so part time for around seven years). And what is it that you do nowadays?