Noceur

If you want control over the appearance of your character, WoW might not be for you. You cannot control height at all. You can only switch between pre-made faces, hair, hair colour and skin colour.

Since christmas I've had a 0/24h sleeping schedual. That is, awake 48 hours, sleep 24. But now I seem to have managed to go back to a normal 8 hours sleep pattern!

I'm not sure just what patch I had when I used the game, but I installed all of those texture packs and it worked fine. When was patch 1.2 released? It made some things look fab, but it's a bit uneven when some areas and people are high-res textured and some not There was no performance change due to the higher res textures that I could tell. EDIT: Guy Gavriel Kay fan?

Yes, I have. I've also read David Eddings belgariad (waaay back in time), and I think that David and Leigh Eddings must write for a younger crowd than whatsherface.. Rowlings? I wouldn't call myself a Potter fan though. I just like reading, and the early Potter books had like a "murder mystery" thing going on that I found rather intruiging. The last book published kinda sucked though. Potter turned out to be a real brat May I also add that I thoroughly enjoy Star Trek, Anime, Star Wars and LOTR. I think the new Star Wars movies stink, though... the narrative is just horrible, and instead of acting the actors verbally tell what they feel. Anyway, call me

*Looks at the latest posts* Errr... I'm 24... But I wish I WAS NINJA!!!' :ph34r:

I've got the Kihlrathi saga collection and it's great. I really like the two first games, hehe. YOU FUR-BALL! Anyway, Freelancer was cool

Well, since it's a bit of a parody on James Bond and all of those spy movies back then, the gadget-tinkering back in the base is a given.

Haven't played Lineage 2, but I play WoW. I likes it.

Haha, I'd hardly say that the thief games are firstperson shooters. In fact, on most missions you FAIL if you kill anyone.

Interesting read, and it's nice to see that they're concentrating on gameplay. Valve did something similar on their maps (orange levels).

Chronicles of Riddick does look, in my opinion, better than Doom 3. I've seen it both on PC and Xbox. This may however be because they've got better design and stuff. angshuman: I'm not a programmer, so much of this is speculation. I do however work with 3D modelling and texturing. I believe the radiosity (or whatever they use, radiosty emulation or similar) in HL2 is for the static lightning of the map. It may affect how the models are lit, but I'm not sure of this. You could use bumpmaps for the rendering of the specifically lit textures on the map. Far cry does a similar things, it makes shadowmaps and lightmaps so the shadows for trees and other static objects won't have to be calculated realtime. (actually, that's what most games do) Radiosity, i.e the real radiosity affects bumpmaps and normalmaps. It calculates light bouncing off surfaces, you see. Normalmaps are just a map where the pixels represent the normals of polygons. So radiosity would indeed affect normalmaps. The reason you'd want static objects have realtime calculated bumpmaps (and normalmaps) is because of non-static lights I believe. Also, bumpmaps and normalmaps (normalmaps in particular) allows for specular lightning. All in all, I believe you've just answered the question why HL2 and Far Cry don't have everything on-screen ultra-bumpmapped and normalmapped. All of a sudden you can run the games and lower-end hardware. "I also thought Quake III had some pseudo-static way of rendering specular highlights." I think I read somewhere that Carmack had made some algorithm to better shade a two-triangle surface. I do believe that's why we need per-pixel lightning... specular lights, as you said. To answer your question, you could just have the textures "baked" to the lights of the map (as I mentioned above). But then, if you made a map entirely with a brick texture but with different lighting for different rooms, you'd have the same texture baked for every room and surface. That's more texture memory than it'd take to have the texture normalmapped/bumpmapped, but less (I presume) for the GPU to handle.

Yes! Because there will be an Alien Swarm for source! Murr, I say! MURR!

Well, to be honest I have no idea. I believe Far Cry could, as one of the highlights of their engine was the polybump technology. Actually, I've made some indoor maps in the far cry editor using a whole mess of normalmapped surfaces and it doesn't slow the game down. I hardly think the Doom 3 engine could handle a Far Cry map (outdoors several kilometer thing) with every surface normalmapped very well at all... most indoor maps in Far Cry do have a lot of normalmapping (especially the tech ones). In fact, I haven't seen much of large outdoors levels using the Doom 3 engine at all. I also feel pretty confident that Source could handle it as well... at least with the same demands on the hardware. Interestingly enough, Thief III has normalmapping (and I do believe most if not all surfaces are normalmapped) PLUS selfshadowing (something you have to enable in the console in Doom 3). Thief III has one of the most impressive shadows and lightning I've seen so far. Anyway, normalmapping certainly is a good thing. I just think you have to be careful not to make certain parts of your model too low-poly, especially where the shape of the contour is important. Hey btw, have you heard that Source will now support HDR? So now CryEngine's got it, Source's got it... but does the Doom 3 engine have it? (actually, I don't know wether it does or not. I don't think it has, it's certainly not used in the game). EDIT: I just wanted to point out that the rendering part of the engine isn't the whole engine, and stuff like sound engine, scripting, input/output and network code play a large role in how good an engine is. Stuff like that I have NO idea about ^_^; ... something I like about Far Cry though, is the dynamic music. I don't remember what Doom 3 had, but Half-life 2 had triggered music. Walk here, play song. Personally, I think that's last week's way of handling music... if you'll excuse the ultra-nerdy expression.

I'm sorry, but that really has nothing to do with physics. No matter where you hit those zombies, they were always cut in half. It wasn't as if you could slice and dice them any way you wanted (like in BloodRayne). That would have been physics. The ragdoll effects when the two pieces fell were physics though. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Actually, if you aim too high on the zombie, you cut the headcrab off the body. But that doesn't change the fact that it's just hit-zones. On to the engines, I wasn't more impressed with the Doom 3 engine than I was with the Far cry engine. The difference is just how ID chose to do their game. They normalmapped everything. You can do that in Far cry's engine, or in the source engine if you so wish as well. The monsters in doom 3 also feel horribly low-poly compared to Far Cry and HL2... they should've worked more on the contours, since they were using normalmaps anyway. I'm also more impressed with HL2's fake-radiosity in the lightning of the maps, as opposed to Doom 3's totally black shadows. What is impressive about the doom3 engine is that it can have so much normalmapping onscreen and still run decently. Saying that it's high-poly, however, is incorrect. If you've seen the voodoo version of the game, you know what I'm talking about. Also about that Unreal 3 model you posted, Kafkan... are you sure it's not ingame? That'd explain the octagon barrels on the gun. The other ingame models shown from that engine look about the same quality of that one you posted, you see. EDIT: Myeah, checked their website and I do believe it's rendered in the unreal 3 engine. The screenshot on their own website shows that it's "low-poly" with normalmapping. Rendering ONE of those models in a game engine is no problems though, render 20+ of those bastards plus the geometry of a map is a whole different matter Anyway, that's the problem with normalmapping. You can make surfaces look like they're high-poly, but as soon as you see the contours (like on the barrels there) you see through the illusion. (my point being, with normalmapping you skimp in on EVERYTHING, it's just more visible on things we know are clearly NOT octagonshaped but round. They could've skipped a few polys somewhere else on the model and used them on the barrels though)

Well the grafics renderer of all of those three engines can produce the same results as far as I know. Source renders a hell of a lot faster than doom 3 for me though. I also prefer the design choices Valve did by not putting specularity/glossyness 100% on everything including trashcans and the trash within I'm not sure how good the physics engine in Doom 3 is, because it's like totally not used at all. Crytek's physics engine is awesome, but Havoc in HL2 is used to create more life-like physics. HL2 runs faster than both Doom 3 and Far Cry on my system. I could play in preposterous resolutions with everything maxed and still have more FPS than I knew what to do with (until I downloaded the latest ATI drivers... now the FPS is high, but the game lags every 0.5 seconds). I suppose Doom 3 runs slower (on my machine at least) because every single surface is normalmapped (as opposed to Far cry and HL2, where they just normal map things they feel need to be). I played through HL2 without falling asleep, whilst Doom 3 was an interesting commercial for ID's new engine the first 100 dark corridors. Far Cry is a damn entertaining game... don't like the near immortal supermutants, but daamn do I love the open terrain :D . Also, Doom 3 - same AI as doom 1, as where Far Cry and HL2 both -have- AI. However, I have to agree that with both Far cry and doom 3 already out on the market, HL2 didn't showcase anything groundbreaking... other than the physics engine which I think performs better than Far Cry's physics engine (which says a lot). Note however that Valve didn't make Havoc. (HavoK?) EDIT: (visual) Designwise, I'd have to say that HL2 is the best game out of those 3. It seems that the hype about games (at least Firstperson shooter games) these days is more about the engine than the actual game. And often it's the gfx renderer that's in focus.

A little late reply perhaps, but I've always found pesuation and high charisma useful for these games. Err, useful if you want more story/dialogue options. I'm not saying it'll affect a whole MESSAH things. In the OC, for example, I managed to convince Aribeth that she was wrong and I didn't have to fight her. I guess that's why I often play paladins. I hate being restricted in dialogues.

I liked the dialogue about "the cat", between that scientist dude, Barney and Alyx (and Gordon). Barney: "Did you hear a cat just now?" I just have one question, I've seen several people on the internet call Gordon Freeman "Gordan". GordAn? Is that a typo, or is it some HL-fan thing that I've missed out on? I assure you, I shall continue to call Gordon by his true name regardless.

I enjoyed playing (in) Morrowind. I never finished the game... I always stop playing because after a while I get bored (about 2 weeks, hehe). Same thing happened to me in KOTOR 1... I quit playing just before the finale Morrowind is a pretty fun sandbox to play around in. The characters are stiff, but I never had any real problems with the quests. I prefer skill/level systems that work like in Morrowind (you get better at what you DO). However, a system like this may be more for Pen and paper (and MMORPG's), I admit. I think the Elder Scrolls games could gain a whole lot if they added more detail, more detailed characters and quests that take place in the area they're given. ... And less cliffracers. As in none. Not even in the in-game literature.

Wow, that is good news indeed. Last time I checked an editor was so far from happening... well, it looked bleak. Is it complete with SDK's and all or just a map editor? Man my taffing-finger is starting to itch now. Must... investigate further.

I thoroughly loved thief 1 and 2, but I never finished the last level on Thief II. Neither did I play any of the mods, since I wasn't that involved with the internet thing back then I just have to ask, is there an official editor out there for Thief 3 now? Or is it like a total sneaksie sneaks hack from the community? (question directed at the fellow who mentioned fan-made material for above mentioned game) Shalebridge Cradle had my pulse go up a notch, I can say. ;P

I couldn't agree more... even though me and Miss Steam has had some quarrels (she's a real hellraiser, she is), I fully support the initiative. And good for you, Arkan ... Half-life 2 and Bloodlines are highly entertaining (although some might disagree with me on Bloodlines, there).

Aww, that's a shame :/ I haven't played the demo yet...

Christ, is it getting so bad that you are considered ancient if you played and remember System Shock? Well the loss is on those people then I guess since they missed out one of the greatest games in history. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Haha, yeah... at least they've successfully made me FEEL ancient. btw, is that Crusader: No regret, No remorse you've got on your portrait? Have you checked out http://ra2083.com/ ? Seems like Crusader but with some RPG elements. (actually, there was some RPG elements in Crusader, wasn't there?) Anyway, I'm happy to see that there are games that you like, Volourn. Hehe. I'd give Jade Empire a shot, if I had an Xbox. Haven't followed it that much since I don't.