I thought he meant head tracking as in they would ship the game with a helmet that tracked your own heads movement and translated it to the screen..

Head tracking is in Onyx and it owns. Aliens will own.

 

Adam Brennecke made it happen.

Awesome. This is better than the crates...

 

Off topic: Any chance of getting this head-tracking awesomeness into NWN2, by the way? While having dwarves stare at my character's crotch is very flattering, it can be a little creepy.

 

 

Otoh, when you are walking with an NPC in Oblivion and they simply stare at you endlessly, never looking away, never looking where they are going, never looking at their feet to make sure they don't get tangled up in their bootlaces, the effect is totally laughable. Or when two NPCs are deep in conversation (about mudcrabs lol) and they both keep talking so wonderfuly to each other while staring right at you.

 

 

I don't know about how the Bethesda devs see the world, but where I come from, when I walk down the street for a cup of coffee most people don't immediately start staring at me unblinkingly and those that do, I make very sure to give a wide berth.

 

But I guess the Bethesda guys are either really beautiful or hideously butt ugly if that is the reaction they see as usual.

Or just paranoid

I was personally expecting it to be another game that uses the Unreal 3 engine. I was hoping however it would use the Source engine, given it can create a realistic and gritty environment, something Aliens IMO needs. Hoping to get a look at this engine soon although, perhaps a different name would of been better in case people think its this.

Hmm. That is odd that they are developing an engine of the same name as another very recent game engine.

 

I'm happy for them to rename it, as long as they rename it to something cool like Tektite or Pyrite. Pyrite is awesome. Especially when you tell little kids it's real gold. Tektite is similarly cool looking meteoric glass that looks like Alien pottery or something.

Pikachu!

or if it is horribly slow like NWN2's electron it should be Slowpoke!

Psyduck FTW!

Well, "Onyx" does sound better than "Black Quartz"

 

They can give it a red paintjob* and call it "Sardonyx"

 

 

 

* I used to play Orks in WH40K Epic

The Tyte engine.

...when I walk down the street for a cup of coffee most people don't immediately start staring at me unblinkingly...

They don't?

 

You need to spend more skill points on your Cleavage skill.

How do you know she doesn't just have a low Perception stat?

Head tracking is in Onyx and it owns. Aliens will own.

 

Adam Brennecke made it happen.

 

Adam mentioned a while back he was working on animation "type" things, good to see he's coming up with such great results.

Erm. Sorry.

 

Headtracking? Sounds like a big fuss over an animation which seems to be quite common in games lately. Or did I misinterprete the term and the depth in it?

...when I walk down the street for a cup of coffee most people don't immediately start staring at me unblinkingly...

They don't?

 

You need to spend more skill points on your Cleavage skill.

 

Have my babies.

or if it is horribly slow like NWN2's electron it should be Slowpoke!

 

In the past I've been a rather vocal critic on NWN's 2 electron graphical render systems and general performance, even to the point of calling it the "Badger" engine, it is likely that some of the perf issues are infact related to "legacy" code written by Bioware, I don't know if Bioware ever did alter their NWNscript parser, neither do I know if Obsidian dramatically altered it, but they certainly invested resources and made mistakes during implementation which may have been costly, but the article I read was from quite some time ago.

 

Electron itself doesn't seem slow, it actually seems really fast, but it fails because you can actually set it to do too much, and in doing so it grind to a slideshow result. It's a double edged sword as it is extremely likely that future systems will certainly be able to run everything on high.

 

At the end of the day, it allows for some really really good dynamic lighting and shadowing, the problem with that is that the generation of dynamic lighting & shadowing is a resource hog on both the GPU and the CPU. That's not to mention all the "other" seemingly hidden stuff the CPU gets on with each cycle.

 

The performance has also dramatically increased since release. So it's clear that the dev's knew it was running slow, heck I'd wager for the most part they even knew why, but a tight schedule place's emphisis on functionality, and stability, not on performance. Obsidian have atleast show loyalty to fan's, and a good ear by improoving the performance.

 

NWN's 2 has a longer "playing" life for fans than most games, so such things as thinking ahead and implementing techniques which run poorly now but are likely to run on later systems is a seemingly wise move.

 

That said, Sawyer had mentioned that there was going to be an emphisis placed on performance during development of the Aliens game, and I can imagine that this is likely coupled with the new "Onyx" game engine.

 

As they're working on what is to be Obsidian's "bread and butter" for some time to come, this means an engine that perform's, is multi-platform, and extensive in it's extendability, with an emphisis on module code is very likely. We'll be seeing games for some time to come using this engine.

 

So as it is an investment, on the part of the company, I don't think Obsidian can afford to create a multi-platform engine which under-performs, and frankly put, I don't think that they will.

 

They've had experience previously working with complete engines, and certainly some talented folks who have in the past worked on previous engines, I cannot seriously see "Onyx", suffering from any of the problems that NWN's 2 did/does.

 

It's implausable.

Erm. Sorry.

 

Headtracking? Sounds like a big fuss over an animation which seems to be quite common in games lately. Or did I misinterprete the term and the depth in it?

 

Who know's what the depth is?

 

I'm pretty certain that it'll me alot more than the mere implementations previously seen in RPG's, that said such animation is usually generated procedurally in code.

 

The least that Adam could have done is implement procedural rotation coupled with IK pivotal effects, it'd also include Z-picking and line of sight stuff with some nice vector and I'm guessing quaternion application. That's the least he could have done.

 

I'd wager he's done alot more than that though, a hell of alot more.

I should be able to go into more depth of head tracking when the systems are more finalized. Yes, it's much more sophisticated than what's in Oblivion & Neverwinter Nights 1. A part of me feels sad that we never got simple head tracking into NWN2. We tried, but it didn't make the cut.

I should be able to go into more depth of head tracking when the systems are more finalized. Yes, it's much more sophisticated than what's in Oblivion & Neverwinter Nights 1. A part of me feels sad that we never got simple head tracking into NWN2. We tried, but it didn't make the cut.

 

*Gives Adam a cookie*

I should be able to go into more depth of head tracking when the systems are more finalized. Yes, it's much more sophisticated than what's in Oblivion & Neverwinter Nights 1. A part of me feels sad that we never got simple head tracking into NWN2. We tried, but it didn't make the cut.

 

*Gives Adam a cookie*

 

Brennecke for the win.

I should be able to go into more depth of head tracking when the systems are more finalized. Yes, it's much more sophisticated than what's in Oblivion & Neverwinter Nights 1. A part of me feels sad that we never got simple head tracking into NWN2. We tried, but it didn't make the cut.

 

*Gives Adam a cookie*

 

Brennecke for the win.

 

It's always Brennecke FTW.

I should be able to go into more depth of head tracking when the systems are more finalized. Yes, it's much more sophisticated than what's in Oblivion & Neverwinter Nights 1. A part of me feels sad that we never got simple head tracking into NWN2. We tried, but it didn't make the cut.

 

*Gives Adam a cookie*

 

Brennecke for the win.

 

It's always Brennecke FTW.

don't be upset Alvin, here: have a cookie too

Edited June 9, 200817 yr by Jorian Drake

I'm wondering when Adam is going to spill the beans about his head tracking implementation....

Speaking of heads, will we see facial animations?

Will the be beards in Aliens?