Specific features aside, the renderer is nice and our material system is pretty cool. I really believe, "It's not the tools, it's how you use it." Source is now an "old" engine, but L4D is extremely well-executed, especially in its lighting and environment art.

 

Our lighting and shadows are very nice. Yesterday we came across a gameplay event in Aliens that looked so cool we had to reproduce it on the main lounge TV. We sent out an e-mail to the company for people to just walk by the lounge to see it. People were pretty stoked.

It didn't happen unless you show us video proof.

How does one "come across" a gameplay event, anyway.

How does one "come across" a gameplay event, anyway.

By playing the game It was just coincidental that the event happened in an area that had really cool lighting.

This is the kind of game that would really benefit from having destructible terrain. Does the engine support destructible terrain?

This is the kind of game that would really benefit from having destructible terrain. Does the engine support destructible terrain?

 

No, just no.

 

Unless a development company wants to build an game AROUND the concept of destructible terrain (and thus do it justice), people should leave it alone.

 

Red Faction's destructible terrain didn't suck, was fun, and I even used it strategically once or twice... but it didn't do the feature justice.

I also dont see how destructible terrain could play a major feature in a game like this.

 

Specific features aside, the renderer is nice and our material system is pretty cool. I really believe, "It's not the tools, it's how you use it." Source is now an "old" engine, but L4D is extremely well-executed, especially in its lighting and environment art.

True, true... Can i dare ask how do you view Witcher approach to camera and controls as in "giving eeasy option to choose what fits you best" to everyone.

Not related to Aliens of course. Just generally.

I thought it was an excellent approach that really should be a norm these days.

 

 

Our lighting and shadows are very nice. Yesterday we came across a gameplay event in Aliens that looked so cool we had to reproduce it on the main lounge TV. We sent out an e-mail to the company for people to just walk by the lounge to see it. People were pretty stoked.

Did you ever had a moment where your game genuinely scared any of the devs themselves? Like hairs starting to stand - scarred?

Not that BOO!-Arrrghhh! scarred thingy. Was there any of those too?

Agreed. Destructible environments look nice, but don't add anything important to the game.

I can't believe I'm reading this. How would destructible environment not be awesome? Keeping aliens at bay by caving down a passageway, crushing aliens under a ceiling, opening an exit by blowing a hole in wall. It could be brilliant if done right. And, if the game has co-op it could be even better: two guys holding off aliens with the last rounds of ammo, to give a third guy time to open an escape route by setting charges; or one guy setting motion sensing charges in a corridor while the rest of the guys try to drive the attacking aliens into that corridor. It could be brilliant fun.

Nobody sees the utility in destructible environments?

 

In a game where enemies bleed acid?

 

There definitely ought to be objects in the gameworld that are affected by damage. The more the better.

All of that can be "scripted", placed content, in a sense - without requiring full depth of destructible environments.

 

Full destructible environments are mucho, mucho work even for a professional studio to pull off.

Edited January 18, 200917 yr by Hiver

Agreed. Destructible environments look nice, but don't add anything important to the game.

Bad Company disagrees.

Destructible terrain can be pretty neat if properly implemented, but the game needs to be designed with it in mind, otherwise it's a wasted feature.

Agreed. Destructible environments look nice, but don't add anything important to the game.

 

You could certainly make a brilliant game from destructible terrain if you devoted a game to it, though. I just don't believe Obsidian is willing or needs to devote the entire game to destructible terrain.

I think it be pretty nifty.

How does one "come across" a gameplay event, anyway.

By playing the game It was just coincidental that the event happened in an area that had really cool lighting.

 

Well,

 

Whatever you do Josh, dont screw this one up.

 

I'm sooo looking forward to this one.....

Edited January 19, 200917 yr by howling1

Specific features aside.

 

I'm interested in certain features outside of rendering. Such as tool chain, iteration times on art etc... etc... I do understand that it's unlikely that you, or anyone, is likely to even attempt to answer those questions.

 

The renderer is nice and our material system is pretty cool. I really believe, "It's not the tools, it's how you use it." Source is now an "old" engine, but L4D is extremely well-executed, especially in its lighting and environment art.

 

What makes the material system so cool?

 

Tools are just an aid to development, so I agree, it's about how something is used. If a tool helps increase iteration time though, then that's a tool worth having.

 

L4D, while excellent, doesn't actually have alot of content, the content that is there is highly polished content I admit, but for it's development cycle one expects MORE content. The fidelity actually seems quite poor in all honesty, but I've only seen a 360 version.

 

Our lighting and shadows are very nice. Yesterday we came across a gameplay event in Aliens that looked so cool we had to reproduce it on the main lounge TV. We sent out an e-mail to the company for people to just walk by the lounge to see it. People were pretty stoked.

 

Real time lighting and shadows? I assume you guys are using deffered rendering techniques?

 

May I just add... I'm really excited about this project, and I'm really looking forwards to seeing your final results.

This is the kind of game that would really benefit from having destructible terrain. Does the engine support destructible terrain?

 

No, just no.

 

Unless a development company wants to build an game AROUND the concept of destructible terrain (and thus do it justice), people should leave it alone.

 

Red Faction's destructible terrain didn't suck, was fun, and I even used it strategically once or twice... but it didn't do the feature justice.

 

"Black" did it better in my opinion.

Real time lighting and shadows? I assume you guys are using deffered rendering techniques?

Yes, 100% real-time lighting and shadows. We are not using deferred rendering, in part because we are using a lot of shaders.

Real time lighting and shadows? I assume you guys are using deffered rendering techniques?

Yes, 100% real-time lighting and shadows. We are not using deferred rendering, in part because we are using a lot of shaders.

Need explanation: What is deffered rendering?

Agreed. Destructible environments look nice, but don't add anything important to the game.

Bad Company disagrees.

Jagged Alliance 2 agrees to disagree too. Can't get at the sniper shooting from the window? Remove window, wall around window and sniper all in one go with a bit of C4.

Real time lighting and shadows? I assume you guys are using deffered rendering techniques?

Yes, 100% real-time lighting and shadows. We are not using deferred rendering, in part because we are using a lot of shaders.

Need explanation: What is deffered rendering?

 

It's a rendering technique used in games like Stalker, killzone 2, AoC and many others, it basically means you render all your desired values out to a G-Buffer, so Normals, diffuse, lighting, specular etc... are all rendered to textures and then put togeather to build a result.

 

It allows for alot of lights to be placed and effect a scene at a minimal cost. To not use it tends to be more expensive, infact to my knowledge it is.

 

Deffered shading is not actually at odds with post processing or material based effects, as any required data can be drawn for that frame.

 

If obsidian are generating lighting and shadows in real time, they have a limit on number of lights in a frame, which in effect has an effect on the shadows. They've done this in the Electron rendering engine, it will be interesting to see the results as its a different approach... Some may even argue a bad approach, but the result is different...

 

Post processing effects like HDR, depth of field, colour filtering and grain filtering for example work fine with deffered rendering.

 

P.S. Does not understand what Mr Josh means by "We're using alot of shaders", no reason I can bring to mind at the moment why that is at odds with deffered shading. BUT he is a designer, so why would he know? It's a curious angle.

Edited January 22, 200917 yr by Nightshape

P.S. Does not understand what Mr Josh means by "We're using alot of shaders", no reason I can bring to mind at the moment why that is at odds with deffered shading. BUT he is a designer, so why would he know? It's a curious angle.

 

The reason to use or not use deferred rendering is dependent on what you want to do. It's an attempt to optimize the shading calculation by restructuring how you do it.

 

In "traditional" forward rendering, the shader does the entire calculation beginning to end. You can swap one shader for another and get a completely different lighting equation, i.e. a very different looking material.

 

In deferred rendering, you divide up the work of your shaders. Various pieces of a lighting equation get rendered into a set of full-screen buffers, and later get composited all together with lighting information. Because each piece of the lighting equation is now done in separate screen-wide phases, your lighting equation is hard-wired into your rendering pipeline, and you have a lot less flexibility with it. All of your materials now have to use the same set of components for their calculation. The other drawback is translucent layers. Anything that is blended on top has to be drawn separately from the deferred rendering process, because layering has to be done after lighting. This means that in addition to a deferred pipeline, you need to support forward rendering for your translucent stuff (smoke, fire, etc.). You can also use a forward render on top of the deferred renderer to get fancier materials, but the more screen space you cover with forward rendering, the more you're cutting off any advantage that your deferred renderer might have over a forward renderer (it's generally worse to do half-and-half than to do all forward).

 

The advantage to deferred rendering is that each stage of rendering is a much simpler calculation. Performance is a question of whether several simple calculations are faster than a single complex calculation, and this depends heavily on what king of stuff you're feeding to your renderer.

 

 

A gross oversimplification is:

 

Deferred rendering gets you more lights.

 

Forward rendering gets you more varied materials.

Also:

 

Real time lighting and shadows? I assume you guys are using deffered rendering techniques?

 

[...]

 

It allows for alot of lights to be placed and effect a scene at a minimal cost. To not use it tends to be more expensive, infact to my knowledge it is.

 

Why would you make that assumption? The vast majority of games do not use deferred rendering. Whether or not it's better or even just faster depends on a whole lot of factors (graphics hardware, platform architecture, memory, content, content pipelines, artistic goals, et cetera). The few developers that are using it will tell you that it's faster because it's faster for them. This does not mean that it is better in general. It is better sometimes.

Agreed. Destructible environments look nice, but don't add anything important to the game.

Bad Company disagrees.

Jagged Alliance 2 agrees to disagree too. Can't get at the sniper shooting from the window? Remove window, wall around window and sniper all in one go with a bit of C4.

 

You can do that? Seriously?