Well i was just messing around with the HL2 Gary’s Mod and this thing came to my mind.
What is your most preffered game engine ?
or
What game Engine would you like see new games on ?
My have just put three choices up there… Doom III, HL2 and FarCry…
Before you ask i would vote for HL2(Source)… Not only the engine looks great but is highly scalable and also the game physics…
My second chioce is obviously FarCry(Cry Engine)… Why cause the ability to render such huge maps is just awasome…
DOOM III lastly… The engine just looks great but we havent seen the engine in big maps as of now… Also cause of the darkness of the game… The engine needs a high end machine which is a negative point…
Also one game to look out for is Serious Sam 2… Serious Sam had an amazing game engine which had the ability to render amazingly big maps but SS1 engine is quite old so not in contension…
I would prefer the HL2 engine for the same reasons u mentioned… the main highlight is the Physics ,never before did i see such realistic environments in a game!
u forget that the physics engine havok ,is used in HL2 …which can be licensed for any of the three engines …
and have u seen ET:QW..it has extremly large outdoor areas and guess what it uses DOOM III engine…
Tie between cryengine and d3tech with a slight tilt towards d3tech ever since it got the megatexture update.
To chose one, it would have to be cryengine as noone has played quakewars yet.
Farcry renders the most amazing outdoor environments, decent indoors but shabby player animations and physics.
Doom3 has the only fully unified lighting system, renders the best indoors with the best player animations in a game ever.
Source is too dated, can’t handle maps bigger than 20x20 cubes, physics are by havok and don’t feel ‘weighty’ enough anyway (good for tp posing).
In hl2, the excellent sense of design and art was the game. Nothing groundbreaking was showcased by the engine itself that couldn’t be done with the ut2003 engine (except for some pretty shade work).
Fully unified lighting, best indoors, best player animations (and surprisingly great looking outdoors with megatexture) - Doom3Tech
Dreamy outdoors, decent indoors but worst ever player animations - Cryengine
Best facial expressions, havok physics and inability to handle large maps without recaching frequently - Source
Yeah the physics in doom3 (atleast those objects that had any associated with them) felt more right than hl2’s havok where everything felt like it weighed 10grams.
HL2 was the best game out of the three though.
Farcry was ok, Doom3 was repeatitive and more fun to just load random maps and play rather than follow the story.
I completely agree with you Saumil. D3 as an engine is far more advanced than any of the others. It’s only that the developers didn’t make full use of its features as it’d be too heavy for systems to handle. However, things have changed now. Machines are more powerful then they were this time last year when D3 came out.
I’m sure Quake 4 which comes out in Q4 (isn’t that coincidental by the way!) this year will further prove your point.
You can add Day of defeat Source, Sin episodes, some ragdoll game, Ubisoft’s Dark messiah and tons of high quality mods
Lost Coast should showcase how flexible the source engine actually is. Best thing about source engine is the scalability, runs on onboard gfx (dx6,7) to the latest dx9 cards. The engine’s in-game interface is one of the best and works like Windows. The AI is more balanced i feel, the AI in farcry though good was unevenly balanced. A lot of players left the game halfway due to the insanely tough AI :S ALthough physics are done by Havoc engine, the way the characters interact with the the objects, and environment in the game has been done beautifully. The netplay sucked initially but has been improved a lot especially the hitbox issue. A lot of good clans are moving over to CS source from 1.6.
Edit: Forgot to mention the Skeletal system which has been implemented quite efficiently. If you use Garys mod u will prolly realise the intricate skeletal system. Another advantage is that its the best engine for creating hi-quality Machnima aptly demonstrated by garys mods and the number of comics and machnima online. The source engine make it a whole lot believable.
Well said blade… The reasone for chosseing the source engine by me was the scalability factor mainly… Otherwise for both Farcry and DOOM III you need quite decent machines…
Also before seeing Gary’s mod i was also not in favour of the source engine and was all set for FarCry(I still beleive its a better game then HL2 but thats a alltogather a different issue) but after seeing the mod i realised what all you can do with the game… Yes source also has its negatives cause 20x20 cube maps but then again it makes up in a lot of different areas…
@anishcool You said you liked the graphics of Doom III but seriously did you enjoy the game that much… Graphics doesnt make up for the game…
mods dont count as games...and dOd is an update of the old in source engine that also doesnt count…also AI has nothing to do with the engine…and how popular a game gets does not depend on the engine --look at HL2 and BLoodlines…
@shastri: Havok engine is not a game engine only Physics thats it.
Mods go a long way in making any game successful, look @ CS itself started as a mod and is a full fledged game. Also the DOD remake is not just retexturing like hl1 source, the whole game is going to be a lot different and i dont see any reason why a remake cant be considered as a game. You easily sidelined messiah M and M.
Otoh one can also argue that most games “licensing” the doom 3 engine are closely tied/associated with Id.
regarding the AI part plz let me know how is AI incorporated in the game otherwise. AI doesnt only mean shoot and dodge btw, it also involves a lot of complex behaviour like interaction with environment, recognizing friendlies and such and afaik the source engine allows the level designers to control AI independently. this is different from path mapping, encounter point mapping etc i guess.
