Improvements to the FX engine?

[Ninja]

Ok, I'd just like to hear people's comments on what they feel are the weak points of the Remedy FX engine (CONSTRUCTIVE COMMENTS ONLY) and what you'd like to see improved.

I think that larger outdoor areas would be good- especially as it'd allow more rooms and buildings you could enter, and more NPCs, thus making more nonlinear gameplay

Facial animations are a must and tweaks to the AI would be nice as well.

Otherwise, the particle effects of the FX engine and everything else is great [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[Oddesey]

Well I recon more acurate death animations? For Instance once I shot a guy in the head and he held his stomach!! LOL

SO its only ity bity little things that need changed.

As for facial animations, not bad at the moment but i suppose it wouldn't be a bad idea to improve them.

I would love to see a sequal. I mean I dunno how'd they do it but whatever the storyline we want BULLET TIME! WOOOOOOOOOHOOOOO

Perhap this time MORE THOROUGH TESTING!

[Co11]

Mirrors... gotta have mirrors.. any new gaming engine has the ability to use mirrors... and if Max-FX has any desire to be liscensed.. then they gotta be able to put mirrors in their level

[biXen]

Well, the game is linear partly because it's a movie game, movies have one story and that's it, you are just lucky to participate in it [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Facial stuff would be nice, also bodyily decals...doh, spelling... well, what do I care...

[Wild Falkon]

Texture engine-animation (like water in Unreal)

Ability to create terrain

Better/different collision detection of handling weapons (The floating hands below the gun disturbed me)

[Steve]

Facial animations is all that I can think of. Why was something that standard not included?

[biXen]

Originally posted by Co11:
Mirrors... gotta have mirrors.. any new gaming engine has the ability to use mirrors... and if Max-FX has any desire to be liscensed.. then they gotta be able to put mirrors in their level

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Mirrors are extremely hard to make + are graphics intensive. So don't count on it...

[SkavenRMD]

Facial animations is all that I can think of. Why was something that standard not included?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Because we thought that since most of the dialog was going to take place in graphic novels, the effort was better spent on other things.

Facial animation is by no means *quite* yet standard (ie. appearing in pretty much every game out there), unless that silly Monty Python style mouth opening and closing actually counts as "facial animation" in your book. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img] But yes, it's definitely coming up in games in the near future.

[Zer0]

Jedi Outcast has nice facial anims.

I'd like to see 'proper' shadows.

[Ninja]

MGS2 and FFX had superb facial animations IMO...but then again, I think that making the animations could be harder with the FX engine due to the texture base for the models, with the poly mesh on top.

[SkavenRMD]

Jedi Outcast has nice facial anims.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

MGS2 and FFX had superb facial animations IMO

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Believe it or not, but I feel great relief when I'm hearing this. Go figure. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[Ninja]

Originally posted by SkavenRMD:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Jedi Outcast has nice facial anims.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

MGS2 and FFX had superb facial animations IMO

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Believe it or not, but I feel great relief when I'm hearing this. Go figure. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Great relief that MP2 will totally destroy those game's great facial animations? [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[Kippla]

A sweet addition to add to the coolness of bullet time, would be "Kill Calculation".

As in you walk in to a room full of guys and hit the 'KC' button. Time is then pretty much frozen, and as you point round the room, trace lines will appear, and show where bullets and ricochets will go. So you can figure out a way to empty a room with a single bullet.

You then start shooting and it goes into bullet time, and you see your sweet handy work creat calculated chaos.

mmmmm

well maybe it aint the best idea, but something added in to compliment bulletime is must for the sequel me thinks.

[Crim]

I dunno, maybe cooler weather effects? It says worst storm of the century, and the snow was falling like it would in a normal season. Post apocalyptic ashes? Colder than devil's heart? [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]
I mean, they were not BAD, but they need a little tweaking. And the snow was falling on me only, kinda like how the rain falls only on Truman Burbank, and not on others. Not bad tho. [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Originally posted by Crim:
I dunno, maybe cooler weather effects? It says worst storm of the century, and the snow was falling like it would in a normal season. Post apocalyptic ashes? Colder than devil's heart?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I thought more snow would've been nice too, but imagine the processing power that millions of particles of snow would need. Don't beleive me? just try running the game with and without the snow, and see the difference in framerate.

Originally posted by Kippla:
A sweet addition to add to the coolness of bullet time, would be "Kill Calculation".

As in you walk in to a room full of guys and hit the 'KC' button. Time is then pretty much frozen, and as you point round the room, trace lines will appear, and show where bullets and ricochets will go. So you can figure out a way to empty a room with a single bullet.

You then start shooting and it goes into bullet time, and you see your sweet handy work creat calculated chaos.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">best. idea. ever.

i thought the snow was fairly weak as well. look at morrowind. the rain effects are brutal in this game. it comes down very hard. why couldnt max payne have a similar system for the snow? (i dont know how to speak technical computer stuff)

also, i wasnt impressed with enemy interaction at all. as in, shooting people never really felt satisfying. i dunno how to fix this. believe me, ive thought about it a lot. i just dont know what they did wrong. maybe the sound effects were too quiet. what do you think?

[ 05-19-2002, 01:45 PM: Message edited by: Quiddity ]

[SkavenRMD]

best. idea. ever.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">faer teh fna wtih dieas. [img]graemlins/hhg.gif[/img]

i thought the snow was fairly weak as well. look at morrowind. the rain effects are brutal in this game. it comes down very hard. why couldnt max payne have a similar system for the snow? (i dont know how to speak technical computer stuff)

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Games that come out later are usually built for higher end machines. This also applies to Morrowind.

Even the snowstorm on top of the Aesir Building sucked in your opinion? Oh no, I suck. I suck at my job. How can I live and continue to work on games now that I know I suck? [img]images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

How would I put this... well, considering that all the effects, from candle flames to snowstorms, were made with the ParticleFX system (our programmers dread special case programming like plague), I have to say the snow wasn't really that bad. [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

also, i wasnt impressed with enemy interaction at all. as in, shooting people never really felt satisfying. i dunno how to fix this. believe me, ive thought about it a lot. i just dont know what they did wrong. maybe the sound effects were too quiet. what do you think?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Painfully aware.

(Umm.. "interaction" you say? Well yeah, in Finland the police call the criminals they arrest their "customers")

Actually this is a problem with a huge number of games out there. It's a combination of lots of factors (sound, animation, timing, visual effects, feedback, hitpoints and damage, what not) that have to be carefully tweaked to get right. Halo and especially Half-Life got pretty close to the ideal IMO. And IMPNC-RO (In My Personal, Not Company-Representing Opinion) even Soldier of Fortune didn't quite feel right even though the whole game was all about shooting people. Something was wrong with the feedback to the player. (and I'm not talking about the "realism" here. I'm talking about the "feel" of it all)

In other words, it's not about how many animations and features you can put into this aspect of the game (after all, Half-Life had just a few animations and sound effects), it's about how they are used. An art in itself.

Just don't tell your parents/friends/SO that you "liked the game except that shooting people didn't feel as good as it should", or they might re-consider a few things about you. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

great post, Skaven. btw, what i said about the snow effects was not a personal attack [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

i definetly agree with most of what you said though. halflife just felt....right, as does halo. lots of people who have played sof2 claim it is the same in this sense. lets hope, eh? [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

btw, for max payne 2, i think enemy interaction should be...improved upon. actually, there's a lot of things id like to see different, but im sure you've heard them a million times by now. so how about just do one thing id like in it?
blow me away.
i dont care how you do it, just blow me away with max payne 2.
seeya then [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[The Baskinator]

Just don't tell your parents/friends/SO that you "liked the game except that shooting people didn't feel as good as it should", or they might re-consider a few things about you

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">*laughs* Man, I hate people who think video games are too violent. Those people should be shot. [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

I kid... I kid because I love.

[Ninja]

The enemies seemed kinda TOO obvious to me i.e virtually everyone you see ingame is an enemy. More NPCs that stayed with you longer and helped you, maybe like the ones in Deus Ex would have been nice.

[Cathome]

The thing I didnt like is about facial animation. All faces are seen as through fog and dont change lively.

[SkavenRMD]

Quddity: btw, what i said about the snow effects was not a personal attack

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I know, I was just being melodramatic. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[Cathome]

Originally posted by The Baskinator:
[QB]*laughs* Man, I hate people who think video games are too violent.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Video games not violent but natural and realistic. I adore them! [img]graemlins/love.gif[/img]

[Dunedain]

Skaven,

I thought the snow on the top of the Aesir building was excellent. It really looked and felt
like one were in a snow storm, high atop a roof in New York with the wind howling and
swirling the snow and ice about as you carefully made your way around, constantly
on the lookout for lurking criminals, filled with apprehension.

Great job! [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[ 08-05-2002, 07:41 PM: Message edited by: Dunedain ]

[Maddieman]

shooting people never really felt satisfying

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">How about dismemberment?

[ 08-06-2002, 12:11 PM: Message edited by: Maddieman ]

[SkavenRMD]

I thought the snow on the top of the Aesir building was excellent.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Thank you, thank you. [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

The snowflakes have an interesting story. Snowflakes seldom travel in a straight line. Since our particle system does not support turbulence, we needed some other way to make the snowflakes flutter around. The solution was an animated bitmap sequence, with the snowflake moving around inside the bitmap area. Hoo boy, whatta kludge, but it turned out to work well without excessive memory and fillrate usage.

[SkavenRMD]

How about dismemberment?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Web site found. Waiting for reply.........<etc ad infinitum>

Seems interesting, though (I managed to catch a glimpse of it earlier today but I didn't download it back then. Darn.)

[Maddieman]

Yeah, the website went down 10 minutes after I annouced that the mod was up [img]graemlins/doh.gif[/img] . I wonder why? [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Should be working now, though. Judging by the response it got from Zer0, and at MPHQ, you do not want to miss this mod . [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Incidentally, you can read how this mod came to being, at this thread.

Thanks for showing interest,

Maddieman

[ 08-06-2002, 06:30 AM: Message edited by: Maddieman ]

[Zer0]

The Server went down for updating i wasn't infromed until the updating was done.

All is fixed now. check it

[shadow fox]

Originally posted by Co11:
Mirrors... gotta have mirrors.. any new gaming engine has the ability to use mirrors... and if Max-FX has any desire to be liscensed.. then they gotta be able to put mirrors in their level

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">well i can solve the mirror problem. everone is vampires.

[Bludd]

That katana mod is pretty cool, but the sound effect when you do some dismemberment is too much.

Too much sound, too much going on and too noisy.

[Maddieman]

Lots of complaints about the sound.

A fixed version will be released tomorrow. You will also be able to download a patch, to save having to download it again.

A brand new feature has also been implemented. This won't appear until the next "official" release though. Top Secret!

Thanks for your comment, it's really encouraging. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

In the mean time, if you're a modder, feel free to fix it yourself. It'll save you having to download it again.

[ 08-06-2002, 08:23 PM: Message edited by: Maddieman ]

[Bludd]

There's one thing, though. When you dismember something (it's especially evident when you do it with a ranged weapon) you stand still for a short while. This is irritating and makes the remaining enemies hit you.

Contiune the good work, Maddieman

[Maddieman]

Thanks for the support,

I was wondering when someone would spot that bug. Sorry, I kind of rushed the release of the mod, so I left that one in. I know what it is: in order for the character to remain in their stance during the camerapath, the controls are disabled until the death animation is finished. The katana attack is in sync with the camerapath, but the shotgun isn't. Shouldn't be too hard too fix, update this time tomorrow.

Anyway, it's a katana mod, not a shotgun one. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Check the website for details and updates.

Oh, Zer0 joined my team, well actually he is the team I guess. I wasn't planning on making a tc, but he has come up with something very, very, cool. There will be a teaser pic included with the update patch.

One last thing; the subject is kind of going off on a tangent. If anyone has any further comments or questions, please post them in the modding forum, there are two relevant threads up already.

Thanks!

Maddieman

[Co11]

Originally posted by SkavenRMD:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">How about dismemberment?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"><etc ad infinitum>
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">My Skaven, you know three languages? [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[SkavenRMD]

What, does knowing what "gringos locos" means mean that you know Spanish? Does knowing what "perkele" means mean that you know Finnish?

[biXen]

Originally posted by SkavenRMD:
What, does knowing what "gringos locos" means mean that you know Spanish? Does knowing what "perkele" means mean that you know Finnish?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">OF COURSE. I know "perkele" "ei sää peittää" (with some dots here and there) and "terve iho" and I'm a leet Finnish talker [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

btw, nice ASM instrumental song winner, although I think the older Catch That Goblin is better you self-ripper [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[SirSushi]

i've been thinking about that enemy interaction thingy too.

i've always wondered why goldeneye (n64) "felt" much better than all those pc shooters. i mean, look at it: in goldeneye you hadn't spraying blood particles or dismembered body parts but still the weapons felt more powerful.
i can't pinpoint it but i think it's a combination of the sound when the bullet hits the enemy and the reaction of the enemy (mostly animation-wise)

[Maddieman]

Ah! I have an opinion on this! [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

I totally agree with your point about Goldeneye, (even though you're are critising my mod as a basis of your point).

The sound defenately had something to do with the way the game 'felt'. Perhaps because you could still hit the enemies during and after their dying animations. In a lot of games, enemies become inanimate objects as soon as their death animation is finished.

By far the best aspect was the interaction between the player and the enemy characters. The game encouraged you to experiment; constantly surprising and rewarding you for your actions (anyone remember the first time a scientist gets the huff, and lobs grenade at you?), even if they resulted in mission failure. As sick as this might sound, the fact that the gaurds reacted to each and every hit (in a covincing, yet sometimes comic way) , and that you could keep 'em going until they eventually died was a novelty that many other fps didn't (and still don't) offer.

On the other hand, Max Payne isn't good because of it's enemy interaction (or lack of); it's the combat scenarios presented to the player, and characterising of enemies (almost each major firefight is preceded with enemy dialogue).

I think another reason Goldeneye 'felt' better was it's impeccable control setup. None of this mouse sensitivity stuff; it really didn't need it. The implementation of a lightgun style crosshair, while still allowing the player to move was genius.

[img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Perfect Dark promised all this and more; yet, being realistic and honest, it flopped compared to Goldeneye. Perhaps it was too ambitious; perhaps Rare were over confident and sure of themselves. People have talked to me about this before, saying "Perfect Dark should be better than Goldeneye, but for some reason, it just doesn't 'feel' right". Perfect Dark was overhyped, and was worse off for it. That's why Rare haven't released any details on the sequel, and that is why 3DRealms are using their [img]graemlins/wid.gif[/img] strategy. If you don't know what to expect, you won't be dissapointed.

I've never really been able to convince a PC gamer about the merits of Goldeneye on the N64. But I still think that even in it's age, it still stands up as one of the best fps, ever.

Well, that's enough nostalgia for one post. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[ 08-10-2002, 06:45 PM: Message edited by: Maddieman ]

[SkavenRMD]

Maddieman: That's why Rare haven't released any details on the sequel, and that is why 3DRealms are using their [img]graemlins/wid.gif[/img] strategy. If you don't know what to expect, you won't be dissapointed.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

biXen: btw, nice ASM instrumental song winner, although I think the older Catch That Goblin is better you self-ripper [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Well, apparently my sequel strategy failed in this aspect with The Goblin Returns. No matter how technically improved it was, it still gets brutally compared to the original and is bound to fail in comparison. The only way to succeed would have been to make the sequel almost identical to the original, but that wouldn't have worked, either. [img]graemlins/hhg.gif[/img]

Anyhow, yes, Maddieman, I agree with pretty much everything you had to say about GoldenEye. I haven't even tried Perfect Dark, but GoldenEye kept me glued for ages, not least for the reasons you mentioned (controls, fun interactivity ideas). Among the other things, I also found it cool how the game "generated" death screams by randomly combining a series of short grunts.

Yet another thing was the cool way the pistols worked: the gun would fire just as frequently as you could press the trigger. Just like real guns. No fixed rate of fire. Most games don't do this because they fear it may become a balance issue (rate of fire versus enemy get-hit reaction animations versus weapon damage).

One silly thing was that while you could shoot hats off soldiers, they didn't notice it at all if you did it with a silenced weapon. In the second level where you sneak in through the restroom air duct, I was aiming for a quick silent headshot to the soldier who was sitting in the booth. I shot off his hat, and he kept doing his business as if nothing had happened. Then a while later the same happened to the solider patrolling in the corridor. I shot his hat off through the window in the door and he kept on partolling. Silly. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]