DNF Physics

[Joe Siegler]

Bump. We have several threads about this going, this is the one we'll use, as it was started the earliest.

If you want to read the others, they're here:

http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthread...&Number=686953

http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthread...&Number=687390

[Joe Siegler]

As has been reported in several places on the Internet over the last day or so, an announcement was made yesterday that the Meqon Game Dynamics SDK has been purchased by us for use in Duke Nukem Forever. Meqon put out a press release regarding this yesterday on their site (which crashed from all the net traffic that got sent their way). Here's a copy of the press release:
3D Realms buys physics for Duke Nukem Forever
27th of September, 2004

Meqon is glad to announce that 3D Realms have decided to buy our Meqon Game Dynamics SDK for their upcoming title Duke Nukem Forever.

Meqon’s product strategy has always been to create the most easy to use and flexible physics engine on the market, but without compromising the computational speed. George Broussard, CEO of 3DRealms comments – “We evaluated several physics SDK's and Meqon was really fast, had the cleanest interface and integrated into our game very quickly.”

The Meqon Game Dynamics SDK does not only handle basic rigid body simulation but also contain highly advanced character and vehicle modules. Mr Broussard comments – “With its advanced feature set, we feel confident that Meqon's next generation physics engine can help us create the next generation of action games.”

It's being discussed on our forums right now in this thread . 3D Realms President George Broussard has weighed in on the announcement in these threads, so if you're interested in the latest, you should check 'em out.

Furthermore, there is an interview online with Marcus Lysen, CEO of Meqon about their game technology, and this announcement. Make sure to check that out over at HomeLAN Fed.

http://www.homelanfed.com/index.php?id=26367

[nossr50]

Very interesting interview, im actually happy your using meqon after playing there demo. That shits amazing , I knocked over boxes for about 4 hours rofl.

[KaiserSoze]

we should have some pretty good games of "pool" in dnf.

i was playing around with the box and balls demo. couldn't help but think of a casino or bar with pool tables.

and a carnival midway with all types of games you can play like busting bottles, shooting cans, shooting baskets, etc.

2010 for sure.

[TKM]

holy shit ... finaly a rumor is true

[Kalki]

Importing from Drazula's locked thread for reference:

Originally posted by George Broussard:
>>There must be considerable advantages to Megon over Karma for you to make the switch. What are they?

IMO, Karma was first gen. Havok was second gen. Meqon is third gen. It's way way faster than Karma ever was, and it does more, and it's cleaner to use. I know Havok is working on next gen stuff now, but it's not available yet.

>>A while ago, GB said all physics engines were basically the same. Did this change with the new generation of physics engines?

At the time they were. That is no longer the case.

>> Has the improvements in the physics engines "changed" DNF content?

It will allow us to do more with physics and we will do what we can to make things cool.

>> Rather than another switch, why not just build yer own damn physics engine?

Physics engines are one of the hardest things to write, so it's best left to a middleware solution.

>>I thought the DNF engine was done. Why are you guys messing with it now?

The rendering has been done a long time. The physics we had have been in for 3 years. We had a ton of physics gameplay code on top of Karma. All we did was replace the low level stuff with Meqon and re-hook it up to our high level stuff.

Why did we do it? Because Karma was too slow to do anything we were trying to do. I don't feel it was a shippable solution, and in fact very few game shipped with it, doing much more than ragdoll.

This is a *very* good thing for the game.

>>Worry not, surely it won't take more than two weeks.
LOL.

You joke, but it's a fairly small scale thing to do. The bulk of the work was done in a couple of weeks and there will be a couple more. That's about like adding in any standard new system to the game, and we have dozens of small, little one month projects that the game is built upon.

But going forward this is incredibly good for the game.

So can characters recover from ragdoll mode yet?

Draz had posted an interesting video from a package called Endorphin. Was that considered and tested alongwith the likes of Meqon?

Anyway the adding of a new sub-system may be good news on the content front but I wouldn't take any time-frame estimates too seriously. We've all been down that road before.

[loqii]

W0WZ OMFG PHYSICZ OMG OMG~!11

What was wrong with the Physics engine in Max Payne 2? You'd think if 3D Realms has a relationship with a developing company, they could just borrow the engine from that and call it good - or.. heaven forbid, maybe make their OWN stuff?

[Needle]

loqii said:
W0WZ OMFG PHYSICZ OMG OMG~!11

What was wrong with the Physics engine in Max Payne 2? You'd think if 3D Realms has a relationship with a developing company, they could just borrow the engine from that and call it good - or.. heaven forbid, maybe make their OWN stuff?

Remedy didn't make their own physics engine.

[codefish]

loqii said:
W0WZ OMFG PHYSICZ OMG OMG~!11

What was wrong with the Physics engine in Max Payne 2? You'd think if 3D Realms has a relationship with a developing company, they could just borrow the engine from that and call it good - or.. heaven forbid, maybe make their OWN stuff?

Max Payne 2 used Havok. As for creating their own, read what George posted

Anyway, after testing out the physics demos from meqon, I'm really looking forward to seeing this stuff in action! The water did so much neat stuff!

[Agulf]

meqon demo 1.4 is out (if anyone SOMEHOW missed that) and theres more stuff doing stuff... ;D

Hmm I was certain this was only a rumor - joe closed this thread with the words "closing thread as it does not have anything to do with dnf anymore" or something...

----------------

I just red some posts at evil avatar...

:yawn: :drool:

[Mr.Blud]

I loved the one where the little guys fell and their arms and legs were treading air, gonna be real good to see people fall from Casino roofs in DNF doing that.

[Kalki]

Forgot to add the Shacknews quote!

GB said:

Here how it works. You have a physcis engine that does things low level, basic things, like move objects in the world, handle constraints, ragdolls, and all of that. On top of that you build a lots of high level gameplay code that allows you to do things with physics objects. That's where most of the development time goes.

So when incorporating a new physics engine, all the high level game code stays and just needs to have the new physics function calls replace the old physics calls.

So within a couple of weeks we had most of the gameplay back up and running, but now we could move 200 boxes in the world at a time, instead of 10-20.

The integration will end up being about a month of one persons time, simply to hook up the new Meqon function calls to a couple hundred high level gameplay functions we had to deal with physics objects.

Basically it's like having a car, and you do something like replace one system in it like and engine, or the air conditioner, or something. The rest of the car stays in place and you just deal with hooking up the new piece to the old car.

This isn't a radical engine change like changing renderers where you have to create new content for the visuals.

[Orochi Avlis]

loqii said:
W0WZ OMFG PHYSICZ OMG OMG~!11

What was wrong with the Physics engine in Max Payne 2? You'd think if 3D Realms has a relationship with a developing company, they could just borrow the engine from that and call it good - or.. heaven forbid, maybe make their OWN stuff?

loqii, please learn how the gaming buisness works before you post stuff like this.

[IHerman]

The Meqon 1.4 demo is pretty cool. I'd love to see a game with loads and loads of objects thet use physics.

the demo also shows some examples of using physics for something rather than decoration.

I have a job now, and within months I will have a nice amount of money on my bank account to buy a new PC, I'm kind of guessing at the tie DNF comes out I will need a new one anyway. I wanna funny use every feature or eyecandy it comes with.

[Java the Hutt]

Is this new physics engine where that previous thread about a new game engine started?
http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/sh...p;page=0#681560

[Night Hacker]

I just got done playing around with the Meqon demo, that is AMAZING! Screw the rest of the games out there, DNF is going to rock!

What impressed me the most about the demos were the Particle, Water and Cloth physics, they were amazing and once I seen the piston demo I instantly could see many many many possibilities for "puzzles" in DNF, more than simply getting a key, but perhaps activating machinery etc... the possibilities are endless and it seems like it is fairly easy to implement. 3DR would be fools NOT to use it! I know I was drooling like crazy. My mind goes numb just trying to imagine the programming that went into creating such a physics engine.

I am curious, what about their engine impressed you the most George?

Anyhow, this is one of 3DR's better descisions, I doubt anyone will argue against it once they seen the demo.

[Nasta]

Wow, long reading...Great news. Meqon sounds like the real deal for Duke. Only one month of drawback for ten times as much of mess in the game. Sweet.
Maybe 2 more years until it's done?
Ooookay,..do it your way. G,night

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

I thought this was a bit improbable.

[Rider]

Inanimate Carbon Rod said:
I thought this was a bit improbable.

yeah it needs tweaking...

[hell-angel]

Rider said:

yeah it needs tweaking...

I only depends on how sturdy you "create" the connections between the pipes. If you "create" them to hold onless shot at this would very well be possible. However, if you create them to break under a certain weight this will not be possible.

That simple.

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

Yeah, it was explained to me why it is that way.


Anyway, I really do like how the walls seem to be implemented.

[Mr. Milton]

You can group two objects together by pulling one of them and then clicking the right mouse button simultaneously. Then pick up another object and do the same.
All objects grouped like this will follow when you pull any object around.
I'm not sure if this is a bug I just discovered or some already known feature. Seems like Fat John found this out aswell...

[Night Hacker]

Inanimate Carbon Rod said:
I thought this was a bit improbable.

Actually, I think it is completely possible. If you look carefull and think about it a bit, both ends are supported, if you take out the center bottom as in that image, there is still plenty of support above as each side would be leaning in against each other. Remember, these pieces are all connected to each other so they won't simply collapse.

Anyhow, I think it looks normal.

[SantaCruzer]

it looks very possible to me. Meqon owns! so does DNF!

[IHerman]

The new demo has some good improvements. For example, this isn't possible anymore (pic from 1.3.1):

[mysteryperfecta]

The first game headed to retail that uses Meqon physics is called Shade. I happen to have a demo of the game on my computer, so I'll share my impressions of the physics in action.

*Draped fabric moved fairly realistically. As in the Meqon tech demo, though, if you moved your character quickly through fabric you just disturbed, your character passes right through the fabric. The line holding the fabric up seemed too elastic, as if the fabric were being held up by rubber bands. I don't know how favorable this compares to Hitman's fabric movement from years ago.

*Ragdoll deaths were pretty floppy. The characters could have used stiffer joints. Also, a "bobble head" effect happened more than once on a felled enemy. Their head would literally bobble on their dead bodies. Similiarly, broken pieces of barrel wouldn't come to rest nearly as quickly as they should.

*One cool thing was how "wind" affected objects. Fabric, clothes lines, etc. swayed realistically in the breeze.

Granted, Shade is a little indie title. I'm sure 3dr can work out many of the kinks I saw dispayed in Shade.

[Fat John]

Here's what I managed exploiting the RMB + LMB trick. This thing was spinning indefinately.

[Micki!]

Try to make a nuclear core next time...

[Fat John]

Micki! said:
Try to make a nuclear core next time...

I don't think the strong and weak nuclear forces are included in Meqon. Can someone confirm that? George?

[Micki!]

GB: "Of course there will be nuclear forces in DNF that's the only thing OUR version of Meqon can do... Does it work Different in the demo???"

Just making fun

[Orochi Avlis]

I would love to see a nuke go off and everything around it crumble and react like it should physically. Like trees bending, breaking, catching fire, cars being lifted up, heavy winds etc etc.

[Micki!]

Lets'e hope that there will be at least effects in some SDK tools that makes this possible... (New weapons mod...)

[Kalki]

Thanks for those impressions mp. I'm sure George would agree that those are the hiccups seen in most physics systems that simply need to be tweaked to look right in the game. I wonder if their high-level already compensates for this stuff and if it doesn't, how long would it take?

[Beelze]

Well, now that we know about meqon, could George offer some more tidbits on what stuff the water does? Is it like in meqon?

[Kalki]

Beelze said:
Well, now that we know about meqon, could George offer some more tidbits on what stuff the water does? Is it like in meqon?

:: Freeze-ray ::

[yossa]

Download the attachment, change the filename to liquid.xml and put it into data\custom folder (backup first)

See - water does "stuff"

[Nacho]

How I love "stuff".

Especially when the "stuff" does "stuff".

[Ryanthelurkster]

I hope dnf is even better than people think it wiil be

[Water12356]

Most exelent.

[Gryph]

Here is an interview with the Meqon guys and the words Duke Nukem: Forever are mentioned.

http://www.totalvideogames.com/pages...rticle_id=6515