Why D3 engine?

brabee · 04-19-2005, 01:48 AM

Hi guys, I was just curious, why do Human Head Studios use D3 engine? In my opinion, it would be more reasonable if they would DNF engine, with all the great stuff 3DR made with it. But maybe DNF engine just isnt that hot shot... Who knows...
But anyway, I believ Prey will be a great game, Rune was awesome. A one more question: is there any release date? Or just WID?

Gryph · 04-19-2005, 01:51 AM

I was wondering the same thing. What makes D3 engine better than the others and more suitable for Prey. I hope the PC Gamer article will address that issue.

vivftp · 04-19-2005, 01:56 AM

Who knows... maybe they would've gone with Source, if they had known about it/had access to it when they started again in 2001. But Doom III tech was available, so they went with it...

It's not a bad engine... who knows, maybe HH can outshine Id on their own engine

shiranui · 04-19-2005, 01:58 AM

How involved is 3dr in this anyway? I'm finding it a little hard to get excited about it as it seems, right now at least, to be "Prey" in name alone.

Another Duke Fan · 04-19-2005, 02:12 AM

Quote:

GryphonKlaw said:
I was wondering the same thing. What makes D3 engine better than the others and more suitable for Prey. I hope the PC Gamer article will address that issue.

The answer is: best lighting + portal technology.

Kev_Hectic · 04-19-2005, 02:26 AM

^ I've read posts that mention that Doom 3's unified lighting would fix the problems that the original Prey engine had with lighting and portals.

My guess is they thought the Doom 3 engine was best suited for this kind of game.

DLT · 04-19-2005, 02:30 AM

Well if they started in 2001 wouldn't that be around the time that 3dr thought duke was going to be out but later scraped it?

If this was the case then why would they pick a 3d engine that would have been at it's peak in 2001 for a game that was going to be out in 2005?

That would have made little sense. The way I see it you pick the engine that you think is going to be high tech when your game comes out.

What do you think devs are buying now for games that are going to be out in 3 years+ Doom 3 or Unreal 3?

dudetheman19 · 04-19-2005, 03:09 AM

Why didnt they use the DNF engine in Prey? Would have been cheeper + DNFs engine should be better or just as good as DOOM3's acorting to 3drealms. Or when did they start Prey on the doom3 engine?

IHerman · 04-19-2005, 03:46 AM

Here's what I think.

In 2001 the DNF engine was far from done. They had to choose between buying an (almost finished) engine, like Doom 3, or wait for 3DR to finish the 'DNF'-engine.

My guess is Doom 3, even though maybe not entirely finished, was ready to go. They could start developing levels and characters.

Waiting for 3DR was pretty risky, they switched before, and my guess is they knew then 3DR was going to start over again. It could take years before they could start.

Doom 3 seems a pretty good choice to me. It's an impressive engine, and ID failed to use it's full potential. I bet Prey will have stuff nobody knew the Doom 3 engine was able to pull off.

04-19-2005, 04:27 AM

Quote:

shiranui said:
How involved is 3dr in this anyway? I'm finding it a little hard to get excited about it as it seems, right now at least, to be "Prey" in name alone.

Looking from the Max Payne games, two people from 3D Realms will have input into Prey. Those people being George Broussard and Scott Miller. A group of people from 3D Realms will also beta test the game most likely too.

lonestar · 04-19-2005, 04:58 AM

Quote:

brabee said:
Hi guys, I was just curious, why do Human Head Studios use D3 engine? In my opinion, it would be more reasonable if they would DNF engine, with all the great stuff 3DR made with it.

yeah. that's what i said here, too. dnf plays on earth, probably with wide-open areas, a very detailed and interactivity world etc. so, 3drealms made a neat engine to handle all this stuff. i'm sure. since there are some prey shots with earth scenarios and this '98 prey demonstration video where are also typical everyday life scenes are shown, i thought, maybe the dnf engine would be a better choice.

but i'm sure, they made something great out of it. hopefully, it's not so d3-like dark and plays only in space.

Kanzler · 04-19-2005, 05:06 AM

It's easy...If you want to make the best game you have to buy the best engine.

Doom 3 engine beats Valve's Source in every aspect.
Better lightning, physics, etc.

I can't even imagine what D3 engine looks like in open areas.

For instance, in terms of graphics the Doom 3 Expansion Pack beats original Doom 3 and Half Life 2. (This expansion pack was released 8 months after D3).

(I'm only talking about the engine not gameplay)

Daedolon · 04-19-2005, 05:35 AM

I don't see why they dropped the original Prey engine, at least looking at one interview where they showed the features of their engine. Or was it the lightning problems what Kev_Hectic mentioned about?

Drazula · 04-19-2005, 06:58 AM

The Doom 3 engine is the best engine to date, and by far the best engine when they started work on Prey.

IMO, Prey will make the "Doom 3 can do it" site unnecessary. Prey will compliment current and upcoming Doom 3 engine games, showing Doom 3 can do just about anything.

sflufan · 04-19-2005, 06:59 AM

Quote:

Kanzler said:
It's easy...If you want to make the best game you have to buy the best engine.

Doom 3 engine beats Valve's Source in every aspect.
Better lightning, physics, etc.

I can't even imagine what D3 engine looks like in open areas.

For instance, in terms of graphics the Doom 3 Expansion Pack beats original Doom 3 and Half Life 2. (This expansion pack was released 8 months after D3).

(I'm only talking about the engine not gameplay)

Better lighting - perhaps until we see Valve's "Lost Coast" level with HDR and the like

Better physics - you've got to be kidding me. And you do realize that a graphics engine has nothing to do with physics? HL2 used the Havok physics engine while I'm not sure what physics engine Doom 3 used. Whatever it was, it certainly was NOT on par with Havok.

crunchy superman · 04-19-2005, 07:43 AM

Quote:

Daedolon said:
I don't see why they dropped the original Prey engine, at least looking at one interview where they showed the features of their engine. Or was it the lightning problems what Kev_Hectic mentioned about?

Here's something William Scarboro wrote after he was off the project:

"There are many ugly problems in maintaining such an engine: two rooms linked by more than one portal (which results in rendering a room twice, basically, and even though they won't overlap, all the culling and transforms are duplicated), graph maintenance with spatial discontinuities, collision detection through portals, handling sound where one sound can seem to be coming from many different locations, rendering characters moving across portals that the z-buffer won't handle correctly, etc. It wasn't fun. The effects were really awesome, though"

crunchy superman · 04-19-2005, 07:49 AM

Quote:

sflufan said:
while I'm not sure what physics engine Doom 3 used. Whatever it was, it certainly was NOT on par with Havok.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I was thinking Havok was precisely what they used.

In any case, I would assume that proper implementation of physics by the developer is what would make it good or bad, and not necessarily the physics engine itself.

TheKins · 04-19-2005, 08:15 AM

Quote:

crunchysuperman said:

Quote:

sflufan said:
while I'm not sure what physics engine Doom 3 used. Whatever it was, it certainly was NOT on par with Havok.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I was thinking Havok was precisely what they used.

Doom 3 didn't use a "real" physics engine, all the physics stuff was done with game script, making it completely moddable.

crunchy superman · 04-19-2005, 08:33 AM

/stands corrected

Gabrobot · 04-19-2005, 08:33 AM

Doom 3 uses its own physics engine (all the D3 tech was made by id Software...makes it easier for Carmack to release the source code later). The physics engine was programmed by Jan Paul Van Waveren, who also did the AI system in Quake III and Doom 3. The physics engine is easily on par with Havok (Van Waveren is quite a genius) and the collision detection is far better (apparently Source still uses the old method which checks for collisions at each engine tick). Doom 3's physics are calculated out before they happen so that the engine already knows when things are going to collide. This means you can have very fast moving objects without having them go right through things. You can read about it here.

Doom 3 didn't hardly use the physics engine at all. The use of it is configured to disable physics on objects after a certain amount of time or when the object slows down to a certain speed (which is why you get the occasional wrench standing on end). It also tends not to activate objects until the player directly interacts with them, which is why objects sitting on other objects don't always seem to behave right. However, that can all be configured in the editors, and anyone who's toyed around with it much (and g_dragentity) will know that it's easily as good as Havok. It also has great Walk IK, which completely fixes all the problems with feet not touching the ground, and feet sliding on the ground, which is something I haven't noticed before in other engines. (Just switch to 3rd person view and run around some terrain for a while to see why it's so great)

Edit: The physics engine isn't done with scripts, it's all C++ code. However, the whole engine was released in the SDK so it is completely moddable.

Cerberus_e · 04-19-2005, 09:37 AM

they probably want a game that is not about walking into infinite squares

FireFly · 04-19-2005, 09:53 AM

Quote:

Gabrobot said:
It also has great Walk IK, which completely fixes all the problems with feet not touching the ground, and feet sliding on the ground, which is something I haven't noticed before in other engines. (Just switch to 3rd person view and run around some terrain for a while to see why it's so great)

George indicated that DNF does this.

Drazula · 04-19-2005, 12:34 PM

Quote:

TheKins said:
Doom 3 didn't use a "real" physics engine, all the physics stuff was done with game script, making it completely moddable.

You make it sound like it was a gimmick. It was a real physics engine, but it was built in-house. And yes, it is VERY moddable.

brabee · 04-20-2005, 01:55 AM

Theres another thing: Rune used Unreal engine, so Human Head are pretty familiar with it. But still, why use a 3rd party engine, when 3DR have great engine "in da house"? Maybe it was like this: "Ok human head studios, we want to wait for unreal engine 3.0 for DNF, so use another one for prey"

))))))))))))))
Who knows

I would also like to ask any guy from 3DR, whats the release date and what are the minimum system specs, if these information are not secret

Thx

Kristian Joensen · 04-20-2005, 01:57 AM

3D Realms hasn't got any in house engine.

hell-angel · 04-20-2005, 02:10 AM

Quote:

Kristian Joensen said:
3D Realms hasn't got any in house engine.

The way I understand it, the engine they use for DNF is based on the unreal engine, but so heavily modified that it will most likely not be recognized as an unreal engine anymore. So you could say that the engine for DNF is an in house engine from 3DR.

Kristian Joensen · 04-20-2005, 02:16 AM

That is correct, but it is still based on the Unreal Engine, but they didn't start developing it until they restarted in early 2002. Prey was started

Vexed · 04-20-2005, 08:14 AM

Quote:

hell-angel said:
So you could say that the engine for DNF is an in house engine from 3DR.

The license deal on the engine thing might protest to that.. I dunno

Kristian Joensen · 04-20-2005, 08:16 AM

They could still get a new licensen. The reason they did not use the same engien as DNF was that they hadn't even started development of the engine yet, while the Doom 3 engine had been in developent fo about a year.

YOu guys have to remeber that Prey started development in late 2001 while DNF was restarted in early 2002.

Vexed · 04-20-2005, 08:21 AM

You'd also think they'd want to save their pride and joy for their pride and joy, if you know what I mean.

04-20-2005, 09:17 AM

Prey was in developement?!

Kristian Joensen · 04-20-2005, 09:18 AM

All games go through development, they don't appear out of nothing.

elloehpipati · 04-20-2005, 09:21 AM

Quote:

Kristian Joensen said:
All games go through development, they don't appear out of nothing.

And all this time I thought they grew on trees...

Kristian Joensen · 04-20-2005, 09:28 AM

Well, Karthik seems to think that.

Gryph · 04-20-2005, 09:29 AM

I wonder how the tools were for the Doom 3 engine. I remember reading that early on the tools were really bad for the level designers and stuff. I think Tim Willits said that.

So I guess Prey and Quake IV were the first to license the Doom III engine.

brabee · 04-20-2005, 10:08 AM

Yeah I remember something like that too. Anyway, I dont think they needed to license D3 engine for Quake IV

The Count · 04-20-2005, 11:58 AM

Quote:

Kristian Joensen said:
They could still get a new licensen. The reason they did not use the same engien as DNF was that they hadn't even started development of the engine yet, while the Doom 3 engine had been in developent fo about a year.

YOu guys have to remeber that Prey started development in late 2001 while DNF was restarted in early 2002.

Yes, George said that HH began work on Prey in late 2001. Probably at the same time when 3DR began to turn their unreal-based engine they had so far into their own DNF-engine. That´s why they had no engine to provide for HH and had to license one from another company. Doom3-tech seems to be especially suitable for the new Prey-game, otherwise 3DR could have licensed the Unreal2-engine also.

Lengis · 04-20-2005, 01:57 PM

Quote:

GryphonKlaw said:
So I guess Prey and Quake IV were the first to license the Doom III engine.

First and only. I doubt anyone would license it anymore. UE3 is the platform of choice.

ishak540m · 04-20-2005, 03:43 PM

Quote:

Lengis said:

Quote:

GryphonKlaw said:
So I guess Prey and Quake IV were the first to license the Doom III engine.

First and only. I doubt anyone would license it anymore. UE3 is the platform of choice.

My guess is that the Doom 3 engine can do just about anything the UE3 engine can do and vice versa obviously but both engines and Source need better particle systems.

Duoae · 04-20-2005, 03:46 PM

Plus i would speculate that a finished product (ie. Doom 3 and source - plus actually licencing the game from 2001 to today) would be more attractive in the short term future - 2006/7 rather than the Unreal 3 engine which will hit it's peak late 2006 early 2007.

Developers are going to want the tech that's applicable in their game's timescale....

04-20-2005, 09:17 AM	#31
Karthik Guest	Re: Why D3 engine? Prey was in developement?!

04-19-2005, 01:48 AM	#1
brabee	Why D3 engine? Hi guys, I was just curious, why do Human Head Studios use D3 engine? In my opinion, it would be more reasonable if they would DNF engine, with all the great stuff 3DR made with it. But maybe DNF engine just isnt that hot shot... Who knows... But anyway, I believ Prey will be a great game, Rune was awesome. A one more question: is there any release date? Or just WID?

04-19-2005, 01:51 AM	#2
Gryph	Re: Why D3 engine? I was wondering the same thing. What makes D3 engine better than the others and more suitable for Prey. I hope the PC Gamer article will address that issue. __________________ 1Emulation: The Peoples' Emulation Site I pity the fool! - Mr. T

04-19-2005, 01:56 AM	#3
vivftp	Re: Why D3 engine? Who knows... maybe they would've gone with Source, if they had known about it/had access to it when they started again in 2001. But Doom III tech was available, so they went with it... It's not a bad engine... who knows, maybe HH can outshine Id on their own engine

04-19-2005, 01:58 AM	#4
shiranui	Re: Why D3 engine? How involved is 3dr in this anyway? I'm finding it a little hard to get excited about it as it seems, right now at least, to be "Prey" in name alone. __________________ wibble

04-19-2005, 02:26 AM	#6
Kev_Hectic	Re: Why D3 engine? ^ I've read posts that mention that Doom 3's unified lighting would fix the problems that the original Prey engine had with lighting and portals. My guess is they thought the Doom 3 engine was best suited for this kind of game. __________________ RIP: 3D REALMS 1987 - 2009, you're still dead to me

04-19-2005, 02:30 AM	#7
DLT	Re: Why D3 engine? Well if they started in 2001 wouldn't that be around the time that 3dr thought duke was going to be out but later scraped it? If this was the case then why would they pick a 3d engine that would have been at it's peak in 2001 for a game that was going to be out in 2005? That would have made little sense. The way I see it you pick the engine that you think is going to be high tech when your game comes out. What do you think devs are buying now for games that are going to be out in 3 years+ Doom 3 or Unreal 3? __________________ The hunt is on!!

04-19-2005, 03:09 AM	#8
dudetheman19	Re: Why D3 engine? Why not DNF engine? Why didnt they use the DNF engine in Prey? Would have been cheeper + DNFs engine should be better or just as good as DOOM3's acorting to 3drealms. Or when did they start Prey on the doom3 engine?

04-19-2005, 03:46 AM	#9
IHerman	Re: Why D3 engine? Why not DNF engine? Here's what I think. In 2001 the DNF engine was far from done. They had to choose between buying an (almost finished) engine, like Doom 3, or wait for 3DR to finish the 'DNF'-engine. My guess is Doom 3, even though maybe not entirely finished, was ready to go. They could start developing levels and characters. Waiting for 3DR was pretty risky, they switched before, and my guess is they knew then 3DR was going to start over again. It could take years before they could start. Doom 3 seems a pretty good choice to me. It's an impressive engine, and ID failed to use it's full potential. I bet Prey will have stuff nobody knew the Doom 3 engine was able to pull off. __________________ Chances are I lost my point in this post after about two lines.

04-19-2005, 05:06 AM	#12
Kanzler	Re: Why D3 engine? It's easy...If you want to make the best game you have to buy the best engine. Doom 3 engine beats Valve's Source in every aspect. Better lightning, physics, etc. I can't even imagine what D3 engine looks like in open areas. For instance, in terms of graphics the Doom 3 Expansion Pack beats original Doom 3 and Half Life 2. (This expansion pack was released 8 months after D3). (I'm only talking about the engine not gameplay) __________________ No regrets Case! Only thermonuclear revenge.

04-19-2005, 05:35 AM	#13
Daedolon	Re: Why D3 engine? I don't see why they dropped the original Prey engine, at least looking at one interview where they showed the features of their engine. Or was it the lightning problems what Kev_Hectic mentioned about? __________________ Duke Hard - 17 map episode for Duke Nukem 3D.

04-19-2005, 06:58 AM	#14
Drazula	Re: Why D3 engine? The Doom 3 engine is the best engine to date, and by far the best engine when they started work on Prey. IMO, Prey will make the "Doom 3 can do it" site unnecessary. Prey will compliment current and upcoming Doom 3 engine games, showing Doom 3 can do just about anything. __________________ "I've been trying to change the world for years, but they just won't give me the source code." - Drazula

04-19-2005, 08:33 AM	#19
crunchy superman	Re: Why D3 engine? /stands corrected __________________

04-19-2005, 08:33 AM	#20
Gabrobot	Re: Why D3 engine? Doom 3 uses its own physics engine (all the D3 tech was made by id Software...makes it easier for Carmack to release the source code later). The physics engine was programmed by Jan Paul Van Waveren, who also did the AI system in Quake III and Doom 3. The physics engine is easily on par with Havok (Van Waveren is quite a genius) and the collision detection is far better (apparently Source still uses the old method which checks for collisions at each engine tick). Doom 3's physics are calculated out before they happen so that the engine already knows when things are going to collide. This means you can have very fast moving objects without having them go right through things. You can read about it here. Doom 3 didn't hardly use the physics engine at all. The use of it is configured to disable physics on objects after a certain amount of time or when the object slows down to a certain speed (which is why you get the occasional wrench standing on end). It also tends not to activate objects until the player directly interacts with them, which is why objects sitting on other objects don't always seem to behave right. However, that can all be configured in the editors, and anyone who's toyed around with it much (and g_dragentity) will know that it's easily as good as Havok. It also has great Walk IK, which completely fixes all the problems with feet not touching the ground, and feet sliding on the ground, which is something I haven't noticed before in other engines. (Just switch to 3rd person view and run around some terrain for a while to see why it's so great) Edit: The physics engine isn't done with scripts, it's all C++ code. However, the whole engine was released in the SDK so it is completely moddable.

04-19-2005, 09:37 AM	#21
Cerberus_e	Re: Why D3 engine? they probably want a game that is not about walking into infinite squares

04-20-2005, 01:55 AM	#24
brabee	Re: Why D3 engine? Theres another thing: Rune used Unreal engine, so Human Head are pretty familiar with it. But still, why use a 3rd party engine, when 3DR have great engine "in da house"? Maybe it was like this: "Ok human head studios, we want to wait for unreal engine 3.0 for DNF, so use another one for prey" )))))))))))))) Who knows I would also like to ask any guy from 3DR, whats the release date and what are the minimum system specs, if these information are not secret Thx

04-20-2005, 01:57 AM	#25
Kristian Joensen	Re: Why D3 engine? 3D Realms hasn't got any in house engine. __________________ The Philosophy Of Liberty, Chaos Theory Tachyons, Time Travel, and Divine Omniscience A Refutation of Moral Relativism(Transcript)

04-20-2005, 02:16 AM	#27
Kristian Joensen	Re: Why D3 engine? That is correct, but it is still based on the Unreal Engine, but they didn't start developing it until they restarted in early 2002. Prey was started __________________ The Philosophy Of Liberty, Chaos Theory Tachyons, Time Travel, and Divine Omniscience A Refutation of Moral Relativism(Transcript)

04-20-2005, 08:16 AM	#29
Kristian Joensen	Re: Why D3 engine? They could still get a new licensen. The reason they did not use the same engien as DNF was that they hadn't even started development of the engine yet, while the Doom 3 engine had been in developent fo about a year. YOu guys have to remeber that Prey started development in late 2001 while DNF was restarted in early 2002. __________________ The Philosophy Of Liberty, Chaos Theory Tachyons, Time Travel, and Divine Omniscience A Refutation of Moral Relativism(Transcript)

04-20-2005, 08:21 AM	#30
Vexed	Re: Why D3 engine? You'd also think they'd want to save their pride and joy for their pride and joy, if you know what I mean. __________________ "People are bastards, bastard coated bastards with bastard filling."

04-20-2005, 09:18 AM	#32
Kristian Joensen	Re: Why D3 engine? All games go through development, they don't appear out of nothing. __________________ The Philosophy Of Liberty, Chaos Theory Tachyons, Time Travel, and Divine Omniscience A Refutation of Moral Relativism(Transcript)

04-20-2005, 09:28 AM	#34
Kristian Joensen	Re: Why D3 engine? Well, Karthik seems to think that. __________________ The Philosophy Of Liberty, Chaos Theory Tachyons, Time Travel, and Divine Omniscience A Refutation of Moral Relativism(Transcript)

04-20-2005, 09:29 AM	#35
Gryph	Re: Why D3 engine? I wonder how the tools were for the Doom 3 engine. I remember reading that early on the tools were really bad for the level designers and stuff. I think Tim Willits said that. So I guess Prey and Quake IV were the first to license the Doom III engine. __________________ 1Emulation: The Peoples' Emulation Site I pity the fool! - Mr. T

04-20-2005, 10:08 AM	#36
brabee	Re: Why D3 engine? Yeah I remember something like that too. Anyway, I dont think they needed to license D3 engine for Quake IV

04-20-2005, 03:46 PM	#40
Duoae	Re: Why D3 engine? Plus i would speculate that a finished product (ie. Doom 3 and source - plus actually licencing the game from 2001 to today) would be more attractive in the short term future - 2006/7 rather than the Unreal 3 engine which will hit it's peak late 2006 early 2007. Developers are going to want the tech that's applicable in their game's timescale.... __________________ DudeMiester: IT IS ARE THE COOLEREST!!! Roger: OH NOES, TEH END OF TEH WERLD.