After playing Need for Speed: Underground and looking at some of the screenies for NFS:U 2, I'm thinking, why can't the rendering engine be adapted for other styles of gameplay, such as an FPS? Granted, I don't want every surface shiny and oily-looking, but the visual effects in the game are very good and would make for some interesting environments.

Now, I know the calculations for NFS:U are not as complicated as for an FPS. The scenery is mostly pre-rendered and static, you don't interect with it. The difference of course being when you hit the nitro, but that's a simple blur calculation. Doesn't affect the scenery at all, just your perception of the scenery. What is impressive is the interaction between your vehicle and the road. And how it maintains speed much better than some other visually similar games.

So, not saying that games like Doom 3 look bad, but some of the visual effects in these games would be enhanced by borrowing the effects from other types of games.

I guess what I'm proposing is a cross-genre graphics engine. I'm just thinking of ideas here. Would it be unreasonable to create a graphics engine for cross-genre games? The Quake III engine is traditionally used for FPS games, but that's because AI and other elements are coded in with it. I'm talking about making a completely modular rendering engine and implementing it in several types of games.

Has this been done? Is it feasible? Possible? What are your thoughts?

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Our very existence is at stake

Yay! I can finally join the snail-racing crew.

-@%

i actually remember one racing mod for Q3... it was quite good and managed to feel like a racing game... i just can't remember the name

but there are some FPSs with blurring effects... a recent example is doom3 when you get the berserk powerup



far cry also has the screen get blurry as you take damage...

to be honest any developer can take any engine and makea game in any genre with it

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LONG LIVE DREAMCAST!!!

There was a UT2K3 racing mod a while back I think...

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ZGPC

Yeah, I saw the blurring effects too. I particularly like the effect of being hit. Painkiller's demon effect is very nice too.

I'm proposing a strictly cross-genre rendering engine. Not intended for any game. Completely expandable and modular. I think it would be an interesting project to undertake.

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Our very existence is at stake

Yay! I can finally join the snail-racing crew.

-@%

isn't that the idea behind renderware?...

a friend of mine was also planning to start working on something like that... a nice modular expandable game engine... but he never bothered to get past the general ideas

anyway... personally i like the look of NFSU but prefer something a bit less blurry like Juiced

i only posted that because i had a sudden urge to play the demo again... i sure hope someone picks it up now that acclaim is no more

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LONG LIVE DREAMCAST!!!

[This message has been edited by DrkJedi82 (edited September 01, 2004).]

Someone should also program an open source physics engine that has all of the laws of physics coded completely accurately into it. Then anyone making a game could use it completely free, and gaming wpould be a better place.

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You were allegedly meant to be able to code any game type in the Cloak NT engine used in Chaser... does anyone remember the game? Have we seen another game on Cloak NT tech? Exactly.

The same was said of Source, but hey, if that game even materialises...

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Fire Pretty - Graz's Armoury - (That's my blog...)Choice language warning!

The Soviet Bunker - (That's my forum...)

"Thou shalt not steal. (Because the government doesn't like competition!)"

How to keep an idiot busy: See below
How to keep an idiot busy: See above

Someone once said that if games developers would share then times would be cut and they could focus on more things. I mean look at Far Cry - you've got absolutely fabulous water effects there that could easily be shared out instead of some other developer coding it up from the ground yet again to the same effect.

Oh yeah, I forgot, it's that Capitalism lark - bah!

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Fire Pretty - Graz's Armoury - (That's my blog...)Choice language warning!

The Soviet Bunker - (That's my forum...)

"Thou shalt not steal. (Because the government doesn't like competition!)"

How to keep an idiot busy: See below
How to keep an idiot busy: See above

Perhaps I should ask Mattias Welander to post at this thread...

Anyway, almost all engines that have the full capability for spheremaps (textures that shift depending on their angle to the camera). As far as modern rendering engines go, virtually everything has the same capabilities.

Doom 3, for example, provided no new rendering techniques; it just made excelent use of them, and made them be more efficient. Bump-mapping was introduced in an old version of Direct3D (I think it was 6), and projected lighting has been availible roughly as long. As far as JK's Sith engine goes, it's VERY archiac; the only more primitive engines I could find were Descent and Quake.

What really matters more than what engine is used is how much and how well you use its capabilities.

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"I know there's got to be some sort of mathematical equation for this sort of thing, but I prefer trial and error. It's one of the advantages of having a socialized health care system."

You forgot the Jedi Engine, used in Dark Forces.

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Perfect Dark had blurring effects when you got hit on the N64. Ahh, that was a great game

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3D Game Studio is made for cross-genre games... and the graphics are pretty good.. especially now that you can use shaders.. I mean... Its no Doom 3... but its cool.

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"The quality of the levels you make is determined by the skill of the person not by the editor in which they use!"
-Michael Kyle

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I forgot there that the JEDI engine includes a true 3D-based rendering application. Sorry about that.

Of course, the polygon engine system has been arround since roughly the late 1960's... It's only preceeded by Bezziere's RayTracing Enigne, circa 1961 (I think I might be wrong on the year, though)

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"I know there's got to be some sort of mathematical equation for this sort of thing, but I prefer trial and error. It's one of the advantages of having a socialized health care system."

NFS:U graphics (for someone like me, who has a slight case of color blindness) is really hard to see and keep up with wth is going on... there is too many lights, colors and on top of that it always look wet out. Not to mention, I've never been a NFS fan because of the lack of realism.. Though the cars look great and it's fun to modify them..

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I felt like destroying something beautiful.

That was more like a HOM effect.

And what is 'raytracing'?

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<]-[ellequin[]Off> Everytime I think I've hit the bottom, and can't get any lower, someone tosses me a shovel

Raytracing is a rendering technique that uses a mathematical model to calculate how light would interact with objects. Each source of light emits "rays," which are "traced" in the rendering engine, and react appropriately to whatever they encounter. For instance, if a ray of light encounters glass, depending on the shape of glass, the color, and the density, the ray may reflect off of it back to the camera completely or bend as it travels through the glass. The technique is industry standard and makes very nice effects, but takes a lot of power to render something.

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Our very existence is at stake

Yay! I can finally join the snail-racing crew.

-@%

http://www.rabidhamster.org/java/JavaRayTrace.php

Raytracing.

System Shock 2 was used for Freedom Force, and I believe a pinball game.

-it's a start.

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