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Just to clarify the reason why high speed physics is more problematic: Normally the phyiscs engine is called in each frame to calculate the new state of the objects. This has to include collision detection obviously. If the movement of an object is below the framerate (or ticker that is used inside the game) this is not really a problem, because a collision should always be detected. If the speed gets above the ticker, it means that collisions have also to be detected when they are already past the point where they should have occured. Physics is time based. You shoot a bullet and it starts moving. It the bullet moves with a low speed, you can test in each frame if it hit a surface and the surface is in place because both objects don't move faster then the ticker allows. Suppose you are shooting at a wall which is 3 units thick. In the first example the bullet moves with a speed of 2 units per tick. No matter how far you are away from the wall, the bullet will always end up right inside a wall with a tick. The position is calculated and is either one or two units before the wall. Since it moves with only 2 units per tick the next calculation will move the bullet inside the wall and the collision is detected. If you have a faster bullet which moves at 5 units per tick, in the same situation the bullet could be 1 units before the wall in the first tick, and in the next tick the new position would be 1 tick after the wall. Such a collision may not be detected by many physics engines.

I checked out ODE which is an open source physics engine. I think it is used in Stalker or some other upcoming high profile game. Even this physics engine can do this. It's not really much what is shown. Some blocks are falling and occasionally a wheel or barrel. All this is pretty slow movement anway so it is not that hard to do. I don't know if Havoc can do high speed physics as well, but I assume so. High speed physics is much harder to code because it creates much more problems. For example: Firing a bullet and let it ricochet correctly and then create such a cascading system. That would put a physics engine more to the test. As I understood D3 physics can do this, but it wouldn't correctly handle this scenario from this movie (maybe).

Well, from a professional physics system anyways. Before HL2, I don't recall seeing any video game that could do this without some pre-written script or cutscene prerendering. Maybe I just haven't been observant enough.

Saving constantly is not the same as god mode. Because the player still has to actively do his actions in order to get along. In God mode this is no longer true, because he simply doesn't need to care. I did some cheats for C64 games because they were to hard. I usualy only did the unlimited live feature because this requires me still to play the full game, only without restarting every five lives. While when I would createa god mode it owuld be quite different to play, because the gameplay can be totally ignored, which is not true for unlimited lives (or unlimited saves which is basically the same).

Judgng the Doom engine lighting by what you saw in Doom 3 levels is like juding level design by what you saw in Doom 3 levels, or judgng AI possibilites by what you saw in the Doom 3 creatures. Doom 3 - the game - didn't use the engine to anywhere near its full potential.

Hello guys i just login, to say GREAT JOB (I love the caracters they are realy professional something that a real professional caracter modeler is capable of doing, hey Oddity are you a professional caracter modeler ? Now on topic, this arrow stick on body thing is that so dificult to do , Severance: Blade of Darkness is a old game and have this feature, along with the same type of lighting/shadowing(volumetric shadows and dinamic lighting) as Doom3 , the only bad thing is that they don´t put in a take out arrow of body animation they fall of after some time, but is cool to see the arrows stick in the body, i will show a video to you guys if you want to see how it work in BOD. p.s- sorry for the bad grammer, i´m Portuguese . cheers A link to the video: BOD Video

In the scheme of things, the gameplay is of the utmost importance to us. Details such as this, while nice to look at, aren't going to make the game more fun to play in the long run. This would be the type of detailing that would be added after the toolset has been released, had time for feedback, bug fixed based on that feedback and then considered finished.

Anyone see the preview video for the game Prey. It's using the doom 3 engine. There was one scene that had children in it that rather freaked me out. I haven't played many games where kids were affected and murdered.

I think anything that's posted on a public website is free game.

That is a brilliant idea Gildoran, that would work for me (and maybe a few checkpoint saves if necessary). No idea if the D3 engine can do that, but if it can, excellent... Doom 3 has checkpont saves, quicksaves and unlimited saves, which doesn't make for much of a callenge if you abuse them... I think it adds hugely to gameplay if like in RL, you know that a fatal slipup will mean losing everything you have done (wouldn't it be nice to have quicksaves in RL, and every time you made an embarrasing faux pas you could just hit reload..), you play the game in a completely different way - more cautiously and conservatively, the way a thief should be. Well that's my opinon, anyway...

I over simplified - but I thought it would be obvious by now that I mean "CAN kill immersion..." etc. and most often does, because excersicing disipline when you save... is kind of like giving you unlimited ammo and aksing you to be diciplined by pretending its limited. But yeah, some kind of a save count statistic would be a good comprimise. I don't like your definitions there - save points don't mean you only have one save game. You can have as many as you want, but the PLACES you can save are limited to certain points.

From what I've heard the biggest change they made to the netcode was switching from a perpixel hit detection system to an oldschool hitscan system since it doesn't eat up a fuckton of bandwidth and processor time and makes for a much smoother experience. So if you're wanting to make an MP mod you'll defiantely want to go with Q4, for a singleplayer game there's really no advantage (as far as I know anyway).

Maybe D3 the game is. I have a feeling that alot of people are gonna move to Q4 when it comes out since it'll have a MUCH bigger modding community behind it. But D3 the engine? No way, it's just starting to get good.

D3 is dead because that mod is switching from one D3 game to another? Interesting reasoning.

Eh, I'd rather leave saving discipline up to the player. No reason to force a player to play the game one way or the other, just because that's the way you prefer. Personally I forget to save if I'm having fun. I'll be playing and then realise I haven't saved in 30 minutes, and think "cool." Then, I'll suddenly have to leave the computer for some reason, and I will enjoy the ability to save at that particular moment so that I can come right back to where I left off. We want to discourage killing people right, so we make killing have consequences, we don't just fail the mission if you kill. Similarly with saving, I think we should just keep a record of number of saves/reloads and display it with the end mission stats, basically to tell people "You saved 214 times on one mission, you loser!" But I don't think we should keep people from saving when they want to.

Thanks guys, im not sure how to post a video file, nor do i have a place to host it. Anyone give me directions on doin so? Anyway, other than that lil problem, ill tell ya a bit about myself. I went to Full Sail in Winter Park, FL for computer animation. Im pushing my skills as a texture and environment artist, but i love all aspects of animation, modeling, and dynamics. Im proficient in Maya 4, 5, and 6; Right-Hemisphere's DeepExploration, Photoshop CS, and Apple Shake. I can work well with NURBS, Polygons and Sub-Ds. Rigging and Animation - I can work with and create SDKs, jiggle deformers, and mel scripting to name a few. Texturing - I can make and use layered shaders, UV, Bump, Spec, Displacement mapping amongst many others. Im a huge gamer and would love to work in the game industry. I dont have any real experience other than classwork and personal work but I would love to step up to a challange and help this team raise the bar for games and the gaming industry all-around. Let me know if I can fill needed spots. I can adapt to just about anything and if i dont know ill try my best to learn it asap. Thanks

That gives me a load of rigging, weighting and animating work after I've finished the modeling and texturing though. I don't think it's necessary to have every model in the game with a run and walk anim at this stage.THey can be counted as 'done' when the textured model is done. THe rigging can come later. I'd prefer if Corth and Diego stopped modeling and concentrated on rigging and animating. I said that months ago. We need animations done much more that we need a few extra characters at this stage.

It was your over use of the simplistic phrase "I find more realism fun" that promted my post there, obscurus. You and I are no different in terms of what we find fun, if your long post there is anything to go by. But I am ready to jump down anyone's throat who uses realism as the primary reason for a feature. Realism is all well and good, but once its in the game, the real question is "does it add anything to the gameplay?". BTW it's my opinion that rope arrows are the natural answer to a grappling hook which was far too complex to implement for LGS, so I would forgive them for that, just as I accept that the guards voice their every thought because you can't see every nuance of body language that you wuld be using in real life to determine if they heard you or not.

Slightly OT here, but you might want to take a look at UT Infiltration. That's the most realistic game I've ever played, and the mod teams' motto was "not pleasing the majority." I'm not sure if anyone plays it anymore. It was originally for UT, but they are working on converting to one of the higher UT engines (2004 perhaps) Here's a link: http://infiltration.sentrystudios.net/

Cheers for that, downloaded it and had a look. Just one more question.... The doom3/base folder is presumably empty before unzipping a FM? (not having the game yet I don't know), if not would the files inside need backing up in any way?

They'll more than likely work like installing a regular Doom 3 map. You'll organize all your assets in their appropriate folders in a PK4, arrange them like you would if you were dumping them straight into the game. PK4 files are straight up zips, the only difference is that the file extention is renamed. If you want a working example go here and download the map, use winrar to open the PK4 (so you keep the directory structure intact), and check it out. I dunno how necessary a loader would be considering how easy it is to install FM's...all you do is dump em in doom3/base and they're ready to go. Might be cool to be able to launch all the Thief missions from one program though.

WHat's the point in slapping a placeholder walk and run on them? We need a proper animaitor to start the real animations. And we have no AI prgrammer either. You're only counting an AI as 'fiinshed' when it's in the game with a placeholder walk,run and attack anim? That's stupid. Eiother you count it as 'done' when it has it's full set of animations, or you count it as done when it's finished being modeled and textured, but you don't couint it as being done when it has one or two basic anims on it. Rigging would also be the job of the animator. If we had a proper one I'd just hand them the textured character.

I think, obscurus, that limiting save points is an unreasonable demand on the player. Some people, including me, actually, would like to have a limited save or checkpoint system, but the fact is that it's so much simpler when you can just save anywhere. Not everybody in the community is a "hardcore gamer." A lot of people like being able to save often so they don't have to waste their time doing things all over again if they make a mistake. Now I'm not saying that you have to appeal to the lowest common denominator, this is a fan-based project after all, but I think you have to make some accomodations people who don't feel like making a major time commitment to the game. To a lot of people it would just seem cruel. If anything, I think that a limit on the number of saves should be an option that you could toggle on or off.

I'm glad someone else appreciates the visual aspects of Lucas' works. Stunning digital landscapes in these latest three. Just think about it -- we're making a video game and surely you can see how much work they must put into their highly-detailed digital sets and designs! How hard are you working just to try and pull off a room with a couple doors, real lighting, hardwood floors and a few things animating? Look at how much action is going on in Lucas' films! Most of the time your mind doesn't even realize they're created on computers. Nothing short of amazing, if you think about it. Next time I watch it, I will pay more attention to the musical score. Every time I watch it, I will be able to focus on something new (besides the dialogue/acting) because there is so much going on that I can appreciate.

Wow, it's a tough crowd today What is your intention with these AtariThief? Sorry, I'm new to the conversation. I think I remember you having a similar thread before, but didn't have a chance to look at it. So, as a newbie into this conversation, I must say I really like the first screenshot, especially the reflection. It doesn't seem too much to me. It's just a very nicely polished floor. The other ones look like I'm seeing T1 or T2 textures in the Doom 3 game. They might be slightly crisper than T1/T2 or something... but without seeing a side-by-side to compare, I can't really tell. It is neat to see them "live on" in the Doom 3 engine, though! That bump-mapped one looks very nice if it was originally a T1 or T2 texture! It has much more "life." Good job.