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pakmannen

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I know this look cool and all, but what kind of super computer will be needed to run it?

All of this stuff can be rendered in 3d apps already, they're simply thinking of ways to make it render faster, but I'm guessing you'll need to spend one shitload of money on your PC to get graphics that look anywhere near as good as the screenshots. They obviously have everything turned up full.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

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Been following along with this game for a while. I have yet to see graphics as good as this in any game to date, though, some next-gen console stuff that hasn't been released yet comes pretty close.

 

I'm guessing Playstation 3, maybe Xbox360, will be able to run at this detail, but I think PC's have a ways to go. In 2007/2008 a game like this might be reasonable. But, now, I think all of those that went along a bought a 300/400+ Nvidia 6800 or 7800 will be reluctant to upgrade for a long while now.

 

Unless it comes out for the PS3, I highly doubt I'll ever play the game. Half-Life based games are more than enough for me, though. TFC continues to top any game that I've played to date.

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It seems to be a very small team working on that project, I wonder if it will expand soon.

 

Otherwise yeah, nice looking, but it worries me about the amount of time and energy (and money) that's going to be needed to make games with that level of detail, not to mention mods in your spare time.

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Ive been playing TEam Fortress for years, what servers are u on?

 

Haha, well, let's just say that I play when I can. I have satellite internet, and therefore gaming in general is something I cannot do very often. When I go over to a friend's who has cable or something, I try to get a little in, though.

 

I love the game more than anything. I must admit I liked it even better when people weren't so darn good at it, though :D. I think this is the reason a lot of people shy away from it nowadays; it's much easier to adjust to a game like Counter-Strike. Steam's popularity has pumped some life into it recently; at least it's good for something. Now only if we had a lot more newbies, and a lot less bots ;).

 

I love turning the volume way up. It sounds like the house is exploding :)

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Haha, well, let's just say that I play when I can. I have satellite internet, and therefore gaming in general is something I cannot do very often. When I go over to a friend's who has cable or something, I try to get a little in, though.

 

I love the game more than anything. I must admit I liked it even better when people weren't so darn good at it, though :D. I think this is the reason a lot of people shy away from it nowadays; it's much easier to adjust to a game like Counter-Strike. Steam's popularity has pumped some life into it recently; at least it's good for something. Now only if we had a lot more newbies, and a lot less bots ;).

 

I love turning the volume way up. It sounds like the house is exploding :)

 

Ive been away from TFC for about a month now playing Day of Defeat, the HL WW II mod. Its a hoot too. Im sure ill drift back eventually.

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These guys are getting in early, is all.

 

In the near future, games WILL look this good, and the tech will have increased to make it easier to produce that stuff than it is today. It's the way its always been.

 

I think they're smart. Like the clever property manager that looks ahead and buys some land ahead of time before the land value goes up.

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Of course games will look photorealistic in the near future. This can already be done with pre-rendered grahpics,. It's just a matter of more powerful hardware and thinking of clever ways to make the renders faster and faster until they're realtime.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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Ive been away from TFC for about a month now playing Day of Defeat, the HL WW II mod. Its a hoot too. Im sure ill drift back eventually.

 

I can't stand the present DOD :(

 

It's too overbearing and saddening to see the what they've done to a once amazing (as in even more amazing) game. 1.3b Forever :D

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id software, hehe.

 

@oDD - I was saying that in response to the people who were saying that it will be disproportionately harder to create that quality of graphics, in terms of difficulty and time taken. All I was saying is - look at what the average joe can create now compared to say, 5 years ago.

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In a sense it is easier to create content for a more powerful engine, because you can use high-poly models and photosource textures without having to worry about optimising them for a very low-poly, low-resolution engine.

 

Trying to make a decent-looking 32x32 texture for the original Quake must have been a real challenge.

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Doing an ultra detailed high poly model for a normal map, then doing a highly detailed diffuse map to fit it is a lot more work than making a 32x32 texture. THe difficulty doesn't really change, it's just a different kind of difficulty, but the amount of time it takes is getting longer.

I can make a low poly character in a few hours, but making the high res version for the normal maps is weeks of work for some characters.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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This is where procedural detail generation kicks in. Of course, it would take a modeller (or a team of modellers) an enormous quantity of time to create a forest of trees, and the mapper if they were to place them in a map by hand. But tools like http://www.speedtree.com/html/speedtreert.htm make populating a map with thousands of unique, individual trees a doddle for mappers. Same goes for a lot of animation - manually keyframing a statue to fall when hit by a rocket is a lot more time consuming and less realistic than simply placing a statue model that has physics properties that will mena it falls over when struck by a rocket.

 

You can apply procedural content creation to a huge chunk of game design by building tools that model the laws of nature (this of course means much more initial work for programmers, but it accelerates content creation immensly).

 

EDIT: here is another example: have a look at this http://www.theprodukkt.com/ go to .kkrieger (you may have seen it before) - a full DirectX9 3D game in 96 kilobytes. All content procedurally generated on the fly - models, normal maps, sounds everything pcked into a tiny file. I was gobsmakked when I downloaded this tiny file and saw how much detail was generated procedurally (granted, the game itself is ordinary, it is a tech demo after all, and it has fairly heavy system requirements, but you get the idea).

Edited by obscurus
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As a mapper, one of the tools I'd like to have is to be able to procedurally generate realistic grime/weathering materials for a map based on the map geometry, base material type, "grime" emitters and weather physics. The grime materials would have normal maps, specular etc, so you could for example, have an oil rig map with basic geometry with base materials that define material type, eg steel, simple normal maps and diffuse maps, and you would then run a process that checks for things like sea spray emitters, rain emitters, wind emitters and prcedural generates materials with realistic rust patterns, paint chips, scratches, dents and so on, and mixes these with the base textures to create what would have taken hours of painstaking work by texture artists. It will still take hours to render, but it can do that while the mapper is sleeping or doing something else.

 

This would simultaneously result in more realistic map textures, and less work for texture artists and mapper (more initial work for the programmers though). Procedural content creation takes a huge load off artists, but it puts a large burden on programmers, although once the tools are coded, it is a matter of bug fixing and maintainence. Once tools like this are built, the mapper and texture artists can focus more on getting the gameplay and 'big picture' right, without having to labour over small details that just consume time. Same for geometry - things like trees, rocks and other natural structures are easily created procedurally, and will require only tweaking and placement as the only intervention by the mapper.

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Very cool - hadn't seen it before. I don't know where they get off saying they're "the first epic FPS" though <_< Heh, and I think it's funny in the crowdtest video, toward the end, he's in the middle of talking about adding "to the overall believability of the scene" and creating immersiveness, but at the same time you see one of the goblins in the background running on top of the heds of the rushing crowd. hahaha:D Yes, "VERRY" believable ;)

 

EDIT: I think this is oDDity's dream come true in the making...

The Offset Engine's advanced shader system allows artists to create elaborate effects without needing a programmer. Complex effects which might normally take a programmer several hours to create and debug can now be created by an artist in seconds. Source: http://www.projectoffset.com/technology.html
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I think the Offset engine has enormous potential, and it is very much approaching the same level of sophistication as Unreal Engine 3, and I will be watching this one with great interest. From the perspective of an impecunious modder, an engine that enables the author to create everything without needing expensive software like 3DS Max or Photoshop is the ultimate tool.

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  • 2 months later...

A new Project: Offset video was added to IGNPC ('Enter the Dragon' (03/24/2006)). A couple new things shown: http://media.ps3.ign.com/media/764/764837/vids_1.html

 

Looks cool, still. But I'm doubtful it'll work. Watch as there is only ever one character moving on-screen at any given time in the main videos, for some reason. Except for the crowd test vid, of course. Still, if my computer could render what they're showing in the videos (doubtful, but if it could) then I'd be pretty impressed with that.

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