Future of PR?

[hoc_xfirestormx]

4 by 4 km maps
Greater than 800m drawdistance
Destructable enviroments
All with 64 players and minimal lag and very much acceptable levels of lighting and textures.

How game engines do you know that are able to do the above, online and still look quite good? Not many, a few but most engines would fall too their knees and mumble some **** about looking amazing at 5 - 10 metres......

4 by 4 km maps? ok. "we have teh big maps lol" isnt really that impressive.
greater than 800m drawdistance? yeah? drawing what? lol you only draw static objects and MAYBE a vehicle or two if youre zoomed.
destructable environments that look like ****. **** built up with tiny spaces in between the giant **** bricks.
"minimal lag"? i hope thats a joke, i honestly do. if 1 single object is off, the lag goes through the roof. dcon learned that after their alpha release. if your system isnt a beast, lag goes through the roof. and lighting and textures doesnt mean anything if you have an advantage in the game if you turn them off. gee, i wonder what most players are going to do?

how many engines that i know of can do that? bf1942 was a better engine, all 3 unreal engines, half life 2 is a great engine, et:qw is going to have all of that, crysis has beautiful draw distances and has some great innovative features as to how things are drawn (watch some videos on crysis and you will see what i mean), crysis has FULLY destructive environments (you can shoot through trees and make them fall over. its crazy), ue3 has destructive environment capabilities, i could name more but im taking a break from studying and dont want to waste any more of my off time. but to answer your question, i know quite a few engines capable of that.

in addition to that, all of those ^ engines have better physics, better graphics (except for 1942), better view distances, better draw distances, better everything. the bottom line is the bf2 engine lacks in the physics, destructable environment, draw distance, and view distance aspects of the engine. the only thing its got is some OK graphics. youre not going to win this argument. believe me, you cant. its not possible.

[Top_Cat_AxJnAt]

HL2 engine cannot do what i said, both in terms of draw distance and map size.


ETQW is using doom 3, significantly more advanced technology mainly becuase it is newer but it cannot do 17km square maps, but the game will not be out for another 6 months or so.

Crysis uses one of the most or the most advanced engines ever created, but it is about 3 years newer than the BF2 engine and the engine will not actualy be avliable for another half a year minimum for moddrs.

U3, again there are only a very very small number of games for the PC that have been released that use this engine, however they would not be suitable for PR, and again any game that would be, will not be released for another good half a year or more.


What you are saying is like comparing the spitfire with the Eurofighter, ofcourse the Eurofighter is many many times more superior BUT IT TOOK THE HUMAN RACE 50 YEARS LONGER TO DEVELOP!

p.s please not the DEVs have upped the draw distance on soldiers and many other items from there unrealistic and often wrong 0.5 levels, for 0.6!

Again, please do not underesitimate the BF2 engine, it does suck in 1 thousand and 1 ways, but it does do the job in hundered and 1 ways well compared to everything and anything else avalible on the market today.

[Nephrmuus]

As the DEVs said before, I promise you that the BF2 engine still has alot left in it and when you start playing games on levels that have 600m drawdistances and firefights ranging on at triple the distances they do now and for longer, you will not think so harshly of the BF2 engine as you do now.

I will grant you that the engine is limited but you should not ignor its advantages and features:
4 by 4 km maps
Greater than 800m drawdistance
Destructable enviroments
All with 64 players and minimal lag and very much acceptable levels of lighting and textures.
How game engines do you know that are able to do the above, online and still look quite good? Not many, a few but most engines would fall too their knees and mumble some **** about looking amazing at 5 - 10 metres......

Well, that might be a hell of a lot better than the smaller-scale engines, but *Cough* ArmA:

• 15km x 15km map (but only one given with game).
• About 4000m max draw distance currently (10000m draw at 1.07 patch which is now available in beta). Admittedly, you'd need a very powerful machine to actually render that and it would only be worthwhile for pilots, but anyway...
• Fully destructable environment (trees, grass, fences, buildings, walls, etc).
• Number of players unlimited, at least as far as I know, rather than hardcoded at 64 (based on server power/bandwidth, of course).
• Grass provides concealment at ALL ranges (it doesn't render past 50m or so, just like BF2, but it makes items, or parts of items, within it invisible).
• I won't even mention the things it beats BF2 engine at that you didn't talk about...

And that is just from the vanilla game - who knows what modders will stretch out of it? But I'm not suggesting that we move to ArmA, just that not all engines are as naff as you say for large-scale combined arms warfare. Why the original poster didn't think it was in the running, I have no idea!

That said, PR is stretching BF2 to the limit and doing very well with it, and I'll be playing it for a long time to come on its current engine. But that is because it is PR, not because of the BF2 engine

**EDIT**
Why do new games/engines always make the tea and walk the dog and then when you get the game it is 2 years late and not quite as wonderful as the devs claim? Comparing BF2 to an engine that isn't available is like comparing spitfires to personal jet-cars ;P

[hoc_xfirestormx]

yeah but arma looks like a baboon's ***, man.

im not saying that the bf2 engine is not useful for PR, im saying that it was disappointing and didnt even come close to reaching its potential, which in my opinion makes it pretty crappy. its a pain to mod. if the pr devs were working with a more mod-friendly game, 1.0 would be out by now, i truly believe that. now am i saying they shouldnt have worked with bf2? of course not, because it suits the needs of pr best. but, that being said, just because there are no alternatives doesnt mean that the engine is good. unreal 3, unreal 2, and unreal 1 were all much better engines. unreal tournament is due next month (probably will be delayed), quake wars is coming out next month.

and no one answered my question: what other games use the bf2 engine?

[Kensei]

and no one answered my question: what other games use the bf2 engine?

Umm, are you serious? This is an easy question that's stumped...

BF 2142 uses the engine...



although it's a mod, it's classified as a game...

OWNED!

[3===SPECTER===3]

ArmA is a great engine to use. the graphics are fine but the realistic gameplay is already implimented and it would really save PR time.

[ArmedDrunk&Angry]

The unreal engines don't allow for aircraft and squads ...is that correct ?

[GeZe]

The unreal engines don't allow for aircraft and squads ...is that correct ?

No, with Unreal, you can do anything. People have made MMOs with unreal, Red Orchestra was made using an older version of unreal. It has a very high modability.

[ArmedDrunk&Angry]

RO doesn't have squads though and no planes although the tanks are kick ***.

[Guerra norte]

The ArmA engine (Real Virtuality/Poseidon) can have 200 x 200 km maps, not 15 x 15...
Also the view distance can be hacked to over 30000 km with a quick Config edit.

[hoc_xfirestormx]

im not saying that the bf2 engine is not useful for PR, im saying that it was disappointing and didnt even come close to reaching its potential, which in my opinion makes it pretty crappy. its a pain to mod. if the pr devs were working with a more mod-friendly game, 1.0 would be out by now, i truly believe that. now am i saying they shouldnt have worked with bf2? of course not, because it suits the needs of pr best. but, that being said, just because there are no alternatives doesnt mean that the engine is good. unreal 3, unreal 2, and unreal 1 were all much better engines. unreal tournament is due next month (probably will be delayed), quake wars is coming out next month.

reeding is teh coolest.

anyway, frontlines: fuel of war has planes, tanks, and helos. quake wars has the same im pretty sure. so, unreal 3 and qw engines ftw.

what you guys have to understand is that this isnt about how a different engine* should have been used. its about what engine you think should be used if this team chooses to move on to another engine, because i feel that pr has a fairly large team and can do some incredible things with games. i think if you gave them a properly made engine with proper mod support and proper physics and such, they would have a field day. i mean look what they are doing with a mediocre (at best) engine! imagine if they were working on ut3.

and if your argument is "BUT IF THEY SWITCHED THEY WOULD HAVE TO DO MORE WORK!!!11 LOL ", then why wouldnt they give up now? i mean good god. if i was scared to do work for what i wanted, i'd just put a bullet in my head right now.

[Nephrmuus]

The ArmA engine (Real Virtuality/Poseidon) can have 200 x 200 km maps, not 15 x 15...
Also the view distance can be hacked to over 30000 km with a quick Config edit.

Sorry to mislead there. I was just saying that the provided "vanilla" map was 15x15km, not saying it was an absolute limit for the engine. Wow, even with 200 players on a server (which is something I've heard people talking about being possible in ArmA), 200x200km would be a little bare; Plenty of places to hide a rally point though

**EDIT**
Hmm, islands that fit into 200x200 km...good for Cyprus and Fiji, but not quite for Taiwan or Tasmania. Wonder if the devs are trying to tell us something?

[Guerra norte]

200x200km would be a little bare; Plenty of places to hide a rally point though

Well, you could have several Armored platoons and Air squadrons agains each other on maps the size a Afghan provins.... imagine that!

[eggman]

Well as far as engines go....

Crysis is 24 - 32p multi player and a bunch of aspects of the game are being scaled back for multi player. Always has been a single player focused engine.

Unreal based games look outstanding, but I am yet to see maps that are a decent size. Most of them are very tight and a realism mod aiming to provide a combined arms experience doesn't work unless you can get the maps really large.

ET:QW is a DOOM / Quake derivative. Multiplayer will probably cap at 32 players and maps at 1 sq km.

From an engine perspective, ArmA is pretty attractive, but it really is not nearly as polished as I had expected it would be given the man years that went into development. It's certainly not a next gen engine, more like the most you can extract out of a previous gen engine. A realism mod on a realism platform where there will be lots of realism mods is not that appealing to me. And just changing the weapons out for different weapons is also not that appealing.

I think there's still life left in the BF2 engine. If we can make 17sq km maps work as well as develop some compelling game modes that get away from "conquest" style play, I think there is still a lot of good game play to be had on the BF2 engine.

[hoc_xfirestormx]

fo sho eggman. im not saying you guys should switch right away at all. just saying something to think about will be future engines

[fuzzhead]

like egg said i dont think there is any decent alternative engines at this time... although i think arma is best, and currently the one thing arma is lacking is ANY kind of intelligent squad based realistic gameplay... arma online right now is a joke.

[L3adCannon]

Garabaldi']...and with EA publishing it, expect the same story as BF2 in terms of support for the modders.

EA is only the distributor, which is a smart move. When it comes to deadlines and development, they have no say.
They were smart and told EA to f*ck off at that part.

[hoc_xfirestormx]

also crytek made a big deal about their engine being individually licensed. hopefully ea wont try to pull any ****.