Project Reality Forums

PR Engine Ideas

So after the recent threads and post about changing engines, and the failed threads. This will be a place for you, the community to post your ideas and engine suggestions. We do care and do appreciate ideas and suggestions.

A few rules in place:

• NO one line responses like "Source is the best!". Your comment will be deleted and/or you will recieve a infraction.
• Suggestions must have links to the Engine in question.
• List of features that work for PR.
• Counter argument must have links and/or reasons why it may not work.
• Watch your attitude, this is a suggestion thread not a debate.

The Dunia engine (Far Cry 2) would be great, if it weren't for the 16 player limit.

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The source engine is terrible, a massive problem they had with insurgency was that they couldnt implement proper ballistics. Instead of a bullet taking a little time to reach its target it hits instantly. This means you dont lead targets and get laser style instant hits.

Couple this with no squad system, tiny maps and weapon sway but still with cone-fire deviation, and I fail to see why it is perfect.

Insurgency does some things really well, but the source engine lets it down....

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Source can do projectiles, except that projectiles don't benefit from the whole lag compensation system that that Source features. Hitscan weapons are unlagged, and so you can have either that or laggy projectiles. Projectile weapons also require more CPU time. I dunno what specific problems the Insurgency team ran into, but I bet they had issues beyond that.

One of the major advantages that the Source engine has over BF2 is the fact that it can be more broadly modified. BF2 allows very little modification beyond adding new maps, models, vehicles and weapons. Source, on the other hand, can be made into a lot of things by modders.

Unfortunately, vehicles are notoriously unreliable online in Source. Eternal Silence uses custom tailored netcode to actually get their spaceship combat to work right in the newer versions, and it was glitchy and laggy in the old ones. Empires manages to use land vehicles, but it, too, sometimes has problems with physics and lag. But, hey, at least Empires has a squad system (not tied to VOIP, though).

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VRV wrote:In the Source Engine can do so squads, voip by squad, commands, etc. Of course, we must work hard at it.

maybe too hard..at least w/ the bf2 engine there was something to start with..there were already flags and stuff, squad system already made, vehicles already coded...the PR mod has gone too far to switch to HL2..plus... i think bf2 was a bigger and more popular engine than the source engine at the time PR was starting off

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Can the Source engine handle AT LEAST 64 players? So far, I haven't seen any Source game with 64 players.

Yeap agree with this statement. If anyone has experience with the source engine supporting 64+ players and LARGE (ie at least 2km) maps, please post about those experiences.

My only experiences with "larger" style Source Engine gameplay was with the empires mod, which supported 48 players and approx. 2km maps (but most of the map was not in play). The mod is very creative, but the gameplay was prety bad from when I played, I tried it for about 10 hours.

As a matter of fact, I cant think of ANY fps game with 64 player limit that runs STABLE in an open public environment OTHER than BF2. If anyone has experience with other games that run with 64 or more players on large maps, please post about them as were always looking for that next engine!

ArmA is an exception, but STABLE and ArmA arent exactly the right way to describe it Hopefully ArmA2 will be much better, but we are talking about released games here, not future stuff that has yet to be proven.

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[R-DEV]fuzzhead wrote:Yeap agree with this statement. If anyone has experience with the source engine supporting 64+ players and LARGE (ie at least 2km) maps, please post about those experiences.

My only experiences with "larger" style Source Engine gameplay was with the empires mod, which supported 48 players and approx. 2km maps (but most of the map was not in play). The mod is very creative, but the gameplay was prety bad from when I played, I tried it for about 10 hours.

As a matter of fact, I cant think of ANY fps game with 64 player limit that runs STABLE in an open public environment OTHER than BF2. If anyone has experience with other games that run with 64 or more players on large maps, please post about them as were always looking for that next engine!

ArmA is an exception, but STABLE and ArmA arent exactly the right way to describe it Hopefully ArmA2 will be much better, but we are talking about released games here, not future stuff that has yet to be proven.

a mix of ARMA2 and OF2DR could be nice... the payer limit of Arma2, the map size of OP2DR, whit the nice effect of Dragon Rising... (realistic balistic, stabalised gun, thermal sight...) =D

BTW how much cost a license ? from UE3 by exemple... or any engine like that 250 - 300K ?

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Tartantyco wrote:-Yes, Insurgency sucks and PR doesn't.

i dont know about that. haveing to set out to shoot showing all of your body sucks. being able to lean out is good!, not really being able to deploy an MG suck "changing mg to deployed mg does not really count on the fact you have to load it each time" oh ya PR we cant deploy the marksmen rifle ether. but you can in insurgency. the grenade launcher in PR don't have the best sight they really dont work that well. but in insurgency you have to use the sight just like the real thing like you use your iron sight on the rifle but you got to mesher up your angle for the range you want to hit. but even thow insurgency is only infantry combat. it get that better then PR. i really dont even bother playing as infantry in PR anymore ill drive/shot a tank or helo. + i end up geting better people in a tank or helo then if im in a dame infantry squad i get the @#$@ uber players.

and it is alot EZer to get your self killed or kills in insurgency you tend to live longer in PR in a fire fight.

don't get me wrong i like PR just the infantry part of it is not quite ware it could be.

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My guess is that ArmA 2 is not going to focus on large scale conflicts as much as their engine technology might allow. I think it's going to include a lot of focus on the AI and on a "story driven" campaign. I say that because ArmA 2 is also going to be released on consoles. Perhaps I am wrong... but I can't see 100+ players being practical for a console FPS. Also I've seen some stuff in interviews abou ArmA 2 that imply "less is more" because they have made the AI much smarter. I interpret this as "we're capping the # of players lower so the GPU, CPU and our pogrammers can focus on other things".

Also iirc, ArmA 2 is on a completely new engine whereas ArmA 1 was built on an evolved OFP engine. I believe ArmA 2 is "Game 2" .. which is what I think everyone hoped that ArmA 1 was going to be. On paper ArmA 2 looks outstanding, if they can manage to release a polished product it will potentially be amazing. But I'll be surprised if it's stable at 60+ players.

egg

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I completely agree with whoever said that they wished Valve had created the BF2 engine... They understand that people want to modify their games, always have. Judging from what have been said about the BF2-engine on these forums it ain't close to as mod-friendly as Valves engine.

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[R-DEV]eggman wrote:My guess is that ArmA 2 is not going to focus on large scale conflicts as much as their engine technology might allow. I think it's going to include a lot of focus on the AI and on a "story driven" campaign. I say that because ArmA 2 is also going to be released on consoles. Perhaps I am wrong... but I can't see 100+ players being practical for a console FPS. Also I've seen some stuff in interviews abou ArmA 2 that imply "less is more" because they have made the AI much smarter. I interpret this as "we're capping the # of players lower so the GPU, CPU and our pogrammers can focus on other things".

Also iirc, ArmA 2 is on a completely new engine whereas ArmA 1 was built on an evolved OFP engine. I believe ArmA 2 is "Game 2" .. which is what I think everyone hoped that ArmA 1 was going to be. On paper ArmA 2 looks outstanding, if they can manage to release a polished product it will potentially be amazing. But I'll be surprised if it's stable at 60+ players.

egg

PlayStation 3 can handle 256 Players on the same map/server =) i dont known for X36 but i do known PS3 can. May be due to CELL BROADBAND Engine... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor))

MASSIVE ACTION GAME [256Players-PS3]
Gametrailers.com - Massive Action Game - E3 2008: Sony Conference Debut Trailer

256 players that would be AWESOME in PR lol =D. But an engine kinda like BF2 but whit all the comodity of ArmA, Big Map, Long Range Sightin...ETC.. that would be PERFECT.

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I wasn't really referring to the technical capabilities of the platforms. I think MAG has tons of potential (128 players per team are divided into 8 man squads).

And I am sure both the PS3 and the 360 can support the client requirements (servers and bandwidth are going to be expensive for Sony / MS to maintain).

But MAG is still TBD if it's a 3rd person or 1st person shooter. That's the sort of thing I was referring to... 3p views do not sit well with hardcore tactical gamers. And I don't think there are a lot of hardcore tactical gamers on consoles *yet*. For now I don't see consoles having the kind of audience that a really hardcore tactical game woould appeal to. But there is so much money to be made that developers and publishers can't ignore the console market.

egg

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[R-DEV]eggman wrote:I wasn't really referring to the technical capabilities of the platforms. I think MAG has tons of potential (128 players per team are divided into 8 man squads).

And I am sure both the PS3 and the 360 can support the client requirements (servers and bandwidth are going to be expensive for Sony / MS to maintain).

But MAG is still TBD if it's a 3rd person or 1st person shooter. That's the sort of thing I was referring to... 3p views do not sit well with hardcore tactical gamers. And I don't think there are a lot of hardcore tactical gamers on consoles *yet*. For now I don't see consoles having the kind of audience that a really hardcore tactical game woould appeal to. But there is so much money to be made that developers and publishers can't ignore the console market.

egg

Well, if PS3 can handle it, why not PC ? and there is no difference on performance from 3rd to 1st person view. I'm pretty sure somone somewhere in a game studio had think to that !!!1111!!111!

Anyway, dreaming is free... so i will continu...=(

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With PS3 you don't have to worry about updates (hardware) until the whole thing is outdated. Just now game makers are making better games to better handle the new console's potential.

With a computer you need to do upgrades and that discourages some people because it seems daunting, really just takes some patient reading. Computer hardware is quickly passing PS3 and X360 in the graphics department, just upgrading everything to get the quality is tricky (CPU, GPU, mobo, all working together)The computer's ability to hold massive amounts of RAM (compared to PS3 and Xbox) is also why Crysis didn't appear on consoles.

My opinion on MAG is that it is made specifically for the consoles in that you have limited buttons(not many strategic games) If a similar thing were to come out for computer it would have more detail in it since we have keyboards and more inputs.

I really don't see how Valve could have made BF2 any better. I guess in a way the modding could be easier (from what i've heard) and joining Valve series games, everything is customizable. Don't think modding was that popular when they released BF2, that or they didn't learn anything from 1942 (Desert Combat!) Sorry for epic post.

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[R-CON]Mescaldrav wrote:The source engine is terrible, a massive problem they had with insurgency was that they couldnt implement proper ballistics. Instead of a bullet taking a little time to reach its target it hits instantly. This means you dont lead targets and get laser style instant hits.

If you've played TF2 you'd see that almost all the projectiles you fire have some kind of time delay on them. I don't know why Insurgency had a hard time if TF2 could do it.

Couple this with no squad system

Resistance and Liberation also created some kind of squad system. It was an automatically assigning one but its still in Alpha stages right now. They had a voip system set up also so that it didn't act like radios but instead you could hear over a certain distance. So you could talk to players who weren't even in your squad.

Not disagreeing overall, just saying that the Source engine doesn't seem as bad as everyone says, unless I'm wrong about what I just posted.

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=Romagnolo= wrote:Ok ok, let's suppose that the source engine can handle a 64 players and then a big map too.

Now, tell me, how would be the view distance ?

Give us solid exemples.

Here's Empires. Make what you will of it.

A lot of people here seem to hate on Source engine based on nothing but Counterstrike or TF2. Source can do a lot. There are limitations to map size, and the number of vertices, etc., but if you look at what various mods did with Source, it's a pretty impressive engine. It can do a lot, but requires some optimization if you want to squeeze a lot out of it. It also has some of the best documentation around (unlike BF2, where "documentation" usually means searching a forum for some post that's probably long outdated anyway). Would Source be a good engine for PR? Probably not. Is it an awesome engine for a wide variety of modding projects? Yes, it is.

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[R-DEV]eggman wrote: Also iirc, ArmA 2 is on a completely new engine whereas ArmA 1 was built on an evolved OFP engine.

Negative, ArmA 2's engine (Real Virtuality 3) is a successor to ArmA's one (Real Virtuality 2), which was based of OFP's Real Virtuality.

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daranz wrote:

Here's Empires. Make what you will of it.

A lot of people here seem to hate on Source engine based on nothing but Counterstrike or TF2. Source can do a lot. There are limitations to map size, and the number of vertices, etc., but if you look at what various mods did with Source, it's a pretty impressive engine. It can do a lot, but requires some optimization if you want to squeeze a lot out of it. It also has some of the best documentation around (unlike BF2, where "documentation" usually means searching a forum for some post that's probably long outdated anyway). Would Source be a good engine for PR? Probably not. Is it an awesome engine for a wide variety of modding projects? Yes, it is.

I personaly like source, it has some great games/mods.
I love Left4dead for example.
I also enjoy Insurgency, and other Hl2 mods, but it not the engine for PR thats for sure.

The closest you could get to PR on source is Insurgency.

I played Empire and the maps are just open field, not much objects on it (otherwise it would probably lag).

You cant make a HUGE forest map like fools road for example, or a city the size of muttrah.

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The ting is Source isn't meant for combined arms, hence why you might see vehicle only mods or infantry only mods, Ive seen empires but its set up in a way that its never really possible to make it realistic(other than th esci fi theme)
Admittedly Id like to see this engine changed but Im content with it

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