360DoF

[Duper]

Hey folks,

New here and I've a question for the Devs on the this project. Does the CE2 provide support for complete 360DoF with vehicles? As you have jest rolling in the trailers, I'm assuming (there's that word) that it's a "yes". (for those that don't know, 360DoF = 360 Degrees of Freedom)

I have alterior motives.

I'm a long time Descent fan and would like to know if it would be at all possible to do a mod for that on this engine. Someone has made one using Doom 3 (the lighting was a big attraction) but it's limited and pretty much ground to a hault. And with Warhead and CE3 out .. or nearly with the latter, Now would be a good time to breath life into a fading game.

I've been a long time fan of MechWarrioras well (I used to play Mech2 on Kali back in the day) but never had a box that could run it well until MW4 came out. I know it's heresy, but I thoroughly enjoyed that installment ... until the TK'ing became so bad that it wasn't playable any longer. ... oh well...

Thanks in advance!


*edit*

..hmm.  guess this might have been better in the "Other Games" forum. (oops sry) Move if necessary.

(I did a search or two, but coudln't find a post concerning this.)  and oh, incidentally, when speaking of something "fairly good", the word is "decent", not "descent".

[Ravir]

The challenge would be the large indoor areas.  CryEngine is really more of an "outdoorsy" setup, with objects placed on terrain.  A Descent map is all object.  In effect you'd be making one huge prefab and sticking it on a island, then spawning the player inside of it.  Not sure Crysis is the best choice of engine.

[Duper]

*shrug*  that's essentially what Descent 3 does. D3 had outside terrain as well.

[KingLeerUK]

*shrug*  that's essentially what Descent 3 does. D3 had outside terrain as well.

Descent used a portal rendering engine, which essentially drew corridors around the player to fly in.

The "outdoor" areas of Descent 3 were still constrained by this mechanic.  You could only fly so high before you found the artificial "ceiling" of the level.  It's not as though you could go outdoors and then fly into orbit.

Don't get me wrong, I love Descent and still play it fairly regularly, but for a mod project your best engine choice might still be the Descent 3 revision.  I can't think of a another title in recent years that does it better, and [that] engine is nearly a decade old.

[Duper]

D3 uses a dual engine. One for indoors and one for outdoors. At the time, doing both was something that had never been done before; not in sandbox format.

Indoors, a portal system was still used but only room to room, not cube to cube like D1 and D2 used. In D3, you use a modeling editor to literally build a level using verticies and faces etc.

Outside was like any other sandbox arena. IT had a sky "dome" rather than a sky box that even Crysis has. The terrain was square in a sphere of sorts.

Descent 3's engine is buggy. AND the source was never released. The SDK is out there but it's limited. The closest thing that could have been concidered a conversion mod was a level simulating 3d Asteroids. (SuperSheep did an awesome job on that!) The engine is antiquated by any standard and cumbersome. It also doesn't do much in the way of lighting. It has specteral and some rudermentary bumpmapping (it was one of the first to do so) but that's only in D3d no OpenGL. And, D3 wsa coded for Glide first, D3d second, and OGL as a gimped 3rd. From what the post mortem on the project said, it's exordinarily difficult to code for all three and not break one or all 3 in the process. (that was then in Dx7)

[Ghiest]

*shrug*  that's essentially what Descent 3 does. D3 had outside terrain as well.

Descent used a portal rendering engine, which essentially drew corridors around the player to fly in.

The "outdoor" areas of Descent 3 were still constrained by this mechanic.  You could only fly so high before you found the artificial "ceiling" of the level.  It's not as though you could go outdoors and then fly into orbit.

Don't get me wrong, I love Descent and still play it fairly regularly, but for a mod project your best engine choice might still be the Descent 3 revision.  I can't think of a another title in recent years that does it better, and [that] engine is nearly a decade old.

The fusion wasn't a BSP engine, but a vertex/face engine and was notorious at the time to develop for. 

[Duper]

sorry, I don't know what a BSP engine is.

I would like to say that there are ways to get around the ceiling. One of the newer versions of the D3 editor allows you to do this.  You can also build an underground structure up past it and transition from there.  Orbit?  lol no, of course not. There's no engine even today that allows for that kind of game play.  Just like the Geomoding of Red Faction was only limited to certain areas and out to only a certain distance.

[CHHš Sturmadler]

I would very much like to see a descent remake.  But it would have to include a good single-player campaign to really draw my interest.

[Ghiest]

A bsp engine is a binary space portal engine, which calculates what to show based on portals.  These type of engines include quake3/call of duty/unreal 3.  They tend to work allot more efficiently than other engines in how it displays information to the screen, but on the other hand it's a real pain in the arse to work with (compare QER to Cryeditor for map making and you will see).

[Duper]

Ohh ok. thanks Ghiest. I went googling for it, but couldn't find a clear definition.

The Fusion was/is though. It utilizes portals extensively. As for the outside terrain, that's a mystery. And a bit ..er half baked by todays standards. 

I've built numerous D3 levels.  Trust me, it uses portals. It does it room to room rather than on a cube basis. So you have a room. Lets say you attach a door. There will be a portal joining the two. (doors in D3 are a room/object hybrid).  You can cut rooms in half or however and interject a portal (if you really want to)  I would hope that that tech died out about then.

I've seen the Cryeditor. Pretty slick I Must say! The terrain editor is all kinds of crazy cool for amatures like me.  I don't script but the scripting editor reminds me of the kizmet editor for UT3.  I think arranging events in a flowchart fasion is a neat idea. I'm a visual kinda person so I appreciate that kind of gui.

Strumadler, Me too.  I prefer solo play over anarchy (death match for everyone else out there. ) Like I said, I don't script so building solo missions can be tough.

I appreciate you guys allowing me to indulge a bit in the venue.   Thanks!

[Cujo]

ok I can't read this without correcting your butchering of the phrase, degrees of freedom.  Degrees of freedom does not relate to the turret's turn radius, it refers to how many ways the turret is constrained to move.  If we consider only the turret, then all it can do is rotate along the vertical axis, so it has 1 degree of freedom.  If we add the gun to the turret, then it has 2 degrees of freedom.  An unrestrained cube, simply modeled, has 6 DoF, it can move along each coordinate Axis (X,Y,Z) and rotations about each axis.

[Duper]

ok I can't read this without correcting your butchering of the phrase, degrees of freedom.  Degrees of freedom does not relate to the turret's turn radius, it refers to how many ways the turret is constrained to move.  If we consider only the turret, then all it can do is rotate along the vertical axis, so it has 1 degree of freedom.  If we add the gun to the turret, then it has 2 degrees of freedom.  An unrestrained cube, simply modeled, has 6 DoF, it can move along each coordinate Axis (X,Y,Z) and rotations about each axis.

.... o_0

Then I'll ask you to Re-read my First post.

I'm asking how well this engine might do to make a total conversion for descent. It doesn't look like Interplay is going to last long enough to make good on their intention to do another installment so I'm looking into other alternatives.

Trust me.  I know what 360DoF is.

and Yea, descent is nothing more than BIG buildings in the ground.  Outside can be used as well. (see Descent 3)  Yes yes .. i KNOW the engine mechanics are different, but that doesn't matter.  Why would it if I was to use a completely different engine? (this is a sum-up answer over the last couple of posts that's already been addressed)

Incidentally, was a license purchased from Crytek to do MWLL or is this all SDK?

[AoP]

Incidentally, was a license purchased from Crytek to do MWLL or is this all SDK?

MechWarrior: Living Legends is a total conversion modification for Crysis and Crysis Wars.

[Duper]

Incidentally, was a license purchased from Crytek to do MWLL or is this all SDK?

MechWarrior: Living Legends is a total conversion modification for Crysis and Crysis Wars.

yes.. i know.

What kind of permissions did you need? To do a total conversion you obviously have access to the finer parts of code, perhaps even source. (I don't know, this is what I'm Getting At) When you have source access, you normally have to buy a license to the engine.

[Ravir]

We had to have official license from Microsoft in order to use real BattleTech sources without the risk of getting stomped out with a single "cease and desist".  Smaller projects can get away with it, but something like this would likely get squashed.  Neither license "cost" anything, but are given under the agreement that we can't make money off of this project.