Friday with Means - September 2nd, 2011 - Engine Screenshots - Tir

[schloops]

I really like those screenshots. And the lighting seems interesting. And it all goes on top of a recent technology (opengl 2 - shaders). So once all is in place, they can work on adding more effects, stuff, whatever.
I'm also looking forward to the gpu doing the 3D work instead of the cpu.

Those graphics aren't the best on the market, but they are great and that is good enough. Interesting light effects combined with a dynamic sky/day-night (real night please)/weather will alone, make the views interesting. And it gives them a platform for incremental changes and it reduces lag... all I want.

May not be reasonable or doable, but I feel night could be better in ao:
- darker
- some mobs only spawning at dark
- torches (could be simple point lights) for players
- lights going on at night in cities/villages... and ideally a vigil (or multiple guards in cities) roaming around with torches.

Was wondering, will the new technology allow for mirrors/glass? I know opengl 2 has no trouble there, but can it work easily in ao? Think I remember glass somewhere but not sure.

[Nuadha]

Wrangeline - I love your suggestions, particularly the radio idea. I agree, though, that the chance of it being implemented is vanishingly small.

[omegahealer]

what wrang said about light and shadows. ever since i saw the first pictures of the new engine i can't play current AO without thinking 'where are the shadows!?'.

[Xatgunner]

Looks awesome

[Silnumtao]

My god, it's full of matrix-multiplied vectors. They should have sent... a poet.

Awesome work guys.

[Brawlking]

Augh, cant wait to see this finished! Will breathe new life into this gem of a game.

[monk13]

I Love Wrangleline's radio Idea, it sounds all kinds of awesome but would require that fc add more instruments than just mitaar and microphone

[Taranide]

Looks good, but what's with all the blur? Engine mechanics or just shop-finish?

[Kopecz]

Jeez I just realized it's September 3. You know what that mean? It's a new fiscal year! It's Quarter 1 all over again! Way to go Funcom. 2021 here we come!

[tzalman]

I'm thinking a "1st half 2012" release on the new engine. I hope its closer than that buts what seems most logical right now. What do you all think? (Kintai and Means too)

[haxi]

Public performance of cover songs requires licensing. Also, I seriously doubt any serious writer is going to grant FC "ownership" of their material.

[Firace6]

I'm just imaging the chaos in borealis, everyone wearing light bars projecting dynamic shadows!

Lightbar party!

[Kane-Hart]

Going tip this to massively :P

[Xandathrii]

OMG Tir!!!!!! Love it!

[neverest]

Just do it quick and get it released. Pimping it up, you can do after its live.

[erozc]

Fix totw's halls to make them a bit bigger... or add more culties (J/K even if it is fun walking around with a city of culties following you )

Random totally-unrelated comment of the month it appears. Yes, if TOTW was fixed it would make much impact on player satisfaction (not).

Just do it quick and get it released. Pimping it up, you can do after its live.

Isn't this what they did in original AO release? I guess they might have forgotten, after 10 years, how it was

[Regidoc]

The most important aspect of the new engine to me is the lighting/shadows. Nothing else (graphically speaking, not talking design here) has as much impact on what a game feels like visually than good lighting and shadows.

Warm colored light early in the morning and colder bluish light in the evening/night and individual lightsources and the sun casting shadows and such. This to me is 90% of what the new engine offers. The last 10% being better foliage (grass/trees) and higher polygon characters.

Now we need an ingame radio. A radio that is located inside RK missions (on desks/tables), that people also can buy from a shop and put in their apartments and so on. The music on this radio will be music made/recorded by players and sent to FC. FC will put the music in the game but only on radios, so only people near a radio can hear it. What music is played depends on where the radio is and is chosen by FC.

So some players that are good with electronica and such can make music that can be heard in main omni city locations or in bars or clubs. People that play classical guitar or piano or whatever can have their music be heard on radios in apartments and such. Radios can be turned on and off and the volume depends on how close to the radio you are standing. Song-library will run on a loop.

The music can be original created work or can be covers of various well known songs. Froobs have access to this content as well so its free and no one is making any money on anything in hopes that this wont attract lawsuits. Anything sent to FC that is original created work, automatically grants FC ownership of that work so once its sent, no one except FC can claim ownership of it

I know I'm talking partially out of my arse here because something like this will probably never be implemented. I just think it's fun to think about and talk about

I know we got some talented musicians here and it would be fun to have some fun with that and add some musical variation to the game since all ingame music is so old by now. Most people I know play AO with the sound turned off, which is a shame, yet perfectly understandable.

There's something similar to that in Second Life. You can tune into radio stations using quick time there as it's implemented as part of the game.

[Mastablasta]

Hardly think textures, resources, or DirectX 9 has anything to do with "Information Technology" illiteracy.

The statement "quite modern" is at best vague. Is the Dreamfall engine "quite modern"? All depends on what measuring stick you are using.

If we get the new engine by x-mas, or just before, that would be fantastic, and also fun.

Didn't you know that IT is the new umbrella-catchall that fits over everything related to anything that takes place on a computer?

At best vague, cause it's a vague thing to talk about. It supports the full list of DX9 features and a bunch of dx10 features, and by extension the DX11 subset of DX10, should they ever want to make use of that. But it's also an MMO engine, where most MMOs do not make use of much of this technology, sitting in a pretty stale looking version of DX9 making use of very few of the "free" ways to get things to look pretty. Or indeed, just make use of environment shadows... Hell, most singleplayer games don't even do this.

[Siyra]

There's something similar to that in Second Life. You can tune into radio stations using quick time there as it's implemented as part of the game.

Along with YouTube allowing the display of movies on prims (objects) such as TVs.

Entropia Universe also has (or had, been a while) a juke box in bars that would play a selection of music. I recall a player wrote a song and got it added to the juke box.

[Cogline]

Nice pics. Great to know I'll have a nice view while those guards shoot me for being a Neutral...