DescentBB

Neo wrote:By the way, Zach said that he heard that his game runs on a 1 GHz CPU with 256 MB of RAM (correct me if I'm wrong) a GeForce2.

If I said 256MB of RAM I was mistaken, it's 512MB. The rest is correct though.

1GHz Intel Pentium Processor
512MB RAM
GeForce2
40GB 7,200 RPM Hard Drive

Zach

Here's a suggestion, which is completely unrealistic, but fun to think about anyway:

1) Create a physics engine that uses true finite element analysis. Realistic physics...

Using Suncho's method of criticism, how would all that make the game more fun?

One thing you could get with realistic physics is dynamic environments. When you do something, the environment is affected. You can knock things over and break things, blow holes in walls, melt things, etc. Turn water into steam, metal into liquid metal or metal vapor, freeze things so they are brittle and shatter them into shards. Knock out a support for a building and the building falls. Pierce a high pressure steam line and fill the room with hot vapor. Blow the airlock and the air rushes out, taking whatever is not nailed down with it. Destruction is fun!

Sligar wrote:

Here's a suggestion, which is completely unrealistic, but fun to think about anyway:

1) Create a physics engine that uses true finite element analysis. Realistic physics...

Using Suncho's method of criticism, how would all that make the game more fun?

One thing you could get with realistic physics is dynamic environments. When you do something, the environment is affected. You can knock things over and break things, blow holes in walls, melt things, etc. Turn water into steam, metal into liquid metal or metal vapor, freeze things so they are brittle and shatter them into shards. Knock out a support for a building and the building falls. Pierce a high pressure steam line and fill the room with hot vapor. Blow the airlock and the air rushes out, taking whatever is not nailed down with it. Destruction is fun!

That would be a nightmare to program and take ages to complete. It would also be very taxing on the system for all of the calculations to perfrom these things. They wouldnt go anywhere if they have to accomodate all of that into 20 some odd levels. Be reasonable.

JF: It could work. They got it for the PS1 game. Its worth a shot. There are controllers out there that allow you to hold 4 buttons at one time. As for programing it for the upcoming generation of new consoles, its a decision they can consider post PC release, and the PC release is about what, 8 months away? By then these next gen consoles will be closer. Also they can do what they did with the first Deus Ex by tweaking it to the console crowd and releasing it months after the PC release. Its very do-able and a good marketing strategy. Mr. Briggs should consider.

Sligar wrote:

Here's a suggestion, which is completely unrealistic, but fun to think about anyway:

1) Create a physics engine that uses true finite element analysis. Realistic physics...

Using Suncho's method of criticism, how would all that make the game more fun?

One thing you could get with realistic physics is dynamic environments. When you do something, the environment is affected. You can knock things over and break things, blow holes in walls, melt things, etc. Turn water into steam, metal into liquid metal or metal vapor, freeze things so they are brittle and shatter them into shards. Knock out a support for a building and the building falls. Pierce a high pressure steam line and fill the room with hot vapor. Blow the airlock and the air rushes out, taking whatever is not nailed down with it. Destruction is fun!

heh, we call that "The Matrix"

shield armor, crippled ships and blowing up enviroments is disturbing when it comes to descent. Things like that are simulator things and simulators are SLO MOTION GAMES.

descent gameplay is raw in your face giving ships black eyes n ★■◆●.

It would still be nice to be able to go under water.

Also it would be nice to have blow upable secrets (at least like D3 had) and other things that require "changing" the environment slightly.

Of course it's up to them to design their game how they like. I will still play it no matter what.

Simulators on the market now are only slow motion because of what they are simulating.

You can have accurate simulation and high speeds. Easy. Just put--mathmatically at least--BFEngines on whatever it is your simulating, and it'll go and accelerate really fast. Tada! Descent-like movement, accurate physics, lots of detail for fun (You get to explore the detail and the like while guarding your base, sitting around waiting for the other guy to attack, but he isn't because your team is whooping his rear).

The specs I listed here are not the system requirements. They are what the game has ran on in the early stages of development. When I list specs I list the specs of the system that ran it rather than what it will tolerate.

Zach

Release a screenshot immediately. The tension is killing me.

Top Wop wrote: That would be a nightmare to program and take ages to complete. It would also be very taxing on the system for all of the calculations to perfrom these things. They wouldnt go anywhere if they have to accomodate all of that into 20 some odd levels. Be reasonable.

*cough* Geomod */cough*

Seriously, there would obviously have to be limits on how far it would go, but it would still make the game far more interesting/challenging.

And Geo-Mod was first done in 2001. Even on old 1999 hardware it still worked fine.

Honestly, most of what Sligar mentioned isn't hard to do. Knocking things over can be easily incorporated in most games these days; blowing holes in walls is geomod and has already been done. Knocking out supports to cause things to come crashing down worked in Red Faction (I tried it myself). Not completely realistically, but it wasn't bad. Piercing high pressure lines which flood the room can actually be done in D3 with scripting; if you want to be really fancy you can use some kind of particle system to get it working. I'm not sure that's been done yet, but I think it has. The airlock effect can be similarly achieved using mere pressure differentials governing force trying to shove stuff out the door... and since D3 also has gravity tubes, that can be done as well.

Melting things I haven't seen yet, and I don't know how much CPU power it'd take. Nonetheless, you could just blow a hole and fill it up with water.

Geo-Mod sucks, because it's too easy for people to make a big hole in the floor and for players to get stuck in the floor (or in HighOctane's game's case, the walls and the ceiling, too).

Also, realistic physics aren't always fun. Getting knocked around with matter weapons isn't fun. *cough*Mass Driver*cough* *cough*Vauss*cough* =P

Not to mention that HaX can destroy the floor completely.

Killanthype wrote:(You get to explore the detail and the like while guarding your base, sitting around waiting for the other guy to attack, but he isn't because your team is whooping his rear).

If you're sitting around doing nothing waiting for them to attack, then you're not doing much to help your team and it's probably why your team is gonna start losing soon. If you were out there helping to keep the enemy busy, there'd be even *LESS* of a chance that your base would be attacked.

Neo wrote: Geo-Mod sucks, because it's too easy for people to make a big hole in the floor and for players to get stuck in the floor (or in HighOctane's game's case, the walls and the ceiling, too).

Aww, I never had that problem. Though, adding a climb key in the game would have helped a lot.

You can avoid that in a game just like you wouldn't purposly jump down a well in real life because you know you would get stuck.

Also, realistic physics aren't always fun. Getting knocked around with matter weapons isn't fun. *cough*Mass Driver*cough* *cough*Vauss*cough* =P

But it sure is fun to do it to others!


I really enjoyed the geomod in Red Faction. It made the game a lot more fun. Though I think they could have been a little more creative in using it in the game.

Yeah, Geomod sounds like a great way to push the game's release date back four years while adding only a marginal gameplay factor. AWESOME!

Sorry, but it sounds like the engine is basically done. Why encourage the developers to fall prey to feature-creep now? I'd like a Descent-like game, not a Daikatana-like failure.

As I said before:

xamindar wrote:Of course it's up to them to design their game how they like. I will still play it no matter what.

So don't get so pushed out of shape.

Neo wrote:Geo-Mod sucks, because it's too easy for people to make a big hole in the floor and for players to get stuck in the floor (or in HighOctane's game's case, the walls and the ceiling, too).

But when you've got a free-flying anti-grav ship you can't get stuck in holes. So Geomod could work here. Not to mention how many more uses we could have for it then ground pounders.

One thing I forgot to add:

Descent 2 had the ability for you to eject a weapon or missle so another team member could pick it up. This could be useful for multiplayer. Any chance you an impliment that?

Neo wrote:Geo-Mod sucks, because it's too easy for people to make a big hole in the floor and for players to get stuck in the floor (or in HighOctane's game's case, the walls and the ceiling, too).

You're not thinking in 3D Neo. You're flying a ship. How could you possibly get stuck in a floor in a hole?

Also, realistic physics aren't always fun. Getting knocked around with matter weapons isn't fun. *cough*Mass Driver*cough* *cough*Vauss*cough* =P

Thats why you impliment this manuver called dodging.

Not to mention that HaX can destroy the floor completely.

Now thats where we get to the fun part. You can help prevent cheating by having the game generate a md5 hash of the table files and levels on the server side. (This doesn't have to be done in real-time. It can be done by the installer, and later the level editor when creating missions, and on startup of the game.) When a player joins a server, the server checks the hash to verify the hash matches. If it doesn't, you don't get to play. Its not a foolproof solution by any means, but it'll help discourage cheating.

Top Wop wrote:One thing I forgot to add:

Descent 2 had the ability for you to eject a weapon or missle so another team member could pick it up. This could be useful for multiplayer. Any chance you an impliment that?

man I missed that feature. it just didn't exist in d3 ;(.

but at least in d3 that friendly fire mod came out so you could kill your teammate for their guns

god i killed bfdd so many times for a fusion

MD, it doesn't matter if you do an MD5 hash or whatever. If someone hacks their EXE to always provide a consistent MD5sum, it's of no use.

I tried this (with a CRC32 instead of an MD5) for OG3. It worked, but it was completely pointless. It comes down to trusting trust, to use a Wolf on Air expression.

BlueFlames wrote:Yeah, Geomod sounds like a great way to push the game's release date back four years while adding only a marginal gameplay factor. AWESOME!

Sorry, but it sounds like the engine is basically done. Why encourage the developers to fall prey to feature-creep now? I'd like a Descent-like game, not a Daikatana-like failure.

Good point Flame. The D3 crew went thru something like that half way through development then wound up farming out door construction.

The one thing I missed in D3 was the way the Fusion used to shake your ship and buck, hard, when the host was released. Made the gun hard to shoot but was a cool effect. In D3, it was more like a neon purple paintball gun. ...unless a tank is bearing down on you with 3.

Duper wrote:

BlueFlames wrote: The one thing I missed in D3 was the way the Fusion used to shake your ship and buck, hard, when the host was released. Made the gun hard to shoot but was a cool effect. In D3, it was more like a neon purple paintball gun. ...unless a tank is bearing down on you with 3.

The fusion you are talking about ruled. If you are flying in reverse and you shot the fusion it made your ship fly faster because of the "buck". I think a feature like this would rule because in a game like descent you have to make people catch stuff so you sometimes fly backwards hoping they come fly into whatever you shoot(at least i do). the buck would help you get out of tight situations quicky. it also adds a effect like trichording but backwards say if you were trichording backwards and shot the fusion you would be going really fast and fast is the key for a action type game. a feature like this would be great if the "buck" was'nt over done.

Any more discussions or questions can be directed to the Q&A that I have arranged with High-Octane.

This thread will remain stickied.