DescentBB

Recently, I had a chance to preview the Core Decision engine using a brief demo.

With no exageration, I was blown away.

The environments are amazing and look more realistic than anything I've seen before. One of the really cool points was the actual passage of time marked by the change from day to night. It's really smooth and and it's not like the sun just goes down and the moon comes up. It's a real transition. Very nicely done, IMO.

The other thing that really caught my eye was the weather. In the demo game, at one point it starts to rain and the rain interacts with the environment. It bounces off objects and beads where it lands. Very visually impressive.

The engine is really smooth too. I didn't notice any gliches or hang ups and I'm running a ATI Radeon x700 Pro 256MB PCI-e. About a mid-range card. Still I ran it with full settings and had no lag.

I thought they weren't doing any outdoors areas. Glad to hear they are.

Man this sounds COOL!

This does not mean that we have outdoor areas.

This demo is designed to show what the engine is capable of.

We will have areas that view the outdoors but you will still be unable to fly freely.

The biggest reason we do not have outdoor areas is because it completely changes the game flow, speed, and playability. I.E. This would cause outdoor areas to not be what we want.

Zach

I know the background pictures I recently seen blew me away. But this sounds more exciting.

zbriggs wrote:We will have areas that view the outdoors but you will still be unable to fly freely.

Ah well, Indoors is still fun.

zbriggs wrote:The biggest reason we do not have outdoor areas is because it completely changes the game flow, speed, and playability. I.E. This would cause outdoor areas to not be what we want.

Makes sense.

Im still wondering if its even going to run for us punny old AGP card users.

But it still means outdoor areas are optional right? So if someone wanted to make a level with an area where you could fly outside they could?

Presently yes, you could make an outdoor level if you wanted to.

And I run an older AGP card. Works fine. As long as the card supports PS 2.0 and DirectX 9.0 then you are probably OK. I don't however recommend going any lower than an AGP Radeon 9700 or equivalant.

Phew, I have the 9800 Pro. But I plan on upgrading later this year to most likely a SLI setup.

Good, my 6800 GT @ Ultra should be fine then, even my old 5900 Ultra would be able to keep up with that.

Nosferatu wrote:Im still wondering if its even going to run for us punny old AGP card users.

Depending on the card, it should run fine. You might want to compare your specs to the minimum specs listed for the game in this very forum.

Darn this built-in, irreplacable RADEON 9200(Mac Mini, good computer, bad upgradability). I need to get a new comp soon, although I'm looking into the intel Macs, but waiting until at least Q1 2007 to see what comes out. Baseline on those is a RADEON X1600.

what? you think radeon 9200 sux? wait Never Mind radeon 9600 pro is better

Radeon 9200 does suck. Trust me.

Zach - you make it sound like outdoor areas COULD be created if one wanted - you just elected not to for gameplay reasons? (Which is fair enough, Descent 3 didn't really work as well outdoors.)

I actually like the idea of the original developer not using all the features that the engine is capable of. It gives modders a sense of discovery of what they could be capable of doing.

One thing I wish for though, its not to have things that modders obviously are going to want to change as 'hardcoded' (such as a ship limit of only 3 *hint* *hint*), that was a nightmare in descent 3 itself and surprised me even more they would do that despite the success of half life due to its own mods.

Looks like I'll be running this game on 800x600 since I got a Radeon 9700...with Omega Drivers....does that give me a 1024x768 chance?