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[IbizaPocholo]

Don't know about "better" but the Killzone 2 engine was always fucking amazing.

Yes

Popular ones being the Cryengine, Doom engine, Quake, Id Tech, Unreal, Source, etc. You know the drill.

I'm going to focus on 2004-2005 time frame. This was the Doom 3/Half-Life 2 era. Everyone was nuts about these new engines, especially the Doom 3 engine, which was also the most demanding. Now, during that time, FarCry was also released and out of nowhere, there was this FPS that could bring great looking outdoor areas with lush foliage and draw distances. After that, the Cryengine and it's "sequels" became another popular engine. Doom3 engine, however, still had some things going for it. Mostly the lighting. Neither FarCry or HL2 could come close to that.

So how about a game, that also came out of nowhere, had it's own engine, had just as good or even better lighting and was also less demanding?

I'll give you The Chronicles or Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay


This game also came out of nowhere and it was also a movie license. Last good movie licence game was, what, Goldeneye? And not only that, but i think this game had superior visuals compared to Doom 3, beating it in it's own game.

It had even better lighting with some fancy bloom effects, you could see your own shadow too. It was also less demanding and in the XBOX version, the flashlights could cast real time shadows, unlike the XBOX version of Doom 3 where it couldn't. You could even shoot off and destroy light sources, making areas darker (since it was crucial to the game style, Riddick was more effective in the darkness). In Doom 3 you could only do this in a few instances.

it also had much better 3D human models and Riddick himself is still one of the best looking 3D models ever IMO.

So what happened to that engine? Did any other game use it? Why it never became popular? What really makes a game engine popular anyway?

Yes

4A Engine used by Metro 2033 and Last Light. 1080p and rock solid 60fps on current gen.



Also the current IW engine that CoD uses is really impressive. People used to mock it last gen for being based on id Tech 3 but on current gen it's fantastic.

Yes

Guerilla Games Engine:

And yes.

I agree with those examples.

 

[gabbo]

Didn't Monolith used it for Shadow of Mordor or at least a modified version of it?

Yes apparently. I didn't know that when I posted originally.
Their inner goings-on escaped me after their WB purchase.

 

[DOWN]

Last gen's MT Framework was slick as fuck on Dead Rising, Lost Planet, and Resident Evil 5. Capcom was golden for a while with that one.

Pray for Panta Rhei

 

[Dictator93]

Yes. They all came from the same root but by now the three games are not the same tech anymore. That's what we try to tell you.

Your response kind of did not single out one of my questions so it is a bit confused. To keep it straight...
You are saying Blops 3 is not based on the engine created for AW's? Inspite of all the graphical systems in it which are matched?

 

[DOWN]

Your response kind of did not single out one of my questions so it is a bit confused. To keep it straight...
You are saying Blops 3 is not based on the engine created for AW's? Inspite of all the graphical systems in it which are matched?

Correct as far as I've read. it's been confirmed in the past that the devs do not build upon a unified and growing engine even though they do end up implementing each other's improvements over time (unlike much of what Assassin's Creed devs share upon new sequels where they have a specific goal of building up the single engine for the series for the other studios to try working with). Much of Advanced Warfare's engine and graphical improvements are absent in Black Ops 3 for this reason (and explains the somewhat controversial weaker graphics claims by fans towards Black Ops 3 upon its trailer reveal).

 

[RoyalFool]

Google is failing me, there was a first person FPS that came out just a few weeks after Quake, it had pretty awesome 3D graphics plus you could blow the limbs off the robots, i remember the main difference being it ran on way lower spec machines than Quake but (from what I remember) looked just as good. Remember rocking it on a 486 and being amazed!

But that Quake hype buried it, would love to find out what happened to the developer.

Thought it was called 'Khrome' or 'Chrome' - enemies were all robots, that's all I can remember!

 

[JNT]

first person FPS

As opposed to a third person FPS?

In all seriousness, can't say I know what game you're talking about.

 

[julzillamilitia]

Guerilla Games Engine:

.

 

[EvB]

And parts of that engine got ported over to Destiny's Tiger engine as well. 'If it aint broke', etc.

The engine was forked off after Halo Reach, Destiny and Halo 4 uses their own variants to suit those games.

 

[Dictator93]

Correct as far as I've read. it's been confirmed in the past that the devs do not build upon a unified and growing engine even though they do end up implementing each other's improvements over time (unlike much of what Assassin's Creed devs share upon new sequels where they have a specific goal of building up the single engine for the series for the other studios to try working with). Much of Advanced Warfare's engine and graphical improvements are absent in Black Ops 3 for this reason (and explains the somewhat controversial weaker graphics claims by fans towards Black Ops 3 upon its trailer reveal).

Everything I have seen about BLOPS 3 though has it having superior graphical features to AW. Perhaps people are talking about art?

I am still confused about this, as I see massive similarities in the rendering.

 

[Guerrillas in the Mist]

Also the current IW engine that CoD uses is really impressive. People used to mock it last gen for being based on id Tech 3 but on current gen it's fantastic.

For games that were designed around reaching 60fps relatively consistently last-gen, they were good looking games. I felt that COD4, WaW and especially MW2 outdid a lot of their lower framerate contemporaries in many areas, although there were obvious sacrifices like the resolution, the mostly pre-baked lighting etc.

 

[neopokekun]

Google is failing me, there was a first person FPS that came out just a few weeks after Quake, it had pretty awesome 3D graphics plus you could blow the limbs off the robots, i remember the main difference being it ran on way lower spec machines than Quake but (from what I remember) looked just as good. Remember rocking it on a 486 and being amazed!

Sounds like Chasm: The Rift.

 

[element]

Literally anything that isn't Unreal.

Ass backwards pipeline, terrible support, and doesn't expose you to having your game legally erased from history by a homer judge after you're left twisting in the wind by the engine provider.

Is that you Denis or someone related to Silicon Knights? Bitter a little?

Most of 1st party devs' own engine are better, simply because they're a lot more optimized.

That isn't necessarily true. Much like any software open source or licensed, you can change it to what you need. If (and there are) first party studios on any platform using UE4, Crytek or Unity can apply their own resources to improve performance to a specific platform if they want too. Being middleware doesn't prevent someone from doing this.

Someone like SCE could have used UE4 as a foundation and forked it to make a version specifically tuned to PS4. But they would still be paying for the license and have no ownership of the core technology. By rolling their own technology and sharing it among studios, they establish a consistent pipeline and renderer without having to pay a licensee fee to an outside party AND they own it. Though they have to build everything.

It comes down to money and how you want to spend and invest it.