Frostbite DX got any other major features apart from the destructible environments that would change gameplay a lot?
It has real world lighting so you could change the time of day on all maps. That would add more variety again. You could play at sunset or in the dark.
There are two ways of doing this destructible environment thing:
1. send information on what is destroyed by what, and client computers take over, render the scene and calculate damage to the environment. Minimum bandwidth required, but highly risk on inconsistent game content among clients and the server.
2. server calculates the damage and send information to clients. High bandwidth required, serious lag expected, but also comes with high consistency.
Both PS3 and Xbox 360 have multicore processors to handle these kind of stuff. I guess that everybody is going to need quad-core CPU when BF3 comes out. PC gaming industry will determine who is the winner of CPU wars by the end of 2010. nVidia is not looking good with the CUDA thing, and AMD is certainly not good if they can't get tri or quad-core CPUs to 3GHz with reasonable power consumption (and heat generation). I hope that gaming industry can embrace OpenGL and dump Direct3D, and use OpenGL's extended function to compute vector/matrix-intensive algorithms. But the industry is not going that way, so we'd better cross our finger and hope PS3 and XBox game developers will support mouse and keyboard, or some genius in Microsoft finally comes with a good idea of FPS game controller.
I don't know about that, red faction had pretty extensive geomodding and that game is aaancient =o
If a game back then can do it easily AND online, I don't see why today's games can't either with little performance hit.
Red Faction's engine can operate for fairly closed (and small) environment like tunnels in Mars by insertion of empty objects. Open space FPS is different and requires much more computing power.
I've done some play testing of destructible environments and it's not all that it is cracked up to be.
After just a few minutes into the round most of the cover in the most contested areas had been destroyed. After that, it became unfun very quickly and turned into the equivalent of trench warfare in WW1 where no one wanted to pop their head up.
There's a balance which has to be found and maintained for maximum playability.
I've done some play testing of destructible environments and it's not all that it is cracked up to be.
After just a few minutes into the round most of the cover in the most contested areas had been destroyed. After that, it became unfun very quickly and turned into the equivalent of trench warfare in WW1 where no one wanted to pop their head up.
There's a balance which has to be found and maintained for maximum playability.
This would be up to the level designers to put objects into the map that still make for some interesting gameplay, even after the surroundings have been destroyed. For example indestructible walls that maybe only make for 30% of the overall objects which still gives lots of things to be destroyed.
However, it would be damn funny if there's buildings to enter (FOB) and a squad of RDXers take the whole building down.
Exactly. The environments should not be more than 60-70 destructible to ensure that the battlespace does not devolve into a flat plane. Certain statics need to remain inviolate for playability.
Red Faction's engine can operate for fairly closed (and small) environment like tunnels in Mars by insertion of empty objects. Open space FPS is different and requires much more computing power.
Not relevant. If Red Faction was created today, it would be but this is an almost decade old game doing something that should have become standard, long ago =P
Not relevant. If Red Faction was created today, it would be but this is an almost decade old game doing something that should have become standard, long ago =P
Agreed
That should have become a standard ever since. To think of the thousands and thousands of guys I couldn've killed if the environment was realistically destructible; just kills me!
Not to mention hundreds pf deaths I wouldn't gotten, like when I hide behind .50-proof card board boxes.
Couldn't someone make a range of objects that are like red barrels/boxes and after a certain number of damage points they trigger an animation (explode)?
Exactly. The environments should not be more than 60-70 destructible to ensure that the battlespace does not devolve into a flat plane. Certain statics need to remain inviolate for playability.
I disagree, it should be 100% destructible. Bring it all down. Hide behind an APC or tank for cover.
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