Game News Project Eternity Kickstarter Update #49: Prototype Demo

[Davaris]

Am I the only one who thinks this assumption is bizarre? When was the last time "ordinary PC" was commonly defined as a PC without a graphics card?? 1998? o_O

Integrated graphics???

 

[J_C]

And they say they are running it on an ordinary PC. By ordinary, I assume they mean no graphics card.

Am I the only one who thinks this assumption is bizarre? When was the last time "ordinary PC" was commonly defined as a PC without a graphics card?? 1998? o_O

Way back than 1998. This assumptions is stupid. You NEED a graphics card/chip (integrated or stand alone) whatever you want to do on a PC. Ordinary PC just means average, several years old rig.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Am I the only one who thinks this assumption is bizarre? When was the last time "ordinary PC" was commonly defined as a PC without a graphics card?? 1998? o_O

Integrated graphics???

Last time I had an integrated graphics chip was 7 years ago on some shitty laptop. What J_C said, they just mean its a standard, ordinary rig. I guess what Sawyer wanted to make clear is that the fancy-looking level uses a pre-rendered background which makes it much less demanding hardware-wise than if they used a realtime 3D graphics engine to render this level of graphical quality. (Because it does look really fancy, better than any top-down 3D game I have ever seen. Compare this to say, Diablo III)

 

[Davaris]

I only got myself a proper graphics card for programming a few years ago and even that was out of date then. So I am way behind you guys.

 

[Zeriel]

It's also worth mentioning that these days the hardware of a PC isn't changing very much at all in the span of a few years. The only thing that really noticeably improves is the video card. Five year old quad core Athlons still chew through games like they're contemporary.

 

[Brayko]

Gaming has never been very CPU intensive. Maybe a few exceptions here and there but overall no. GPU's will always be the trump card for gaming. Having an SSD drive and a good amount of RAM will see fast loading times, which is always good to.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I'm curious, could anyone explain how exactly what Obsidian showed in the demo works from a technical point of view?
I imagine they took a pre-rendered background and put a second 3D-"layer" on it which contains all the animated effects, water, the animated waterfall etc. Maybe I should have put it the other way around: They created a basic 3D level in Unity containing just the basic stuff like the watefall and other 3D effects and added the pre-rendered 2D background to it. Is that about right?

Quick suggestion is: MovieTexture (Animated texture or video file). Animated waterfall is probably done with particle system.

 

[Infinitron]

I'm curious, could anyone explain how exactly what Obsidian showed in the demo works from a technical point of view?
I imagine they took a pre-rendered background and put a second 3D-"layer" on it which contains all the animated effects, water, the animated waterfall etc. Maybe I should have put it the other way around: They created a basic 3D level in Unity containing just the basic stuff like the watefall and other 3D effects and added the pre-rendered 2D background to it. Is that about right?

There is no 3D geometry in the scene, according to Sawyer. So no "3D layer".

 

[aliquidparadigm]

And they say they are running it on an ordinary PC. By ordinary, I assume they mean no graphics card.

Integrated graphics? Probably. Modern integrated graphics should be able to handle a game like this, though. My parents inherited my old X1600XT and can still play games like Limbo, World of Goo, NightSky, and other HumbleBundle games with it, and PE may not even require as much (or much more, at worst) as those.

 

[St. Toxic]

Integrated cards are coming back in style.

 

[Davaris]

I got my answer and was told it looks like 2D color/depth sprites.

http://books.google.com.au/books?id...0CDoQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=depth-sprites&f=false

The way the waterfall was standing vertically in the level, shown at the end, had me a little confused. If it was sitting flat with the render image, it would have made sense to me. So I understand what they did now. This is good old sprite programming.

 

[Brzęczyszczykiewicz]

Minimum requirements for PE will be probably more or less:
CPU: shitty dual core intel atom
GPU: Intel HD 2000
Ram: 1 GB XP, 2 GB vista and 7,8
15-20 GB of free place on HDD

 

[Jasede]

Oh yeah the install is going to the huge if the Infinity Engine games are anything to go by. Like... really, really huge.

 

[TwinkieGorilla]

Integrated cards are coming back in style.

Uh oh, wait 'til the WCDS hears about this!

 

[Semper]

Making the water rise and fall for the waterfall isn't a special feature for that selected area? Pray tell, how much rising and falling water is planned for Eternity? [...] They've spent a lot of time making one area look good. And sure, it looks great - and dynamic! But I'd sure love to see one of these other exteriors "they've worked on".

hmkay... implementing scrolling uvs or particle emitters can only be used for waterfalls, never thought of that. developing the tools to quickly implement this sort of stuff into your engine ain't just there for one single area, they're using this to touch up every pre-rendered area. ever opened a sdk or toolset? in most cases you'll find one or two areas where all the engine experiments and implementations are stuffed to test them in-game. i doubt that this outdoor scene is such an area, but i bet that this is their most developed area so far.

there's no need to touch up other areas when your implementation doesn't work the way you want it. hardest part is always a flexible and solid pipeline.

The way the waterfall was standing vertically in the level, shown at the end, had me a little confused. If it was sitting flat with the render image, it would have made sense to me.

it stand vertically because the in-game camera is an orthographic one. the pre-rendered background is sitting flat on the ground (big image plane - probably dozens of them to load and swap them dynamically to keep memory foot prints small) with a baked isometric view. now if you place a model on the plane it will blend in if you recreate the camera's render view. the waterfall could be simply box with scrolling uvs to get that effect.

 

[tuluse]

Integrated graphics? Probably. Modern integrated graphics should be able to handle a game like this, though. My parents inherited my old X1600XT and can still play games like Limbo, World of Goo, NightSky, and other HumbleBundle games with it, and PE may not even require as much (or much more, at worst) as those.

PE will have 3d elements like characters. While it should run on some slow hardware, it's not going to be easier to run than a pure 2d game.

 

[Arkeus]

Oh yeah the install is going to the huge if the Infinity Engine games are anything to go by. Like... really, really huge.

My feeling is that, like BG install, there will be different options: crappy graphic, medium graphic, HD graphic even in the downloads setups, so that you actually don't need to DL 30GB files if you are on a crappy laptop.

 

[tuluse]

Oh yeah the install is going to the huge if the Infinity Engine games are anything to go by. Like... really, really huge.

Image compression wasn't used in IE games, all the backgrounds were stored as bitmaps. Just changing that to PNGs would decrease their harddrive space by about 2/3.

My feeling is that, like BG install, there will be different options: crappy graphic, medium graphic, HD graphic even in the downloads setups, so that you actually don't need to DL 30GB files if you are on a crappy laptop.

The different installs in BG were about how much was left on the CDs.

 

[Davaris]

Oh boy.

You just stirred the Hornets nest.

I didn't understand what I was looking at when I said that, but now I do. This engine is using Baldur's Gate rendering methods, with the addition of 3D effects. There is nothing convoluted about it.

 

[Davaris]

Now watch this:

What am I looking for?

 

[Davaris]

The 3D models and how well they are rendered.

It looks pretty fine to me. I liked it when I first saw it and still do. It would be interesting to compare them both, if they pulled the camera back more.

 

[Davaris]

The point is that 3D real time rendering can be done well and yes, it looks very nice too. Not to mentions it contributes heavily to good mechanics since you cab then implement more modifiers such as from terrain, heights etc better.

Agree with you on most everything there. Height maps can be simulated somewhat with bitmaps. But the customers like the look of the pre-renders, so what can you do?

 

[tuluse]

modifiers such as from terrain, heights etc better.

These are equally easy to do from 2D and 3D. See Sid Meier's Civil War games.

 

[Jasede]

Oh yeah the install is going to the huge if the Infinity Engine games are anything to go by. Like... really, really huge.

Image compression wasn't used in IE games, all the backgrounds were stored as bitmaps. Just changing that to PNGs would decrease their harddrive space by about 2/3.

I am a complete compression noob, isn't there a loss of quality when you convert from .bmp to anything?
And I wouldn't mind a huge download anyway, so it's moot.

 

[tuluse]

I am a complete compression noob, isn't there a loss of quality when you convert from .bmp to anything?
And I wouldn't mind a huge download anyway, so it's moot.

PNGs are lossless which is why I chose that format for the comparison.

GIFs can also be lossless, but you have to 256 or fewer colors.