I remember the good old days when I was a little kid playing around with the games Unreal and Unreal Tournament 1. Soon I started fiddling directly with the engine experimenting with more exotic things such as AI simulations or making movies. What fascinated me albeit it was really poorly documented, was the UnrealScript feature which basically is kind of like JavaScript but tailored for elements in the environment allowing for more advanced scripting of elements such as actors (monsters, NPCs, turrets, vehicles, etc), weapons, particle systems, light effects, advanced AI and so on. I looked upon this engine as the engine of the future but my friends didn't share my enthusiasm as much cooler games came along at the time. Now, many years later, the Unreal engine still lives and is thriving.
Then a few years later I came upon Doom 3. Something that struck me was that it was considerably more technically advanced than other contemporary games and much more stable. Firstly, it was visually stunning, you had a metallic shine that I hadn't seen in other games, you had heat effects beautifully visualizing distortions in the air from turbulent flows of hot air. Also, you didn't only have dead textures but you also had interactive panels directly in the textures in the game which I considered mind blowing. But the final aspect of this engine that really made it stand out was how stable it was. For example, switching between the game and other programs is still an issue today, the switching between the game and another program commonly takes around 10 seconds and it is common that when you switch back to the game, you either have a black screen where you cannot do anything but restart the game, or when you switch back, you end up in windowed mode unable to go back to the same old fullscreen mode without restarting the game. With the DOOM3 engine, switching between it and another program was a breeze and you could always rest assured that switching to or from the game will never lead to bad behaviour. Also something else that struck me was how well the engine worked with other applications. You see, on my laptop where I ran the game, when adjusting the volume or changing the contrast or any other hardware specific properties with one of the custom hardware keys of the laptop, a nice graphical HUD or OSD with a bar or other indicator of current volume pops up, beautifully overlayed on top of the desktop with a semitransparent alpha blend effect. Usually while running a game in fullscreen, these HUDs never show up. But in DOOM3 these features had no problems with blending in with the DOOM3 game engine and I was very surprised that it even was possible!
In more recent years I have partially lost touch with the computer games front but I read still with great interest about different technologies out there. I think ID software is or at least used to be one of the major pioneers in the field coming up with very interesting new technologies from time to time. I heard they used a revolutionary texture application method for the game of Rage that speeds things up considerably.
I really liked the half-life series but apart from the physics that were introduced with hl2, I was actually not that impressed with the engine. I like the TES games but to tell the truth, I find the engine those games are based upon to be buggy and bloated. For instance, a game like Skyrim when considering it runs on a PS3, should run very smoothly on a PC even with 2011 years of PC hardware. But the GUI is hopelessly laggy and sluggish.
So I was delighted to read that Bethesda were considering teaming up with ID Software for a new game engine to be used with future Fallout and TES series. But my delight was not shared which I experienced in the following now closed thread:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2753286/bethesda-fallout-presentation-gamescom-opinion.html#16442789
It doesn't look like Fallout 4 is based on any of the id Tech games but who knows what contributions have been made to their Creation engine.
I cannot say that the Wolfenstein or 'The Evil Within' games that supposedly are based off of the Rage engine are very impressive but I guess that is a matter of feature implementation. But the preview of the latest DOOM game looks very promising:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjzUFlk0eR8
The particle system implementation together with volumetric lighting and global illumination looks really nice so it still looks promising for ID Software.
Then I saw the following Youtube clips of potential future engines:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AvCxa9Y9NU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTF7wz0-AQs
Some people say that Euclideon is fake though.
I'm aware that there is much more to this than just the visuals such as the 'logistics' behind the development process and the availability of tools to handle such 'logistics', and other features such as storytelling or even AI which is still abysmal among games and hasn't improved significantly during the past 20 years!!!
So which engine has the most potential and where is the FPS technology going?
Then a few years later I came upon Doom 3. Something that struck me was that it was considerably more technically advanced than other contemporary games and much more stable. Firstly, it was visually stunning, you had a metallic shine that I hadn't seen in other games, you had heat effects beautifully visualizing distortions in the air from turbulent flows of hot air. Also, you didn't only have dead textures but you also had interactive panels directly in the textures in the game which I considered mind blowing. But the final aspect of this engine that really made it stand out was how stable it was. For example, switching between the game and other programs is still an issue today, the switching between the game and another program commonly takes around 10 seconds and it is common that when you switch back to the game, you either have a black screen where you cannot do anything but restart the game, or when you switch back, you end up in windowed mode unable to go back to the same old fullscreen mode without restarting the game. With the DOOM3 engine, switching between it and another program was a breeze and you could always rest assured that switching to or from the game will never lead to bad behaviour. Also something else that struck me was how well the engine worked with other applications. You see, on my laptop where I ran the game, when adjusting the volume or changing the contrast or any other hardware specific properties with one of the custom hardware keys of the laptop, a nice graphical HUD or OSD with a bar or other indicator of current volume pops up, beautifully overlayed on top of the desktop with a semitransparent alpha blend effect. Usually while running a game in fullscreen, these HUDs never show up. But in DOOM3 these features had no problems with blending in with the DOOM3 game engine and I was very surprised that it even was possible!
In more recent years I have partially lost touch with the computer games front but I read still with great interest about different technologies out there. I think ID software is or at least used to be one of the major pioneers in the field coming up with very interesting new technologies from time to time. I heard they used a revolutionary texture application method for the game of Rage that speeds things up considerably.
I really liked the half-life series but apart from the physics that were introduced with hl2, I was actually not that impressed with the engine. I like the TES games but to tell the truth, I find the engine those games are based upon to be buggy and bloated. For instance, a game like Skyrim when considering it runs on a PS3, should run very smoothly on a PC even with 2011 years of PC hardware. But the GUI is hopelessly laggy and sluggish.
So I was delighted to read that Bethesda were considering teaming up with ID Software for a new game engine to be used with future Fallout and TES series. But my delight was not shared which I experienced in the following now closed thread:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-2753286/bethesda-fallout-presentation-gamescom-opinion.html#16442789
It doesn't look like Fallout 4 is based on any of the id Tech games but who knows what contributions have been made to their Creation engine.
I cannot say that the Wolfenstein or 'The Evil Within' games that supposedly are based off of the Rage engine are very impressive but I guess that is a matter of feature implementation. But the preview of the latest DOOM game looks very promising:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjzUFlk0eR8
The particle system implementation together with volumetric lighting and global illumination looks really nice so it still looks promising for ID Software.
Then I saw the following Youtube clips of potential future engines:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AvCxa9Y9NU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTF7wz0-AQs
Some people say that Euclideon is fake though.
I'm aware that there is much more to this than just the visuals such as the 'logistics' behind the development process and the availability of tools to handle such 'logistics', and other features such as storytelling or even AI which is still abysmal among games and hasn't improved significantly during the past 20 years!!!
So which engine has the most potential and where is the FPS technology going?
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