FEAR AI & physics, a decade without progress

[Blitzvogel]

Never forget another implementation of water physics, UT2003/4:

http://youtu.be/mxeUztzPIzU

Again, pretty inconsistent in that not all water in the game was reactive, and the quality of the effect varied from map to map (many a joke has been made about gelatin). Still, it's quite rare to have properly interactive water physics (as opposed to the bogus effects you see in Gamebryo etc.)

Possibly even more surprising is that Unreal Championship 2 had UE2's liquid physics implemented as well as - if not better than - UT2004, and that was on the (original) Xbox!

The water effects in UT2004 look like they are implemented as a 2D layer (like in Bioshock) on top of a generally oscillating 3D geometry. I don't have the game to see in person, so it's hard to tell.

Been playing through FEAR for Halloween and uploading it to Youtube the past week. I have Intervals 5 all uploaded so far and part of 6. Hopefully I'll have it all done by the weekend. Yes, I'm shamelessly plugging this [again].

 

[ThinClient]

oh, and FEAR Online is garbage, BTW.

 

[Puppies04]

I remember reading an intersting atricle about AI a couple of years back.

A games developer was basically saying that AI was taking more and more of a back seat because you can't show it on a screen shot and can cherry pick video clips so it doesn't appear awful.

Basically you have already bought the game before you realise the enemy AI is crap and by that point the developer doesn't care.

I can imagine the board meeting:

"We would like another 5 coders to work on the AI"

"Hold on, the last game we made had poor AI and it sold bucket loads"

"Yes it did but...."

"Shut up Brian, we can save time and money here, sheesh it isn't like anyone else is pushing the envelope on AI. What are they (the customers) going to do? Lets employ 5 more people to work on the sun shafts, they seem to sell well"

"But...."

"Thats an order Brian"

"Ok sir"

 

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[Blitzvogel]

EDIT: Here's a good still where you can see the troughs in some disrupted water against the wall:

My mistake :thumbsup:

I think I still have a copy of Max Payne 2 somewhere. I've only fired it up once ever, but considering how you compare it to the first FEAR in terms of atmosphere, I might have to play it again. Does MP2 take place completely at night only?

 

[shortylickens]

Max Payne 2 was good stuff.

 

[Tweak155]

Funny, because I didn't think MP2 was as good as the first, but I still liked it.

Started F.E.A.R, it's OK so far. I can't help but wonder why the graphics aren't nearly as good as HL2? Didn't that come out 2 years earlier?

EDIT:

Nvm, it was only one year. But HL2 looks a LOT better.

 

[dguy6789]

lol @ the notion that an XB1 core is 3x as fast as a 360 core...

I couldn't tell you if it's exactly 3x faster but that is not necessarily even a liberal estimate. The new gen consoles overall are many times more powerful than the 360 and PS3.

 

[escrow4]

Anyone noticed that nearly all these games were shining single player examples? With lengthy single player campaigns? We need another shooter like Wolfenstein, a long(er) single player only shooter where single player isn't a throwaway addon.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Fear 3 was awful

I really enjoyed Fear 2 as well as the original.

I loved FEAR for its day, that was one seriously impressive games. I remember listening to the devs commentary on the game where they wished they only had the time to make the clocks in game behave dynamically and tick like real clocks...they really wanted to put that extra element in.

FEAR 2 despite a lot of consolization, and me having a particular problem with the dumbing down of games was surprised to see that it was quite good, mostly in the context of a horror game, they managed to really hit a cinematic stride with that game and it was popular for PC gamers at the time to trash the 2nd game, I actually really enjoyed it.

Fear 3 was pretty shit, other than the unique coop game modes which were fun for a few hours at our LAN parties.

 

[Blitzvogel]

Funny, because I didn't think MP2 was as good as the first, but I still liked it.

Started F.E.A.R, it's OK so far. I can't help but wonder why the graphics aren't nearly as good as HL2? Didn't that come out 2 years earlier?

EDIT:

Nvm, it was only one year. But HL2 looks a LOT better.

I agree with you except with the shadowing and some of the special effects. I really wish HL2 had some sort of global shadowing including self shadowing that wouldn't come around until Episode 2, but only via the flashlight. CS: Global Offensive has global shadowing though, so I'm surprised it hasn't been put into the older Source games.

 

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[Blitzvogel]

Well the game would need good looking muzzle flashes during slow-mo. I'm going to assume the PS2 version had very comparable muzzle flashes with the Graphics Synthesizer's dedicated 2560-bit bus to the 4 MB eDRAM (48 GB/s!).

Edit: Holy shit, the PS2 version looks like ass.

 

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[misle]

It's not quite the same thing, but Max Payne 3 is really good.

I hated Max Payne 3. I love MP 1 & 2, but after 45 minutes of shit cut scenes, I just uninstalled MP 3.

 

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