id Tech 5, Still Alive!

Graf Zahl said:

I want to play something new that is fun. Is that too much to ask?

Bioshock is due august.
Quakewars is looking promising with it's flair of Command and Conquer esque mission objectives.

That's two games that I am looking forward to playing. But they'll probably suck, cause they have new cool technology boosting their world presentation.

Although it's not first person, Gears of war is supposed to come to the PC too. Unreal3 engine is an impressive piece of technology, and Gears of war is a very fun game. (Especially in Cooperative)

No new games are gonna be good if your attitude is that they'll suck.

EDIT: And neither if your attitude is that they'll be the greatest thing since sliced bread.

AirRaid said:

The Source engine already has this. You can blend textures together using a mask, which is pretty quick and easy to use.

Quake3 already has this too

As do Doom3, although you need models to use it.

kristus said:

EDIT: And neither if your attitude is that they'll be the greatest thing since sliced bread.

For me, KDiZD is that, though I didn't expect it. ;)

@Graf Zahl: Maybe there are still companies which find new algorithms for better effects (i.e. this megatexture) and ones which try to imagine a gameplay. Most of the help comes from enthusiasts who do it for personal amusement, not from companies which search for profit. In the end (in the final end), why pay when can code stuff into the think box?

One of the things you have to remember is that Carmack has specifically stated that he's working towards making his 3D engines be capable of being used for non-realtime applications -- in his keynote at Quakecon last year or the year before, he talked about how the only difference between real-time and Pixar-quality in his latest engine was how long it took each frame to render. So to that end he's adding features that are of interest to artists in general, not just game artists, and being able to uniquely texture anything in the world quickly and easily is a great thing to that end. I agree that the whole megatexture thing is not really gee whiz like Doom 3's real-time lighting was, but realtime rendering is getting to the point where it's limited not by the programmer's abilities but by the speed of the hardware. Carmack knows that any idiot can make a great-looking engine with all the features on 3D cards nowadays, so he's spending his time on less obvious features that are nevertheless of use to content creators.

Wait, 20GB of textures in that little demo? I'd hate to see how much disk space the next id game is going to require.

id's pretty good with keeping filesize down. Carmack knows how to optimize, which is very apparent with Doom 3, which only required 3 CD's. ;) The "20GB of Textures" is probably more about showing off the engine's capabilities than an honest estimate how much space their next game will use.

exp(x) said:

Wait, 20GB of textures in that little demo? I'd hate to see how much disk space the next id game is going to require.

Nowadays we have 250GB hard drives as standard. When Doom 1 came out (~15MB) we had 200MB hard drives. If the next Id game is 20GB, the "amount of your hard drive" that it uses is roughly the same.

What about those of us who can't afford new hard drives? I've been stuck with an 80 GB for the past couple years and it may be a while until I can actually upgrade the thing. I'd hate to have to uninstall some other games that are oversized already just to install something 20 gigs and end up not liking it.

A harddrive isn't exactly expensive-

kristus said:

A harddrive isn't exactly expensive

10,000 RPM ones are :(

Now I can't wait to see what the actual game is -- this reminds of the first peek at the Doom3 engine (also at an apple convention).
Is this the same engine (idTech5) that the new Wolfenstein will be created with? IIRC it was said they would use the same engine.

**COUGH** 40 gig hard drive on my other computer, 80 on this **COUGH**
And when were 80 gigs standard?
40 gigs???
2 gigs????(I miss DOS 6.0) :')

Try just having two 15 gig hard drives, one of them taken up by Windows XP. Now guess why Doom is one of my favorite games. :D

kristus said:
A harddrive isn't exactly expensive-

Given that I just built a half-terabyte RAID for under $150USD, I'd have to agree...

And I have a 1 terabyte raid system. Hard disk drives are cheap.

Cheap hard drives are cheap.

kristus said:

Bioshock is due august.
Quakewars is looking promising with it's flair of Command and Conquer esque mission objectives.

i just pre-ordered bioshock limited edition the other day.

if i had the money i'd pre-order quake wars, but i only have so much cash at the moment and it comes in slow.

i've actually got a stack of games in my "let's abuse dethtoll's new video card" list, some of which i've played before on lower settings.

I would have done the same, but I am in for a month or two of, being really poor. Something to be expected when school ends and you have to start working again.

I think the ID demo looks pretty good, but I really hope they aren't making a racing game. It kind of reminds me star wars, I don't know if that's a good thing.
Speaking about upcoming good games.
Bioshock and QW were mentioned, but Crysis and Assasin's Creed are also looking pretty cool.
I will *******ly neef a new pc to play any of these games though=)

Lamneth said:

What about those of us who can't afford new hard drives? I've been stuck with an 80 GB for the past couple years and it may be a while until I can actually upgrade the thing. I'd hate to have to uninstall some other games that are oversized already just to install something 20 gigs and end up not liking it.

If you can't afford a new hard drive, you probably can't afford the graphics card that you need to play the game anyway. In fact, games nowadays are so expensive that you probably can't even afford the game. So no biggie.

Upgrade or die. You cannot expect to keep playing new games if you do not upgrade.

doom2day said:

**COUGH** 40 gig hard drive on my other computer, 80 on this **COUGH**
And when were 80 gigs standard?

Taking Dell's website as an example, their very very cheapest "starter base unit" bargain basement home PC comes with a 160GB hard drive. It's probably fair to say that it became standard to have at least 80GB about 2-3 years ago.

So wait... does this mean they're tossing the Doom 3 engine and making a new engine, or what?

TonicBH: They're selling licenses of the tech 4 (The engine used for Doom3, ET:QW, Q4 and Prey) for 250 000$ (single title).

From their website:

Our current multi-platform technology available for licensing is id Tech 4. Used by such titles as DOOM 3, QUAKE 4, Prey, Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars and the next Wolfenstein game, id Tech 4 revolutionized the use of real-time dynamic lighting, while the MegaTexture code offers previously unprecedented terrain detail.

http://www.idsoftware.com/business/technology/

It's not like they've ever made more than one game per engine anyway (except for the Keen games, and possibly the Wolf3d engine.)

i guess wolf3d counts as two games if you include spear of destiny.

kristus said:

It's not like they've ever made more than one game per engine anyway (except for the Keen games, and possibly the Wolf3d engine.)

Doom and Doom 2?

Yeah, oh, silly me, then there's of course Doom1 and 2. :p (EDIT; beaten to the punch)

But that was in the old days when it didn't take more than a year to make a game. ;)

Dr. Zin said:

Maybe instead of non-repetetive textures they should look into non-repetetive gameplay.

Actually, carmack talked about how with the new tools they're using they can focus on gameplay and level design (I assume racing tracks in this case) before they spend time enhancing the details of the environments.

In other words, the era of the Brush is almost over

fraggle said:

Imagine creating 20 similar-looking dirt tiles, for example, and having the game engine automatically lay them out in a way that doesn't look repetitive. Or another good idea would be a system for doing nice-looking boundaries between different textures, so you don't get a straight line cut-off when going from grass to dirt. Something to make development quicker and easier

Thats is *EXCACTLY* what this technology (and the tools used with it) are designed to do, among other things. Google Quake Wars and you'll see the exact features you just wished for being discussed in many previews

Snarboo said:

I really don't understand this community sometimes. We're not even seeing a real game here and already we're complaining about how much it will suck. :p

I'm finding it really hard to understand how people do not understand how much of a revelation the new tech5 is. Any coder who disagrees simply doesn't grasp the technology IMO.

The new tech isn't some black magic, if you understand GL then it is a fairly obvious direction to take. The point is that its the first engine (to my knowledge) that actually steps up to try the technique.

What it does represent is a fundamental shift in the way the pipeline is used and will scale superbly into the DX10 age when the time comes. Its the future people, one day all texturing will be done like this.

DaniJ said:

and will scale superbly into the DX10 age when the time comes.

What a horrible thought - being forced to use Windows Vista... :(