Other engines

[Dima]

3dactionplanet posted an interview with Jeff Mills and Joe Wampole from Terminal Reality.
The interview is quiet long (7 full pages) and deals with different subjects (from new engine to the games powered by the old one).
Here is the most intresting part of the interview:

3DActionPlanet: What does your engine have that makes it superior to the new Unreal technology, the DOOM engine, Halo, etc?

Jeff Mills: Real lights and shadows. The cornerstone of the Nocturne technology is that we start a scene completely black and then add lights. Where no light shines, the world is dark. Just like in real life. That realism in the lights increases the believability of our environments. Future Nocturne titles will take better advantage of this lighting technology to allow characters to hide in shadows or feel the blistering hot death of raw sunlight on their supernatural skin. We've got bump mapping and specular mapping and detail mapping and moving lights. Everything the new Doom engine has. Also, artists have tremendous power over the NocturneX engine. We don't have a watered-down custom editor for environments or characters. Everything is done in Lightwave or 3DStudio, powerful tools that no in-game editor can hope to match.

I highly recommend reading the interview (especially the new engine part of it) as it includes tons of new and exciting information!
Although, I still don't see it as a worthy competitor for The New Doom engine.

http://www.3dactionplanet.com/features/interviews/nocengine/

[sirgalahadwizar]

I am not going to be impressed with any of these games until they give the end-user full autonomy in editing the game. Command and Conquer: Red Alert comes close to this standard (but not quite, seeing as you can't actually *ADD* anything to the rules.ini file, and making gfx is a pain in the arse).

This means everything must be in very simple game code - sorta like the .ddf files in edge. It means that if the models are made with 3d studio max or something, the game should come with a model editor capable of editing those formats (ie, you dont have to have a Computer Science degree and a multi-thousand dollar program just to edit the thing).

You sohuld be able to take the thing outta the box and fuck up the gameplay balance quickly. This is why I do NOT play console games... you cannot change them.

Quake and Quake2's game code was way too complex for the average joe to figure out, and the model editors that are freeware for editing quake and quake2 are shit. For anyone to realisticially make a mod or TC for those games they would need a very expensive program (3ds prolly) and extensive knowledge of C++ (which most ppl do not have).

[Zaldron]

But is it still fixed camera???

That´s something critical about the power of the engine. The Nocturne engine supported dynamic shadows & bumpmaps, but thanks to the fixed camera. Since the scene doesn´t changes, they could precompile some data about the brushes reactions to light obstruction.

[Espi]

sirgalahadwizar said:

Yeah to see if I could actually do anything with HL code I'd need MS Visual C++ or whatever it is, dunno how much it costs but my guess is much.