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Rank: One of the Main Weird
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I've just come across this thread where the new dev Imago-Quem discusses a lot of the graphical EQ2 improvements, only half way through but there are a few facts I didn't know about EQ2 (like how the graphics engine for it started work in 1999). This list of potential improvements he has in there so far go Quote:Well, let's see...
- Hair/Fur
- HDR Lighting
- Fast and expansive grass / flora
- new water
- new oceans
- better skyboxes
- atmospheric haze
- volumetric fog
- God rays
- point light shadow maps
That's what I've got scratched down here. There may be a few other ideas we've passed around also. Out of the list I'd vote in Hair/Fur as being the most important as it would improve the character models to no end (even though I ironically play a Froglok ;) ), secondly would be hard HDR lighting or grass/flora maybe? Definitely last for water, I wonder there if the motivation to change it is purely performance though. The other thing I didn't realise was the new animation artist Tom Tobey, one telling change there is that all his animations are hand drawn, I wonder if this approach means that they are dropping the motion capture approach?
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Oh man I really hope not (re motion capture approach). I think one of the things that has kept EQ2 looking so good for so long is the "fluidness" of the model movements. Other MMO's (even WoW) seem clunky to me.
As for the list, I would say do whatever will make the most performance impact (lighting?). I had figured we would be looking at an engine rewrite at about now in the game's lifespan, I guess they plan on keeping everything intact and just working on tweaks.
Still better than not working on it ;)
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Cyanbane wrote:Oh man I really hope not (re motion capture approach). I think one of the things that has kept EQ2 looking so good for so long is the "fluidness" of the model movements. Other MMO's (even WoW) seem clunky to me.
As for the list, I would say do whatever will make the most performance impact (lighting?). I had figured we would be looking at an engine rewrite at about now in the game's lifespan, I guess they plan on keeping everything intact and just working on tweaks.
Still better than not working on it ;) I'll have to take a look at the new NPC animations myself to see how the animation goes, but motion capture does sound the way to go too, the only weakness of EQ2 for me in animations has been not enough of them, the more the better. Still working through it all, 24 pages so far is impressive, but his musings on what are needed in which priority are interesting Quote:Ok, here's the list, ordered, to my best guess, of what players and internal management would vote for in regards to popularity and feasibility:
(Totally subject to change)
1. Upgraded flora system
2. Upgraded cloud system
3. Upgraded sky-box effects
4. Point-light shadow maps
5. SLI/Crossfire support
6. HDR lighting
7. Upgraded weather system
8. Hair strands
9. General optimization overhaul
10. Upgraded water (refraction, reflection, rippling)
11. Ambient Occlusion
12. God rays
13. Under water flora (coral system)
14. Ocean effects (waves, clear edges)
15. Underwater upgrade (refraction, dust)
16. Atmospheric haze / depth fog
17. Depth of Field
18. Subsurface scattering
19. Global illumination
20. Caustic mapping
21. GPU PhysX Me personally I'd be putting No.8 as one of the top priorities if not the top priority since it makes all the avatars in the game look better, even if you play a bald character. Really impressed here with the developer feedback, at the start though he does mention about posting while compiling, I hope the forum didn't delay him too much, but his ideas for time were Quote:
But based on some graphical understanding and experience, here's my best shot (difficulty from easy-1 to nearly
impossible-10):
( 2 ) Point-light shadow maps (only because sun-lights are done now)
( 3 ) Atmospheric haze / depth fog
( 3 ) Underwater upgrade (refraction, dust)
( 4 ) Upgraded sky-box effects
( 5 ) Upgraded cloud system
( 5 ) SLI/Crossfire support
( 5 ) HDR lighting
( 5 ) General optimization overhaul (difficulty totally depends on how much)
( 5 ) God rays
( 6 ) Subsurface scattering
( 7 ) Upgraded water (refraction, reflection, rippling)
( 7 ) Upgraded weather system
( 7 ) GPU Sun Shadows
( 7 ) Upgraded flora system
( 7 ) Caustic mapping
( 7 ) Depth of Field
( 7 ) Under water flora (coral system)
( 8 ) Ocean effects (waves, clear edges)
( 8 ) Ambient Occlusion
( 8 ) Hair strands
( 9 ) Global illumination
( 9 ) 3.0 Shader upgrade
( 9 ) GPU PhysX
And as for the completely new engine, I would not have expected it myself, especially since EQ2 was designed with the future in mind (even if they predicted the wrong one with CPU's vs GPU's!), it would have been nice, but I've not seen it happen on any other big games or MMO's without a totally new version.
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Lomax wrote:And as for the completely new engine, I would not have expected it myself, especially since EQ2 was designed with the future in mind (even if they predicted the wrong one with CPU's vs GPU's!), it would have been nice, but I've not seen it happen on any other big games or MMO's without a totally new version. They totally rebuilt EQ's engine, at least once.
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ahnlak wrote:Lomax wrote:And as for the completely new engine, I would not have expected it myself, especially since EQ2 was designed with the future in mind (even if they predicted the wrong one with CPU's vs GPU's!), it would have been nice, but I've not seen it happen on any other big games or MMO's without a totally new version. They totally rebuilt EQ's engine, at least once. Thanks, I didn't know that, although I couldn't name another game that has had an engine change, WoW's had upgrades, or at least apparently, the problem I think with its art style is that it seems to have rapidly diminishing returns (going to double check and update the post if so, but windows reported my EQ2 install as ~9Gb while WoW was reported as ~15Gb, something seems wrong there). The more I hear about the EQ2 engine the more I wonder if it was originally intended for EQ1 then, its strange also that it is so CPU dependant when Brad mentions Smed making the decision to go hardware only for EQ1Quote:A year or so passed and I remember distinctly being in a meeting with the EQ leads and Smed. We were discussing min specs and hardware requirements. After a while, Smed starting pushing the idea of going hardware only, 3dfx Voodoo 1 required. I remember being wary of the idea, but
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Rank: One of the Main Weird
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Ahh well, bear in mind that when EQ1 was in the pipeline, there was a serious question about whether to insist on 3D hardware or not. EQ2 had less of a decision there, because every gamer had some sort of 3D card by then - in some senses, it was *less* advanced for its time.
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