Duke4Ever Q&A
Q: .BTW, is it true that DNF will have location-specific damage, like Soldier of Fortune?
A: Yes. Been in a long time. We have per poly hit detection. And once you combine that with motion captured animations, you can then do context sensitive hit/reaction animations that look incredibly real.
Q: so when is it going out? Next month? 6 months? Next year?...
A: DNF will not be out in the immediate future. It is a 2000 game and not Q1, so at least 6+ months out. This was merely a "preview" of things to come for PC Gamer. The good news is that this is also the worst the game will look and it will only get better from here
Q: these screenshots look good. the textures are amazing.. and things look higher poly than unreal. which makes me wonder. if unreal is damn slow. how slow is this mother gonna be?
A: From what I've read the poly counts are in like with Quake 3. We use 900-1000 polys per model and a dynamic level of detail system to remove polys at a distance. We just have very detailed textures and use lot's of photo source, so the detail stands out a lot more.
Shots were taken on a Voodoo 3 at 1024x768. All textures are 256x256 and below. Skin sizes on characters are the same as Unreal Tournament (although what we are doing with the same space is quite different... thus squeezing out a *lot* of detail).
Other items of note are a quote of George over at Stomped stating that they are in fact implementing the UT net code. Also, George Broussard has a fairly large .plan update which covers links to all the info and comments/shots that hit the net yesterday. Lastly, I noticed Maarten posted the 640x480 images yesterday. Well now that the server load is a bit lower, here are the screenshots in 1024x768 resolution glory: [shot1] [shot2] [shot 3] [shot 4] [shot 5] [shot 6] [shot 7] [shot 8] [shot 9] [shot 10]
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hutama
replyHere\'s the whole Q&A for ya.
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>>> And isnt it funny how Scott Miller says they \"rarely\" steal content from Army of Darkness, yet theres the Chainsaw for an arm!! <<<
There\'s a difference between \'rarely\' and \'never.\' I never said \'never.\' ;-)
Scott Miller
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>>Theres something about the Casino screenshot that really bugs me tho.
Look at the Shell Casing. Its square, WtF??!?!
Haha! One of those little game-isms that comes through in a shot, but you NEVER notice while the game is running ;) If it\'ll make you happy, we\'ll make the shells 32 sides and LOD them, ok? ;) Just saving polys where we can...
George Broussard, 3D Realms
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Shots were taken on a Voodoo 3 at 1024x768. All textures are 256x256 and below. Skin sizes on characters are the same as Unreal Tournament (although what we are doing with the same space is quite different... thus squeezing out a *lot* of detail).
The machines the game is being developed on are no different than what most of you hardcore gamers already have. Probably not even as good! :) The trick is getting it to run *well* on the guys who are still behind the curve of technology. Which is obviously a goal as that was a large part of what helped Duke be so popular is so many people could play it on their systems.
Charlie Wiederhold
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>>> I sorry but the whole duke thing is getting mighty boring for us end users. 1000 duke addons, 1000 console game..
Boring!! Duke might be buttering your bread 3drealms but it\'s old move on!! Maybe a new and fresh idea would be nice... <<<
There will be plenty of new and fresh ideas (and characters) in DNF. An important design goal with this game is to change things up a lot and redefine the genre in several fun ways, and those ways are not represented in any of these screen shots. Have a little faith. Yes, this game is taking awhile, but it will be worth it. One of our goals is to make DNF the most insanely interactive FPS ever released, and that level of realism and interactively is not easy (note how Tresspasser tried and failed). Look at many of our competitors games and you see very limited interactivity with the levels--most items are in the world just for looks. All these years later Duke 3D is still one of the most intereactive games ever released, and DNF will blow Duke 3D away.
BTW, the team here is quite jazzed by all the positive comments. =)
Scott Miller
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>>> So what kind of level of realism and interactively are we talking about in lets say, a strip club? :) <<<
Let\'s just say our stripper won\'t let you down. (Assuming you got a big enough, um... bill.) ;)
Scott Miller
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>>Hey, if you look in the screenshot with the rocketship blasting off in the background, The countdown clock reads 00:02:07. What\'s up with that? New levels of realism my ass ;)
haha! I asked John Anderson (level designer about that), then he showed me. It\'s a POST launch timer ;) :02:07 into the launch after the countdown.
>>I\'d like to know what the ETA is as well.
>>so when is it going out? Next month? 6 months? Next year?...
DNF will not be out in the immediate future. It is a 2000 game and not Q1, so at least 6+ months out. This was merely a \"preview\" of things to come for PC Gamer. The good news is that this is also the worst the game will look and it will only get better from here
>>Unreal wasnt that slow, besides Tim Sweeney said that there going to be releasing another patch for Unreal when they ship UT that should bring D3D performance up to the same level as UT.
UT is really fast in Glide. The D3D drivers can likely use some work. But framerate and action are our #1 concern. We don\'t want to ship a slow slug of a game, as people won\'t play it.
>>these screenshots look good. the textures are amazing.. and things look higher poly than unreal. which makes me wonder. if unreal is damn slow. how slow is this mother gonna be?
From what I\'ve read the poly counts are in like with Quake 3. We use 900-1000 polys per model and a dynamic level of detail system to remove polys at a distance. We just have very detailed textures and use lot\'s of photo source, so the detail stands out a lot more.
Thanks for all the feedback guys! The team is really excited now. You get kind of tired of looking at your own work day in and day out, so it\'s good to hear comments from a fresh perspective.
George Broussard, 3D Realms
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Captainsternn,
>.BTW, is it true that DNF will have location-specific damage, like Soldier of Fortune? Shooting a guy in the jewels and hearing Duke saying, \"Damn, that hurts!\" as only he can would be a riot...
Yes. Been in a long time. We have per poly hit detection. And once you combine that with motion captured animations, you can then do context sensitive hit/reaction animations that look incredibly real.
George Broussard, 3D Realms
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>>> The first, various shots have fire from a gun or the fountain at the Mirage (AKA Menage). It just doesn\'t seem as cool as the fire in Max Payne. <<<
Some of the art and effects in these shots are placeholder, waiting for the good stuff to be completed. Fear not. ;-)
Scott Miller
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>>The first, various shots have fire from a gun or the fountain at the Mirage (AKA Menage). It just doesn\'t seem as cool as the fire in Max Payne. The shot showing an explosion inside a warehouse/building of some sort looks good, though.
Well first, when a game runs at full speed you don\'t analyze the effects as much And second we haven\'t integrated our particle effects system yet, so they shoudl get better. And third, Remedy has the best particle effects I\'ve ever seen, so I\'m not sure we can match them
>>Secondly is the Menage building. Is that a enviromap as the building with an actual structure below? It looks blurred as environmental maps tend to be.
Just a really, really big poly and the texture gets stretched. Again, nothing you really notice while playing, but in a static shot it stands out more.
>>Is that a ID/Barcode tag on the police officer\'s face? Or is it a scar?
It\'s a bar code tatoo kind of deal.
George Broussard, 3D Realms
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In general if you can run UT smoothly you should be ok for DNF. But I recommend more memory (always good). 128 megs, and a Voodoo 3/4, TNT 2/Ge-Force etc for graphics.
The game will run on less, but the above don\'t cost that much and as the game is still a good bit from being done, you will probably improve your systems anyway
We\'ll post more specific specs once we get closer to release.
George Broussard, 3D Realms
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Dark Angel,
>>I wonder if they can make the eyes blink and the mouth move when he talks.
But of course
George Broussard, 3D Realms
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\"We\'ve been working really hard. Virtually every texture in the game is photo source from a digital camera, so things look \"real\". Once we move the code to Unreal tournament\'s code base November/early Dec), we\'ll be ready to rock and finish the game up.\"
George Broussard, 3D Realms
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