Better than Cryengine2 and Unreal Engine 3

System specs are the same as the PS3 as far as I know.

And I don´t think that it looks better as the crytek engine. I think a jungle is harder to render as what they have done. And polygone # wise I have seen such stuff already on PS3 like for example LAIR. While it´s getting impossible to be able to say anything about the polygcount because it´s getting pretty high. Just the textures issues are still there on the ps3.

I can see more and more that graphics has not realy something to do with fun. Yeah, of course this counts only from 16bit up. I mean I think there are games on SNES which are much better as most games produced nowadays.

Ich finde sowieso, das die alten Spiele, wo man noch zu 4. an einem Rechner sitzt und auf der Tastatur rum hämmert, die machen einfach immer Spaß ! Besser als irgent son SPiel alleine zuspielen...

Es kommt auch net immer auf die Grafik an, Worms wäre ein beispiel, lustige Würmer, COmic Style, vllt Schon alt aber immer noch Lustig !

cYa Sebastian

Grrrr! >:( Don't get me started on "Project Offset".

Short version: Waaaay back when they were just 'playing around', they asked for folks to help debug/test/play with it, give suggestions, etc. ...Time moves forward... They show some really nice stuff they have done. All their supporters/fans ask if it's still planned to be "free or very low, indie, hobbiest price". They reiterate that yes, it will be. One of the reasons they started it was to learn themselves and 'just play around'...because all the 'big name' engines were just too dang expensive. ...Jump ahead in time... Suddenly, they say, "Well, the price is going to be a bit more expensive, but that's 'cause of all the work we've put into it". (fans/supporters guestimate $1k - $2k). ...Fast forward again... "Oh, uh, sorry, we changed our minds. It's now gonna be a bazillion dollars. Thanks for your years of support, help, suggestions and all that. C'ya, loosers!"

Grrrr! Sorry, but I'm *still* bitter at that whole "changed our minds" switcharoo they did. Just ONCE I'd like to see a pair of excellent programmers "stick it to the big guys" by writing a UT3/ProjectOffset/CryEngine2 level game engine...and then make it FREE (or VERY low price...sub-$1000). Can you imagine the kick-ass looking games we would see? Can you imagine the sheer amount of unaldulterated new-game-ideas that would be popping out? Man...when I win my millions and millions, I'm gonna spend $3million developing a 'next-gen' game engine and sell it dirt cheap.

then again, people are spending so much of there life developing an engine, then i think they deserve to be paid a profressional price, and maybe at the begining they didnt realize it would become this big eventually

Project Offset does anger me , to just turn your back like that on their fellow indies just for some money , c'mon , they were still going to make millions with their game , what a bunch of money hungry panzies. Same thing with the other engine , the reality one , even though that one was pretty expensive as it was , but had indie licenses and the like that made it a good and possible option , and here came epic with some money and they gayed out in an instant. Thats why I love gamestudio , even though it might not be the Unreal 3 engine , it's a good engine and very affordable , which in turn gives us the oppportunity to make a game withought having to be rich. So yeah , a big [censored] you to the project offset team.

Hmm well there are some good points being made. It would be nice for a low-cost engine to be made available to indies. That is certainly true.

I can understand how it is frustrating for many people who have followed them to see them aiming thier toolset to more well-financed projects.

But there is also another side. The fact is developing a " true next-gen " engine is not as easy at may appear to some. It is actually pretty difficult. It requires significant knowledge and understanding of a myriad of subjects, details and nuances. It requires much thought and foresight.

For someone is developing such an engine, it is a very personal thing. Much time, thought and effort.

During this odyssey this dreamer-programmer must somehow pay for hardware / software , pay the bills ( if applicable ), go to school ( if applicable ), and finally live life.

They will work for months --- and yes even years --- with little to show.

Especially frustrating is finding that developing such an engine is not nearly have the battle. Engines power games. Even if an engine were to be developed, the game remains.

Developing a game requires even more resources ( i.e. such as money ) and time. It also requires a staff. Especially artists. Not just a lone programmer trying to make crude meshes.

The Project Offset team decided to go the tech demo route. Release some nice videos, polish the technlogy. Attract interest. Try to obtain a deal, a license that allows them to work full-time on their dream project.

They are people too. They need to pay the bills. They want to develop games just like you. They chose one path, it seems to be working for them.

Again its frustrating for other indies. to see one more engine that they might not be able to obtain. But its their work, their dream. Hehe now enough grumbling lets work on our own

Good for the PO to sell the engine for what it's probably worth. Any team, with a sane head on their shoulders, would do the same thing.

While i have no comment about the engine, i do think that the pricing is sensible, largely because "serious" developers often dismiss an engine or technology if it is inexpensive...silly huh?

...yet sooo true!

But still, nice screenies.

Another new screen, simply amazing !

I think the 2D straw doesn´t look so well. They use millions of polygones and such stuff is 2D... I don´t like it. MAybe personal taste. But in the best game I played in my life everything was 3D. I am talking about Vampire Bloodlines. I think there are no sprites in that game.

I dont understand why they wasted alot of polygones in that screenshot for the mouth of a beast and then made almost everything on his back just a flat texture... They screwed the rule for high detailed face and low detailed body, by exaggerating it.

This screen shot is a good example for, I want to watch it, but I dont want to play it.

Next to vampire bloodlines, the best games I know are games like: Super Metroid, Zelda III, Zelda Ocarina of Time, Yoshis Island, Super Mario World, Sonic Adventure, Actraiser, Gargoyles Quest (on snes), FinalFantasyIII, Rayman, BeyondGood and Evil...

and some other I can't remember right now (on NeoGeo are also alot of great games).

amazing, indeed.

Very nice lighting, very nice textures, amazing details ... This is the look I am aiming for in a future fantasy armor package

To the guy saying that the pricing is right because they worked hard on it ect.. , how about Matt's Sphere plugin for gamestudio ? He isnt selling it for a million dollars , or a couple hundred grand , or even a grand, it's $39.99 , and brings gamestudio pretty close to those million dollar engines. See the difference ? So here's another big [censored] you to the project offset team from me , and my respects to matt.

where do you get these screenshots from?

here

@why do i die
why do you even talk sometimes? the sphere engine is nothing compared to other engines, does it include any kind of culling no, does it have any systems to reduce quality for slow and old computers? no, do it have its own collision detection? no, you have to have at least comm to use it which is 200, matt didnt make the sound collision entity management, or networking features,or physics or any of that. on top of that, where are his editors that make a good content creation pipeline? wait no he didnt create them did he! whoa what a revelation, they are all dont by conitec, and the content creation pipeline for 3dgs is a little slow, because its indie priced. dont get me wrong matts a great person, but you just cant compare sphere to a whole engine or to especially any next gen engines. which by the way, paul l ming didnt say PO was offering it for a million or a couple hundred k, he said 1k-2k, which is an incedible price for this engine, its about the same price as 1 computer than can actually run any games made with it so if you want to do great work on a free or under $100 price then do it yourself because your not going to be getting hand outs

The shots look great, but I personally like the environment of Crysis much more. Then again, all these new engines kinda look the same with the HDR/Blur/Softshadow look. I'm having a hard time seeing what the major visual difference is between them all...

About engine pricing: One could probably make the argument that in the next 10 years, game engine prices will eventually level out. Because once the engines look very close to real-life, and computers are so fast culling and the such isn't as big of a deal, what's there to seperate the engines? After all, while one might say 3dgs is a year or two behind the Graphical side of things. Eventually it will catch up when all the $500,000 engines become stalled at "real-life" graphics. At this point you'd have the $500,000 dollar real-life looking engine, and the $800 dollar real-life looking engine.

@lostclimate , PO is not 1k-2k , where did you get this from ? It's aroudn $500,000 , I would love them if it was $2000 , even if it was $5000 I would think it was awesome , but $500,000 is a slap on the face. At matt and Sphere , I never said matt made gamestudio , I stated it was a PLUGIN not engine , but Sphere IS pretty close to those engines , give Sphere to the Epic team and see what they'll do with it , you have to open your tiny little brain up , and realise all that those engines have are shaders , normals mapping , specular mapping , and bloom or hdr are the ones used the most , and guess what , SPHERE HAS THEM TOO. Of course , you still need someone to make all those insanely good and high polygon models and levels and all that neat stuff to be able to take advantage of the shaders. But since we still cant crank out quake 2 quality models , well you can imagine how [censored] we are trying to create gears of war type models. But that doesnt mean Sphere isnt on par , it really does bring gamestudio pretty close , and by pretty close I mean , you can make a game and it will be called next gen by anyone , and thats all you really want right. Here's another example , there's another engine , cant think of the name right now , it's like gamestudio , but a lot worst , it cost aroudn the same , they were bringing out a shader version of their engine , and guess what , they were saying it was going to be around $11,000 for the shader version , see what I mean now by saying matt didnt charge $1000 for the plugin. Have you ever seen what top notch plugins can cost ? Third party softwares like Havok physics engine to integrate into your game , it's all very expensive , let's put it in perspective again, hold on , let me paragraph , people here always critizime abouit that.

With sphere , you can at least do Doom 3 quality, with that said, you dont need any more to be considered next gen and not the past , so you have to give the plugin it's respects. Just look at the Wii games , none of them are next gen , and nobody gives a crap , they're good games , and people are more than happy playing them, and developers making money, while your here downplaying a great engine (gamestudio) and a great plugin (sphere) , for engines that cost half a mil to a mil for them and engines you will never in your life be able to license , EVER . If I was conitec I would void your gamestudio license and wish you good luck with with project offset engine and or crysis engine. Void his license conitec , we should get rid of all this ingrates on here.

from their site
" The team has recieved a lot of interests from other companies for licensing the engine. In february 2006 they licensed the OE to Red 5 Studious for an coming MMO, but they are looking into more licensing options with other developers. They are being very selective on whom they license it to though, as it is important for them to believe in the company and the game they are developing. "

That doesnt really sound like an engine that's priced at 1k-2k for anyone to buy , however , I'm not sure where I read the $500,000 , maybe it was an estimate or something , but they dont even mention the engine in their webpage anymore , so it's easy to see it's not something for most people , so I'm sure it's really expensive , or they would be advertising the price , the only people who hide the price is for the really expensive engines.

thats a bit more of a reasonable reason to assume that, but still the community seems to believe its between 1k-2k, we'll just have to see how it turns out

thank you! I love you too.

And I don´t know what you try to say.

I don't want to bark in, etc..

But what I think is that you're being pretty random. First you mention small detail, 2D straw, and end listing your favourite games.. When the topic is wether or not Offset Engine is better than CE2 or UE3 and given 'proofs' are the screenshots.

As a sidenote; I don't see any sprites in the specific screenshot =/

Well, I am writing what I am thinking when I see the screen shots. It´s indeed difficult to understand if I don´t write something different as what I think to make it easier to others to understand what I feel.

And writing english makes a big gap into my thoughts making them more confusing and difficult to understand/explain.

Anyway I still think what I said is right, because I would never publish these screenshots because I think they are not good.

Funny thing is I am right back from a friend who is an artist who can draw "perfect" and thinks, a good picture is well (realistic and clean) drawn. Everything what is not clean and "realistic" drawn is crap for him.
I think he understands nothing about art and this world. Not in a bad way, because I hope one day he will understand what I mean. But he is still at the beginning.

hmmm... I guess that won´t make any sence to most people here, and you will think I am offtopic. And I also think this is the wrong place to talk about it and everyone can discover himself this world.

I allready know that for my taste matt aufderheide open-mind regarding art isn´t very big. I think his look at art is very "flat" or 2 dimensional. We also have our difference and he doesn´t like me aswell as I don´t like him.

And to write my previous post in a way which hopefully everyone understands: (I think that) To most people a screenshot/movie with alot of polygones and glamourus effects makes them think the engine is written by smart talented people. It must be a great engine with which can made great games.

But I think they only see the half truth.

There are much more points as the plain picture which give me information about project in this picture. And if the creators don´t see that, I think they didn´t see other things as well. For me these information count aswell as alot of polygones and effects.
How can someone put alot of work, money and time into something and then publish such a not well structured and espacially low intended picture?

Anyway I have understood that I am in the wrong place here and my opinion is more and more against the stream, what is totally useless. I am out for now.

Thanks for the info from Gamestar Frank. For sure the other aspects mean very much, though, I guess I was talking more in the line of graphics.

Well it should be noted that when you license an engine you obtain more than simply a binary.

Engines like Unreal 3 and Crysis have well-developed pipelines , quite a bit of well-written documentation , code and artwork samples and other nice things.

Quality, priority support and bug fixes / enhancements. In fact, for certain engine licenses you may be able to make personal phone calls to senior developers , attend or request seminars and meetings with senior engine development staff , discuss and recommend future enhancements ( that are actually listened to, to a certain extent ) etc.

For many studios / publishers paying for such benefits is economical.

Your crazy cipher , no matter how beautifull and good the Unreal Engine 3 is ,
it's $750,000 , do you properly understand that number , SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS , maybe in capital letters you'll understand it better. Thats a fortune man , it's insane , only big companies with tons of money can afford that , no one else. The only reason these companies pay it is because well , it is a very good and complete engine , and has all the next gen stuff and is very powerfull as well , and frankly , when you have a 30 million dollar budget throwing 1 million to the engine and just worrying about the game doesnt seem like a bad idea. But you have to realize , things are only worth what people pay for them , nothing more , look at 3D Max , it's expensive , but it's $3000 some dollars , and it's a very powerfull software which has been used in many commercial movies and the like , yet it's something affordable in that sense, why in the planet would someone think it's just to charge almost a million dollars for their software ? No matter how much documentation it can contain , and shaders , and anything else , it's still a game engine , with no game , just the engine , you still have to produce a good game with it , or it's worthless , I think it's inhumane for this chimps to be charging that much for a piece of software , and retarded that people of this forum agree with the price , and then beat down what we have , critisize it to the last detail while we praise the other to the last detail. Again , awesome and beautifull engines , but definately not worth their price.

Yes, but maybe unlike your own puny budget a big studio has more cash to spend on its game. So the Unreal3 engine is a good opportunity for them, developing your own engine wich would perform at the same rate would cost you well over 750.000 dollars so it's a good alternative for those who do have the money. And about your comparison with MAX, just look at how many times Gears of war has been sold the money made with this is way over 750.000 dollars and is profitable and thus affordable for the studio who devoloped is. So in that sense it's not inhuman

yes, but i'm sure your budget is as puny as mine , or you wouldnt be here , so why all the hostility towards a felow puny budger developer ? Your a bit too defensive of the big companies for being a gamestudio user yourself dont you think ?

People don't use gamestudio just because it's cheap. Even if it doesn't have all the next gen speeds and graphics, it's very easy to use and is still a great engine/studio!

There are about 100 projects using Unreal3. So there must be good reasons for that

And your comparison with 3ds max ist not very good. 3ds max is a good software but not the best. All max users I know tell how often it crashes. Plug-ins are often built in quick and dirty.

The movie "300" has been made with Lightwave and Lightwave is much much cheaper than 3ds max.
Sometimes the most expensive software is not always the best.

For pure modelling some other tools like Silo or Modo are better. And ZBrush is the best for creating details. Max ist just a well known but very old tool.

MS Office is expensive. OpenOffice is for free. I wrote many scientific documents with StarOffice / OpenOffice because it is better, better support for formulas, big documents work better and faster, direct vector graphic support in your documents, inbuilt PDF writing and much more.

Max and MS Office might do better marketing and there are simply more warez copies around there. That still does not mean that they are the best.

What is this thread even about anymore? Its not about max, lightwave or gamestudio..

@ Frazzle:
Happy B-day

@ Matt Aufderheide:
I've sent you 2 pm's why don't you answer?

@ All:
Sry for the offtopic.
Cheers
Omega

this is true , I agree , I guess for a big company the Unreal 3 engine is the way to go , as it is a very impressive engine , but still , all these engines prices do sound a but insane , but you make some good points.

As long as people pay $750 000, they will keep selling it at $750 000. Supply and demand.

Hiya.

I think a BIG part of the problem is that the bean counters of the 'big publishers' wouldn't know a good game if it swam up their urethra. (Kinda like how Hollywood is now).

A potential game designer says "This is our game! Cool, huh?" and the publishers hear "Blaa blaa blaa". The game designer says "Look at all the stuff you can do in this game! Awesome, no?", and the publishers hear "Blaa blaa blaa". The game disigner says "Here's all the new twists we are putting into the story! They'll love it!", and the publishers hear "Blaa blaa blaa". ..at this point, the game designer realises that the publisher has no clue about what he's trying to get accross.. So, the game designer says "It's kinda like Halo, but we use this new 'next-gen' engine that costs $750,000", and the publishers hear "Halo, Next gen, $750k" and think "Wow! That *must* be good! Deal!".

You see, while a more advanced game engine is always nice (I'd LOVE to be able to use UnrealEngine v3!), it isn't usually neccissary if you have a good, solid game idea and execution. There are a LOT of free games out there on the net (all kinds, from MMO-style like Runescape, to RPG-card mixes like PuzzlePirates, to...well, just everything out there). Most of these games are/were made "on the cheap", and have a LOT of folks playing them. The current video game industry is suffering because of it's own success. A handful of hit games (DOOM, Unreal, Halo, Elder Scrolls, World of Warcraft, etc.) made MILLIONS...so now, every publisher and his goldfish expects to make millions. But, they are dealing with millions in development costs now because there is a misconception that "more expensive game engine = more successful game"; the writers of said game engines take/took advantage of that and said "Well, if they are getting millions, *I* want millions too!" and priced their 'next-gen' (by the GAWDS I'm really starting to hate that term!) game enigine with that price range in mind. As time has gone on, more and more developers and publishers just are not willing to risk $10-20 million on a new game style/concept/type when they don't know if it will suck. So, like Hollywood, they rely on "Well, has this been done before, recently, and did it succeed in makeing millions?" If the answer is "Nope, this is all new", then it's a no go. Oh, sure, it *could* be the next World Of Warcraft...or it could just outright flop. When the developer/pulbisher has put millions and millions into the development they just aren't willing or able to take that risk.

My theory is this: If a couple of genius programmers were to create a game engine as good or better than Offset, Unreal 3, CryEngine 2, etc., and then offer it for sale for 'dirt cheap' (say, "$1200), I guarantee we'd see more innovative games being released. I see a lot of indie level developers out there who have really cool ideas, interesting stories, intreging settings and characters, etc...but are hampered by the engine they use. So, these games may get made, but don't make any big waves because the developer/artist was forced to "dumb down" his ideas because the engine couldn't handle it.

Sorry, but $750k for a game engine is, IMHO, a *serious* problem for every potential game developer out there. That's why Project Offset pissed me off so much when they sold out.

Hehe well we are sort of in agreement then

Doug is right in that the tools do not make the game, but they can certainly help reduce effort, cost etc.

This is a bit of what I was trying to say really --- tools are just tools. Average tools are just average, but they do not prevent you from making an excellant game. You can build a palace with a simple hammer.

The good ones are worth a reasonable amount. They will not automatically make an excellant game, or even any game. But the good tools certainly do help alleviate some of the hassles and annoyances of development.

Now a " reasonable amount " is pretty relative.

But one thing to note. " Next gen " costs are not due to the cost of an engine, SpeedTree, Maya, animation middleware and whatever software you purchase. These costs are relatively fixed and can be spread over a number of projects and time. Unreal 3, for example, will remain ( with enhancements )competitive circa 2012. Or at least Epic believes so

The Quake Engine was never 5 thousand USD. Likewise with NetImmerse / Gamebryo , Serious Engine and most other game engines. Yet that did not prevent game innovation or inflate development budgets to painful limits.

Rising costs are mostly the cost of labor. Of assembling a team of artists, writers, programmers, and the top-heavy management practices of today ( i.e. expensive rent like Konami ). Oh and marketing, cost rivals that of development itself.

And that brings us back to the idea of " good tools ". Good tools are important and well worth the cost simply because they save other costs of development.

As for whether 750 thousand USD is tooo high. Well it certainly is for me. But nothing prevents me from assembling my very own toolset to rival Unreal 3 or any other engine.

Maybe that's what the 3DGS community should do ?

@Cipher: Thats what we've been doing

You see these countless contributions made in the comunity. What bothers me is that nobody ever puts them together...

building a sculpture with a hammer huh? that will be an ugly statue i spend the extra 750,000 for the chisel as well

but as for the idea of integrating things together, the biggest issue is making it all set in a well streamlined artwork pipline that still allows flexebility for programmers

I'll just stick to last-gen for my games , lol.

@Frank,

You make a very good point. I'm thinking in the same way and though all these plugins are great and I apprecaite everyones' efforts, I feel like they are all (with the exception of IntenseX) really filling in things that should real be in the core enegine. I'm hoping the A7 we get by the end of the year will take a big step towards removing the need for most of these plugins and then by mid 2008 we get an update that gives us the full integrated toolset we all want.

What does everyone think - is that too optimistic a roadmap or very possible?

Too optimistic? Put away your joint!

LOL, OK Bloodline, want go halves on Unreal 3 instead then in December?

Conitect should really just licence all these plugins into gamestudio and integrate them with it , I mean , gamestudio should already have all this type of things included , but since it doesnt , it shuold just integrate them in there , why start from scratch when there is already all this nice third party tools done.

Project Offset has been bought by Intel:
http://www.behardware.com/news/lire/22-02-2008/#9418

Enjoy your meal
Toast

Was just going to post that(Intel) - lol

This engine is like the best

What do you think the fees are for this engine?

Good for PO. Only that price tag on that blog about Geforce 9600 for 149€ ruined my day ^^

When I inquired about this a long while back, the pricetag shortly after their first commercial license was $500k.