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Question about engine trasition and gameplay

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LogisticEarth

Grizzled Veteran
Sep 24, 2007
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Pennsylvania, USA
#1
I don't think I'm alone here in saying that one of my favorite things about Red Orchestra is the massive view distances possible with UE 2.5. Not only in long-range tank battles but also in infantry engagements. Maps on the scale of Berezina, FestungKurland, and others just don't seem to be available in more recent FPS.

So my question is, does UE 3 allow for really long view distances? Or does the increased detail put too much strain on the system. I started worring about this when I was recently playing around in America's Army 3, which is built on UE 3. On the larger maps they implemented the infamous, ever-present fog that developers have used to hide engine limitations since time began (and by that I mean the late 90's :p ). Although AA3 is a bug-ridden mess and I wouldn't be surprised if the devs over there didn't use the engine to it's top capacity.

So will RO 2 have this problem because of an engine limitation? I was worried that this was part of the reason for the Stalingrad setting: urban combat doesn't need vast view distances. Can anyone confirm/deny my fears about the transition from UE 2.5->UE 3.0?
 
#3
Ah good. I know it's kind of early in the development cycle but can anyone give a ballpark number of what kind of possible engagement ranges we'll see? The PC gamer article mentioned aiming at an enemy "hundreds of meters away". I'd be happy if we start off with something like a 400-500 meter view distance. It would be bad for tanking maps but that's pretty good for combined arms and more than enough for infantry.
 
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#9
I think one of the important things with a new title on a new engine is that you can raise boundaries on required hardware aswell.
There is no need to support a small group of people which are still running old hardware.

I'd exclude everyone who has hardware which is NOT capable of simultaneous multithreading or unified shader hardware.
This means you'll at least need a dual-core processor and a GeForce 8000 series, Radeon HD 2000 series or higher.

Why? Just because a select group of people has inferior hardware doesn't mean you have to give a lacking gaming experience to the good amount which does have capable hardware.
I hope that the Unreal Engine 3.0 revision used for Heroes of Stalingrad will include support for the DirectX 11 API.
 
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#11
SgtH3nry3 said:
I think one of the important things with a new title on a new engine is that you can raise boundaries on required hardware aswell.
There is no need to support a small group of people which are still running old hardware.

I'd exclude everyone who has hardware which is NOT capable of simultaneous multithreading or unified shader hardware.
This means you'll at least need a dual-core processor and a GeForce 8000 series, Radeon HD 2000 series or higher.

Why? Just because a select group of people has inferior hardware doesn't mean you have to give a lacking gaming experience to the good amount which does have capable hardware.
I hope that the Unreal Engine 3.0 revision used for Heroes of Stalingrad will include support for the DirectX 11 API.
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ridiculous, there is a reason why there are options to tune the graphic quality. excluding players just because the dont have the hardware sound both stupid and arrogant and its detrimental to the business, as they will be losing sales
 
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#12
To be pragmatic here, ROO wasn't targetted at top hardware. It was a $20 budget game. If TW plans to stay near the same budget, they probably want to make sure budget concious gamers (with budget systems) can run the game too.

I agree with Federov (not just cause he's a better tanker than me) that options are the way to go. Gameplay is gameplay, and since everything important is happening server-side, most everything else is eye-candy. Eye candy can be tweaked on or off.


About Orel style maps, while frustrating - it really makes sure you try to stay alive, doesn't it? A good option is to drive out for 10 minutes and don't die.
 
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#13
Fedorov said:
ridiculous, there is a reason why there are options to tune the graphic quality. excluding players just because the dont have the hardware sound both stupid and arrogant and its detrimental to the business, as they will be losing sales
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You are absolutely right.
But tuning goes only so far.

There should be a clear line about what is wanted, what is needed and what is needed to achieve both.
You can have excellent and balanced (due to a fixed drawdistance for sprites, etc) gameplay with a tad higher requirements.
Or you can have mediocre gameplay (certain players able to spot others due to completely different settings) with regular requirements.
It doesn't mean you need "top" hardware. In 2010 a then 4 year old entry-level GPU and 5 year old entry-level dual core will suffice.
And I can't imagine Heroes of Stalingrad being released that early, maybe 2011 if we are lucky.

Ostfront already incorporated some of these thoughts, look at the mandatory vegetation settings for instance.
Some bushes and sprites can't be disabled, this is the same idea only on hardware level.
Problems like these are already plaguing modern games like ArmA 2, Crysis, etc.
 
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#14
Mormegil said:
To be pragmatic here, ROO wasn't targetted at top hardware. It was a $20 budget game. If TW plans to stay near the same budget, they probably want to make sure budget concious gamers (with budget systems) can run the game too.
Click to expand...

I don't think ROHOS will be a budget title as Ostfront was. RO (as well as KF, for that matter) was a fairly quick port-and-upgrade of the mod content, while ROHOS will (I assume) be all "new" content, made from scratch. This time around the devs have significantly more time and money, so I think they will be able to make a higher level game. Perhaps not a AAA title, but something above Ostfront.

Also, IIRC Krivoy Rog has viewdistances of over 1km.
 
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#16
Fedorov said:
UT3 is an AAA title and it does not require a beast machine to run well
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True, but Ostfront needed quite a machine to work properly. It still does, as those entry-level dual cores at ~1600 to 2000 MHz still run Ostfront at crap framerates.
Some computers that ran UT3 just fine could barely play Ostfront, due to the lack of SMT support.
No one complained about that either.

By the time Heroes of Stalingrad will see the daylight singlecore processors are history, with the possible exception of embedded devices and (cheap) dumbphones.
The parallel processing power that simultaneous multithreading gives you can change gameplay drastically.
Streamlining the game for people who run a 4+ year old AMD64 or NetBurst singlecore CPU seems a bit out of place.
 
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#18
PsYcH0_Ch!cKeN said:
Yeah, it's really not a good example at all. I do have sympathy for the devs, but sadly that doesn't change the fact that the game is rubbish in its current state.
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Lol, yeah guys, I download AA's3 to try out the engine, and immediatlely, it felt similiar to the MoH:pacific Assault Engine, which was terrible!!! So I was as worried too :eek:

But If UE3 can cope with massive tank maps like Orel and AZeiglei, then I'm as happy as a pig in sh*t :D
 
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