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jonneymendoza

What if CryEngine was used as Arma 3 future engine?

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I might look as a donkey here and I think BIS stated they wouldn't change the engine but what about the Just Cause2 engine ?

I know it's a VERY different game, but d*mn, it's offering a 1000 Km² map, +/- 100 vehicules (with damages and deformation system), real time wheater, destrutible environement,...

Personnally I don't care, I like the current engine and it could be same for another 10 years I wouldn't mind. It's just curiosity but it doesn't seem impossible to create a large scale environement with good graphics and physics.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to give a lessons to anyone, you all probably know much more about making a game than me, I'm just curious

Edited by Macadam Cow

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I might look as a donkey here and I think BIS stated they wouldn't change the engine but what about the Just Cause2 engine ?

I know it's a VERY different game, but d*mn, it's offering a 1000 Km² map, +/- 100 vehicules (with damages and deformation system), real time wheater, destrutible environement,...

Personnally I don't care, I like the current engine and it could be same for another 10 years I wouldn't mind. It's just curiosity but it doesn't seem impossible to create a large scale environement with good graphics and physics.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to give a lessons to anyone, you all probably know much more about making a game than me, I'm just curious

I'm not particulary interested in Just Cause 2 but isn't it a GTA-type game? Where the only AI and vehicles are the AI and vehicles in a very small radius around your position? Where basically ANYTHING revolves around you, meaning "once you turn you back on it - bang! despawn!" Also destructible environment.. what does it mean? Terrain deformation like Red Faction 1, building destruction like Red Faction Guerrilla? Or just a couple of boxes, barrels and scipted events? I played JC1 a few times and the AI was very similar to AI of the "game we shall not speak about" - appearing out of nowhere and disappearing into oblivion moments later - not exactly the complexity of RV engine...

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I'm not particulary interested in Just Cause 2 but isn't it a GTA-type game? Where the only AI and vehicles are the AI and vehicles in a very small radius around your position? Where basically ANYTHING revolves around you, meaning "once you turn you back on it - bang! despawn!" Also destructible environment.. what does it mean? Terrain deformation like Red Faction 1, building destruction like Red Faction Guerrilla? Or just a couple of boxes, barrels and scipted events? I played JC1 a few times and the AI was very similar to AI of the "game we shall not speak about" - appearing out of nowhere and disappearing into oblivion moments later - not exactly the complexity of RV engine...

I don't know, never played the game.

There's no terrain deformation (didn't see any in the few vids I saw), building destruction is nothing like red faction it's more scripted and I guess what you said about that "bubble of life" in a small radius around the player is true but that doesn't it's impossible to get rid of it in a smaller world.

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I love how on Arma releases the cry engine always gets a thread of it's own.

My vote would be to stick with he real virtual engine, why? Because of what you can do..sure CE2 and CE3 are graphically sexy but it doesn't have the ability for players to pilot fixed wing from the start.

It doesn't have the ability to code enhancements, everything you do is pretty much done via flowchart and it works..the community managed to get fixed wing pilotable so it's not faulty it's just somewhat limited.

Visuals is one thing, but what things can do is another..which imo is far more important than the pretty, it is what has made these games unique since day...1 of tools release on OFP.

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And you're not a programmer or familiar with the AI code in the RV engine. So I dont see how you're qualified to comment, to be honest.

Lol, i'm however still allowed to express my opinions based on what i know. :rolleyes:

But i see again, Mr. "DM -The Forum-Post-Police" only waited until i make anywhere a slight (in his eyes) mistake again, so he can step-in and bash me again...You are my hero:rolleyes::cool:

problem is that all map of "enterability" is known at a begining, when you will change that, you must regenerate all that in real time! But this still not solve problem when AI will be catch up and there will be no way out.
Ok that sounds reasonable from your perspective of course, but what if you cut that "enterability map" already from the beginning in to multiple pieces and then only recalcualte the pieces where something has changed?

For the Problem when AI gets stuck, well i would simply leave it there, leave the group htey belong to and let them "die". Isn't much different from RL, if you are buried in rubble from collapsed house-parts you'll be lost for sure in most cases.

Anyway, by 2015 you'll have found a good compromise way, i'm convinced about that :D;).

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Lol, i'm however still allowed to express my opinions based on what i know

And you know what they say about opinions :rolleyes:

but what if you cut that "enterability map" already from the beginning in to multiple pieces and then only recalcualte the pieces where something has changed?

This is what I meant...:j: Its a very complex system, which I'm not really disposed of to talk about in depth. But saying "simply cutting it up into little bits" you'd think they would have thought of that already, no? I mean, its enough trouble to get the AI to not walk in the road... and you want them dynamically recalculating the cost map per building, based on its destruction state, and the off chance that there may or may not be debris blocking the entrance?

For the Problem when AI gets stuck, well i would simply leave it there, leave the group htey belong to and let them "die". Isn't much different from RL, if you are buried in rubble from collapsed house-parts you'll be lost for sure in most cases..

Whats the betting you'd be the first person to bitch and moan that your AI gets stuck when part of the house they're in is destroyed :j:

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well, I've to agree with mr.g-c: it's a question of the underlying data-structure and as such it's a question of goals and focus. Though DM has a point too. I really appreciate every information from developers we get. However discussing the design of the engine might be a little bit (like in totally) out of place.

It's fine to suggest features, to suppose how things should work and so on. But it's another thing to reason how these things should be implemented in general, which tradeoffs to take, debating what is feasable and so on. At this point public discussion becomes quite silly. Silly and also rather insulting. Like they would never have considered implementing better rivers, underground features, a fully destructible environment or whatever fancy thing there is. Between the line it reads they lack of vision, imagination and/or effort. Clearly they do not. Sure, they could communicate their experimental works a bit more, but it's a two edged sword because experiments may proof not that usefull, while people probably won't really grasp the concept of an experiment.

For the Problem when AI gets stuck...

Again, I've to agree with mr.g-c, AI getting stuck should join grpNull. But we would need either an additional event handler or a unitStuck command or something. Thus it would be a problem for the mission designer to solve and be creative. He may choose to not care at all, to kill em off, to send a rescue team, to trigger a side mission, ... and maybe a little, foolproof module to easily choose the desired behaviour.

Generally it's always better to have an option or even complete control over such "upper-layer" behaviour instead of the hardcoded lowest common nominator solution.

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The Crytek Engine looks...industry pretty. It, by no means, can achieve the phot realism that you can get with ArmA2. The Crytek 3 Engine LOOKS like a video game engine. I have FRAPS footage from ArmA2 that looks like newsfeed footage. The crytek engine looks "too perfect." The real world isn't that perfect. The physics in the Crytek series also leave alot to be desired.

Destructible enviroments are no longer uncommon. In 2008, the Unreal 3 engine was capable of structural destruction.

(jump to 5:15 in the video).

The fact is that ArmA2's engine is MUCH MUCH more than eye candy. The physics going into this engine and it's ability to obtain near photo realism in it's appearance are what set it apart.

If BIS ever moved to the Crytek or Unreal engines, they would probably lose me as customer lol

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The physics going into this engine and it's ability to obtain near photo realism in it's appearance are what set it apart.

While I agree Cryengine is not a path to take for BIS, I think you overvalue ArmA2's "photo realism" and "physics". ArmA2 has next to no physics, and a poor lighting engine, something that CryEngine triumphs at in comparison. No rose tinted glasses here, I've played and enjoyed both. I've seen people make custom maps and panoramic screenshots in Crysis that put ArmA2 to shame, and vice versa. It just depends on how well one can use either game's editor. (Sometimes the players can cook up better looking maps than the game's designers)

I don't really think we'll ever see ragdolls and further advanced physics in ArmA2, but I would love to see them improve on the lighting engine, it's abysmal. No amount of custom effects will change that. However I believe it's obvious that it's that way for a reason, to save processing power, but since we're talking hypothetically about the future, one can hope hardware will allow BIS more flexibility.

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I don't really think we'll ever see ragdolls and further advanced physics in ArmA2, but I would love to see them improve on the lighting engine, it's abysmal. No amount of custom effects will change that. However I believe it's obvious that it's that way for a reason, to save processing power, but since we're talking hypothetically about the future, one can hope hardware will allow BIS more flexibility.

Hopefully the better lighting engine will be achieved using modern techniques like Differed Lighting, allowing 100's of light sources on screen without much performance.

and the implementation of DX10/DX11 and 64bit OS

Crysis and Dragon Rising make use of differed lighting which is why the lighting engine is so detailed and gorgeous because they dont have to worry much about performance.

I do agree lighting engine is to put it bluntly outdated.

Sakura chans night light fix makes the lighting look alot better at night you should try that out.

Its really hard to make any suggestions for Arma 3 future engine, seeing how we dont know if BIS is going to make another Arma game, doubt it and plus the hardware and new techniques are coming out all the time.

2015 might have some kind of revolutionary rendering system or new CPU architecture something that none of us could predict.

Im really hoping that the "Unlimited Detail Technology" (youtube it) is legit and works as planned, that in itself would make Arma 3 beyond any expectations.

Also with this larrabee and fermi architectures who knows what will be achievable in 2015+

Solid State drives will be heck of alot cheaper in 2015 and hopefully they will be able to transfer all the data from A2 to the SDD, to totally eliminate LOD trashing and other problems arma 2 faces.

Heres some crazy speculation:

Arma 3

Total photo-realism

Extremely high level of detail (past Crysis)

Running at Full HD or whatever the highest supported resolutions are at the time @ Constant 75 Hz in v-sync

2015 System specs:

Windows 8 64bit

CPU: Intel i10 6.2Ghz

GPU: Nvidia GTX680 only running physics simulation

RAM: 8GB of High channel DDR5 RAM

SSD:250GB 3GB data transfer/sec or whatever it could be

Rendering engine would be RV4 using Unlimited detail technology Point cloud data rendering, instead of traditional Polygon rendering, hence why the GPU will be used solely for Physics simulation other small tasks.

:lol: im drooling.

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Just so that you know, BIS (and/or/with Black Element) already have another game engine developped for Carrier Command. It's been confirmed by Dev's it's a new one. Maybe this is the foundation for what's coming next...

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The current engines BIS is using are fine... If they were to change engines though for some oddball reason, they should use the same one the D-Day: 1944 team is using. The engine they are using from what ive heard can run their entire 150km X 150km map fine on a Pentium 4, and this map is more destroyable than ARMA2's map.

It also supports "random" AI, I've heard the devs talking about how they have been scripting the AI to act in a random fashion that has 25+ different ways to react to the same situation.

Edited by bwc153

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D-Day: 1944

The Duke Nukem Forever of WW2 games. Only they don't have a publishing deal or a studio full of professionals. There's no evidence of such an engine existing, much less performing as advertised.

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The current engines BIS is using are fine... If they were to change engines though for some oddball reason, they should use the same one the D-Day: 1944 team is using. The engine they are using from what ive heard can run their entire 150km X 150km map fine on a Pentium 4, and this map is more destroyable than ARMA2's map.

It also supports "random" AI, I've heard the devs talking about how they have been scripting the AI to act in a random fashion that has 25+ different ways to react to the same situation.

I read on the internets that it will eventually become sentient and cure AIDS too...

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Hi all

As others have pointed out people need to stop confusing moving to 64 bit architecture with building a new engine.

64bit architecture != New Engine.

A couple of decades back I was involved in changing a product from 16 Bit architecture to 32 bit it involved no change to the core engine. We just replaced a few 16 bit modules with their 32 bit equivalent.

The core engine and the way it worked remained exactly the same, any change to a winning engine with its inherent 10 to year development and training cost is commercial suicide.

The Real Virtuality Engine (RVE) is still the most advanced simulation there is in a gaming engine that can run in a PC environment. COD CRY, Unreal and BF engines are just not in the same league. None of them has the terrain streaming or AI capabilities of RVE. NOT ONE! Nor do they have a development environment in the same league. And not even the dedicated Real Time Strategy games can match RVE's entity count, view distance or terrain size.

The only thing I would perhaps look at is the Unlimited Detail Technology for the graphics.

http://unlimiteddetailtechnology.com/

The posibility of running ArmA as a unversal game engine on a Nintendo Wii platform would be a commercial nuking of all other platforms and game engines.

I would want to see a technology demonstrator on a PC I provided and they installed on first though as I am a little sceptical but I can see the concept working as it sounds similar to some things we did at AGG LLC.

Either way any new engine that BIS use will remain the RVE even if they convert it to a 64 bit architecture RVE.

Kind Regards walker

Edited by walker

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64bit architecture != New Engine.

Nonsense. As any greasy-skinned 15-y/o American can tell you, 64 bit is obviously twice is better than 32 bit. It doesn't matter that all the people who want 64 bit don't actually understand what the 'bits' actually mean, it's too crucial for 21st century computing for intellectual analysis.

Next item on the agenda - BIS' urgent need to optimize the game for 6-core CPUs.

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Hey.... didn´t noticed this new "Unlimited Detail"-Technology before, but i am very impressed by it now. I hope its not just a big hype to make some money :)

There is a great comparisonvideo which also shows some content of ArmA2 so if this wasn´t posted before..... take a look!

But i think it will take some time to get this Tech used in games... but perhaps we will get it in the future... *dreaming* ;)

Edited by Cultivator

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Very interesting tech in those videos. I'd hope to see something become of that in the future rather than it's potential be fizzled away into obscurity.

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The videos are quite impressive if they are actually rendered real-time. But it's extremely suspicious that he doesn't mention any downsides.

-how much mem/disk space would one rock model with infinite detail take? one would assume infinite amount, unless it's procedurally generated. but can procedural generation of infinite amount of objects work real-time or are you then limited to using just a few unique models due to memory constraints (as seen on the demos, lots of repeating objects, not actually infinite detail)

-you'd still probably need polygonal meshes for everything that has collisions, physics, animation, deformation, destruction, path finding etc because doing that with infinitely complex geometry would cost infinite CPU cycles

-no mention of tesselation, which achieves 90% of the same end-result with a traditional polygonal renderer (round surfaces, very high surface detail, higher view distances, could eliminate much of noticeable LOD popping)

I think it might be a good tech (if it's real) to compliment current rendering methods, but not really replace everything.

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Hi all

If the hype is to be believed then "Unlimited Detail"-Technology is a game changer.

As to the downsides if you look in the original post about it in Off Topic I commented on the mention of "Artifacts" in one of the videos.

I suspect the artifacts are as a result of the algorithm used but as I mentioned before the key factor is the company alowing potential customers such as BIS, Nintendo etc. to see a technology demonstrator loaded on to a PC the potential customer supplies. This remains in full view of the customer and the "Unlimited Detail"-Technology guys through the hole demostration and gets wiped afterwards to ensure proprietry technology remains with its owner.

"Unlimited Detail"-Technology only provide their demostrator on a CD.

Kind Regards walker

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Hi all

As others have pointed out people need to stop confusing moving to 64 bit architecture with building a new engine.

64bit architecture != New Engine.

A couple of decades back I was involved in changing a product from 16 Bit architecture to 32 bit it involved no change to the core engine. We just replaced a few 16 bit modules with their 32 bit equivalent.

The core engine and the way it worked remained exactly the same, any change to a winning engine with its inherent 10 to year development and training cost is commercial suicide.

The Real Virtuality Engine (RVE) is still the most advanced simulation there is in a gaming engine that can run in a PC environment. COD CRY, Unreal and BF engines are just not in the same league. None of them has the terrain streaming or AI capabilities of RVE. NOT ONE! Nor do they have a development environment in the same league. And not even the dedicated Real Time Strategy games can match RVE's entity count, view distance or terrain size.

The only thing I would perhaps look at is the Unlimited Detail Technology for the graphics.

http://unlimiteddetailtechnology.com/

The posibility of running ArmA as a unversal game engine on a Nintendo Wii platform would be a commercial nuking of all other platforms and game engines.

I would want to see a technology demonstrator on a PC I provided and they installed on first though as I am a little sceptical but I can see the concept working as it sounds similar to some things we did at AGG LLC.

Either way any new engine that BIS use will remain the RVE even if they convert it to a 64 bit architecture RVE.

Kind Regards walker

The number ONE thing about changing to 64bit is the access to RAM. This one thing alone will stop the hard drive thrashing. This engine or future RVE begs for it.

As stated a million times before we the community applaud BIS for all the optimization/tricks they have used to squeeze a resource hungry SIM/GAME into the 2GB RAM 32bit space. EA/Activision,etc.. can't begin to compete to what BIS has wrung out of that limited space.

IF BIS continues with the MilSIM line of games I and others hope they take that bold step of moving to pure 64bit to give their excellent coders the CPU/RAM resources they so rightly deserve.

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Bohemia Interactive is a small company, they know and love the engine that they're using now (Forgot the name). There is absolutely no point in using the CryEngine 3, it's expensive it's something Bohemia isn't used to and we can already do alot with the engine we have, though it would be nice, it isn't necessary.

You guys probably forgot that BIS have way enough money (from selling VBS2 over 1,5 million copies to military wich delivers them lots and lots of money) to buy CryEngine 3 if they are to lasy to develope new good engine by them self.

My final word , if BIS will decide to keep just tweaking their current engine and not writing new one wich will fit into the next-generation game engines , Arma 3 will be an EPIC fail , even worser than A2 on it`s release because A2 engine just can`t handle all the stuff BIS try to put into a game, it`s TOO OLD.

P.S. "Fudgeblood" if people at BIS have the same taste like you and don`t like to move\take new steps in development and explore the new worlds ,just sitting on one place and be happy with what they have. IF IT`S SO Probably A2 was the last massive selling title BIS shipped to the shops.

Edited by Oleg-Russia

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You guys probably forgot that BIS have way enough money (from selling VBS2 over 1,5 million copies to military wich delivers them lots and lots of money) to buy CryEngine 3 if they are to lasy to develope new good engine by them self.

My final word , if BIS will decide to keep just tweaking their current engine and not writing new one wich will fit into the next-generation game engines , Arma 3 will be an EPIC fail , even worser than A2 on it`s release because A2 engine just can`t handle all the stuff BIS try to put into a game, it`s TOO OLD.

P.S. "Fudgeblood" if people at BIS have the same taste like you and don`t like to move\take new steps in development and explore the new worlds ,just sitting on one place and be happy with what they have. IF IT`S SO Probably A2 was the last massive selling title BIS shipped to the shops.

So you think instead they should buy another engine from someone that will simply look more fancy, or build a new one from scratch and code the thousands of things that the current does?

In depth mission editor, unit commands, vehicle speeds, infantry stances and the ways they effect movement, varied body movement, high visibility and standoff distances, modules, triggers, trigger effects, the ability to enhance vehicles and add far more versatility in modding such as fire control systems, various weapons and the ability to change loadout in mission, fully operable gauges that record all sorts of data and visual avionics display. Even with all of these that is simply a very small chunk of the iceberg, do you think it would be sensible to redo all of this?

Moving to just about any other engine would be a step in the wrong direction whereupon you fall off a bridge while wearing cement shoes, plummet into a river and drown.

Edited by NodUnit

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You guys probably forgot that BIS have way enough money (from selling VBS2 over 1,5 million copies to military wich delivers them lots and lots of money)

Thats one way of making money, but not their main source and hell, its not as much money as you think.

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They need to make teh world more destructible and more dynamic. i also want to see teh CQ be more refined and solid. right now CQ seems rigid and stiff with no life whatsoever. give us CQC bad company 2 style WITH arma 2 weapon accuracy and recoil and where good to go

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