Farcry Engine, Multiplayer, & Mods...

DOOManiac · February 2004

<div class="IPBDescription">considering it for Espionage...</div>What do you guys think of the Farcry engine? I've been looking at it and it already does quite a few nice things we'd like for Espionage that quite frankly I'm not sure if HL2 can do. Most importantly it does huge huge landscapes with vast amounts of vegetation. I'm not too sure how well it handles large indoor areas though.

Supposedly the developer is putting forth a lot of effort w/ including easy to use mod tools (supposedly the level editor is as simple as painting the landscape), but I just dunno if Far Cry is gonna be one of those games worth modding though. You don't wanna put a lot of time into a game that nobody has anymore 3 or 4 months later. And not to mention any technical problems the game may have when it comes out...

What vibes are you guys getting from this one? Anybody here played the multiplayer beta? If so, please give me your detailed impressions of it.

Tequila · February 2004

Far Cry is awesome outdoor, but it suffers from the Unreal Tournament 2003/4 problem of having distinctly weird feeling indoors... almost non-solid and fake. I wouldn't recommend it, as HL2 can do expansive outdoor areas too, but no doubt will feel a damn sight more 'real'.

Insane · February 2004

With HL2, you have a pretty good assurance that you'll have as large a community (and thus potential playerbase for Espionage) as with HL, something that you can't garuantee with Far Cry.

Personally, I wouldn't rule HL2 out untill you've seen what it can do.

OttoDestruct · February 2004

How about the Duke Nukem Forever engine..... <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' />

Tequila · February 2004

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (OttoDestruct @ Feb 23 2004, 01:53 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> How about the Duke Nukem Forever engine..... <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' />  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
Because in 2054 (I'm being generous, I know) we'll have moved on to bigger and better things.

roachems · February 2004

What Insane said.

Making a mod for Far Cry is pretty risky if your looking to get it as popular as say, NS. With HL2, there is almost a guarantee that it will be popular. Cause its HL2!

Narfwak · February 2004

</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Insane @ Feb 23 2004, 06:33 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> With HL2, you have a pretty good assurance that you'll have as large a community (and thus potential playerbase for Espionage) as with HL, something that you can't garuantee with Far Cry.

Personally, I wouldn't rule HL2 out untill you've seen what it can do.  </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> 
Ditto. I think you'll have to wait and see both games firsthand before you can decide which engine is better. As far as I know, Far Cry is releasing several months before HL2; this will give you the opportunity to play with the tools and see if the community is going to last the test of time. Once HL2 rolls around, you can play with those tools and decide which game has the superior engine. You won't need to wait around with HL2 - as Insane stated, it is almost guaranteed to have a large community.

DOOManiac · February 2004

Thanks for the input guys. Seems my assumptions about bias towards the FarCry engine were pretty on.

I'll keep it as an option, but more on the back burner of just in case HL2 never comes out. (You know, like TF2) Or if HL2 can't handle what I want it to do.

Emsee · February 2004

I'm on the MP beta, theres not much I can tell you really as most of the work we've done is on balancing and such. Stuff like player speed and weapons obviously have no bearing on any kind of modding.
As far as the netcode/lag compensation etc goes....well it's no half-life. A 50+ ping can be frustrating sometimes making it hard to hit people with any kind of accuracy. Although theres only been 2 beta versions, it ends 03/03, the netcode has improved quite a bit from V1 and hopefully will again in a patch sometime as the team are aware of the concern over it. Although at the moment it ranges from about acceptable to bad/ too annoying to bother with.
The hit detection can sometimes seem way off, with pings of about 60 it's not uncommon for a close range pistol duel to go on for about a min without a hit.

With the time available between farcry and Hl2 releases it's probably best for you to try it for your self and hopefully they will be working on improvments to it to release a patch soon. But I would expect hl2 netcode to be better considering just how good hl is now.

RuBy · February 2004

I'm sure the final game will be much better optimized but the Far Cry demo is known to run very poorly on high end machines... that might be a point to consider. In any case with HL2 you'll have a sure win, with Far Cry it will be harder to predict but I would definitely keep it as an option.

Pulse · February 2004

The demo runs remarkably well when you consider that you are looking at an entire gigantic island, complete with hundreds of 3d trees, surrounded by reflective water, all with no distance fog. I get perfectly acceptable framerates with all options set to max at 1024x768 on my midrange system.

Quaunaut · February 2004

I'd go with HL2, for 2 reasons:

Insured playerbase.

And everything the farcry engine says it can do(and we've seen it do in the demo), HL2 can do better, AND perform better. First off-

In HL2, we saw 2 big areas- the docks(with the EXCELLENT water effects-no, that wasn't a skybox), and the main one, the beach with the highway. In Farcry, I must run the game at lowest settings for a few reasons- the water effects tax systems BIGTIME, and STILL don't show ripples where you've gone(comon, even morrowind does that!), the vegetation is a bit screwy, and lastly, the inside areas looked like crap.

HL2 on the other hand, looked damned good all around. AND you could still support vehicles(that actually have real physics). And thats another thing- remember in James Bond movies how he always seemed to use physics to his advantage? Like throwing knives would worm much better now. Also, maybe putting in extra things, like making a body fall silently(maybe pressing the use key while slitting throat?), or other things could be done, and could make the game a much bigger thinking game than it probably already would be.

I say HL2.

DOOManiac · February 2004

We've seen HL2 render big open empty spaces ( A dried up sea bed, a somewhat big but by no means large beach) but we haven't seen it do any huge landscapes filled with trees and other vegetation. That's my main concern w/ the HL2 engine.

Scythe · February 2004

My main worry with far cry is that the engine doesn't seem to be very scaleable. It runs like crap on my radeon 8500 pro whereas HL2, judging from the benchmarks, should run fine.

Far cry's indoor areas look fine to me...

--Scythe--

Gliss · February 2004

I think the only problem you'll have with FarCry engine is the playerbase (which we can't confirm what its size is atm), and the indoor stuff. Considering the way Stealthmod and Espionage look, it's a good thing to have outdoor scenery (sneak up on someone in a cramped corridor? Puh-leez!). Plus, tons of people are crazy about FarCry, seeing as how they've actually released a demo, while HL2 has nearly nothing to say for itself, except some nice screenshots & videos (all of which FarCry have). Lots of people have given up on HL2 and VALVe when Steam came out, so I'd go for FarCry.

Fina · February 2004

From what I played of Far Cry, I loved it. It has the best outdoor environments I've ever seen in a game. However, it seems to have some issues with ATI cards. I have a Radeon 9800 pro on a AMD 2800+ and I get around 40-50fps normally. My brother's 1600+, GF4 Ti4400 ran equal or faster than mine did. Reading the FarCry forum seemed to point out a large number of people with 9700/9800s with the same problems. Hopefully a fixed will be found soon.

There are already a number of mods available for the Far Cry demo. Hopefully that will point toward a mod-rich game, but we can only hope for such at this point.

Farcry Engine, Multiplayer, & Mods...

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