DAOC engine

[old.job]

Hmmmm I just downloaded 'cough' Motorcross Madness 2, and I am gobsmacked by the graphics, very detailed terrain, convincing vegetation, real time shadows, runs a smooth as a button on my machine, the specs only req a 16mb card!! An area easily the size of any zone in DAOC , so how come this 2 year old game looks as good if not better than even the SI shots?
Ok it's a completely different game, but it runs lovely even with loads of other players on the screen and it's got 3d sound.
If you've got a copy drag it out and have a look, borrow it off a mate, I think you'll see what I mean, granted the sky's a bit crap, but really the terrain is lovely, how come SI is going to require such high specs, when games looked this good 2 years ago on much less powerful hardware?

 

[noob_pride]

Daoc has better graphics than any other MMORPG and even has better graphics than most games of any type to date!!

cmon it even has real looking hands and not big blobs lol

and daoc has been out how long now? and they have a new or updated engine comming out!

plus I dont think the game your talking about has real life weather, sounds, large maps, lots of people, lots of mobs, lots of other stuff to!

 

[old.Maronan]

I won't say that the DAoC engine is extremely well used or even good in itself.

However, Motorcross Madness is a completely different ballgame from Dark Ages of Camelot. I reckon you drive around in a static route, with animals played next to the road and possible on the driving area?

Now, try to make it so you could drive in an area 10 times the size. Force the game to have a mechanism to swap parts of the area in and out (Zoning). Allow a much more varied enviroment (In the car game you just have players or cpu controlled cars). In DAoC you have players plus a whole lot more cpu controlled cars that has to be sync'd over the network, etc, etc.

Anyways, Graphics is just eye-candy. Its the gameplay thats important.

 

[Danya]

Driving games you only see the landscape from certain angles. Pretty easy to fudge it to look good.
For instance the shadows... on everything? or just the vehicles? that's only a few shadows in total. Try that with 200 people on screen...
Vegetation... you never get close enough to see it. Also DAoC's trees aren't bad tbh.
Terrain may look nice as well, but again you never get close enough to see what it's really like...

 

[old.job]

MM2 is a completely free drive anywhere in the zone, all shadows are real time, there is loads of objects in the game, moving trains etc, everything interacts, full collision detection and when you do a massive jump you can see for miles. The rider has full animation incuding all types of smoothly animated falling and ground collision.
Also it is an on-line game as well, not mmorpg but still it's an eyeopener to me.

I think you guys are thinking of driving games like sega rally or something with static backgrounds, MM2 terrain is just like DAOC , fully explorable, really if you play the game you'll know where I'm coming from.

 

[tripitaka]

Graphics

MM2 has a minimum spec as does DAOC - but i bet the minimum spec for DAOC is lower so more ppl can run it.

Also, What name is against MM2 - 'nuff said.
(and no, im not complaining about the graphics in DAOC or the company behind it).

im basically saying Microsoft has the time/ppl/money to be able to make a better looking front end to a game which doesn't need to have 200 ppl on screen all in sync at once.

 

[old.tRoG]

fanboi

 

[old.job]

Very true the coding for the interaction must be horrendous, with regards to the min specs they are much less for MM2 than even this engine in DAOC, I too despise Microshat, that's one reason why I stole it off Kazaa, ...c'mon Billy come get me man!

Yes DAOC can run much more people on screen at once, but of course you do get a slideshow for your trouble.
It just runs so smooth, it's not even slightly taxing my gforce2, which is at it's limit with DAOC even when there's no one else on screen.

OK I'm pushing my luck now, someone's gonna tel me to f@ck off and play it then.

 

[Arumar]

i would tell you to go play it then, but i won't bother, because of a quote from someone else

Anyways, Graphics is just eye-candy. Its the gameplay thats important.

So, i know which one i prefer to play, so i think i'll go play daoc

 

[Psy|:m00:]

That and SI makes it look prettier than it is

 

[Belsameth]

in Motorcross Madness you never have 200+ moving people + god knows how many mobs on screen. unlike DAoC
that has a lot to do with it. Framrate lag can get bad enough as it is.

now imagine the engine having to render realtime shadows for 1 group + the 30 Tanglers they pull.
and that's not even an uncommon situation. when defending a relic it can become awefull to a point where you think the game runs smooth on a relic defense with the current lag.

it has to be said tho that the DAoC engine is far from well done. but when comparing it to a single player/limited multiplayer game you have to take into account all the factors.

 

[gengi]

on a side note

Does anyone actually know the specs for Shrouded Isles ?
Do I have to rush out and buy a couple of GeForce 4 Ti 4600's ?
Or will what you have already be enough. I would think that Mythic/GOa would not be so stupid as to annoy a lot of customers who can curently play but would not be able to play due to hardware limitations on what is after-all an expansion pack

later

Gengee

 

[Aeternus]

Well, shrouded island is based on the same graphics engine as Morrowind: The Elder Scroll III.... so if your computer can handle that game, daoc should work just fine. Although that game is single player oriented, so it probably has a bit bigger specs than a mmorpg...

The graphics engine used in Daoc is called NetImmerse, the current version that Mythic uses is 3.0.

Shrouded Islands will be enhanced on the latest 4.2 version...

I belive even if your using a older graphics card, you should still see an improvement in framerates, since this engine has a lot of fixes and enhancements compared to the current one. It will of course give all the latest cards like geforce3-4+ and the radeon8500's+ some rather yummy visuals with all the latest effects supported by directx 8.1... probably making daoc one of the best looking mmorpgs around.

The engine is most likely released as a patch, since its apart of your daoc subscription, would be really odd if not.

more about the company behind NetImmerse here.

 

[Flimgoblin]

Daoc uses an ancient 3d engine that doesn't even have occlusion culling or level of detail culling...

(i.e. that pretty epic armour of yours gets rendered in every detail to EVERYONE within 3000 units or so - despite the fact it's a single black pixel )

Methinks they were strapped for cash during development and a copy of netimmerse 3.0 fell off the back of the passing delivery lorry...

but 4.2 will be good mmm

 

[old.Tohtori]

Just to add a little info on where all the memory goes in a game. You see the hud? That eats it up, music eats it up, sounds, when you open your inv..poof..a bit more gone. The sky is changing all the time, there's a big one. Not to mention all the things moving, dying, killing and such. Just saying that graphics is not the only thing eating memory. As it is in MM2, there is just the few racers and your own, it's much easier to make "superb" graphics when you don't have tons of other things in the code and such.

Granted, DaoC could look better but considering the game itself, graphics is not the biggedt concern in this game.

Just my cha cha cha and a bottle of rum.

 

[old.job]

Hey Fing I hear what your saying about the rendering, that bring's up another question, if I F11 my character I can watch him run off till he's a black spec, but when I move across a zone, a group of characters always pops up when they are close enough to be individually identified, is the pop-up distance the same all the time and for everyone?
Or as I suspect, is it how qucikly the game can load the info, those giants out in rvr always pop up right in front of me, any speeedspeller will tell ya how scary that can be, whereas smaller mobs are visible further out.

Anyway I'm not playing MM2 anymore just got a 19" monitor and the games physics are too realistic, it's making me puke!!!

 

[Flimgoblin]

The "pop" distance is based on the size... (it was static before 1.45) so giants appear longer before you get near them...

However if you use f11 to stop your camera - you'll notice if someone is fairly far behidn you you'll not see them or their horse go past... the rendering engine only knows about stuff that's close to you, when you've horsed off into the distance it doesn't know... I wonder if you horse past Caer Ulfwych and freeze f11 as you look towards the guards - will they disappear after a while?

 

[Ragnarok1978]

DAoC is pretty dependant on your "connexion" (hehe) to the net.

Generally, if I have a bad day with lots of loss and high pingtimes, players, mobs etc. do not pop as fast as they do on a good day.

Generally I can spot people and mobs from pretty far away (I think there's a max rendering distance), but on a bad day I may not see them till they're right under my nose. It would also make sence that larger objects are larger to load (and download) than smaller ones. But I don't know the engine or the netcode for DAoC, so this is pretty much based on my own assumptions.

Ofcourse there's serverside lag as well, so it's not totally dependant on your hardware. I believe serverside lag has quite a bit to do with the chopping in large battles, cause it just can't update everyone fast enough.

 

[Flimgoblin]

Large battles lag is 100% the graphics engine...

shift-p for your performance meter (might be ctrl-p)

first two are latency and packetloss. The third is framerate...

You'll notice in a zerg fight the first two are still green, the third goes red.

 

[old.Plebo]

Originally posted by Fingoniel
Large battles lag is 100% the graphics engine...

shift-p for your performance meter (might be ctrl-p)

first two are latency and packetloss. The third is framerate...

You'll notice in a zerg fight the first two are still green, the third goes red.

One of the Shrouded Isles beta testers reported that there was no longer any framerate problems in RvR, which sounds promising.

 

[Flimgoblin]

indeed
they finally have a decent 3d engine *yay*

 

[SFXman]

Dark Age of Camelot has absolutely wonderful and smooth graphics... very well done. I'd say that I for one will be completely shocked by the über graphics effects that SI will bring along...
The thing in DAoC is that the engine has a slight flaw, it can't handle many things happening at once which is sort of strange since this is the very thing Mythic should have concentrated on since this IS an MMORPG.
Just my two pence.

 

[old.Normengast]

No matter how you turn it the game engine is 80% depending on CPU speed instead of gfx card speed, which makes it crap.

 

[Freia]

Originally posted by Ragnarok1978

Generally I can spot people and mobs from pretty far away (I think there's a max rendering distance), but on a bad day I may not see them till they're right under my nose.

That must be because you have an extra few seconds (lag time) before the game realizes you are close to them.

It would also make sence that larger objects are larger to load (and download) than smaller ones.

It would be insane to download the model for all objects
Your client probably gets a message that mob type 0x01F8 is at coordinate x, y, z and then it knows what model to render and what skin to put on it. Saves a couple of bytes

Anyways. Lets face it: DAoC probably has the crappiest gfx engine around. I mean, it's supposed to be all about large battles. Keep raiding etc. And still there is NO thought at all put into displaying many objects on screen smothly, like lowering the detail of objects that are far away. Its totally insane and quite frankly i think it should be punishable to torture us with slideshows like they do....

I get mad every time I think about it. And then they go raving about how amazingly good their new engine is. The only thing that is amazing is that we didn't get a decent engine from the beginning!!

If you wanna compare, go have a look at Serious Sam (Released march 2001). Here is some screenies and information about their graphics engine. Mythic should have used that one, or actually just about ANYTHING but NetImmediateCrapFPS.

Oh, and if you want to check out state of the art graphics you should have a look at Noone lives forever. (the screenies dont do it justice. You really have to experience seing a note on the wall 10 meters away and walking upt to it and being able to read todays menu with perfectly rounded and detailed fonts. Then we can talk about good graphics.

<takes a deep breath>
Oh, i feel better now

 

[Ragnarok1978]

Originally posted by Freia

It would be insane to download the model for all objects
Your client probably gets a message that mob type 0x01F8 is at coordinate x, y, z and then it knows what model to render and what skin to put on it. Saves a couple of bytes

That's true, but then it comes down to hardware alone, in terms of the time it takes it to render a taiga cat compared to a Troll

In regards to graphics, I ain't no expert I know NOLF2 has pretty great graphics, hell I think the first one has (It's bundled with my GF4).

Alltho Mafia is just about the prettiest game I've ever played, sure buildings and clothes could've been nurtured more, but all in all it's a pleasure to watch.

Anyways, floating off-topic, better stop

 

[old.Tohtori]

Ok i know this is a x-box game but... still...

have to advertise a game that i was making

www.housemarque.com

go to "GAMES"

go to "TRANSW S.B."

And there you go...some nice screenies

 

[belth]

Send me a copy? Keltainen 16 will do for transfer

 

[old.Tohtori]

Oh no no no. You have to wait and buy it like all the others, i get more money then

 

[belth]

You're evil, I tell you, EVIL!

 

[old.job]

Man I HATE!!!! Macrotedia flash player, why do people insist in using it for a front page and have no alternative link to skip.

I hate it cos sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt, what's wrong with HTML!!!

What's the most pressed button on Flash intro screen?
..you got it...... SKIP!!!!