[Unknown Soldier]

Looking at GameSpot I see they reviewed The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay - Developers Cut. They rate it a 9.3, which is higher than what they rated HL2(9.2).

Looking at the images though, I wondered what engine the game uses? Is it Doom3? Certainly looks like it.

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images..._screen006.jpg

US

[micron]

It looks nice

[digitalwanderer]

Sort of fun too, but the AA is a biatch to enable on ATi cards and it suffers a bit from "shader AA syndrome". (My own term, but I think you'll understand it)

Some of the stuff annoys me, like how when you climb a ladder it has to go to third-person perspective for it....but the first-person hand-to-hand fighting more than makes up for it. I like the melee in the prison aspects of it.

I wanna try it on an nVidia card and see if the AA is any better, but it's an entertaining game if nothing else.

(BTW-This one is rightly rated "M" for mature. LOTS of bad language and stabbing people from behind in the kidneys and stuff. )

[AlStrong]

Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier

Looking at the images though, I wondered what engine the game uses? Is it Doom3? Certainly looks like it.

Proprietary. Heavily modified Enclave engine.

[digitalwanderer]

And under "Shader Options" it lets you choose which you want and it goes up to 2.0++ which is defined as 6800 only.

My X800 defaulted to 2.0 and it won't let me select 2.0++. (I had to try. )

[Unknown Soldier]

Originally Posted by Alstrong

Proprietary. Heavily modified Enclave engine.

Ahh Thx .. looks very nice.

So what you rate it Digi?

US

[AlStrong]

Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier

Ahh Thx .. looks very nice.

I'm pretty sure it's right. Some of the Starbreeze devs hung out at the TXB forums and I picked up some info there. I'll see if I can't find a quote.

OXM April 2004

OXM: Were you inspired by any other engines during the development of the Riddick technology? For instance, Dues Ex came out and did some cool stuff with lighting and normal mapping...

Magnus (Technical Director/Lead Engine Programmer): I wrote the first prototype for a stencil engine in the middle of the development of Enclave, inspired by an early demo of Doom 3 that IdSofware showed at an Apple event. We had just received Geforce4 boards at that time, and that was also a trigger to try out new stuff. We even considered using the technology for Enclave, but we rejected the idea rather quickly when we started to look into the implications on the project (i.e. severe delays).

When we started working on Riddick we decided early on that we were going to use per-pixel lighting with normal maps. The rest of the lighting wasn't decided on. The initial worst-case plan was to just use a lightmap per light source. I wasn't sure if the Xbox would handle the fill rate required for a full-blown stencil engine, with shadows from everything and for all lights. However, after some early prototyping I came to the conclusion that it might work, (but) it will be very hard, and that GPU performance would be our worst enemy. So we decided to go for it.

[digitalwanderer]

I can't really rate it yet, I haven't had enough time with it.

Tentatively a thumbs-up though as I'm enjoying what I'm seeing so far, my complaints are much more nit-picky than show-stopper stuff.

[london-boy]

Better than HL2? Cool!!

[rms]

Anyone know what the visual difference between Shader2.0 and 2.0++ is in the game? Looks like perhaps less bump-mapping?

Anyway running at 2.0 on my 6800GT gives a large framerate boost over 2.0++. 1280x1024 is playable now instead of 1024x768.

I'm well into the Mines right now (am also well into HL2) and give Riddick a high rating. It is extremely violent though, with realistic human opponents, so *do not* let young kids play this. I haven't seen the movie, and probably won't after this

rms

[Dave Glue]

Originally Posted by rms

Anyone know what the visual difference between Shader2.0 and 2.0++ is in the game? Looks like perhaps less bump-mapping?

Says so right in the options - it enables soft shadows. That's it.

I haven't seen the movie, and probably won't after this

rms

It's not based on the film.

[london-boy]

Originally Posted by Dave Glue

Says so right in the options - it enables soft shadows. That's it.

Why would they need 2.0++ instead of 2.0 for soft shadows?

[mondoterrifico]

Originally Posted by Alstrong

Proprietary. Heavily modified Enclave engine.

Yeah. http://www.starbreeze.com/engine.jsp

[digitalwanderer]

Originally Posted by Dave Glue

It's not based on the film.

It would be the prequel to "Pitch Black", the events happen before he gets his eyes shined. (I think it happens later in the game actually, but I'm not very far yet.)

[swaaye]

LOL. This game is NOT better than Half Life 2. Not even close really. I'm down in the sewers with the monkey people (wtf). It's fun, but the areas are too small. I don't like these indoor corridor crawls much.

The fist fighting is pretty cool though. I love how you can even control your fist's direction and use some strategy. That's awesome.

Atmosphere is ok. Music is generic 'Hans Zimmer' rip off material. Swearing gets old. The guards say the same STUPID lines WAY too much (FarCry esque).

I'd give it a 70-80% so far.

It murders my 9600 64MB(440/220)/Athlon64 3000+/1.25GB notebook though. It may be more demanding than Doom3. Some areas run smooth, others are in the single digits. Very strange. It's not always apparent WHY it's running slowly either.

Shader settings on my RV350 have VERY little performance impact, from fixed func to PS2.0 is a negligible change. Even turning texture detail and shadows all the way down = not a major change.

[thegrommit]

Is this another console port without a quicksave/self save system?

[digitalwanderer]

It has a quicksave that you can save at any point.

[XxStratoMasterXx]

Is the StarBreeze engine more advanced than Doom 3's?

[T2k]

Originally Posted by XxStratoMasterXx

Is the StarBreeze engine more advanced than Doom 3's?

That's not a hard job...

[anaqer]

Originally Posted by T2k

That's not a hard job...

Gee, you guys make a great couple!

[Mendel]

I only played it on xbox but I gotta say... it truly was hell of a lot better than HL2 or doom3. Not as good as far cry though.

It fixes the "I can't climb on top of things" annoyance right out of fps games. It is the only fps game ever where stealthy approach didn't annoy the hell out of me. It combines adventure game and fps in a whole new way. It has excellent voice talents and great graphics. Weapons are very good too.

Immersion in melee fights, the special moves and stuff are great. If someone points a gun at you, you can grab the gun, turn it to point your enemy while he still holds it, and force him to pull the trigger forcing him to blow his own brains out. Superb!

There is only one sewer mission that I didn't like.

My scores for recent shooters:

Metroid Prime 2 100/100 Game of the Year for me!
Far Cry 97/100
Riddick 95/100
Painkiller 92/100
CS:S 91/100
HL2 89/100
Doom3 82/100
Halo 2 69/100
Killzone Now playing...

[Luminescent]

Dig, your not missing much with the 2.0++ profile (for this gen, at least), as its only playable at resolutions under 1280x1024 (preferably 1024x768 and lower) and does not seem to function with AA enabled.

[Guden Oden]

Originally Posted by swaaye

LOL. This game is NOT better than Half Life 2. Not even close really.

Yeah, Riddick has the potential to be MUCH BETTER!

I must say, after playing through HL2 almost 2x, it really isn't even close to what it was cracked up to be. Where's all this hyper AI unscripted stuff that was promised for the E3 demo last year? Where's all this completely breakable and physics-based stuff that was hyped? There's like 2 places in the game physics ever plays any kind of big deal. And where are those awesome-looking HDR metal roof tiles that Valve released a shot of? :P

Sorry, after spending time with the game I have concluded HL2 is a majorly overcooked ham. I expect the Painkiller expansion will schpank its booty in a major way if it's ever released over here (grrr!) and hopefully so will Riddick too. Enclave's a very enjoyable game, so as long as Riddick isn't WORSE, then it's already gone a long way.

[rms]

Originally Posted by Mendel

Immersion in melee fights, the special moves and stuff are great. If someone points a gun at you, you can grab the gun, turn it to point your enemy while he still holds it, and force him to pull the trigger forcing him to blow his own brains out. Superb!

I've had this happen a few times in fights, but have no idea how to initiate it. It's very hard to tell what's going on once you get in close to an opponent. Any tips?

rms

[Scott_Arm]

I'll have to give this game a shot. I wasn't even mildly interested in playing it. Not really a fan of the Riddick movies. Pitch Black was ok, but the other was not very good at all. Kind of drew me away from the games. From the screenshots I've seen, the graphics look nice, but I don't like the game art at all. But the melee combat sounds very cool, and I really wanna see how that plays out.