[Hellbinder]

Check out 4d rulers new AMP-II engine demo.

http://www.4drulers.com/

It looks just like Doom-III and Game 2 of 3Dmark03. It only supports GF3/GF4 currently But i am assured that Radeon support is a high priority and on the way very soon. It is a very early Tech Demo.

Looks like the question of wether the Doom-III appraoch is right or not is being answered. This engine is awesome, looks fantastic, Plays super duper fast, and only costs 200$ for an initial licence.

Here is a list of features.

Real-time 3D corridor renderer. The Six degrees of freedom allows the user to create full 3D environments, like first and third person shooters, 3D architectural walkthroughs, virtually any 3D simulation.

Per Pixel Lighting. The engine uses per pixel dynamic lighting, not preprocessed low resolution shade maps such as the Quake series engines or Unreal engine. This next generation lighting allows for bump mapping, specular lighting and stencil shadowing. Characters and the environments are now rendered and cast shadows the in the same pipeline, so characters, map objects and level geometry are all treated the same and are rendered in the most realistic methods possible using the latest hardware.

Bump mapping. Bump maps will give the appearance of real depth in a surface, allowing for fine detail like fingernails, wrinkles, beard stubble, rivets, weapon details, carpet, anything you can imagine under a few inches in real world depth can be simulated correctly with a bump map. Bump mapping helps eliminate texture tiling also, and time can be saved because world textures no longer need fake shadows and lighting painted into them, just color is needed in texture maps now.

Specular lighting. By using a texture, you can control exactly how shiny each pixel of a surface is. Chrome, and shiny metals have never before looked so realistic in any game engine.

Stencil Shadowing. Realistic stencil shadowing allows shadows to cast off of characters and the world itself. These shadows cast onto other surfaces and wrap around up a wall, or onto mutliple surfaces, just like real shadows work. Other engines try to fake shadows with projection blobs on characters and by using shade maps which are a big waste of texture memory. Don't settle for anything less than real time stencil shadowing in your game.

Projection Textures. By using a texture in conjunction with a light source, you can create very detailed soft shadow effects like mini blinds, or make custom shaped lights by filtering them through an image.

Fog Flares. Nearly any shape of lense flares are now possible, so volumetric lights, spot lights, rectangular glows, etc can all be created for the ultimate lens flare effects.

Texturing. AMP II allows up to 1024x1024 32 bit textures. It supports TGA, PNG, BMP, and DMT file formats.

Texture Memory Management System. The engine has texture compression and scalable texture depth to lower texture memory requirements.

Shader System. Create "shader effects" which manipulates a texture for fantastic surface effects. Panning, scaling, glowing, pulsing, rotating, flickering, animated, and other effects are all possible. These are useful for panning text or static on a computer screen, light bulbs flickering on and off, pulsing glowing surfaces like lava, practically anything you can imagine. Used in conjuntion with lighting effects can produce stunning visuals.

3D character renderer with skeletal animation system. Skeletal animation system allows for the most realistic animations possible. Use 3D Studio Max's standard animation system, Bones, Character Studio or motion capture to bring characters and animated objects to life. The engine also has a velocity setting to slow your characters' walk down to match his current speed, so you can tweak how fast a player moves without redoing run and walk animations. Also polygons can be assigned to multiple bones which gives a nice elastic appearance at the joints.

Realistic light sourcing with shadows. Every light in AMP II is dynamic, meaning there are no pre-calcuated lights. This makes it possible to destroy lights, move lights, apply shaders to lights, etc, at no extra rendering expense. Per pixel lighting allows users to control the lighting of their surfaces at a per pixel level and also allows using smoothing groups and normal maps. This allows for soft round lit surfaces, or hard edges on corners, or anywhere in between just like smoothing groups work in 3D rendering packages such as 3D Studio Max. Colored lights are allowed as well.

Particle system. An advanced particle system allows creation of sparks, smoke, dust, muzzleflashes, flamethrower effects, weapon effects, etc.
Portal Rendering. Portal rendering allows for viewing of levels almost instantly versus older BSP engines which sometimes took hours or even days of preprocessing times. It is also much easier to work with and more efficient than BSP rendering engines. Simply make a 90 degree turn in a corridor, and it perfectly cuts off what isn't visable.
OpenGL based rendering.

Includes Wire (tm) networking library which powered the ultra smooth net play for Gore –Ultimate Soldier. (tm)

Being that it plays so fast it would be great to be able to break the tech in this engine down and see how it differers from the Doom-III approach.

[Crusher]

Deus Ex Inivisible War isn't worthy of mentioning eh?

I played the Gore demo. It didn't make me too anxious to rush out and buy a new video card just to check out their new demo (it did, however, make me anxious to run the uninstall program).

[Hellbinder]

I played the Gore demo. It didn't make me too anxious to rush out and buy a new video card just to check out their new demo (it did, however, make me anxious to run the uninstall program).

Thats Great..

This isnt Gore...

did you even look at the screen shots????

[Chalnoth]

Yeah, I really do feel that global shadowing will very quickly become a must-have feature. As I've said in the past to people commenting on the low polycount nature of DOOM3, wait until you see it in action. I doubt it's just because of Carmack's pull in the industry that many other developers have come to this same conclusion.

[RussSchultz]

Originally Posted by Hellbinder[CE

]did you even look at the screen shots????

I couldn't find any screenshots on the website. Didn't look too hard, but you'd think since they are selling their rendering engine, they'd have screenshots galore.

[Ostsol]

http://www.4drulers.com/ampscreenshots.html

Two screenshots.

Nice looking engine. Just needs a game, now.

[flf]

I like how their company name is just slightly "better" than 3DRealms.

[Freak'n Big Panda]

Looks like shit IMO! Sorry but it does I mean look @ the char models.... omg disgusting! And the textures arn't veen that nice.... No where close to doom 3 or game test 2 IMO...

[Qroach]

Bleh, It looks ok... certainly doesn't look as good or detailed as any of the doom3 shots we've seen. Bah, eveyrone is always looking for a Id killer. It never happens.

[John Reynolds]

Originally Posted by Qroach

Bleh, It looks ok... certainly doesn't look as good or detailed as any of the doom3 shots we've seen. Bah, eveyrone is always looking for a Id killer. It never happens.

Game engine-wise, I agree. Game design-wise, id lost the first person shooter crown years and years ago. IMO.

Funny thing is, as hard as I bag on id's games I'm sure I'll buy Doom 3 the day it hits store shelves. Funny that. :?

[JF_Aidan_Pryde]

Originally Posted by John Reynolds

Game engine-wise, I agree. Game design-wise, id lost the first person shooter crown years and years ago. IMO.

Funny thing is, as hard as I bag on id's games I'm sure I'll buy Doom 3 the day it hits store shelves. Funny that. :?

Quake3 is still the best multiplayer deathmatch game bar none!
Single player though, I agree.

[Ostsol]

Texture quality is a matter of the texture size used or if detail textures are used. It's a matter of content, rather than capability. It's quite likely that the engine is quite capable of handling large textures and detail textures, though it is quite puzzling as to why the developers would choose not to utilize such capabilities in the tech demo. . .

[Matt]

I'm pretty sure it can handle better texture detail. It's been noted that 4DRulers put this together quickly to get exposure on their engine before other engines start catching on with the whole per-pixel lighting/Doom3 tricks that has been wowing us. For the price though, I'd say it's pretty good. Not sure about ease of use via the editor though.

For those of you who want more than the 2 screenshots on the 4DRulers page, I've put up a bunch on my site: http://www.3dgpu.com/comments.php?id...amp;category=9

[Tagrineth]

Originally Posted by Freak'n Big Panda

Looks like shit IMO! Sorry but it does I mean look @ the char models.... omg disgusting! And the textures arn't veen that nice.... No where close to doom 3 or game test 2 IMO...

Character models and texture 'niceness' is up to a game's artists, not an engine's coders.

[JD]

It's nice and almost looks like mine(no specular or bumps) and the ones I've seen so far ie. Doom3, power render X, cauldron's cloakNT, tenebrae2, probably some others I forgotten about.

You guys also find the colors being washed out? I think it's the specular that's doing this. I think there is a need for matte surfaces. You guys think the oblique railings and curvy pipes are becoming a new fad?

[Ostsol]

Originally Posted by JD

You guys also find the colors being washed out? I think it's the specular that's doing this. I think there is a need for matte surfaces. You guys think the oblique railings and curvy pipes are becoming a new fad?

I've gotta agree. Too many graphics demos out there that use shaders put too much into specular highlights, making surfaces look glossy when they really shouldn't (like with bricks).

[Matt]

Sort of reminds me of Evolva, everything was glossy in that game (tech demo?).

[BoddoZerg]

Looks closer to "Tenebrae" quality than "DOOM3".

Other than vastly higher texture quality, what exactly is DOOM3 doing that's better than the hordes of other unified per-pixel lighting / stencil shadowing 3d engines?

[Saem]

Other than vastly higher texture quality, what exactly is DOOM3 doing that's better than the hordes of other unified per-pixel lighting / stencil shadowing 3d engines?

There is a good collision and physics engine. Not to mention it's probably pushing more polies and the textures you talked about. I wouldn't be suprised if it was using shaders for other special effects. Finally, it probably does all of this much faster than the other engines.

[breez]

Originally Posted by Saem

I wouldn't be suprised if it was using shaders for other special effects.

Yep, when a zombie hits you, there's a nice motion blur effect going on. Not sure if this is achieved by using shaders.

[breez]

Ati support comes in 2-3 weeks.

[SpellSinger]

You can guarantee ATI is in touch with them. So the lead engine programmer for this project only has a GF3. Sounds like they have good funding!!

Looks good though!