CryTek vs. id & Valve

Quake2 required it.
But very early in the life of Quake, it was possible to play it on the accelerators. I played it on a Verite board of a friend.

 

No..
Quake 2 has a software mode
quake 3 requires an accelerator

 

The first to support one, but it wasn't required. You could play in software mode.

As for less linearity, I think Deus Ex did it several years earlier and in a much better way (IMO) to boot.

But I didn't mind HL2 being a linear "movie", that was the proper way to tell that story in my eyes. Only Ravenholm part was a bit annoying.

 

I don't think Quake was even the first game to support 3D acceleration, never mind require it. Wasn't there a version of Nascar Racing, which could be accelerated on a Matrox Millennium?

Anyway, even Quake 2 and Unreal had software-only renderers. I'm not sure which game would have been the first that refused to run at all unless you had accelerated 3D. It might well have been Quake 3.

 

But I agree with Yerli. JC was my idol for a long time, but lately, he seems to have lost it somehow, the magic that he could produce...

Take the latest demo for example, Tech5, the damn thing looks dated probably 2 years before release!

 

I don't think they made a revolution with Wolf3D. Hover Tank beat it to 3D and Doom had the big cultural impact. Sure, some people were playing, but it was a drop in the ocean.

 

Thank you! I'm glad to hear someone else say this finally. A friend of mine practically does nothing but play FPSes and of course he's always following the progress of the next greatest shooter to come out and when the Tech 5 tech demos were put out not too long ago he called me up and left a message just raving about how amazing it looked. I had to ask myself - were we watching the same thing? I thought Tech 5 looked like Doom "3.1" w/outdoor environments. Nowhere near as visually compelling as Crysis, and not even close to being out yet. Granted, because it's not yet close to release it still has a lot of time to mature, but comments by id staff lead me to believe that its broader development base and being targeted more at consoles will really limit what they're able to pull off graphically.

 

I think they will with Crysis.

CryEngine2 has been licensed to 6 game developers and 2 universities, if I remember correct.

Obviously Crytek isn´t the biggest right now, but one thing I know for sure is that Crytek delievers games of the highest quality. I would say that Crytek is doing the most complex (graphics, A.I. etc.) games and are also doing the best games (gameplay) IMO.

 

There were actually some games made for that VLB 3D Blaster from Creative. And, there's even a game made for the Matrox Impression Plus VLB, which had 3D acceleration like that of Millennium. Basically just accelerated Goraud shading and polys? That game was a 3D fighter called Sento. I remember it being previewed in a sidebar of a CGW hardware roundup.

I'm pretty sure that Quake 3 was the first game to require 3D acceleration.

 

There were a couple of conversions from the Sega Saturn (notably Virtua Fighter) which were designed to run on Nvidia's original NV1 card (the Diamond Edge 3D). I also remember a version of NASCAR Racing that could use the accelerated Gouraud shading on a Matrox Millennium. They would probably be good candidates for the first PC games to use 3D acceleration.

 

Come on. Hover with texture-less art was dull, wolf was the brakethrough proving 3d fps is right way played by everyone.

3D Blaster came with 5 games in the box and few others were patched for support.

 

Actually while Doom made the "3D" shooter popular, System Shock was the first fully 3D textured "shooter" that I can think of. And beat the pants off of Doom in all but framerate. Story and freedom of movement.

I think Descent was the first fully 3D "shooter" (more like a shooter/flight sim hybrid) that supported hardware 3D acceleration in a meaningful way.

However, you have to hand it to Doom for supporting the online mod community in a meaningful way. I remember playing the snot out of the various mods made for Doom 1 and 2 (basically the same engine).

As for storyline. Half-Life and System Shock 2 certainly raised the bar in the 3D accelerated era. And did it properly with a linear on rails movie type experience. Granted System Shock 2 had a limited amount of "freedom" but it was still a shooter on rails. I mean how can you tell a coherent and powerful story without being linear. Every shooter that has tried has failed horribly in trying to tell a compelling story.

And lest we forget. Epic's engine tech is also driven by one man only, Tim Sweeney. So in that they are very similar to ID. Both also having started with 2D scrollers. Jill of the Jungle for Epic and Commander Keen for ID. But while ID made a gradual transition to full 3D (Keen -> Wolf3d -> Doom -> Quake) Epic made a much more ambitious transition going straight from 2D scrollers and pinball games to Unreal.

As far as engine tech. I'd have to say it's still dominated by ID and Epic at tier 1. And the likes of Valve and Crytek in Tier 2. Although it could be argued that Crytek is still a Tier 3 engine developer/licensor. I'm talking about the number of licenses sold of their respective engines. Monolith is still hanging around with their Lithtech engine, but I'm not sure I'd even consider them a tier 3 licensor of engines. And there's a few more engines hanging around in the Tier 3 licensing area from companies that I can't remember the names of.

Regards,
SB

 

The original System Shock (CD version) is probably my favourite game ever. Obviously modern games far surpass it in terms of graphics, but in terms of the amount of fun I actually had playing it, the amount of emotional investment I put into the game, I don't think anything has ever surpassed it.

Interestingly, two of my other top 5 games of all time date from much the same period: Bioforge and Privateer 2: The Darkening - all three published by Origin. That was a good time to be a gamer.

 

Lets not forget Duke Nukem ! Now that was a fun game.

Apparently there is a sequel being made called Duke Nukem Forever.... yes, you heard it here first on B3D Woohoo....

 

Duke Nukem a game where i spent more time in the cinema than on the whole game.

Shhh don't tell anyone but a insider source told me this game will be released 2027 , apparently you will be able to hire the movies on the video-store shelfs to....

 

You should try those F.E.A.R. MP servers with the Duke maps. Real videos on screens now instead of pixellated boobies.

 

When I got my first 486 in 1992, the salesman gave me a floppy with some demos. Wolf 3D, Jill of the Jungle, and Scorched Earth, I believe. Wolf3D was a demo on some of the systems at the store (a large US electronics/furniture chain called American). It was incredible stuff and I think that everyone I showed it to was impressed. I've never even heard of Hover Tank. Before Wolf3D, I played Stellar 7 and Arctic Fox.

And I'm not sure you can compare System Shock to Doom, at least not in industry impact or mind share. Shock isn't a multiplayer game, while Doom's multiplayer is pretty much what caused its popularity to explode. Doom was such a great time. It was probably the first multiplayer experience of its kind and it certainly did what it did well. Multiplayer services popped up almost exclusively just for it (i.e. DWANGO). My 14.4 modem got a lot of use. My first international multiplayer experience was playing Doom through Kali against some French guy.

You might compare Descent to Doom. Those two games had quite the rivalry back then. I found them to be capable of co-existing quite nicely, but that didn't stop rabid fans from appearing. Who remembers the SpaceOrb 360 gamepad that was basically designed for Descent? http://www.mindflux.com.au/products/spacetec/sorb360.html

Looking back at Descent and that gamepad makes me think that the industry hasn't moved forward as much as some people want to think.

 

Rage demo looked quite very nice...

 

what rage demo
edit: oh yeah that racing demo thingy