A few questions for Markus to pique my curiosity...
(1) I remember that when MP was first released, it was explained that the engine was DX7-based only due to time constraints and wanting to ensure the best possible compatibility for the existing hardware base. Seeing that this base has moved on (and you've had plenty of time 8) ), is the new engine going to be just DX8/7 or will there be any use of DX9 specifics, such as 2.0 shaders or displacement mapping?
(2) Real-time shadows. Presumably, you have experimented with these but what do you think is likely to be used in the final release. The standard blobs, shadow maps, or stencil shadows?
(3) The first engine seemed to rely more on highly detailed textures, rather than large polygon count models, for added realism. Naturally, the capabilities of the available hardware have greatly increased, so will we see progress in this area (i.e. no more "square" heads)?
(4) Character model realism. Again, what sort of progress can we expect to see? Moving fingers, mouths, eyes, etc? What about the modelling of the characters' movements and have you sorted out how shoulders are really supposed to attach to the torso
?
(5) Finally, the standard geek questions - any multiplayer and how long (roughly) will the game take to complete, compared to MP?
Thanks in advance.
(1) I remember that when MP was first released, it was explained that the engine was DX7-based only due to time constraints and wanting to ensure the best possible compatibility for the existing hardware base. Seeing that this base has moved on (and you've had plenty of time 8) ), is the new engine going to be just DX8/7 or will there be any use of DX9 specifics, such as 2.0 shaders or displacement mapping?
(2) Real-time shadows. Presumably, you have experimented with these but what do you think is likely to be used in the final release. The standard blobs, shadow maps, or stencil shadows?
(3) The first engine seemed to rely more on highly detailed textures, rather than large polygon count models, for added realism. Naturally, the capabilities of the available hardware have greatly increased, so will we see progress in this area (i.e. no more "square" heads)?
(4) Character model realism. Again, what sort of progress can we expect to see? Moving fingers, mouths, eyes, etc? What about the modelling of the characters' movements and have you sorted out how shoulders are really supposed to attach to the torso
? (5) Finally, the standard geek questions - any multiplayer and how long (roughly) will the game take to complete, compared to MP?
Thanks in advance.
