Project Offset Engine (New Screenshot)

[scooby_dooby]

"Project Offset" (working title) is a game like no other first person shooter to date. We wanted to make an FPS set in a epic fantasy world. A game where you can choose one of many character classes. A game where clans can combat over mission based objectives and be ranked accordingly. A game where you can play alone, coop, team based objective or deathmatch.

The controls feel exactly how an FPS player would expect. Play as an archer and
your skill using the bow and leading your target is what will set you apart. When the battles get close up, pull out your sword and continue the fight melee.

For players who like vehicle combat, we won't disappoint. Project Offset will have creatures you can ride, dragons you can fly, siege weapons you can man -- all part of an epic battle between you and your foes.

Project Offset is built around a next gen engine, where every model is created with the amount of detail and effort normally found only in a cinematic, making you part of an epic story.

"The Offset Engine is a complete platform for creating next generation games. Though it aims to be a top tier engine, OE is not just built with large developers in mind. Every aspect of the engine is designed around the goal of reducing development time and cost, while empowering designers and artists with the tools they need to create spectacular visual effects and immersive environments."

Video: http://www.projectoffset.com/media/project_offset_june_2005.wmv (save as)

 

[scooby_dooby]

Unified Lighting and Shading

The Offset Engine uses a fully 64-bit floating point HDR rendering pipeline. This allows pixels to encode color values which are brighter than the displayable range of the monitor, enabling cinematic color precision. Effects such as motion blur, depth of field, and specular bloom are all possible with the engine's post processing architecture.

The engine fully supports normal mapping technology, which allows source art comprised of millions of polygons to be reduced to just a few thousand polygons with no apparent loss of detail.

The Offset Engine's advanced shader system allows artists to create elaborate effects without needing a programmer. Complex effects which might normally take a programmer several hours to create and debug can now be created by an artist in seconds.

On the left is source art comprised of 1.2 million polygons
On the right is the resulting in game model comprised of just a couple thousand polygons



Lighting and Shading notable features:

The node based shader system used by the shader builder is integrated tightly with the rest of the engine. All shader code is internally generated on the fly as the engine runs, without the need to save code out to external files.

Programmers that wish to extend the capabilities of the shader editor may do so by adding "shader modules". These are small, simple to create XML files which define the behavior of the shader nodes.

With other engines, often multiple versions of the same shader must be created for the shader to work under different lighting conditions. The Offset Engine, on the other hand, automatically generates all the necessary permutations for the shader to work in any lighting environment.

Specular bloom is used to give the Offset logo a dramatic appearance



Shadowing

The Offset Engine uses a texture based shadowing approach, utilizing hardware shadow mapping technology when available. All objects in the world are affected uniformly by shadowing, with correct self-shadowing on characters and other complex objects

An object casts shadows on the ground and on itself

Dynamic self-shadowing occurs on the beast's arm and inside his mouth

Shadowing notable features:

Designers can select between several shadowing techniques and quality settings to achieve the effect they are looking for, including a completely new technique we call "displacement shadow mapping", which conforms the shadow's shape to any normal maps that are applied to the surface

Shadows work correctly with shader-based opacity, with light passing through the translucent regions

 

[SanGreal]

It looks great, but its been discussed before.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23793

 

[mckmas8808]

I really hope that this engine gets picked up by some small devs. People complain about price of next-gen games it seems to me that if you pay these guys $50,000 they will let you license it from them.

 

[scooby_dooby]

It looks great, but its been discussed before.

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23793

not these new screenshots!

 

[MfA]

Wonder what texture based motion blur looks like in motion with a high contrast background (I know this is about as good as it can get, without having to spend more time on rendering it than it's worth, just wondering how good it looks in the worst conditions .

 

[scooby_dooby]

Video here: http://www.projectoffset.com/media/project_offset_june_2005.wmv

I haven't watched it yet...still DLing

edit: holy crap, this engine/game look sweet

 

[SanGreal]

I really hope that this engine gets picked up by some small devs. People complain about price of next-gen games it seems to me that if you pay these guys $50,000 they will let you license it from them.

I think they're more interested in getting a publisher/funding for their game than licensing the engine at the moment.

Personally, I think one of the manufacturers should buy the engine and/or studio and develop a solid set of tools around it then license the engine cheap to exclusive developers.

I'm especially surprised MS isn't interested. These guys could certainly be had for a bargain

 

[BOOMEXPLODE]

I bet they've had offers, they probably just see more opportunity in developeing their (obviously great) technology themselves and making an awesome game out of it.

 

[scooby_dooby]

"Unfortunately, we can't stay self-funded for too much longer! We're looking for publishers, investors, and even fans who want to contribute to our effort (see below).

Our immediate goal is to find enough money to hire a few more people to refine and further develop the engine and gameplay. Eventually we want to ramp up and send the game into a full scale production, ending up with a kick ass title.

Investors and publishers: we are interested in talking about partnership opportunities. Please email Sam."

 

[mckmas8808]

Yeah they basically are saying right there that they have not had many offers if any. Well I hope that some publisher puts some money behind them.

 

[cthellis42]

I really hope that this engine gets picked up by some small devs. People complain about price of next-gen games it seems to me that if you pay these guys $50,000 they will let you license it from them.

I think they're more interested in getting a publisher/funding for their game than licensing the engine at the moment.

Personally, I think one of the manufacturers should buy the engine and/or studio and develop a solid set of tools around it then license the engine cheap to exclusive developers.

I'm especially surprised MS isn't interested. These guys could certainly be had for a bargain

Don't speak too loud... EA's listening!

 

[Sean*O]

Very interesting. Amazing looking stuff.

 

[Arun]

I thought it was quite obvious Sam would most likely refuse any proposal to become part of a bigger company? Had he not wanted to be 100% independant, he wouldn't have quit S2Games in the first place (most credible reason I heard about is he didn't like the genre of their next game, which is ironic since he was a co-founder)

Uttar

 

[_xxx_]

Hasn't Epic bought them?

EDIT:
No, that was Reality Engine...

 

[czekon]

http://www.gametrailers.com/umwatcher.php?id=133

very nice vid great visuals

 

[c0_re]

wow the vid looks pretty nice, especially or some indy guys, anyone wish to take a guess at the engines efficiency? I mean if they can make the engine do all these thing at once on a say the PS3\360 thatll be pretty impressive in comparison to what we've seen so far this gen.

 

[czekon]

yeah it's announced on x360 and ps3 it will be nice to see something at E3

 

[!eVo!-X Ant UK]

These screens are very old

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I don't think Offset has ever been announced for any platform other than PC. The devs have said they'd like it on consoles, but at the moment, unless you have a quote to show otherwise, which the Project Offset website cannot provide, it's not coming out on any platform but PC.

Though I'll add if there's one dev team you really want to showcase you platform, it's got to be this one! I'd have thought Sony and MS would be ain bidding war!