Topic: A game worth noting - possible huge competitor

[contingencyplan]

Was looking through GameDev.net at various 3D engines (I still wonder on occasion whether Crystal Space is the best choice. Please don't shoot me), and came across a thread describing this guy's journal. Apparently, he's working on a game that's very close to what we're trying to do. I'd suggest seeking teaming up with him, but I don't know what all would be involved - his game is a LOT further along and has much more of a following than Precursors does.

Just thought I'd throw it out there - at least helps to know what our competition is going to be.

Oh, and check out the absolutely fucking gorgeous bad news.

[Rosencrantz]

Also on this front I was browsing around and came across
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8426566575107987989
and
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3744650885934024232.

They have higher res versions for download, but those are the easy ones to see some of the stuff they're doing.
Most notable seamless space-planet transions. They've also stated in the FAQ that they're using procedural functions to help generate content.

[contingencyplan]

Two working examples of this engine / project in action:

• Minas Tirith: project to produce an explorable city of Minas Tirith from Lord of the Rings
• Infinity Combat Prototype: Demos the current combat facilities of the game.

A vid of the combat prototype in action can be found on Google Video. More HSFA goodness.

Morgul and Whitelynx, y'all should definitely check this out, pronto. Rosencrantz and I have been discussing it all night, but we want to get y'all's take on it before posting our own opinions.

[ryguy_1617]

This is really amazing...however, another thing to consider is specs required to run it.

[Morgul]

I've finally taken enough of a chance to make my thoughts coherent, and frankly, I've come up with this responce, "Yeah, so?"

Let me explain. I've read most of their site, and I've read most of the storyline they have. It's rather dull, rather over done (I counted three books on my book shelf that have almost the same plot... along with the videogames Homeworld and Homeworld 2. Keep in mind I own maybe 25 books... and 3 of those were basically this story.) So, from a sheer plot standpoint, I'm not just apathetic, I'm actually rather against. It's been done before. Hell, the disease plotline has been done before. So far, I'm not impressed.

The graphics are pretty, yes. I give them huge props for this. The engine seems amazing. Procedurally generating everything seems like a good idea. Those are features I'd love to have, if possible. They're not things I'm too interested in rewriting our game for, or merging projects over.

I would love to talk shop with these guys. If they approached us, I'd be interested in working on combining the two projects, so long as it became Precursors, not Infinity. As it is, I don't really care too much. If someone other than me would like to talk to them, point us out, and ask them about the technical problems they've solved, I would be rather happy. I'd like to know how they procedurally create everything. That's about it.

--Chris

[whitelynx]

Here's a copy of what I wrote in the IRC channel earlier:

<whitelynx> if someone can convince me that the engine is definitely better than CS, ok.
<whitelynx> but here's the thing...
<whitelynx> I haven't seen _anything_ that they've done that couldn't be done in CS
<whitelynx> yes, some of what they're doing hasn't been written yet in CS, but it can be done
<whitelynx> and we have to weigh the cost of implementing it within CS' framework to the cost of rewriting what amounts to 90% of our code
<whitelynx> one thing Rosencrantz didn't mention last night in his list of stuff we'd need to reimplement is the behaviour layer
<whitelynx> we'd need to rewrite the whole thing, since all of our BL classes make heavy use of CS-specific and CEL-specific functionality
<whitelynx> so basically, unless there's something in the underlying architecture of the infinity engine that makes it far superior to CS/CEL, it won't be easy convincing me that we need it at all :-P

As far as talking to their team, the thing I'd be most interested in hearing from them is how they went about getting seamless planet-to-space transitions. The procedural stuff would also be interesting, but I think our starfield mesh would go a long way toward that goal.

[Rosencrantz]

Here's a copy of what I wrote in the IRC channel earlier:

<whitelynx> if someone can convince me that the engine is definitely better than CS, ok.
<whitelynx> but here's the thing...
<whitelynx> I haven't seen _anything_ that they've done that couldn't be done in CS
<whitelynx> yes, some of what they're doing hasn't been written yet in CS, but it can be done
<whitelynx> and we have to weigh the cost of implementing it within CS' framework to the cost of rewriting what amounts to 90% of our code
<whitelynx> one thing Rosencrantz didn't mention last night in his list of stuff we'd need to reimplement is the behaviour layer
<whitelynx> we'd need to rewrite the whole thing, since all of our BL classes make heavy use of CS-specific and CEL-specific functionality
<whitelynx> so basically, unless there's something in the underlying architecture of the infinity engine that makes it far superior to CS/CEL, it won't be easy convincing me that we need it at all :-P

As far as talking to their team, the thing I'd be most interested in hearing from them is how they went about getting seamless planet-to-space transitions. The procedural stuff would also be interesting, but I think our starfield mesh would go a long way toward that goal.

Yeah, whitelynx that's mostly the conclusion I'd come to. It looks really beautiful at first glance, but after playing with their combat prototype I don't see much differernce between that and what we can do in CS. And I agree on the seamless transitions, although I think I've got some ideas on how they do that.

I did forget to mention the behavior layer specifically though, thanks for catching that.

[contingencyplan]

So what would be involved in us getting CS to the same level?

[Morgul]

Primarily a list of features we'd like to see. After that, we'd just need a general idea of how to do it and then the gurus of the CS channel can help with the design.

[contingencyplan]

I've sent the email requesting a meeting with the Infinity guy. I'm interested to see where this goes - if we can combine teams while still keeping the Precursors storyline, (depending on other factors as well) I'll be strongly for joining teams. But we'll see.