Engine Showdown

Which 2nd Gen engine do you believe is going to be the best? IE Versatility, easiest to use during design, has best features, has widest range of playability on older machines, etc. etc.

Doom
Half-Live (Valve)
FarCry Engine Thanks to bojangles for reminding me that I left out the FarCry engine.
OR do you think all those are simply preparing the world for the...
Unreal (not the existing engine, the new one they're developing. Go to www.unrealtechnology.com and see for yourself.)And don't forget the new Unreal engine IS under development. they are talking 12-24 months for release of it.

I think the Unreal 3 engine is the final step towards perfect graphics in video games... those screens look like cg animations, not real time rendering...

But I kinda think the HL2 will be easier considering it was made for mods...

I think the Source engine will be the best like master chief said. It will have really good phyiscs, and the modibility is great.

that unreal engine looks sweet. if games will play like unreal tournament does on that engine then i would take it. but then again i've only played one of the engines so wtf do i know.

I don't think the unreal3 engine should be placed in the same category as those other engines. What like 2 years before completion on unreal3? I think Doom3 looks better than HL2 but I really like the Far Cry engine. I don't think HL2 will touch the Far Cry engine but they are for different things.
Best indoors: Doom3
Best Outdoors: Far Cry
Best all around: HL2 because it is supposed to play full settings on a 9800pro(effecient) and because it will get the most mods.

I think that Doom3 has the best shader language
Farcry has the best Outside and massive rendering
I think that HL2 will have the best models and textureing
I think that the Unreal3 will pwn all!!

bojangles said:

I don't think the unreal3 engine should be placed in the same category as those other engines. What like 2 years before completion on unreal3? I think Doom3 looks better than HL2 but I really like the Far Cry engine. I don't think HL2 will touch the Far Cry engine but they are for different things.
Best indoors: Doom3
Best Outdoors: Far Cry
Best all around: HL2 because it is supposed to play full settings on a 9800pro(effecient) and because it will get the most mods.

Click to expand...

I agree.

The UIII engine shouldn't be considered with this generation of gfx engines. It probably won't run even run on 6800u/x800 cards and we know it definitly won't run on 9800/5900 generation cards.

The Far Cry engine is sweet, shame it suffers from bad performance even on high end machines sometimes, and it's bug ridden.

HL2 looks sweet, especially character models.

UT20004 engine is sweet as it can produce huge environments, and lots of polygons.

We haven't seen the Doom 3 engine render outdoor environments yet. I'm anxious to see that. This engine has the best shader effects I've ever seen. Imagine applying that to trees, mountains etc. I bet it will be pretty impressive. It's also pretty scalable. We've seen that it doesn't require the top hardware to look good.

I think The unreal 3 engine is actually done or close to it but they cant release it for a few years yet because it will take so much in computing power that even today's uber boxes would run crying to their mommys at the sight of it.

But I think The HL2 engine will blow others away, look at the physics it uses in the demo, awesome...

Yeah I'd predict the HL2 engine will have better physics and a more interactive environment that Doom 3's engine. Can't wait for HL2!

Tall_Dallas said:

Thanks to bojangles for reminding me that I left out the FarCry engine.

Click to expand...

I try my best big guy. Anyway I am really liking the D3 engine in the way that it looks spectacular on ANY setting. I am really blown away by my ability to enjoy it(unlike farcry) with my fx5200(6800gt on the way HehHEhEH). The Far Cry engine sure is pretty but very glitchy. I hope I can depend on the HL2 engine for some cool mods. My FarCry and D3 mods have sucked so far.

In rank from great to not being released for atleast a year.

Doom Engine: Star of OpenGL. (and overall) Why? Because I said, the shading language is great, decent physics, outdoors look great (sand blowing in the wind was a crazy affect if you actually look at it. Characters render great, unlike in HL2 from the Bink video previews the characters look like they are walking not skiing. Extremely high texture count ability for a rather small amount of graphics memory considering the complexity of the rendering at hand. Good ability to scale with compression unlike most games.

Far Cry: Star of direct3d. (AKA crappy proprietary AP) Good physics, character rendering. Outdoors ability very simalar but lower when compared to that of Doom 3.

Half Life 2: As far as the engine goes, the game better run at full setting on a 9800 pro, and should run on a 9700 pro if their programmers are not complete morons. The game has a relatively high texture count but lacks any smart programming. I was watching a bink video where the powerlines that were hanging each looked like 6-7 separate lines that were just randomly floating. No real effort was put into the character models besides texturing their attire. They seem to ski as the move. Decent ability to render massive textures, but Far Cry and Doom 3 (if you haven't seen the outdoors that I speak of play the game a bit, it really isn't that far in) still make it look atrocious comparatively speaking. The game looks decent but the engine is crap. I wouldn't play anything by this company though, it's licensing policies make me angry and the game isn't worth supplying an evil company with my pecuniary resources with which to do their evil bidding.

Unreal 3: Wow, this engine is wrong but is at the bottom because it isn't in the same category as these games. That because of the aforementioned fact that the engine doesn't even exist and won't exist for as the poster said 12-24 months.

L>MS said:

Half Life 2: As far as the engine goes, the game better run at full setting on a 9800 pro, and should run on a 9700 pro if their programmers are not complete morons. The game has a relatively high texture count but lacks any smart programming. I was watching a bink video where the powerlines that were hanging each looked like 6-7 separate lines that were just randomly floating. No real effort was put into the character models besides texturing their attire. They seem to ski as the move. Decent ability to render massive textures, but Far Cry and Doom 3 (if you haven't seen the outdoors that I speak of play the game a bit, it really isn't that far in) still make it look atrocious comparatively speaking. The game looks decent but the engine is crap. I wouldn't play anything by this company though, it's licensing policies make me angry and the game isn't worth supplying an evil company with my pecuniary resources with which to do their evil bidding.

Click to expand...

I have no idea what you are talking about on half of this. Ive never seen any of the characters "Ski" when they walk. The only difference i can see between the D3 Engine and the Source Engine is that source looks more realisic b/c in doom3 it seems like every thing is shiny. Everything is slick and shiny.

i started playing d3 a little last night, and lets just say i am a little underwhelmed. Granted i only played for about 5 minutes, but still. Far Cry made a MUCH bigger impact on me than doom3. Just my opinion.

snyper1982 said:

i started playing d3 a little last night, and lets just say i am a little underwhelmed. Granted i only played for about 5 minutes, but still. Far Cry made a MUCH bigger impact on me than doom3. Just my opinion.

Click to expand...

Oh you just like the pretty plants
I think the character models are what makes HL2 look great. The way they walk looks fine to me. And HL2s physics look spectacular. I am sure other developers will be able to make this engine look better than HL2 did imo but as far as pure visuals go, I don't think it has anything on D3 or FarCry.
And like I said before, there is no real way to compare the Unreal3 engine to the aforementioned ones. It is in a class of it's on. We will compare it when Carmack decides rockets aren't his thing and gets back to games

bojangles said:

Oh you just like the pretty plants
I think the character models are what makes HL2 look great. The way they walk looks fine to me. And HL2s physics look spectacular. I am sure other developers will be able to make this engine look better than HL2 did imo but as far as pure visuals go, I don't think it has anything on D3 or FarCry.
And like I said before, there is no real way to compare the Unreal3 engine to the aforementioned ones. It is in a class of it's on. We will compare it when Carmack decides rockets aren't his thing and gets back to games

Click to expand...

i think you have a point. i ahve always liked outdoor levels better

ID have seen the Unreal3 engine video too. I bet they are working on their next "even-more-impressive-engine" as we speak.
I have waited for doom3 since I saw the first screenshots summer'02. Now I'm waiting for unreal3.
But I'm expecting graphics like the "final fantasy" movie before 2010.

If you remember the original Q3 engine, alot happened with that after it's release. IMO, the best example use of the Q3-engine was Medal Of Honour AA. Big outdoor scenes nice plants,etc. I think we can expect that from the doom3 engine (and probably HL2) aswell. But as squads said: WTF do I know...

The biggest problem today, even with Doom3 is too few polygons on the characters. Looks like Unreal3 will fix that though.

edit: Saw some screenshots(Unreal3) from another thread here today...Is it just me or was there almost no shadows?

i think the best use of the q3 engine was call of duty.

Poll added, 'cause this is an interesting question.

Personally, I think the Doom III engine will be the best. I mean, look at the Quake III engine. It's still in use, and it's still powerful and highly moddable. The Doom III engine, even when run on systems that are not so great, still renders things wonderfully. It also doesn't require a boatload of system power to run, either.