I'm not sure about soft shadowing, but it does have dynamic shadows now. They're using an entirely new lighting model, from what I've heard. I'm just not sure that Empires would benefit at all visually by the switch, though, because shadows are pretty much neglected at the moment, and particles are far and few between besides the generic explosions. Also take into consideration that you're suggesting something that would make it look prettier. After having my suggestion that Grizzly dirty up his new map a bit challenged by a forumgoer arguing that adding overlays would kill his FPS and increase loadtimes, I have no doubt that sooner or later, someone will pop their head out of their little hole in the ground, nibble on some nuts and berries, and scream, "OMG PERTCLES? THAT WILL INCREASE LAG, LOL."
It all depends on how the particles are implemented, not only in the engine but how the information is transferred from client to server. Yeah, the smoke nades in America's Army cause my frame rate to drop, but it doesn't give me more lag. Punkbuster Screenshot, however, causes me to lag into corners and off the damn bridge on Bridge... :'( CURSE YOU, PBSS! WHY ARE THERE HACKERS?!?!? WHY IS PBSS NECESSARY?!?!? WHY CAN'T I HAVE HIGH-SPEED INTERNET LIKE EVERYONE ELSE? *stabs a random Comcast employee, and dumps it on AT&T's doorstep as a message*
You forgot Cinematic physics, so far from what we've seen this used on brush structures (i.e. the ep. 2 trailer). But I'm pretty sure it can be adapted to models if it hast already. This would be great in that say a NF Vehicle factory was hit by a tank shell peices of the structure (and parts of the walls) would collapse/blow off and those peices would fade away ecventually to reduce lag. Repairing it would make those parts fade back in or just respawn the barracks completely. This would actually be cool on tanks when a NF heavy was hit badly armour plates and details would break off. This would be the best visual feature of all. It would give gameplay a really organic visual feel to it.
Here is some speculative info about new features: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_engine There are a lot of nice features, two simple but very useful in this mod could be: Objects self-shadowing will make Empires buildings much more realistic Landscape and Flora Rendering, hope it will let design bigger and better natural enviorements, I'd like to know which are the exact improvements to be added.
there we go! R_yell gets straight to the point (links us) wow theres alot of interesting stuff there...
Holy destructible environment Batman! This, along with the foliage and open area optimisations, will be very inflential in the future of Empires.
agreed, this sounds like a great idea. only problem: people will need Episode 2. I'd still switch it; we want to attract people to this mod which has features none other has, but I just can imagine people being pissed with us.
stick with current engine plz. honestly, if HL:DM dint come with HL2 i would have left at the engine switch
Are you sure that you need episode 2 to run the episode 2 engine? Won't HL2:DM get updated with it as well by default? Or one of the other Valve games running on Source?
I would assume that valve will keep HL2DM up to date as a showcase for the latest engine. Although there is TF2 on the EP2 engine, so who knows.
Yes, EP 2 won't be needed if valve update policy do not change. The engine is updated periodically, usually valve mods get those updates first, and then the SDK.
I really hope they do. but it would then brake all the mods that run on Ep1 engine. I think perhaps they will give the engine out (freely) to people that have HL2
Do you guys live in a bubble? Valve released a simple version of thier newes engine to the public with the new SDK update.
