Okay guys,I'm quite sure this hasn't been suggested before,so I take the chance and throw this idea at ya! As most of you might know,the Orange Box gave the Source Engine some very interessting and usefull features,and one of them seems very spectacular if it would be implented (if possible) in Empires! I'm talking about the "Cinematic Physics System",which allowed to blow up entire buildings with more than 750 objects flying around in the air! I'm not quite sure how it works,these objects can't be interferred by the player as far as I know,but it looks stunning,and doesn't seem to pull down the performance at all... If you guys know what I'm talking about,did you ever thought of tanks in Empires blowing up into let's say,50-100 pieces? I think IF Empires could get this feature to work,that would add A LOT of fun into empires,because right know,blowing up tanks isn't spectacular at all... ---- As far as I know,those cinematic effects are made using keyframes,right? Maybe someone could explain how it works,se we could discuss how this can be implented into mulitplayer and moving objects instead of world models. If it ain't possible for tanks,maybe at least the buildings in Empires could use this feature? ---- Another feature,which I'm 100% sure to be implented soon,is the new particle effects system,which will drastically improve visuals in Empires,smoke and explosions would look sooooo much better! Discuss...
just so you know, theres like at least 3 topics on this i think. anyways, i haven't played any orange box games so it sounds pretty cool.
I think this is a day dream of most of us... As soon as Empires moves to the Orange box engine... I think the Damian should get pretty busy with those simulated physics I want to see tanks blow up into a million pieces, structures collapsing when destroyed... OoooHh... God... Yees...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xlU0uFuKZQ Watch this video,if you guys don't know what I'm talking about,it also doesn't contain any spoilers,because it's a custom map
All cinematic physics does is allow you to make animations based on prerendered physics. And apparently it was done using a commercial plugin, so no tool in the SDK.
Does that mean that there is no way to actually make these "animations" with the SDK? Aren't there any freeware programs which can do that? Oh well,you can't have anything I guess... But we could at least add client side physics explosions,that at least some parts fly aroung,which don't need any additional bandwith,but look pretty
Unless you have a server farm to use for calculating the physics, you're not getting cinematic physics, and without the new Orangebox code, you couldn't use it either.
As I said,these exploding effects with flying parts would be a client-side feature ONLY. the parts wouldn't be interferable by the player,therefore,not causing more use of CPU power (only client CPU) or bandwith of the server. It's like a particle effect,it just looks pretty,and with the orange box,we can use multicore cpu,which would give us more CPU power to produce such things on the client side,dont ya guys think?
So in that case; nothing is stopping something like that to be in Empires besides man power (And to some extent CPU power)?
so let me get this right, (i like2learn!) the current source engine its using(empires) doesn't support multicores but the orange box source engine does. so orange box source is like the newest version of source? and would you need to actually have an orange box game to play empires if you switched to it?
What arklansman is correct. You don't need to own the Orange Box Valve are very kind to update the whole Source Engine with new and quite powerfull features and make them availible for the modding community. As long as you have Half Life 2,you will be able to play mods which take advantage of the multicore support. Especially Empires will benefit from this,because Multicores (especially on the server side) can calculate a lot more things at a time then singlecore,meaning that we will be able to have more players and more interactions within the game. So what I would like to see in the future are: -Destructable buildings (Explode/fall appart,then dissapear after being detroyed) -Destructable Vehicles (Explode into some big and small peaces,disappear) -Bigger Maps -Improved HUD
