dsmart says:

*sigh*

It is hard to appreciate the challenges of doing something different and something you actually want to do and love doing.

You guys can make fun of me and my games all you like but the fact is, unlike most, I still get to make the games that I want to make, regardless of who thinks, says or does what.

Best of all? I still have a job and a company going into its 14th year and a career spanning 20+ years and fourteen commercial game releases.

Nobody gets to fire me, shut my company down, cut my funding, tell me what I can/cannot create etc. So, uhm, yeah, go ahead, take your potshots.

Fact of the matter is that when you’re doing a 400 sq. km open world game that is designed to look decent at any altitude, there are lots of compromises to be made.

We’re not talking about flight games which look awesome at high altitude and shit at low altitudes. This terrain engine was designed from scratch to be decent at any altitude. Go compare it to the likes of UBi’s upcoming H.A.W.X - which isn’t even on par with the venerable Ace Combat 6 - which by itself, ONLY looks good a high altitude, looks like shit at low altitude and has awesome models based on real-world aircraft.

When you’re doing a shoebox game (see Ace Combat 6, H.A.W.X etc), you can do a lot of things. I am not going to throw in 2D bitmap trees just to create an ‘environment’.

This is not some Unreal Engine game shoehorned to be a combat sim. I do in fact have a SpeedTreeRT license. We just haven’t implemented it yet. And when we do, the barren areas of the planet - e.g. desert, canyons etc will still be barren.

This game, like the title says, caters to a variety of gameplay environments. In this regard, a LOT of compromises have to be made in order to make the game fun, playable and accessible.

At the end of the day, the graphics engines are just fine (only an ass would make a determination based on compressed video footage) for what they need to do and the environment they need to render.

I specifically did this 17 minute combat footage in order to attract the attention of those who *want* to get the real feeling of *flight* when playing a game that touts it; as opposed to the hack (see every Unreal game with airborne vehicles, Frontlines, BF games etc) that is prevalent in most games that give you a ton of assets in which the only differences in dynamics modeling are some variable tweaks here and there to turn a fps traversal engine into a vehicular or aerial dynamics one.

Also, after seeing the footage from the H.A.W.X travesty, I wanted to - again - remind gamers that there are those of us (old school PC game devs) here who *do* value the PC gaming environment. Something I touched on in my latest dev blog entry.

I never have - and never will - design, fund and develop games for the masses. I cater to the same like minded folks who keep buying my games. Invariably, as with all games, you win some, you lose some. Doing what you love and being able to pay your bills so you continue to do just that, is the key to success.

So yeah, go ahead, laugh. Your Pink slip (to go with the Pink tutu) is just around the corner. Me? I get to make games.

January 28th, 2009 at 6:17 pm

dsmart says:

Im sorry to say this, but even the world in Flightsimulator 2002 looked more animated then your train does..

Yes, you should in fact be sorry that you said it; because it is yet another Apples to Oranges comparison has no merit or any basis in reality. At least to those of us who have probably played practically every single game in existence - more so flight sims

Lets not get into the fact that every single MSFS looks like crap at low altitude, has very high DEM use etc. Puhleeze.

Maybe you clearly missed the part where this terrain engine was designed to be used - and played - at any altitude. No, you couldn’t have possibly missed that.

The difference between constructive criticism and taking potshots (aka taking the piss) is determined by one’s IQ and quite possibly one’s tolerance for pain and abuse - since one is not likely to be able to take what one give without some serious medication. Or crack. Or both.

January 28th, 2009 at 10:30 pm