Trance on 8/3/2008 at 05:04
I don't know why you post Wikipedia links if you aren't going to read them for yourself and get your knowledge straight.
The Brain on 8/3/2008 at 10:25
Heh, you are right, Trance. :p
I was quite sleepy when I made that post.
BSP-tree is used for speeding up rendering process by dividing large game map data into smaller ones. Unfortunately time to compile BSP-tree rises rapidly when game area grows bigger. I noticed this when I was making levels for Quake 2. Unreal wasn't that problematic.
cosmicnut on 10/3/2008 at 08:58
OK ZylonBane, if I have it wrong, why not set me right.....
I have no problem being wrong. Its best to be put right when your wrong..
So put me right!
Saying "your wrong" and not explaning why is pretty annoying and make you look stupid....
catbarf on 10/3/2008 at 20:44
Quote Posted by cosmicnut
OK ZylonBane, if I have it wrong, why not set me right.....
I have no problem being wrong. Its best to be put right when your wrong..
So put me right!
Saying "your wrong" and not explaning why is pretty annoying and make you look stupid....
Saying 'Show me I'm wrong' and not bothering to do a simple Google search is pretty annoying and makes you look stupid.
ZylonBane on 10/3/2008 at 21:16
God how I hate these discussions, as people tend to forget that there are two halves of a 3D engine-- the worldrep, and the renderer:
Both Doom and System Shock use an essentially two-dimensional internal worldrep. In Doom the world is built out of arbitrarily shaped sectors. In System Shock the world is built out of a grid of tiles. They both are limited in that their data format doesn't support rooms-over-rooms.
Now the renderers--Doom can only render a straight-ahead view. No pitch, no roll. The entire renderer is optimized for speed around this limitation. The System Shock renderer, on the other hand, is a general-purpose 6DOF polygon engine. This means it can render the worldrep at any arbitrary angle and position. The tradeoff, of course, is that it runs much more slowly than Doom.
So can we finally lay this "Doom uses squares, Shock uses triangles" gibberish to rest?
Al_B on 10/3/2008 at 21:57
Since both engines are very different in their approach comparing them for speed is probably pointless. Both system shock and doom would be the poorer if they used each other's engines.
James Sterrett on 11/3/2008 at 02:54
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
You can only play a game for the first time once. By playing SS2 co-op for the first time, you lost something forever-- the experience of discovering all its pitfalls, twists, turns, and horrors with no one to depend on but yourself. Conversely, you can always go back and play SS2 in LOL WUT KEKEKEKE multi-player mode without losing anything.
On the other hand, I not only got to experience the dread, I got to do so with another person whose mounting dread not only kept pace with mine, it wound up being mutually reinforcing.
I do wish we'd had something recording the two of us when the walls dropped in Polito's office. Our fraying nerves disintegrated. :D
flexbuster on 11/3/2008 at 05:19
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Both Doom and System Shock use an essentially two-dimensional internal worldrep. In Doom the world is built out of arbitrarily shaped sectors. In System Shock the world is built out of a grid of tiles. They both are limited in that their data format doesn't support rooms-over-rooms.
I could swear I remember instances in SS1 where there were rooms above other rooms. At the very least, there were certainly different vertical levels within the same room, and, for instance, platforms above you that also served as floors, and I'm not sure what the technical difference even is between that and "rooms over rooms". Hell, I think that maze-like area of Engineering DID have corridors overlapping others.
Al_B on 11/3/2008 at 08:07
SS1 used force floors in a few areas to give that impression. Engineering and the bridge in particular spring to mind. From a technical perspective they were still using the same map squares - just divided up. I'd have to double-check the map format, but this would almost certainly prevent different textures being used for the lower and upper sections of such a room as well as many other limitations.
Trance on 11/3/2008 at 12:08
All that was used in that case were little squashed 3D boxes suspended in the air that the player could walk on. Hexen and some BUILD engine games used that stuff all the time, with the exception of Hexen being unable to display them in 3D. They're game objects with a blocking flag set, not part of the level's architecture.
