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Home > Archive > Xbox forum > June 2005 > The Offset Engine - impressive real-time next-gen game engine
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The Offset Engine - impressive real-time next-gen game engine
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| http://www.projectoffset.com/technology.html
video: http://www.projectoffset.com/media/...t_june_2005.wmv
The Offset Engine is a complete platform for creating next generation games.
Though it aims to be a top tier engine, OE is not just built with large
developers in mind. Every aspect of the engine is designed around the goal
of reducing development time and cost, while empowering designers and
artists with the tools they need to create spectacular visual effects and
immersive environments.
Unified Lighting and Shading
The Offset Engine uses a fully 64-bit floating point HDR rendering pipeline.
This allows pixels to encode color values which are brighter than the
displayable range of the monitor, enabling cinematic color precision.
Effects such as motion blur, depth of field, and specular bloom are all
possible with the engine's post processing architecture.
The engine fully supports normal mapping technology, which allows source art
comprised of millions of polygons to be reduced to just a few thousand
polygons with no apparent loss of detail.
The Offset Engine's advanced shader system allows artists to create
elaborate effects without needing a programmer. Complex effects which might
normally take a programmer several hours to create and debug can now be
created by an artist in seconds.
Lighting and Shading notable features:
a.. The node based shader system used by the shader builder is integrated
tightly with the rest of the engine. All shader code is internally generated
on the fly as the engine runs, without the need to save code out to external
files.
b.. Programmers that wish to extend the capabilities of the shader editor
may do so by adding "shader modules". These are small, simple to create XML
files which define the behavior of the shader nodes.
c.. With other engines, often multiple versions of the same shader must be
created for the shader to work under different lighting conditions. The
Offset Engine, on the other hand, automatically generates all the necessary
permutations for the shader to work in any lighting environment.
Shadowing
The Offset Engine uses a texture based shadowing approach, utilizing
hardware shadow mapping technology when available. All objects in the world
are affected uniformly by shadowing, with correct self-shadowing on
characters and other complex objects.
Shadowing notable features:
a.. Designers can select between several shadowing techniques and quality
settings to achieve the effect they are looking for, including a completely
new technique we call "displacement shadow mapping", which conforms the
shadow's shape to any normal maps that are applied to the surface
b.. Shadows work correctly with shader-based opacity, with light passing
through the translucent regions
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| Grackle 2005-06-09, 12:32 am |
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<xenon360> wrote in message news:0uWdnTUW5PGZjzrfRVn-sA@comcast.com...
quote:
> http://www.projectoffset.com/technology.html
>
> video: http://www.projectoffset.com/media/...t_june_2005.wmv
>
>
> The Offset Engine is a complete platform for creating next generation
> games. Though it aims to be a top tier engine, OE is not just built with
> large developers in mind. Every aspect of the engine is designed around
> the goal of reducing development time and cost, while empowering designers
> and artists with the tools they need to create spectacular visual effects
> and immersive environments.
>
i.e. an even easier way to make crap look and smell better than ever, so
gamers get a few extra days of glitter before they notice there's no depth
to the game -- just long enough to make those all important initial sales.
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| James Garvin 2005-06-09, 12:32 am |
| Grackle wrote:
quote:
> <xenon360> wrote in message news:0uWdnTUW5PGZjzrfRVn-sA@comcast.com...
>
>
>
> i.e. an even easier way to make crap look and smell better than ever, so
> gamers get a few extra days of glitter before they notice there's no depth
> to the game -- just long enough to make those all important initial sales.
I donno, it seems like a cool idea and if modders can use it with games
we might see more mods and more replayability with games...
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| Walter Mitty 2005-06-09, 8:36 pm |
| Grackle wrote:
quote:
> <xenon360> wrote in message news:0uWdnTUW5PGZjzrfRVn-sA@comcast.com...
>
>
>
> i.e. an even easier way to make crap look and smell better than ever, so
> gamers get a few extra days of glitter before they notice there's no depth
> to the game -- just long enough to make those all important initial sales.
>
>
Sounds like the standard hype for any new SW program : power at your
fingertips for pros and novices alike.
A load of shite, of course.
--
Walter Mitty
-
Useless, waste of money research of the day : http://tinyurl.com/3tdeu
" Format wars could 'confuse users'"
http://www.tinyurl.com
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| James Garvin 2005-06-09, 8:36 pm |
| Walter Mitty wrote:
quote:
> Grackle wrote:
>
>
> Sounds like the standard hype for any new SW program : power at your
> fingertips for pros and novices alike.
>
> A load of shite, of course.
I've seen a few things pull it off, but it does look an awful lot like
it isn't accessible to the masses....
If the tools is good, I would like to see game houses use it to make
GOOD games with deep plots rather than focusing on engine development.
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| Andrew Ryan Chang 2005-06-09, 8:36 pm |
| >http://www.projectoffset.com/technology.html
Entire site is 404'ed. Actually, it says:
=========
Gone
The requested resource
/
is no longer available on this server and there is no forwarding address.
Please remove all references to this resource.
Apache/1.3.33 Server at www.projectoffset.com Port 80
=========
--
Get one month of decent job creation and suddenly all the people who tell
you that a president really can't control the economy are suddenly telling
us the opposite.
- Atrios, Apr 4 2004.
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| Walter Mitty 2005-06-09, 8:36 pm |
| James Garvin wrote:
quote:
> Walter Mitty wrote:
>
>
>
> I've seen a few things pull it off, but it does look an awful lot like
> it isn't accessible to the masses....
>
> If the tools is good, I would like to see game houses use it to make
> GOOD games with deep plots rather than focusing on engine development.
Which, of course, is the problem. No game companies appear to be able to
make use of the tools provided. They have to tweak and add things which
provide marketing power - generally at the expense of the generic
qualities of the underlying engine of course.
--
Walter Mitty
-
Useless, waste of money research of the day : http://tinyurl.com/3tdeu
" Format wars could 'confuse users'"
http://www.tinyurl.com
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| James Garvin 2005-06-09, 8:36 pm |
| Walter Mitty wrote:
quote:
> James Garvin wrote:
>
>
>
> Which, of course, is the problem. No game companies appear to be able to
> make use of the tools provided. They have to tweak and add things which
> provide marketing power - generally at the expense of the generic
> qualities of the underlying engine of course.
I donno, Duke Nukem Forever did a good job of coming out right on
schedule using only pre-built tools ;-)
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