Warp wrote:

>   That's one problem I have noticed with new gaming technologies: Most of
> them are put into games just for looks, but very seldom actually used
> for gameplay.

Yeah. Eyecandy seems to be the way to go these days.

>   I don't know if Thief3 uses shadows in the way you describe, but it would
> be a rare exception.

Farcry uses (what appears to me to be) a fairly sophisticated foliage 
rendering system, and sure enough much of the game revolves around 
sneaking through the undergrowth trying to avoid being seen. (I have no 
idea to what extent the enemeis "see" like a human does.)

>   (OTOH, one could argue that something which is rather heavy to calculate
> and which can be turned off with a rendering quality settings shouldn't be
> a relevant gameplay feature because when it's turned off then it makes
> little sense.)

When I played in one CSS match, the server operator demanded that all 
players have their game set to DirectX 9 only, to avoid things like 
people not being "properly blinded" by flash grenades. (At least, that 
was their excuse. I'm not sure if it's really true...)

>   (HL2:Episode 2 has some impressively massive physics simulations at
> some points, such as a collapsing bridge. However, these could also be
> simply precalculated motion paths, and a physics engine would not really
> be needed.)

I was under the impression that those really big scenes *are* 
precalculated...

>   OTOH, the physics engine *does* contribute visually a lot, so games
> really are better with one. For example throwing a grenade near a pile
> of boxes can be visually quite fun. Also ragdoll physics make falling
> enemies more realistic in all kinds of terrain, something which is very
> difficult to do with precalculated motion paths.

I guess you're probably the best person to ask about this Warp... How 
"hard" is it to build a working game physics engine? I mean, how easy is 
it to get good framerates? What other problems are involved?

(One thing I notice about all the Steam-powered games is that 
slow-moving objects resting on surfaces sometimes seem to pathologically 
jiggle around apparently without dissapating energy. Which, obviously, 
looks a little weird...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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