Source 2 (next generation)

D

DeAdLy_cOoKiE

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Source engine is state of the art. However, with next generation graphics hardware, and consoles (Xbox 2/PS3), I'm interested in the future of Source. Which (graphical) features could be implemented in the engine to enhance it. The first thing that I'm thinking of is additional/improved shadow effects (selfshadow/soft shadow) and bumpmapping, cubic environment mapping, and ofcourse with the extra 3D power, the ability to render large levels, and higher polygon counts (more objects in a level). Also, I would love to see a realtime bumpmapped rotating planet in the background.

Some nice pictures:
http://www.back2roots.org/View/3D Addict 03,1/
http://www.back2roots.org/View/3D Addict 07,1/
http://www.back2roots.org/View/3D Addict 16,1/
I'm sure, with next generation Hardware, we're pretty close to have these rendered in real time in Source.

Another thing I would like to see is the use of 'portal technology'.
I always ask myself if it is even possible to do an engine that makes 'proper' use of Portal Technology, so that levels can be truly seamless. In other words, is it possible to design a game/engine that can theoretically render infinite worlds, or at least as big and vast as the designer wants it to be. Loading level data on the fly as you are playing, since I think this is the most essential feature for future game engines. This also opens up other interesting solutions/gameplay elements. I recall the excellent walk-through mirrors in Unreal which would take you to another part of the level - it would be great if this could be done seamless, with realistic shadows casting through the passage. It was no doubt an interesting feature for the gameplay as well.

Another interesting solution with this could be levels created out of parts. For instance a library of rooms and corridors of which a level could be created. Other possibilities would be Esher-esque multiplayer levels, on which you could see your competitive players walking on walls and ceilings, your yourself when you look through a 'portal' of which ofcourse you could walk through, seamlessly. The only game that looked like it made some decent use of Portal Technology seemed to be the unreleased game Prey from 3D Realms, but in my opinion this technique should and could be more exploited.

Another thing I would like to see is the implementation of realistic and dynamic water. Imagine turning on the water tab and leave it running until the bathtub (or sink) overflows, and the water fills up the bathroom (or kitchen), until the door bursts and the water flows out into the connected rooms and corridors, and so forth.

The motion of the power cables are one of the features in Halflife 2 that I like most. This made me thinking of realistic simulated wind. Imagine an underground tunnel network where you are lost. Light up a flare and watch it's movement which would help your way out, the direction you need to go.

Another thing that I would like to see is Artificial Lifeforms (A.L.). A world that occupies various Intelligent Lifeforms, each doing their own thing, some more vicious than others. Think of birds, rabbits, fish etc, part of the environment. Not necessarilly essential for the gameplay itself, but a rather nice addition that would make the world feel more real.

Any other suggestions for improvement of Source engine, or interesting screenshots. Post it here.
 
Another thing I would like to see is the use of 'portal technology'.
I always ask myself if it is even possible to do an engine that makes 'proper' use of Portal Technology, so that levels can be truly seamless. In other words, is it possible to design a game/engine that can theoretically render infinite worlds, or at least as big and vast as the designer wants it to be. Loading level data on the fly as you are playing, since I think this is the most essential feature for future game engines. This also opens up other interesting solutions/gameplay elements. I recall the excellent walk-through mirrors in Unreal which would take you to another part of the level - it would be great if this could be done seamless, with realistic shadows casting through the passage. It was no doubt an interesting feature for the gameplay as well.
Click to expand...

Already quite possible.

Another interesting solution with this could be levels created out of parts. For instance a library of rooms and corridors of which a level could be created.
Click to expand...

Prefabs, stock models, already done, Morrowind did it mostly.

Another thing I would like to see is the implementation of realistic and dynamic water. Imagine turning on the water tab and leave it running until the bathtub (or sink) overflows, and the water fills up the bathroom (or kitchen), until the door bursts and the water flows out into the connected rooms and corridors, and so forth.
Click to expand...

It would likely be the floor that went first tbh.

The motion of the power cables are one of the features in Halflife 2 that I like most. This made me thinking of realistic simulated wind. Imagine an underground tunnel network where you are lost. Light up a flare and watch it's movement which would help your way out, the direction you need to go.
Click to expand...

Possible now, though faked, but nobody would really notice the difference.

Another thing that I would like to see is Artificial Lifeforms (A.L.). A world that occupies various Intelligent Lifeforms, each doing their own thing, some more vicious than others. Think of birds, rabbits, fish etc, part of the environment. Not necessarilly essential for the gameplay itself, but a rather nice addition that would make the world feel more real.
Click to expand...

already been done to various degree's in different games. Some successful some not.

-

the screenshots didn't look all that impressive for next gen stuff, especially the last of the three, infact that one just looked like a Bryce render.
 
Another thing I would like to see is the implementation of realistic and dynamic water. Imagine turning on the water tab and leave it running until the bathtub (or sink) overflows, and the water fills up the bathroom (or kitchen), until the door bursts and the water flows out into the connected rooms and corridors, and so forth.
Click to expand...
As bill gates himself said,
"We will probably never reach full dynamic water"
or something to that extent but the same thing really.

Not for at least 15 years will we reach that level.
Insane amount of calculations. I mean literally insane.
Billions!
 
Minerel said:
As bill gates himself said,
"We will probably never reach full dynamic water"
or something to that extent but the same thing really.

Not for at least 15 years will we reach that level.
Insane amount of calculations. I mean literally insane.
Billions!
Click to expand...
Gates also said that 640K of RAM should be enough for anyone, so I'll trust Bill Gates when he can blow trumpet playing soapmonkeys from his ass, until then, my view of him is as follows: He's full of shit.

However, we are quite a bit away from dynamic water.
 
I think fancy liquid effects, even when it is possible, will for the most part still be a novelty rather than actually of any real use.

Physics yeah, those have their uses and its good we've got them in games now. But think about it, liquid effects, having water spill out of buckets, or filling up a bathroom... how many times will you want/need to do that? Yeah the first few months there would be tons of water mods, but after that? What _real_ uses would it actually have that couldn't be done with tricks to fake it. eg: the bathroom thing, with simple triggers and setting up, you could do that in Source, in HL1, in quake even. Then set it up to damage the floor and come through, could all be done with tricks and with more control over what you want to happen.
 
AJ Rimmer said:
Gates also said that 640K of RAM should be enough for anyone, so I'll trust Bill Gates when he can blow trumpet playing soapmonkeys from his ass, until then, my view of him is as follows: He's full of shit.

However, we are quite a bit away from dynamic water.
Click to expand...
EVERYBODY has said something that seemed right at the time .. I think you're being unneccessarily harsh, tbh. IBM and Intel have made similar blunders, along with their CEOs, etc .... in fact, so has nearly every company, ever. Are they all lying too?

The Dark Elf said:
I think fancy liquid effects, even when it is possible, will for the most part still be a novelty rather than actually of any real use.

Physics yeah, those have their uses and its good we've got them in games now. But think about it, liquid effects, having water spill out of buckets, or filling up a bathroom... how many times will you want/need to do that? Yeah the first few months there would be tons of water mods, but after that? What _real_ uses would it actually have that couldn't be done with tricks to fake it. eg: the bathroom thing, with simple triggers and setting up, you could do that in Source, in HL1, in quake even. Then set it up to damage the floor and come through, could all be done with tricks and with more control over what you want to happen.
Click to expand...
Agreed. I wish Hydraulics wasn't so complicated - It'd make my life so much easier :(
 
If you just take a look at the beginning of HL2 where you see G-man's face(Set otions to highest),the grafics is almost the same as the pics you posted above,you need to get out more.
 
actually, valve did give us dynamic lighting (although somewhat limited)
what valve didnt put in hl2 is dynamic shadows
 
I would much rather see the implementation of aerodynamics before water dynamics. I will go now :imu:
 
whatever that image-something was, the one that's supposed to make everything hella realistic, VALVe had talked about adding it at some point i think, anyone know what i'm talking about?
 
HDR lighting? Parallax mapping? Not sure what you are talking about.
 
Its Image Based Rendering or somethingl ike that.

It's taking a 2D image and mapping it out with polygons. It was in Post-Life article on one of the Pc Gamer Issues.

It's something like that.
What it might also be is what alot of "Interactivity things".

Taking a real life object, and mapping it out onto a computer in 3D.
(Which we can do).
It would have been included in HL2 but the average video cards didn't have enough memory.


It's something similar to one or the other..ill try and find the article.
 
Its just crappy animation screenies lol go watch robots loser
 
Its just crappy animation screenies lol go watch robots loser
Click to expand...
Who are you talkin to?

Ok here we go,
From the Post-Life Article in Pc Gamer(US)
What will HL 3 be like?
Well, according to the Ken Birdwell, a senior software development engineer at Valve, one planned feature that had to be cut from HL 2 was image-based rendering. Oversimplified, it's a method of modeling and rendering objects based on photographs to create photo-realistic settings. "There are just too many 3D cards without enough texture memory, and we relized that [image-based rendering] wouldn't work on many customers' machines," explains birdwell.
But as more powerful hardware emerges over the next few years, all that could change. Valve's modular code design for HL 2's Source Engine allows for its core components, such as its rendering or physics engines, to be swapped out with next-generation technology.

Thats part of the article.
Pc Gamer January 2005 Issue, page 116.
 
They are gonna use a slightly upgraded version of source for HL3
 
Black and White is supposed to have liquid physics... like holding up water behind walls and breakign the walls with a rock and have the water gush out to drown the amrmies all realistically (imagine hl2 with waterphysics)
 
The way I look at it is that Doom 3 is targeted for high-end machines only (extremely complex 3D engine), while Halflife 2 is targeted more for the middle-end (scalability).

Xbox 2 and Ps3, with core processors running up to 4 Ghz, AND featuring a next generation of 3D hardware (and the fact that consoles use the 640x480 resolution), I think Halflife 2, or the next version of Source will have the capability to render at least twice as many polygons on screen - remember this is for consoles.

My current system (which is compiled not long ago, which I consider state of the art, for PC's) only supports a 2 Ghz Processor (and an older Geforce Card - I still have to buy the newest Geforce FX card), runs Halflife adequately (mostly because of my dated 3D card). Next generation of PC hardware will, as I reckon, have the capability to render twice as many polygons as well, at high resolutions.

I'm really looking forward to future games using the Source Engine, when 4Ghz processors, 512 Mb memory, (and Geforce FX 6 being low-end) are a standard for PC.
 
Btw, by realistic water I mean water that will fill up rooms and areas realistically, in the sense that the water level does NOT rise for each room at the same time, instead the water will fill one room, then when it reaches the top (or an opening) it will fill another one and so forth.

Filling buckets with water, or glasses is not ideal and not what I meant.

Look at this map to get a sense of what I mean:
http://hol.abime.net/popup_picture....801-2900/2889_g1.png&zoom=1&filename=Exile_g1
 
Black and White is supposed to have liquid physics... like holding up water behind walls and breakign the walls with a rock and have the water gush out to drown the amrmies all realistically (imagine hl2 with waterphysics)
Click to expand...
Now let me ask you something. Is each one of those water particles being physically simulated?
Probably just simulated water.


They are gonna use a slightly upgraded version of source for HL3
Click to expand...
Did you figure that out all by yourself?
lol obviously(Though it might be a bit more than slightly matters when HL3 comes out).
 
Minerel said:
(Though it might be a bit more than slightly matters when HL3 comes out).
Click to expand...

no there was an interview and then there was the quote release it WAS HORRIBLE AGAGHAH
 
Instanced Geometry. Like static meshes in the unreal engine. (but dont become dependant)
 
DeAdLy_cOoKiE said:
Another interesting solution with this could be levels created out of parts.
Click to expand...
I feel this is inevitably in the future of 3d games. The workload of creating unique, from-scratch high-polygon models of everything is going to surpass the capabilities of even medium- or large-sized game companies. Give it ten or fifteen years and I think their will be libraries of objects that can be leased to game co's. Either that or modelling technology must advance by a tremendous amount. Imagine a game which accurately modelled your street (Not a very intensive environemt, I'm betting). Upwards of 50 car makes, in various states of disrepair. Hundreds of houses, minutely or greatly differing in architectural styles, each with a unique combination of colors, home additions, furniture, yards and lansscaping, etc. Non-repeating textures :) (I think advanced methods of dynamic texture generation will become standard as well). People of all sorts, shapes, sizes, races, and voices.
Just too much, on your own street. It would take months and months of work by a 20-member team, and that's just for one city block.
Of course, accuracy of this fashion is a long way off. But independantly produced models seem like an inevitability in not too long a time...
Other possibilities would be Esher-esque multiplayer levels, on which you could see your competitive players walking on walls and ceilings, your yourself when you look through a 'portal' of which ofcourse you could walk through, seamlessly.
Click to expand...
Multiple gravity sources is supposedly possible (I tried emailing gabe, pre-release. No answer, but it was officially confirmed as possible by someone). Obviously, things may have changed. I'm dissapointed that it isn't possible in CSS or DM, but I think it could be modded by a sufficiently skilled team.
Another thing I would like to see is the implementation of realistic and dynamic water.
Click to expand...
This is _somewhat_ possible. There are real-time simulations of water surfaces that are runnable on todays machines. Volumatic computational fluid dynamics is even possible, if some forms. The resolution of the simulation must be limited to 10,000 compartments or somesuch, which detracts from it's usefulness. Also, it takes the majority of our processors computing capability to do this. Until the computational load of this kind of simulation is a small fraction of total CPU time, it won't be practical to incorporate in games.

Here's looking to the future though. :) I also am looking forward to this kind of tech.

fluid dynamics would do the wind thing too. Other types of systems would make it possible, of course, but less realistic. Systems that exist here and now, though.
Another thing that I would like to see is Artificial Lifeforms (A.L.). A world that occupies various Intelligent Lifeforms, each doing their own thing, some more vicious than others. Think of birds, rabbits, fish etc, part of the environment.
Click to expand...
AI is a tricky fish, so I hear. Designing even one consistantly behaving life-form would be tricky. Things like this have been done. Again, the CPU for for simulating scores of such AI is doubtlessly very demanding.

I doubt many of these features will be implemented on Source. It is Not A Magic Bullet. It's just an engine. Technology is incremental. I have little doubt that real-time graphics will not still be on the advance in 40-50 years. Things will most likely be VERY close to _truly_ photorealistic by then.
 
Realtime Dynamic water is already possible, theres a few sites that have it working correctly, but not in computer games yet. Obviously having large amounts of water moving would be hard on the CPU.

Everything else you mentioned is already probably going to happen. Have you seen the Unreal 3.0 engine? It looks *alot* better then thouse images, and its in real time.

Alot of the things you stated are fairly old technology, Serious Sam had some form of gravity thing so you could walk up a giant wall (maby that was mentioned).
 
Flamin-h said:
Realtime Dynamic water is already possible, theres a few sites that have it working correctly, but not in computer games yet. Obviously having large amounts of water moving would be hard on the CPU.
Click to expand...
Links?
I severly doubt it is proper fluid dynamics, just particle-based with a few tricks to make it look more like water (hell, even LotR didn't use proper fluid dynamics that for it's fluid effects, as far as I can remember). Even small amount of water would be INCREDIBLY hard on the cpu if it were to look believable or do anything useful (like spill)
 
with clever use of soft/rigid physics, metaparticles, and shaders one could pull off decent looking fluids in real time, but the processing power it would take to even look close to good (fluid surfaces and metaparticles require large amounts of polygon tesselation) would leave no power to handle more important aspects of any game. Maybe this will become more and more prevalant in games once the PPUs or whatever physics cards come into play.
 
Realtime Dynamic water is already possible, theres a few sites that have it working correctly, but not in computer games yet. Obviously having large amounts of water moving would be hard on the CPU.
Click to expand...
There not 100%, 100% Realtime Dynamic Water requires almost every particle to be physically simulated. This causes immense calculations. Now for games, thats even harder to pull off because the CPU is already calculation other things.

What you could do for like an ocean to say, is physically simulate just maybe a top layer and fake more twords the bottem when we get PPU's. Even with PPU's doing as I said early(100% fully dynamic water) would be a bitch. Trust me, there would be more than 30,000 water particles is a small pond.(Which is why it would be good to fake the lower part) Now you could make the water particles bigger but it would look worse.
 
Sieg said:
If you just take a look at the beginning of HL2 where you see G-man's face(Set otions to highest),the grafics is almost the same as the pics you posted above,you need to get out more.
Click to expand...

well...where g-man does look absolutley AMAZING at the beginning bit, i wouldn't quite go that far
 
What I'd like to see in Source:

- Real motion blur and DOF
- Image based rendering
- Unified shadowing system using shadowmapping (basically expanding the current shadowing method)
- Some sort of realtime-ish radiosity
- Subsurface scattering for faces (I suppose it's possible with the current Source though with custom shaders)
- Detail textures (old tech, but pretty good stuff)
- Better support for displacement geometry to go beyond terrain editing but towards the patch system of Doom 3
- Real time occlusion
- Soft body physics
 
realtime radiosity? Give it 10 years....
 
Pi Mu Rho said:
realtime radiosity? Give it 10 years....
Click to expand...
we've already got it, to a point, it was a small demo with it, software mode. Ran like shit but it did run.

Personally though I don't see the need for it unless the game has day/night cycles or had a _good_ reason for lights having that level of effect on the surrounding area. Other than that the effect would be a huge demanding waste of resources and offer very little to the game itself.

Besides I'm sure there are ways to fake it with shader effects that would work just as well.
 
DeAdLy_cOoKiE said:
Unreal 3 Engine features seamless level-loading. Finally. I hope it means what I am looking for. Theoretically infinite levels. You should watch the vids of the techdemo, the physics and particle effects are truly breathtaking, definitely superior to Halflife 2. Wow, this is really cool stuff. There's also a watermill that rotates because it is hit by particles.

Article:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/03/09/news_6120126.html

Video's:
http://www.1up.com/do/download?cId=3138759
Click to expand...

of course its superior to source.. its a next gen engine, not the current.

give it a couple of weeks, DNF will probably claim to be using it and changing their physics engine to Unreal's *chuckles*
 
DeAdLy_cOoKiE said:
Unreal 3 Engine features seamless level-loading. Finally. I hope it means what I am looking for. Theoretically infinite levels. You should watch the vids of the techdemo, the physics and particle effects are truly breathtaking, definitely superior to Halflife 2. Wow, this is really cool stuff. There's also a watermill that rotates because it is hit by particles.
Click to expand...
You could say WoW has that too surely ... there are no level loading times for travel around one continent.
 
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