Enemy Territory Mini Preview (QuakeCon 2006)

[fitbabits]

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (PC)
QuakeCon 2006 Hands-On Mini Preview
James A. Young (aka fitbabits)

Time now for my impressions of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars! I can actually sum it up in one long acronym – OMGWTFBBQWYTAL! It was by far the most impressive game on show. Almost everything about it had me giggling inside like a teenager who’s just opened their first MySpace account.

From the stellar graphics to the wonderful sound, there was not a lot to complain about. It played like a dream with no hint of slowdown or choppiness anywhere. Of course, the machines it was running on probably had little Ninjas inside making sure that everything went as smoothly as possible, but that’s besides the point. Sadly, there wasn’t a lot I could do in the limited time I had to play it, but I came away making a mental note to purchase it immediately upon release.

I mentioned above that there was not a lot to complain about, but it would be remiss of me not to mention some minor problems. Clipping while in vehicles was noticeable, but not so bad that it detracted from the overall experience, and it only seemed to happen sporadically. This will no doubt be addressed before the game is released, or at least one would hope so.

One other issue I noticed was the lack of environmental degradation. If I throw a grenade or fire a rocket at a player on a dirt road, I would expect it to leave some sort of scorch mark at least (a crater would be preferable, but alas it wasn’t to be). Sure, the pyrotechnics were nice and all, but to fire a dozen rockets into the ground and leave no discernable mark really removed me from the experience. I know that this is not a fault of ETQW alone, but for a title that’s so pretty and solid otherwise, the lack of environmental degradation was jarring.

Final preview verdict? If you have a rig capable of running this at anything close to its potential, it’s a must buy.

[danhoo]

I'm stoked for this game.

Fit -- regarding the missing scorch marks, did it seem like there was no "decaling" at all? For example, did you also notice a lack of bullet hole decals on walls, etc? That is kinda strange...

[fitbabits]

I'm stoked for this game.

Fit -- regarding the missing scorch marks, did it seem like there was no "decaling" at all? For example, did you also notice a lack of bullet hole decals on walls, etc? That is kinda strange...
I didn't really notice, to be honest. I think there were bullet hole decals, but I'm not sure. It was really odd to blow someone 50 feet in the air and to leave no marks at all.

[AntB]

We have so much fucking graphical power and yet no realistic environment degredation. This is rediculous, I would be just fine with GTAesque graphics if I could destroy the whole damn city if I wanted to.

Damn the public for not going nuts over Red Faction.

[fitbabits]

We have so much fucking graphical power and yet no realistic environment degredation. This is rediculous, I would be just fine with GTAesque graphics if I could destroy the whole damn city if I wanted to.

Damn the public for not going nuts over Red Faction.
Crysis seems to have the environmental degradation down! And Red Faction was awesome!

[digitalErich]

Hmm, Quake Wars, 2142, Dark Messiah, Burning Crusade (no my thing anymore, but it's a big game)....this fall and winter will be a good time to be a PC gamer.

[Nameback]

Limited decals? Wow

[TheKeck]

Hmm, Quake Wars, 2142, Dark Messiah, Burning Crusade (no my thing anymore, but it's a big game)....this fall and winter will be a good time to be a PC gamer.
And......... a-woot.

[roboninja]

Cannot wait for this. Finally something to replace RTCW sa my online FPS :)

[reimomo]

Hmm, Quake Wars, 2142, Dark Messiah, Burning Crusade (no my thing anymore, but it's a big game)....this fall and winter will be a good time to be a PC gamer.

I know there's talk of a beta/demo this fall, but QW got pushed into 2007 iirc.

[FooManLinux]

Originally Posted by AntTripz
We have so much fucking graphical power and yet no realistic environment degredation. This is rediculous, I would be just fine with GTAesque graphics if I could destroy the whole damn city if I wanted to.

****HEY***** Freaking under statement of the year!!!!
I as well would play with GTAesque graphics if there was even a tab bit more innovation then there is in current games. I remember playing red faction at one of my LAN party blowing holes in the ceiling and watching other death matchers fall though it. I remember wondering what games would be like after this, only to be disappointed when the concept just fell to the waste side. Screw gfx, i am done with that, bring back innovation!!!

[Schnoogs]

Stoak factor high...although I know I'm supposed to hate this game because of the lame megtexture technology...sarcasm

If John Carmack only knew how lame megtextures are...sarcasm

[51|RandoM]

Compare and contrast squad mechanics between this and bf2 for us. :p

[51|RandoM]

Damn the public for not going nuts over Red Faction.

Red Faction was fatally flawed, though, at least in this department.

Geomod was fun until you noticed that it wasn't really physics at all. I had fun blowing away rock until I found I could blow away all the rock around a doorframe and the doorframe would still hover in mid-air. That is more jarring to me than not being able to destroy anything.

I'll be happy with just decals until somebody does it right.

[Schnoogs]

Red Faction was fatally flawed, though, at least in this department.

Geomod was fun until you noticed that it wasn't really physics at all. I had fun blowing away rock until I found I could blow away all the rock around a doorframe and the doorframe would still hover in mid-air. That is more jarring to me than not being able to destroy anything.

I'll be happy with just decals until somebody does it right.

Red Faction was pretty cool for a lot of reasons...Geomod was one of them.

[FooManLinux]

I disagree, the multiplayer game play that came from that concept was priceless. Aside from that red faction worked on the ps2. Now fast forward an odd number of years to today, and why do we have all of these gfx improvments yet this geo mod idea is gone? Think about for example how much more computing power these new conroes that just came out have compared to the ps2. Had the work been done i think we could have improved this engine or idea to include physics.

[SexualChoc]

It looks and sounds so awesome. I can't wait to get my hands on it.

[digitalErich]

I know there's talk of a beta/demo this fall, but QW got pushed into 2007 iirc.
Yeah, the latest date I hear is March, and that's still winter where I live : )

[51|RandoM]

Had the work been done i think we could have improved this engine or idea to include physics.

They've pushed the envelope in other directions, mainly in the direction of more simultaneous players, higher resolution textures, higher playable resolutions in general, dynamic lights/shadows, and more models, with higher poly counts.

The problem with deformable terrain, especially in a multiplayer game is that the server has to track each of those deformations as a new, independent object, and update every client each time the state of that object changes, and of course how it changed. Want to see a minimal example of this and how it is very server/bandwidth intensive, even when minimally implemented? Play the new version of the cs_militia map on Source. Go into the kitchen in the basement of the house. Toss a frag grenade into the area with all the bottles/kitchen junk. You will lag the entire server as it grinds through the updates telling every client where each item ended up, what state it ended up in, and how it got from point a to b.

It is a non-trivial task on a LAN, and is impossible for any extensive use on a WAN, imho. The server has to verify that each player has exactly the same version of the environment. Allowing one or more players to change that environment without updating all of the players has a name---cheating.

It is the same reason PhysX isn't going to be featured anytime soon in serious, large-scale WAN gaming, except for cosmetic physics.

One other problem, specific to goal-oriented teamplay is map balance/design when the players can(and will)create shortcuts to deal with any of the traditional roadblocks you put in place to create hotspots/chokepoints. Handling that can be tricky. One game where you can see this today is chromehounds on the city maps. Playing as a base defender on urban maps, it is commonplace practice to level the buildings around your base so nobody has cover on their approach. Question is whether or not that was intended, or did they intend for the match to be the urban peek-a-boo/hide-and-seek forced upon you by the urban layout?

[easi]

Destructible environments are the biggest white elephant in gaming. People seem to have been conditioned to think they need it by a vocal minority who won't be happy until they can live their life inside a computer.

[Mr.Green]

It eats up a lot of bandwidth and in the end, it doesn't add much to gameplay.

[Poewan]

Hmm, Quake Wars, 2142, Dark Messiah, Burning Crusade (no my thing anymore, but it's a big game)....this fall and winter will be a good time to be a PC gamer.

How could you forget Warhammer: Mark of Chaos and Medieval 2? Heresy!!

Question is whether or not that was intended, or did they intend for the match to be the urban peek-a-boo/hide-and-seek forced upon you by the urban layout?

I beleive they actually intended people to blow up pathways through the building to suprise their enemies. If you look at the intro, in one scene there is a hounds smashing through a building to attack a foe...makes sense to me, I generally enjoy these urban maps.

[digitalErich]

How could you forget Warhammer: Mark of Chaos and Medieval 2? Heresy!!

Well, I forgot Crysis, too. I find it great that I can't list all of the AAA games coming out in a season. Like I said, good time to be a PC gamer.

[Poewan]

Well, I forgot Crysis, too. I find it great that I can't list all of the AAA games coming out in a season. Like I said, good time to be a PC gamer.


I dont even want to THINK about Crysis...my poor old rig (Athlon xp 3200+, 1 gig corsair PC400, Radeon x800pro) will probably break down and explode if I ever dare install that game on it. Actually...Medieval 2 scares the shit out of me on that front too :(

[TheKeck]

I dont even want to THINK about Crysis...my poor old rig (Athlon xp 3200+, 1 gig corsair PC400, Radeon x800pro) will probably break down and explode if I ever dare install that game on it. Actually...Medieval 2 scares the shit out of me on that front too :(
I guess you don't have high hopes for my P4 3.0 gHz machine with a Radeon x700 then. :(

[Majster Wichajster]

My computer would blow up if it saw Crysis in a 20 meter radius. P4 1.4 GHz (the first batch made) and 256 MB Ram. Not a single GPU can save this config. When running Windows XP.

[Poewan]

I guess you don't have high hopes for my P4 3.0 gHz machine with a Radeon x700 then. :(

That depends on how much you can bring yourself to lower the game settings I guess hehe...Im the kind of sucker that, if not able to turn everything to max settings, will break down, cry, and go buy a bunch of upgrades to remedy the situation. Or ignore the existence of said game. The thing is, besides Medieval 2 and Crysis, I expect my rig to be able to run pretty much everything else I intend to play on the PC for the next 6 to 10 months. So I will adjust my perception of reality, pretend these 2 dont exist, and then play them when I have a rig capable of doing them Great Justice.

[chingtastic]

All of the upcoming "notable" games sound great.

Shouldn't we be asking how many of them will actually be released in said timeframe? :)

51, that was a great examination of how physical changes in the environment could bring down a server. I hadn't thought along those lines until now. Seems it would be awfully hard to implement this from a develoer's perspective without ruining the gameplay experience due to lag.

[Wasson_]

Large scale, complete geo-mod like degradation would be stupid and pointless in a game like Quake wars...it was nearly stupid and pointless in Red Faction (It certainly was in the single player version, and way more uesless in Red Faction 2.) A kind of Isolated environmental damage would best.

[MacD]

Well, some physics don't need to be done by the server. Bottles, small boxes etc are cosmetics...just let the clients handle that, 'cause who cares if the bottle lies somewhere else on someone else's screen, as long as you can fire through it it doesn't affect gameplay. Larger objects however must be synced...however, if the physics is properly implemented, I'd say you could just let the server know that you threw a grenade 'there', let the server pipe that thru and let the clients blow up the grenade and calculate where the small objects roll...big objects can be done server side (or if you have a real accurate physics system even be done client side...if your physics are 'real' and not afected by framerates, you should actually be able to get it all done client side!) with big objects steaming thru small object (with those small objects being affected, just not affecting the larger object).

Bleargh...too early for me to be typing about deterministic stuff :(

I wonder too if those megatextures couldn't just have procedurally generated or even just pre-made decal normal maps dropped onto them. You wouldn't get craters which made you walk into a dip in the map, but at least it might look as if you dented the landscape...and all that would have to be transmitted was the location of said normalmap...a simple x/y/z infopacket. Plus of course on the fly client calculation of the resultant when you have overlapping craters...but thats exactly what your pixelpiepelines are godo at.

[fitbabits]

Welcome to EvAv, MacD!

[roboninja]

Well, some physics don't need to be done by the server. Bottles, small boxes etc are cosmetics...just let the clients handle that, 'cause who cares if the bottle lies somewhere else on someone else's screen, as long as you can fire through it it doesn't affect gameplay. Larger objects however must be synced...however, if the physics is properly implemented, I'd say you could just let the server know that you threw a grenade 'there', let the server pipe that thru and let the clients blow up the grenade and calculate where the small objects roll...big objects can be done server side (or if you have a real accurate physics system even be done client side...if your physics are 'real' and not afected by framerates, you should actually be able to get it all done client side!) with big objects steaming thru small object (with those small objects being affected, just not affecting the larger object).

Bleargh...too early for me to be typing about deterministic stuff :(

I wonder too if those megatextures couldn't just have procedurally generated or even just pre-made decal normal maps dropped onto them. You wouldn't get craters which made you walk into a dip in the map, but at least it might look as if you dented the landscape...and all that would have to be transmitted was the location of said normalmap...a simple x/y/z infopacket. Plus of course on the fly client calculation of the resultant when you have overlapping craters...but thats exactly what your pixelpiepelines are godo at.
lol, this is sort of what I was thinking on the physics being handled client-side, but I am glad I did not have to type all of that to explain my thoughts :)

[Shifteh]

Well, I forgot Crysis, too. I find it great that I can't list all of the AAA games coming out in a season. Like I said, good time to be a PC gamer.

Am I the only one who waits for games to actually come out before I give them 'AAA' titles?