Max Payne

Max Payne,  was rendered using two different game engines for different platforms.  MAX-FX 2.0 for the windows version for the second one and RenderWare **See Below for More Renderware Info** for the PS2 and Xbox versions and all the first versions.  This third-person shooter video game was developed by the Finnish Remedy Entertainment and was produced by 3D Realms.

Influenced by Mad Max, and directed by George Miller, and the Hong Kong action Cinema Genre.  It was one of the first video games to incorporate the 'bullet time' effect into gameplay - and if you don't know what this is go and watch the matrix right now - SHAME ON YOU.  The game itself has a very gritty noir spirit and bears a strong resemblance to a detective novel as it continues to give cuts from you playing to a comic book style of story telling.  Its beautiful in more ways than one.

RenderWare (RW)

A 3D API (Application Programming Interface) - excuse the jargon - and graphics rendering engine using in computer games and Active Worlds.  RW is developed by Criterion Software Ltd which is owned by EA (Electronic Arts).  Competing with other libraries such as Argonaut's BRender and RenderMorpics' Reality Lab.

Renderware's principal commercial importance was in providing an off-the-shelf solution to the difficulties of PS2 graphics programming.  It was almost describable as 'Sony's DirectX' during this era.

Prior to its second version, an external script language was needed (eg MEL script in Maya) to take advantage of initial RenderWare.  RenderWare 2 has is own internal scripting language RWX. However, in RenderWare 3 the script was removed.  This next RenderWare (3) focused on a binary model file format.  As with the previous version, Criterion removed support for the RW3's formats in RenderWare 4.

Its a widely cross-platform program.  It ran on Windows as well as Apple Mac OS X based applications.

*RenderWare is no longer available for purchase but EA still honour old contracts however RW4 has supposedly now dissolved into the rest of EA internal tech.

Games that used RW:

Bully

Burnout Series

Call Of Duty Finest Hour

Cold Winter

GTA III, San Andrewas, Vice City

Manhunt

Max Payne 2: Fall of Max Payne

Mortal Kombat

NFL Blitz

Sonic and the Secret Rings

Stardom 3

The Sims 3

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4

...and many more but this just shows a range of the games and the capacity and power of the software.

Games, Engines And Things I Didn't Know

What is a Game Engine?

The Short Answer..... A software system designed for the creation and development of video games.  The long answer involves a little more depth... what does it do? Why use it and how did they come about!?

What they DO:

They provide a suite of visual development tools in addition to reusable software components.  These tools are generally provided in an integrated development environment to enable a simplified, rapid development of games in a data-driving manner.  Sometimes called 'Game Middleware' they provide flexible and reusable software platform which provides all the core functions needed to develop a game application whilst keeping costs, complexities etc down.

These engines usually provide platform abstraction, allowing the same game to be run on various platforms including game consoles and personal computers (PCs) with few (if any,)  changes made to the game source code.  Within Game Engines you get more specialized systems for different areas eg - Middleware components such as Havok for Physics, FMOD for sound, or Scale Form for UI.

Game Engines (forgetting about the name for a minute) are sometime used for other kinds of interative applications with real-time graphical requirements such as marketing demos, architectural visualizations, training simulations, and modeling environments.

History:

Prior to game engines, games were written as a singular entitles... this means like a game for the Atari had to be designed from the ground up to make the most optimal use of the display hardware - this core display routine is called the kernel by retro developers.  I was one of those retro guys who remembers the Atari and the classic games on it.  I remember the REALLY bad graphics which to be honest we loved just as it was something to do and was so interactive.  My two brothers and I would fight over whos turn it was and I and one other had to stand (the disadvantage of being the younger brother with only one chair).  From what I can remember every game was pretty much platformers as it would have required something magical for a 3D game in the early 1990s.  Most game designs through the 1980s were designed through a hard-coded ruleset with a small amount of leve and graphics data.

The term 'Game Engine' I believe arose in the middle of the 1990s mainly in a connection with 3D games such as 'First Person Shooters'.  This came about with memorable games of id Software's Doom and Quake games that a lot of developers spring boarded off and licensed the core portions of the software and designed their own graphics, characters, weapons and levels - it was the 'game content'.  Away from that the game specific rules and data for the basic ideas and concepts such as collision of bodies and the game entitiy meant that new teams and companies could grow and speacialise in different areas.

Today Game Engines are some of the most complex applications written, featuring dozens of finely tuned systems interacting to ensure a finely conrolled user experience.  It is now common for a typical games development team to have several times as many artists as actual programmers.

Game Engine - NetImmerse and Lineage II is based on the Unreal Engine (already mentioned on the blog).

RenderWare engine is used in the Grand Theft Auto and Burnout Franchises.

MMOG Middleware (Massively-multiplayer online games Middleware)

This is far more complex than the middleware for single-player video games.  However the increasing popularity of MMOGs is spurring development of such middleware packages.

Some Middleware is listed below - typically used for MMOGs:

RealmCrafter

Multiverse Network

Gamebryo

Bigworld Technology

HeroEngine

Monumental Games

NetDog Networking

Environment Design_01

Again, just to get the ball rolling on a few ideas for our environment and the layout.  May change considerable but they are only ideas.  Someone once said to me "Don't get to precious with your ideas as the client may always change them and think of better things anyway.  This is true when working for anyone or working WITH anyone.  Our work will be a combination of two people.

Character Desgin_01

Just a few greasy mechanics and cheeky chaps to get the ball moving on the character front. I took inspiration from Sketchs by Silver.  Silver helped designed Disney's "Kim Possible" and Nickelodeon's "Danny Phantom".  Great artist and amazing cartoonist :D

Looking at his work and my team mate Sam Saunders' work has really inspired me to get into my 2D drawing mode and I'm hopefully going to keep churning out drawings ... and eventually some will come out pretty good.  Anyway theres a few sketches just to get the ball rolling.

Games I want to look into

Games I will hopefully look into for this project for Characters and information:
Fallout 3 for character and style
Half Life 1 and 2 for metals and rust
GTA all of them obviously
Assassins Creed
Full Throtle
Serious Sam
Max Payne
Tomb Raider

Unreal Engine 3

One of the best Engines around - used for creating games for the PS3, XBox 360 and PCs is the Unreal Engine. The third of its kind now and it only gets better and better. Every aspect of the Unreal Engine has been designed with the ease of content creation and programming in mind. The team have attempted to give as much Power as possible to the hands of the artists and designers to develop assets in a visual environment with minimal programmer assistance. The Engine is intergrated with numerous leading middleware technologies.

Heres a list typical content Specifications taken off of the Unreal Engine Website.
"Different Genres of games will have widely varying expectations of player counts, scene size, and performance, so these specifications should be regarded as one data point for one project rather than hard requirements for all.

Characters:
Renderable Mesh: Build renderable meshes with 3,000-12,000 triangles, based on teh expection of 5-20 visable characters in a game scene.
Detail Mesh: Build 1-8 million triangles detail meshes for typical characters. This is quite sufficient for generating 1-2 normal maps of resolution 2048 x 2048 per character.
Bones: The highest LOD version of our characters typically have 100-200 bones, and include articulated faces, hands, and fingers.

Normal Maps and Texture Maps:
Character, Normal and World Texture Maps authored at 2048 x 2048 resolution. We feel this is a good target for games running on mid-range PC's in the 2006 timeframe. Next Generation consoles may require reducing texture resolution by 2 times, and low-end PC's up to 4 times, depending on texture count and scene complexity.

Environments:
Typical environments contain 1000-5000 total renderable objects, including static meshes and skeletal meshes. For reasonable performance on current 3D cards, we aim to keep the number of visible objects in any given scene to 300-1000 visible objects. Our larger scenes typically peak at 500,000 to 1,500,000 rendered triangles.

Lights:
There are no hardcoded limits on light counts, but for performance we try to limit the number of large-radius lightes affecting large scenes to 2-5, as each light/object interaction pair is costly due to the engine's high-precision per-pixel lighting and shadowing pipeline. Low-radus lights used for highlights and detail lighting on specific objects are significantly less costly than lights affecting the full scene."

The Closure of a Site

A brand spanking new - Part Worn Tyres - Shop

Ok so they didn't have an exit sign so they just stuck it on a cone. I think people kept driving in the wrong way.

Ohhh dear it would appear the poor guys at Part Worn Tyres haven't enough money to fix their damaged sign. Maybe they have enough for a fence though - or is it a 'hire a fence?'

How run down should we go? Here is the process of a Garage starting up fresh and new and slowly time is taking its toll on it.