/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.4474936]

Which company had the better engine, ID software with id tech 2/3 or epic with the unreal/unreal tournament engine? I always was more impressed with the unreal engine because of it's great use of lighting and textures, especially with anything that involved outdoor environments or at night.

[Anonymous No.4474972]

Unreal has a bunch of snazzy tricks up its sleeve- detail textures, seamless area portals, wide open maps, varying gravity areas in a map being an engine feature instead of a hacked-in shebang by expansion pack devs- but id Tech is easier to map and mod for, more stable under the hood, and has way less problems regarding video drivers and mouse input when running on a modern system. If there's one thing Carmack and co. got absolutely right the first time, it's Quake's aiming and movement.

At least that's my experience. I used to be an Unreal guy through and through but eventually played Q1 and Q2 and upon realizing how much of my beloved GoldSrc and Source games owe to ol' id Tech 2 I was an instant convert.

Q3A is also way more fun than UT99. I don't know how I dealt with that lead-weights-on-your-feet spam dodge constantly slog when I could have been strafejumping instead.

[Anonymous No.4475032]

>>4474972
Why aren't the newer Id Tech engines more pushed to learn over Unreal Engine and Unity?

[Anonymous No.4475054]

>>4475032
Id doesn’t care right now about being the next epic

[Anonymous No.4475057]

>>4475032
>closed source
>mega textures
>nowhere near as optimized as id tech of old
>lucky if you even get an autoexec, nevermind a full bind and alias system
Because new id tech is shit.

[Anonymous No.4475062]

>>4475032
Licensing mostly. Both are okay engines. Unreal Engine and Unity are more flexible though.

New id Tech is shit, but the old id Tech engines still live on in many modern engines.
Old id Tech engines where all based on each other too. (up to id Tech 4).
The new ones 5 and 6 are new beasts and related only to each other.

Anyways, in /vr/ land, both the old id Tech engines and the Unreal engine where awesome.

[Anonymous No.4475095]

>>4475062
>>4475057
One thing that’s really disappointing with new id is that their new engines only get made for one game when up till the doom 3 engine they were the go to company for engine licensing. Losing carmack killed the company, it’s just bethesdas and zenimax slave now

[Anonymous No.4475707]

>>4474972
UT had some trick jumping

[Anonymous No.4475760]

I like unreal and lithtech 2.0 for the feeling of weight to the player character. It's not great for straight up shooters but feels awesome in games like Deus Ex and Thief/SS2.

I guess this style of movement was ruled out as sluggish by shithead playtesters since now FPS games have you going from 0 to 100 instantly with no head bob, gamebryo style. Feels like hovercraft garbage.

[Anonymous No.4475774]

>>4475095
Its not just carmack leaving cause IDTech has been a mess since RAGE even while carmack was still on the engine. Maybe he was trying to leave but my conclusion is they were more interested in making a technically superior and gave no fucks about compatibility.

>"Textures wont render right on your system? Its surely not the fault of our glorious mega textures. Its the INDUSTRYS fault for not adapting to our superior design!! Try buying a chipset that is "designed correctly"

[Anonymous No.4476174]

>>4474936
The longevity of id tech 3 is fucking nuts so I'll go with that.

[Anonymous No.4476194]

>>4474936
Yeah, unreal engine was the most expensive one as far as I know. And you didn't mention the source engine, which is also pretty good.

[Anonymous No.4476195]

>>4476174
didnt knew the source engine was based on quakes

[Anonymous No.4476253]

Quake 3 runs faster.
Unreal used the cpu for effects that would be faster on hardware

[Anonymous No.4476267]

>>4474936
I am presently using UE4 to build my game.
Often thought about cracking open a doom2 source and modding the shit out of it and making it my own engine...

Im not sure where to go from here exactly but it looks like I'll be hacking Unreal's engine to do my bidding.

[Anonymous No.4476268]

>>4476267
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZueVSxJDvIY

[Anonymous No.4476276]

I am indeed going with the Retro Aesthetic.

[Anonymous No.4476426]

>>4476195
Source engine if I recall is almost entirely a rewrite, but still has some quakeworld and quake 2 code in it

[Anonymous No.4476440]

>>4475774
>>"Textures wont render right on your system? Its surely not the fault of our glorious mega textures. Its the INDUSTRYS fault for not adapting to our superior design!! Try buying a chipset that is "designed correctly"
>tfw you always used the right hardware

[Anonymous No.4476483]

>>4474936
I really liked Unreal engine's portal-based system for rendering optimization over id's BSPs, but I liked id's games way better.

Also as a minor aside I really liked how id had a usable intuitive console for binding keys or what have you that didn't require you to look up pages of shit to figure out how to use.

[Anonymous No.4476484]

By the way Unreal 1's effects looked really, really amazing on a 3dfx Voodoo Rush (not Voodoo 2) with its neon colored lighting dithering technique. It was done to simulate actual lighting because it was way earlier tech than standardized Glide/OpenGL but it ended up being a really cool looking effect that I miss and haven't seen duplicated since then. It had vaguely the kind of feel that a lot of these pixel cyberpunk gifs these days evoke.

[Anonymous No.4476851]

>>4476267
too bad you aren't making a pronz game, fellow game dev

[Anonymous No.4476890]

>>4476484
U1 effects were done via the demoscene techniques, since Epic founders were veterans of the demoscene.
All those particle effects, proceduraly generated FX-textures, lights and overall visuals, even the ending sequeence... You might consider Unreal '98 to be a pinnacle of the demoscene evolution

[Anonymous No.4476897]

>>4476890
That's pretty cool. Any notable examples of their work?

[Anonymous No.4476903]

>>4475760
Neither of those engines power SS2 or Thief. They run on The Dark Engine.

[Anonymous No.4476946]

>>4476903
Thief 2 is Unreal Engine

[Anonymous No.4476949]

>>4476946
Thief 3 was. 1 & 2 were both Dark Engine.

[Anonymous No.4476954]

>>4476949
Weird. I could've sworn it had the similar folder structure to an UE1 game.

[Anonymous No.4477029]

>>4476954
nope, both were dark engine.

[Anonymous No.4477425]

>>4474936
As far as speed is concerned, id Tech 3 is better - it placed much lower demands on the CPU than Unreal 1.

Unreal's level editor was much easier to use - you didn't have to run the game to see lighting, and rebuild times are much shorter, making map development faster. It is for this reason that I quit Half-Life mapping, it has the exact same problems as QII/III.

[Anonymous No.4477475]

>>4477425
Speaking of lighting, Quake 2 batched all the dynamic lights into a single texture and sent it to the graphics hardware, and the liberal usage of dynamic lights for every gun shows how fast it was. Unreal doesn't do this, at least not when using OpenGL, The fog in Unreal is also just an extra pass of lighting projected onto the surfaces.

[Anonymous No.4477479]

>>4477425
i guarantee any kind of modern map editor for id tech blows anything for ue1 out of the water

[Anonymous No.4477483]

>>4477479
I've never used the editor before. How does that portal system work? Does it add them all automatically?

[Anonymous No.4477485]

>>4474936
>ID software
It's id software, not ID you stupid fuck. Did you ever even look at their logo?

[Anonymous No.4477492]

>>4477485
It's Id. Yeah, they stylize it with lower-case characters, but as it's named after the (((Freudian))) concept of the id, rather than an acronym for identification, it follows that you would write it as Id formally.

[Anonymous No.4477504]

>>4477492
>but as it's named after the (((Freudian))) concept of the id, rather than an acronym for identification,
That's exactly right.
>it follows that you would write it as Id formally.
Wrong. The logo is id, therefore it should be typed as id regardless.

[Anonymous No.4477507]

>>4477504
VALV^E

[Anonymous No.4477529]

>>4476267
>a doom2 source

Consider using Build, it's idtech 1 on steroids.

[Anonymous No.4477543]

>>4477485
>>4477504
>therefore it should be typed as id regardless.
Of course there's a stipulation that you don't have to if it's a popular game they made and on the title screen, right??

[Anonymous No.4477546]

>>4477507
Well aren't you the best of the seven clever boys.

[Anonymous No.4477551]

>>4475062
>new id tech is shit
NuDoom running on Switch begs to disagree.

[Anonymous No.4477553]

>>4476174
Wait, CoD4 engine is based on Q3 engine?

[Anonymous No.4477557]

>>4477529
Build is snazzy, but it's hacky as all fuck. Ken Silverman had no fucking idea what he was doing when he coded that, he was still in High School. I highly recommend AGAINST using Build.

Idtech 1 is kind of rough around the edges and is mostly solid, but there's still a lot of hardcoded stuff that comes to mind that could be a bitch later on. Movement and physics in general is a huge mysterious clusterfuck that works well but is really weird to try to change.

>>4476267
I'd say stick with UE4. It'd be a bit more hacky making 2.5D FPS using a mostly 3D engine, but it saves you a lot of headache of having to deal with actual 2.5D FPS code. If you are a real expert in C++ and can decipher Carmack's code then go with idtech 1, other engines don't bother.

[Anonymous No.4477560]

>>4477543
that was earlier on though. I think it still stood for "Ideas from the Deep" back then? Now it's just a noun 'id' after the psychological concept.

[Anonymous No.4477561]

>>4477546
So nothing to say about the evidence that writing game titles after their logos doesn't make sense? I rest my case.

[Anonymous No.4477570]

>>4477557
What's wrong with Build? Sure, it's not the cleanest code, but it works well and does it fast.

[Anonymous No.4477610]

All of John Carmack's engines have physics stuff hardcoded to framerate. He was a brilliant graphics programmer, but a shit engine programmer. That Crytek guy who took his place has been doing much better work.

[Anonymous No.4477685]

>>4477504
A logo is just a logo. It should not effect how you write or type a proper noun. Proper nouns must always have capitalisation. Id Software is Id Software, learn English. Learn primary school level English.

[Anonymous No.4478269]

>>4477475
WTF
These graphs are total bullshit. Where do you guys get them?
I was playing Unreal 1 and UT at P2-400 and TNT2 M64 (which is a cut down TNT2) at 40-50 in 800x600.
And on P3-650Mhz GeForce 256 UT at 70-90 in 1024x768, that is without any graphical downgrading tweaks.
With tweaks it was possible to get into 120+ fps territory on the above rigs at 800x600 resolution.

I remember that clearly because I was into some local competitive Unrealing back in the day and was testing Unreal's performance on different machines in the local LAN clubs. Above systems being my own and used as a reference.
Both this pic and the similar Q1 one are bullcrap.

Here's a vid of Unreal Gold (unreal 1 updatet to UT version of the engine) running on 266Mhz P2 with a Diamond Monster (Voodoo 1) at ~20 fps fps in a benchmark mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q97Ghl9K980
Voodoo 3 on P3-700 should give more than 60 at 800x600, not 30 at 640x480. This is completely wrong.
Maybe they fucked up and bottlenecked their rig somewhere.

>>4477425
Unreal and UT run much better than Q3. UT was running at a playable rates on P2-200 Mhz with a Voodoo 2, while Q3 was a sub-10 fps slideshow on that same machine on lowest setting.

[Anonymous No.4478282]

>>4477685
Are you literally autistic? If a name uses a stylized way of capitalizing it, then it's perfectly acceptable to write it that way.

[Anonymous No.4478283]

>>4477475
>>4478269
Right now googled up a few vids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-SdCnEODvc
P3-500, Voodoo3, 1280x1024 resolution.
Framerate dips to sub30 occasionally because of a V-sync.
This graph is complete BS.

[Anonymous No.4478297]

>>4476851
MOMMY

[Anonymous No.4478315]

I always loved how Unreal did detailled texture.
Serious Sam engine did that too.

[Anonymous No.4478327]

>>4477685
I would love for you to try and tell an English professor that it's actually O. Henry and not o. henry.

[Anonymous No.4479498]

>>4478315
Unreal does multiple layers of detail textures, three I think, though you can usually only get close enough to see two.
Quake 3 has a console variable for it, but I don't think it was ever utilized.

[Anonymous No.4479519]

>>4478283
Unreal is not Unreal Tournament. Bots make a difference.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia,87-10.html

[Anonymous No.4479538]

Unreal is crazy better than Q2 engine. When you get up close to an Unreal texture, it doesn't pixelate!

[Anonymous No.4479564]

>>4479538
there are id tech 2 games with detail textures
even goldsource got detail textures

[Anonymous No.4479762]

>>4479564
why modern games can't do it then?

[Anonymous No.4479881]

>>4479519
There are UT videos on that channel too.
The chart is still way off regardless.

[Anonymous No.4479891]

>>4478315
IIRC serious sam just added a bunch of random black dot noise and called it a day.
Unreal Engine games often added numerous detail textures for different materials like wood, metal, stone, grass, concrete etc.

>>4479498
UE can do however much layers you specify. If left iunspecified it keeps adding layers as you go - you can see that if you use Ghost mode to get much closer to a wall than a game would allow you to - you would be able to see as it adds like 4 or 5 more layers.

>>4479762
Either because they are faggots that don't care, or there is some sort of technical limitation related to cantsoles since every game must be a multiplat now. Maaybe they don't do so well in the multitexturing department IDK.
I imagine games like Skyrim and FO3/4 would lok much better if proper DTs were applied to materials.

As far as I know, no other game engine does Detail Texturing to the same degre as UE1 does. Never seen anything like this in any other games.

[Anonymous No.4480101]

>>4479519
Unreal was updated to unreal tournament engine

[Anonymous No.4480138]

>>4476174
This. Idtech is the greatest, Quake 3 is easily the most important video game engine ever made.

>>4477553
duh nigga haven't you heard the memes?

also i've never really liked the look or feel of unreal engine, especially the modern ones that plagued a lot of the games last gen. I hate the plasticy look of games like bioshock for example, fucking disgusting.

idtech has always felt so fucking solid, and the family tree of engines that have branched off of it, including goldsrc/source and COD engines, is insane. the only mediocre offering was idtech 5 but now they're back on track again with tech 6.

[Anonymous No.4480147]

>>4480138
"plasticky" look of Bioshock and the like is not the fault of UE, but the modelers who don't know how to work with materials.
Models in Bulletstorm, Batman games etc. look just fine.

Also both idTech 5 and 6 is plagued with numerous texture problems and inability to use actual high res textures, texture popin, extremely high VRAM requirements (about 4 times as much for similar pixel density on a textured object), as well as ridiculously bloated filesize.
Hardly anybody can use Megatextures to their full potential, but everyone has to suffer with the negatives they bring.

[Anonymous No.4480154]

>>4480147
>Models in Bulletstorm, Batman games etc. look just fine.
not to me. they all have that signature plasticy unreal engine look of all those games last gen. i just looked at a game's screenshots/video and knew it was that gross unreal engine before I even checked. it was very off-putting.

[Anonymous No.4480157]

>>4480147
and I agree idtech5 sucked. idtech6 though is fucking fantastic.

[Anonymous No.4480162]

>>4480154
You are autistic.
>>4480147
>>4480157
New Wolfenstein is a good showcase of everything wrong with idTech 6.
Texture popin, extreme VRAM requirements - if you have 4Gb vram the maximum textures it going to give you are Medium, even if you set them on ultra, even worse - if yo uset them on ultra it will actually load worse substitute textures in many cases while it tries to load ultra textures and fails, so on 4GB Vram machines medium textures lok better than ultra ones (because actual ultras never load), which should never be the case. That was the most noticable issue for me, but there's a lot of other engine-related problems that are ignored by developer completely because they can't fix it (check the game's tech support forums)
Sure it worked fine in id's hands, but its track record in the hands of other people so far is not great.

[Anonymous No.4480164]

>>4480162
>You are autistic.
says the guy getting upset about game engine opinions. have a nice life on 4chan buddy.

[Anonymous No.4480169]

>>4480157
I don't know. The new Wolfenstein game looks kinda of artificial. Put it next to the new Call of Duty, and you will see the difference. Both run at 60 FPS on consoles anyway.

[Anonymous No.4480176]

>>4480169
>Put it next to the new Call of Duty, and you will see the difference.
The COD game engines are heavily modified idtech3 engines anyway (best 3D engine ever made). Their roots lie there. I haven't played the new Wolfenstein, but fuck me Doom 4 was fucking incredible from a technical perspective, both console and PC.

[Anonymous No.4480229]

>>4479762
Base textures are good enough to not warrant overlaid random noise. If it means another area has to be sacrificed, it's probably not worth it.
Graphics at the time of Unreal could only do two textures simultaneously. Lightmaps were already taking up the spot, so detail textures would require another rendering pass.

[Anonymous No.4481484]

>>4480229
We aren't talking about then.
We are talking about now, where in FPS, even on highest settings if you walk up to a wall, there's a good chance that all you see would be a blurry mess, while Wheel of Time did this >>4479891 in 1999. Modern games sure as hell can do an additional pass or a few when player gets faceplanted into a texture,both on PC and on consoles, yet for some baffling reason they don't.
Case in point - that highly appraised new Doom - it's environment textures turn into a blurry mess up close. Same goes for Fallout 4, and even COD/Battlefield etc. Not to mention lower profile games.

[Anonymous No.4481837]

Newer Id Tech engines got funny features like rebranding.

Idtech got renamed to:
stem engine in evil within 2
void engine in dishonored 2
...

Also shall rising godot engine beat the ue4 and unity?

Excuse me for shameless promotion

A game about your mom
https://dissensiondev.itch.io/project-raspidarasilo-4

[Anonymous No.4481894]

>>4480138
>I hate the plasticy look of games like bioshock for example,
That look was common for most games released during the end of sixth through about half of seventh gen's lifespan. Hell Doom 3 is probably one of the earlier games with that look.

[Anonymous No.4483318]

>>4481894
Doom 3, not sure about Bishock, uses gamma-space lighting, which contributes to the plastic look (and the darkness).

[Anonymous No.4483323]

>>4479564
>>4479762
Even N64 supported detail textures kek

https://level42.ca/projects/ultra64/Documentation/man/pro-man/pro13/13-07.html#05.1

[Anonymous No.4483326]

>>4481484
Perhaps it looks jarring for e.g. smooth metal to suddenly have scratches up close. Then again, it's also jarring to see four linearly interpolated texels.

[Anonymous No.4483351]

>>4483323
It was already obvious from OoT's title screen, with the grass.

[Anonymous No.4483375]

>>4483351
OoT grass is a regular texture tho, with no extra detail layers.

[Anonymous No.4483420]

the old id engines have always felt super stable, i don't know how JC pulled that shit

[Anonymous No.4483515]

>>4475774
to be fair ID cooperated with hardware producers a lot back then, they had a lot to say on how things were implemented

[Anonymous No.4483523]

>>4476253
>Unreal used the cpu for effects GPU of their time couldn't handle when the engine was made

fixed

[Anonymous No.4483537]

>>4481837
>Also shall rising godot engine beat the ue4 and unity?

not with the python scripting
C style or bust

[Anonymous No.4484015]

>>4483515
I have 3-4 test computers set up for work and I have noticed some funny things when it comes to game engine performance.
>AMD CPU+Nvidia GPU= ID tech runs like shit
>AMD CPU+Radeon GPU=ID tech runs great
>Intel CPU+Nvidia GPU=Unreal engine runs great
>Intel CPU+Radeon GPU=Unreal engine runs like shit

[Anonymous No.4486949]

>>4474936
Anymust-play mods for Unreal 1/ UT '99?