Friday with Means - November 25th, 2011 - Less words more screens

[Louderer789]

My main concern with the new engine is if it will remain backwards compatible for those with low-end graphics cards; myself being one of those people.
I would like to be able to play with the new engine without having to spend money I don't have on a new card (actually an entirely new computer, I still use AGP)

so I was thinking, even if the engine would utilize the GPU more then it does now, perhaps they could add support for multi-core CPU renderings via threading so it would function as it would now, but utilizing the CPU in conjunction with the GPU

They aren't asking you to buy a computer capable of beating Gary Kasparov at chess or Ken Jennings at Jeopardy. They are asking you to have a video card made in the last 5 years...and you've had 4 years to prepare.

[Mastablasta]

Or you could just keep on playing the old client.

[Obtena]

How many of those thousand will stay once they get over the "ooh shiny" stage?

I'm sure some hater will rub their magic ball and take their own biased, speculative answer of zero, just to prove their point.

The fact is that some volume of people will come back and some volume of those people will stay, even if it's just for one month. Some people might chalk that up as a 'huge phail' but I don't honestly think that the upgrade's primary purpose is to get players back for a second coming anyways, so that kind of failing assessment isn't meaningful. I believe that it's simply a matter of making AO a game they can continue to develop in their own studio with their own tools.

In otherwords, after the upgrade, they probably won't be supporting the current tools that enable them to continue developing AO.

[Alternity]

Are there any screenshots of Shadowlands with the Dreamfall engine?

And why not make FWM, a fortnightly or monthly thing?

It seems like if you do it once a month it would be a bit more special, and there would be a more of a progress report. I call for The Anarchy Monthly (TAM) and at least we can get a substantial juicy update than a few screenshots here and there.

Just don't read any FWM until the last friday of the month, there problem solved!

[Anarrina]

If you could avoid snarking at each other in this thread, that would be nice. Take it to PMs, if you please.

[Alternity]

Actually you have a very strong point. I hope once the relaunch of AO occures, some nifty person starts an unofficial AO boards, like for example AOForums.com or AOFlames.com, then people can snark all they want.

We had that, and it was quite good reading material. Until people quit AO, and there were none left to "snark"

[Cogline]

Better watch out. Sometimes snarks turn out to be boojums, and then you'll "softly and silently disappear."

[drakio]

They aren't asking you to buy a computer capable of beating Gary Kasparov at chess or Ken Jennings at Jeopardy. They are asking you to have a video card made in the last 5 years...and you've had 4 years to prepare.

Actually im using this computer My uber hypercooled PC. I will be still able to run anarchy ? :O

[Esssch]

Actually im using this computer My uber hypercooled PC. I will be still able to run anarchy ? :O

You can run AO on this, though it'll run a little warm.

[Alternity]

I predict this weeks FWuM will be a picture of a picture of the new engine, see what I did thar?!

[Hardcore]

I've got a question.

Why would you make the grass completely flat in the swamp for instance? Why can't you make it more "alive" with a natural movement? Like the video Means posted on youtube December 11th 2009?

You dont have to make the grass very long or so, just make it atleast a couple centimetres (ingame). Do you flatten the grass because of the overload of moving things on the client?

[Mastablasta]

What do you even mean "flatthen the grass"? If you read the various other updates you'd know there's been issues with getting the floral maps to display properly and that it hasn't worked till just recently, far later than this post.

[Hardcore]

What do you even mean "flatthen the grass"? If you read the various other updates you'd know there's been issues with getting the floral maps to display properly and that it hasn't worked till just recently, far later than this post.

What I mean is that they have just put in a picture of grass and make it display on this ground. There is nothing sticking up, just completely flat. a pic of how the normal grass in ao looks like

I have zero experience with game devlopment or anything at all in that genre. But if we are to have a new engine it would be nice to see less "flat grass" and more sticking-out-of-ground-grass.

I tried to google grass in a game but I didn't come up with any good examples of how I'm trying to describe the image in have in my head.

Flat grass aint beautiful to watch at all.

[Mastablasta]

So, you mean like everyone else does it and has done for the last 20 years of displaying grass? 3d grass is a feature. If it'll be everywhere, who knows.

[Hardcore]

So, you mean like everyone else does it and has done for the last 20 years of displaying grass? 3d grass is a feature. If it'll be everywhere, who knows.

That's the problem, using an 20 year old feature. Time for a change, don't you agree?

But I dunno, perhaps the technology haven't gone that far yet..?

[Mastablasta]

I don't think you'll find major changes in graphical display technology coming out of a 1 man operation for porting a graphics engine to a 10 year old game of limited success.

[Menzagitat]

I tried to google grass in a game but I didn't come up with any good examples of how I'm trying to describe the image in have in my head.

Flat grass aint beautiful to watch at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08cxbDxB_6g

[Hardcore]

I dont think that video is no longer proof of how the new engine will look like. Iiirc that was engine footage (or cinematics, non existant engine footage) from the old ogre engine which they later dumped.

I'm more than happy to be prooven wrong because I think that teaser looks beautiful.

Would be nice with a new updated graphic engine trailer

[Mastablasta]

For an actual preview of how some of it might look, you could take a look at the grass in Age of Conan.

[Reids]

Would be nice with a new updated graphic engine trailer

Means said there would be one.....about 2 years ago.