Rate the new FPS demo engines

[m0r94n]

Crysis Demo
Visuals = 10 (Even if we have been 'mislead' it still looks fantastic, even on medium!)
Physics = 9 (Brilliant, though I do have 1 or 2 issues)
Stability = 10 (No Problems At All)
Speed = 8 (Runs great on Medium and was nearly playable on Very High. Given my system im confused!)

Total = 9

UT3 & GoW
Visuals = 8 (Better than CoD 4, but nothing on Crysis)
Physics = 7 (Theyre there, but I havnt really noticed them)
Stability = 8 (Some stuttering)
Speed = 9 (Runs pretty much maxed out)

Total = 8

CoD4 Full Game
Visuals = 7 (I honestly dont see why everyone loves the visuals here so much. Theyre good, but nothing special)
Physics = 7 (Bullet effects really do give more gameplay options)
Stability = 8 (Need to mention the AI here, at times can be clueless. Not great for squad based action.)
Speed = 8 (Runs maxed out, but I dont feel its a cause for great joy on my pc)

Total = 7

 

[agnes]

All I can say is lol tbh. UT3 engine beating crysis in visuals? Why is everyone so hung up on this one screenshot comparison, they've bothed been cherry picked as best and worst. Sorry mate, but how can you give UT3 and COD4 engine a speed of 10 and cryengine a speed of 6, it's like comparing three bugatti's speed, but one of them having an elephant driving it. It's not proportional to say the least.

without sounding harsh, but i my self was naffed off when my rig struggled to keep crysis above the fps it gave me, therefore im gonna be hardsh on it. and i like the UE3 engine, dark, grimey... my kinda thing, i like stuff like that. where as crysis excels, and i mean truely excels in dynamic lighting and interaction. but for ME, i dont like it as much as i thought i would... as the OP said, YOUR score, so my opinions arnt wrong, its what I think...

as for that screenshot of comparison lol, its all waffle as im sure you will agree, it doesnt take anymore brain power of a monkey to do what they guy did with those screens. funny how he didnt take a pic of the foliage as he came out ontop of the cliff at the start of the demo overlooking onto the beach... people would definetly say something else rather than "crysis scammed us all!!!"... so i agree with you on that but its not polite to judge and guess why someone has chosen their opinion without their answer first

ags

p.s. im not comparing engine with engine, just a general summary of what i thought it was

 

[Samione]

without sounding harsh, but i my self was naffed off when my rig struggled to keep crysis above the fps it gave me, therefore im gonna be hardsh on it. and i like the UE3 engine, dark, grimey... my kinda thing, i like stuff like that. where as crysis excels, and i mean truely excels in dynamic lighting and interaction. but for ME, i dont like it as much as i thought i would... as the OP said, YOUR score, so my opinions arnt wrong, its what I think...

as for that screenshot of comparison lol, its all waffle as im sure you will agree, it doesnt take anymore brain power of a monkey to do what they guy did with those screens. funny how he didnt take a pic of the foliage as he came out ontop of the cliff at the start of the demo overlooking onto the beach... people would definetly say something else rather than "crysis scammed us all!!!"... so i agree with you on that but its not polite to judge and guess why someone has chosen their opinion without their answer first

ags

p.s. im not comparing engine with engine, just a general summary of what i thought it was

Fair doos

 

[warnea1984]

Crysis has not mislead us. Someone was able to re-produce the same visuals with the sandbox editor. Also how mant TIMES have they said the engine will scale 2 years ahead.

I've seen that video and its close but if you watch it look at the ground shrubs, they only cast shadows onto the ground and not onto themselves as was shown in the original media release. I imagine the engine can do it but it would be a huge drain on gpu calculations.

 

[Margaret]

I've seen that video and its close but if you watch it look at the ground shrubs, they only cast shadows onto the ground and not onto themselves as was shown in the original media release. I imagine the engine can do it but it would be a huge drain on gpu calculations.

Oh for crying out loud who cares!

It's far better than anything else out even without them tweaks, the gameplay footage we have seen in videos was in the demo, they haven't mislead anybody.

The Jungle Fight footage, well quite frankly I didn't expect the end product to look like that, the majority of the footage is what we was given in the demo graphics wise.

 

[warnea1984]

Oh for crying out loud who cares!

It's far better than anything else out even without them tweaks, the gameplay footage we have seen in videos was in the demo, they haven't mislead anybody.

The Jungle Fight footage, well quite frankly I didn't expect the end product to look like that, the majority of the footage is what we was given in the demo graphics wise.

Dont get me wrong the engine is awesome the best I've seen, i dont feel mislead at all I understand that developers start we've great ideas that have to be cut, like i said ifthey had implement the full shadows it would kill every system out there and no one could play it. If i'd been crytek I would have done the same.

 

[HangTime]

how can you give UT3 and COD4 engine a speed of 10 and cryengine a speed of 6, it's like comparing three bugatti's speed, but one of them having an elephant driving it. It's not proportional to say the least.

That's precisely the point. When using such a rating system, where the engine is split into 4 different categories, the speed rating should NOT be proportional to the visual quality. That's what the Visual category is for!

So it is perfectly feasible to give, say, Quake3 a higher speed rating than Crysis. It's just that it will likely get hammered in the Visuals category!

 

[Samione]

That's precisely the point. When using such a rating system, where the engine is split into 4 different categories, the speed rating should NOT be proportional to the visual quality. That's what the Visual category is for!

So it is perfectly feasible to give, say, Quake3 a higher speed rating than Crysis. It's just that it will likely get hammered in the Visuals category!

Err how shouldn't it? That makes no sense :S I give the the pokemon game engine a speed of 11111111. It has to be proportional otherwise it's not an accurate representation of what the engine is capable of is it ?

 

[eekfek]

Ut3 - 7/10
Crysis - 3/10
COD4 - 9/10

the vibrant colour and speed of the Ut3/Cod4 engines are superb, both offer fast visuals and are coded to make the gameplay as important, whereas Crysis feels more like a physics/tech engine with a game strapped on, what happened to the bright wonderful gfx ? lights piercing through the dense vegetation and trees ? instead we have farcry with more polygons ... overall Ut3/Cod4 have given what gamers really want, gameplay and visuals that nearly everyone can enjoy, crysis wont do that ... imo

 

[HangTime]

Speed is speed. I'd expect something like Pokemon to get a much higher speed rating than a next-gen FPS like Crysis (although I think to be worthwhile the comparisons need to be from games of the same genre).

I mean, in the Olympic 100m race, they don't turn round and say "Well done Mr Boldon, you may have clocked the fastest time and crossed the finish line first, but Mr Christie is bigger than you. Therefore he's getting the Gold medal, sorry mate!"

If speed rating was weighted based on visual quality then it would defeat the whole point of having a Visual rating in the first place. To maintain the integrity of the rating system, you'd then have to say "Well, Crysis is the best looking game, BUT I'm not giving to give it a higher Visual rating than UT3/CoD4, because it runs slower. Otherwise it's not proportional!!". Otherwise you could have a stupid situation where two games have the same speed rating, but one has a higher visual rating. This would imply that it looks better and yet runs at the same speed, which isn't the case.

If we were simply rating the engine overall, then yes, performance would need to be weighted/proportional to visual quality. But we aren't. We are assessing discrete attributes of the engine, independent of the others.

 

[Samione]

Speed is speed. I'd expect something like Pokemon to get a much higher speed rating than a next-gen FPS like Crysis (although I think to be worthwhile the comparisons need to be from games of the same genre).

I mean, in the Olympic 100m race, they don't turn round and say "Well done Mr Boldon, you may have clocked the fastest time and crossed the finish line first, but Mr Christie is bigger than you. Therefore he's getting the Gold medal, sorry mate!"

If speed rating was weighted based on visual quality then it would defeat the whole point of having a Visual rating in the first place. To maintain the integrity of the rating system, you'd then have to say "Well, Crysis is the best looking game, BUT I'm not giving to give it a higher Visual rating than UT3/CoD4, because it runs slower. Otherwise it's not proportional!!". Otherwise you could have a stupid situation where two games have the same speed rating, but one has a higher visual rating. This would imply that it looks better and yet runs at the same speed, which isn't the case.

If we were simply rating the engine overall, then yes, performance would need to be weighted/proportional to visual quality. But we aren't. We are assessing discrete attributes of the engine, independent of the others.

Like I said before it's comparable to testing the speed of three cars but putting a two ton weight on the back of one - if you rated the speed of the one with the weight on to be worse- it wouldn't exaclty be a fair representation would it? I'm afraid we don't live in a super abstracted universe where nothing relates to each other. But ultimately whatever tbh

 

[Vanishing Point]

Crysis really renders huge amounts of foliage very well, futhermore you can actually shoot it and it reacts, trees topple and things. Also it has a huge draw distance. Not very many games so far have been able to do anything like that and still look good you have to give the engine credit for that.

It is part of why the game seems slower, it is not just how it looks but what it is rendering. Bioshock looked great and did water well but you were in an enclosed space with lots of similar environments, so it was less demanding.

 

[HangTime]

Of course it wouldn't - I would pay no attention whatsoever to a car 'benchmark' which was testing speed with a two ton weight on the back of one car. It would invalidate the testing process.

The reason for this, is that the two-ton weight is an ARTIFICIAL way of slowing down the speed. Crysis is NOT being artificially slowed down, your analogy would be the equivalent of measuring Crysis speed while defragging your hd and running a huge winrar archive in the background.

 

[Samione]

Of course it wouldn't - I would pay no attention whatsoever to a car 'benchmark' which was testing speed with a two ton weight on the back of one car. It would invalidate the testing process.

The reason for this, is that the two-ton weight is an ARTIFICIAL way of slowing down the speed. Crysis is NOT being artificially slowed down, your analogy would be the equivalent of measuring Crysis speed while defragging your hd and running a huge winrar archive in the background.

Seeing as cars don't render stuff it's kind of hard to come up with an analogy the compares the two- the car one illustrates it pretty well tbh. It's about what the engine has to cope with in relation to the speed- that's the point I was getting across.

 

[Zefan]

Seeing as cars don't render stuff it's kind of hard to come up with an analogy the compares the two- the car one illustrates it pretty well tbh. It's about what the engine has to cope with in relation to the speed- that's the point I was getting across.

Yes but the "Speed rating" shouldn't take ANYTHING else in to account. It should be based purely on how well the game runs, paying little to no attention to how good the game looks.

 

[HangTime]

Well, the closest car analogy I can think of would be to have two cars, one is faster than the other, but the other weighs more (in default configuration i.e. no artifical weights slowing it down).

What you are suggesting is that the fastest car shouldn't be considered the fastest, because it weighs more. It's like saying a Ferrari isn't faster than a Stretch Limo because the Limo has to carry more weight.

 

[Samione]

Well, the closest car analogy I can think of would be to have two cars, one is faster than the other, but the other weighs more (in default configuration i.e. no artifical weights slowing it down).

What you are suggesting is that the fastest car shouldn't be considered the fastest, because it weighs more. It's like saying a Ferrari isn't faster than a Stretch Limo because the Limo has to carry more weight.

I'm not suggesting that becuase in the analogy I used three cars that inherently had the same speed/power to begin with.

Also if it's not meant relative it seems like a pointless thing to rate in the first place.

 

[Streeteh]

Crysis really renders huge amounts of foliage very well, futhermore you can actually shoot it and it reacts, trees topple and things.

But that has little or no impact on the gameplay as far as i can tell - i toppled a huge tree onto some mug, it bounced off of his head and he just kept running about as if nothing had happened. You can shoot the wall of a corigated iron shack with a high caliber rifle and the bullets won't pass through - not exactly good physics in terms of gameplay.


CoD4 for example though, has used basic physics to increase gameplay tactics, for example different materials may or may not defelct bullets, so choosing your cover well is vital and you can pick off enemies who THINK they're safe.

I would rather have gameplay affecting physics than visual physics.

Like I said before it's comparable to testing the speed of three cars but putting a two ton weight on the back of one - if you rated the speed of the one with the weight on to be worse- it wouldn't exaclty be a fair representation would it? I'm afraid we don't live in a super abstracted universe where nothing relates to each other. But ultimately whatever tbh

That analogy would apply to bad implementation of the same engine. For example Rainbow six vegas and Gears of War - both use the same engine but one runs far faster than the other. Same car, different performance.

These aren't the same engine, they're completely different. Its like comparing a Ferrari Enzo to a Saleen, the Saleen is faster but the Enzo handles better. One game engine looks better, the other runs faster on current hardware.

The point of rating speed of an engine is because of current gen hardware, something rated higher in speed has a better hope of running on average systems, whereas something with a higher visual rating but lower speed is probably more suitable for high spec PC owners. Eg, i wouldn't be suggesting to my mates that they buy crysis as the majority of them have low to average end PCs, i would probably recommend CoD4 to them though.

 

[ergonomics]

i think crysis does very well considering the sheer amount of objects it need to render and calculate, although as others have said, the physics on the houses are laughable.

i can picture someone just leaning on a wall on korea and the entire 3 story house just falls on them.

the UT3/gow engine, although technically looks good, detailed, good shadows, etc, its way too bright, and there is a distinct lack of colours imho.

but then i guess there are 2 extremes, the bright colours of crysis, and the dull greys/blacks/whites of GOW. cod4 runs perfectly, looks alright, and keeps you in enough action most of the time to not really notice the minor details of the engine.

this is why i can see they put so much effort into the cryengine, as its not a 100% action filled game all the time, so you have the time to explore and look at everything in detail.

 

[Inazuma]

Crysis Demo
Visuals = 10 (Looks absolutely immense)
Physics = 9 (10 if it had rag dolls)
Stability = 10 (No crashing, loads very quickly)
Speed = 9 (Needs draw distance sliders, but otherwise very good)


UT3 Demo
Visuals = 9.5 (Also looks amazing... but not as nice as Crysis)
Physics = 7 (People explode into bits, yum.)
Stability = 10 (No crashing and loading is pretty fast)
Speed = 10 (Runs great for how good it looks)


CoD4 Demo
Visuals = 6 (Models are nothing special, textures are poor in a lot of cases, 2D background smoke effects; but lighting and atmosphere are pretty good and have a realistic feel.)
Physics = 3 (Are there even any real physics effects in this game? :/)
Stability = 10 (No crashes for me and I love how there is basically no loading screen)
Speed = 9 (Runs great)