The IW Engine comapred to the Source Engine

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Valve has been constantly improving the Source engine. Half Life 2 and Portal 2 look like they're on entirely different engines, and the things you can do in Portal 2 were unheradof in 2005. But it's the same engine.


IW engine? They haven't done a damn thing to it.


See the difference now? See why gamers don't mind the Source engine but balk at Activision spewing another junkheap on IW Engine?

Well that's just wrong isn't it? Half life 2 and Left 4 dead look exactly the same, despite being years apart. Now compare Cod2 to Cod4.

Wait, what? When was the last time you played either game? Because Half Life 2 looks downright ugly by todays standards, but l4d looks pretty good for a game from 2008. l4d2 and Portal 2 look at least as good as any other game from their respective time periods. The only way I can see you saying that HL2 looked like L4D is if the only HL2 game you've played is Episode 2, but even then L4D is running on an improved version of the engine.

What are you smoking? Can I have some? L4d 1 and 2 both look downright bad. Considering they were made in 2008 and 2009, they look absolutely awful compared to older titles [such as cod4 and halo 3] I've played HL2, and I notice no difference between that and l4d, except that l4d doesn't wank off it's physics engine in your face [Hl2's only noteworthy selling point]
Other games that came around 2008, Dead space, crysis, Bioshock, 3 beautiful games from different engines, so how do this many developers keep up to dates with making things look good but Valve stay behind so much? I'll tell you. They're making money from just modding Hl2, and selling it to saps full price.

They did put HL2 on the Orange Box engine when they released the Orange Box. If you want to see what it looked like originally, load up HL2 Deathmatch sometime. The textures, lighting, and everything else look like crap.

Also, what settings are you running these games on? HL2 on high looks worse than L4D on high, which looks worse than L4D2 on medium. I would put L4D2 next to most games from the time period -- it's right about average in graphics. And don't compare it to Crysis. Crysis was a tech demo, and its graphics arguably still haven't been topped, even by its own sequel.

Well I'm going by my xbox versions of L4d 1 and 2 [although my pc copy of the first doesn't seem much different] and compared to my HL2 on pc, I honestly can't see a difference, except that the L4ds are very slightly smoother looking.

Well there's your problem; the Xbox 360 runs them on the equivalent of medium settings. Further, HL2 was upgraded a few years back to run on a 2007 build of the Source engine; you'd have to play HL2 Deathmatch, which was left alone to avoid changes in the movement physics messing up the game, in order to get a fair comparison.

 

[headshotcatcher]

Because Valve fans are the most loyal, blind and aggressive people you'll find outside of Nintendo fans.

So you wouldn't agree Portal 2 looks like a current gen game? Because it sure is one of the prettiest games I've seen in a while!

 

[dmase]

From what i'm reading IW has been updated heavily for those that are saying it hasn't. Black ops apparently used the old version but not Modern Warfare 2.(weird)

I think the reason IW hasn't brought out the next in line is because its mainly an in house game engine. They don't make huge sums of money on it aside from the titles they release, unreal could conceivably sit back and collect royalty checks paying for development and putting out patches and upgrades occasionally for the engine alone.

Personally I like the game engine that killzone 3 used which according to wiki is a heavily modified in house engine with havok physics. Does anybody know if the heavily modified in house engine a modified cryengine or something?

 

[NickCaligo42]

The Infinity Ward Engine is a very bare bones, very streamlined engine that exists for the express purpose of creating three kinds of games--shooters, shooters, and shooters. It's been employed exclusively in-house and features no mod tools. I don't believe they even license it out to studios outside Activision, actually. Not that you'd want to mod with it, it's extraordinarily rigid; it's not just that it's only made for shooters, it's that it's only made for Call of Duty. The developers themselves say so--but that's how they like it. It's a tool expressly designed for their workflow and the types of games that they make and that they know they'll be making until the end of time, and it works well for them, enabling them to develop fairly high-quality content in extremely short cycles. Plus, since it doesn't have a lot of overhead from features their games don't need, it runs super-efficiently. It's the way any proprietary engine should be.

The Source engine, while not precisely 100% open to all users, does have an SDK available to anyone on Steam who wants to futz with it. If you're a computer scientist with expertise in C++, at least. Still, it's widely available and has represented a wide variety of mods and games, including Valve's catalogue, third-party projects like Dino D-Day, Darwinia, and Flipside, as well as Vindictus, an action-MMO that takes advantage of Source's physics engine, and Zeno Clash, a first-person beat-'em-up with a unique, almost Jim Henson-like atmosphere and a brutal combat system. It's a versatile engine and it's proven it, though it shows its age and feels more than a little rough around the edges the more it gets stretched. As a tool it's a bear to try and work with. Modern features like real-time preview haven't been worked in since its inception, and it still feels like trying to build with the Quake engine in a lot of ways, depending very strongly on constructive solid geometry where modern engines depend more strongly on static meshes.

Oddly enough, both engines are very similar in that last regard. Where Unreal Engine and CryEngine maps are built on the principle of modularity, Infinity Ward Engine-based games do not feature any modular buildings or assets. There's a collection of repeatable props, of course, but environments in their games are more or less hand-crafted with incredible attention to detail, much in the same way that Valve's games are, but taken to a somewhat greater extreme.

*shrug*

I don't really have an opinion either way. They're both fascinating pieces of tech that I've got some respect for, and I just like talking about this stuff. Personally I wouldn't develop a game with either. I'd sooner get my own proprietary engine together, or just go with Unreal, as it is the engine that I myself am the most familiar with.

 

[fix-the-spade]

My question is this then, why is Call of Duty called out so often for using a six year old engine, yet Valve is allowed to still use a seven year old engine upon which they built more games?

Valve do in fact get lots of stick for using an 'outdated' game engine, it comes and goes in cycles and usually goes quiet whenever they release a new game.

The problem (as I see it) is that people confuse what's on the label with what the actual software can do.

For example, CryEngine 3, new graphics engine, must be better than the old one right?
It's DirectX9, chew that over in your head for a minute. CryEngine 3 operates on the same base specification as the original CryEngine, it's considerably less capable the CryEngine 2, which powered Crysis.
The only reason it was developed was so Crytek coul publish a game that a 360 can run without vomiting it's guts all over the floor. New engine doesn't necessarily mean new or advancing tech.

In IW's case the engine has changed very little since Modern Warfare was released, from CoD2 to 4 quite a lot was added, but from then on it's not really changed. The result is that MW2 and BLOPS don't really look any better, it's not helped by them all being generically brown in their art direction.

Valve on the other hand re-write the Source Engine almost constantly, even Half Life 2 and CS:S have had new features added (HDR, Particles and multi-core support in case you're wondering) along with new version with each game. Even from Left 4 Dead to L4D2 Source got a more or less ground up re-write so L4D2 could support weather effects and pyrotechnics better. They also tend to optimise relentlessly, TF2 recently had an update that dramatically reduced how much memory it used, the result being that my old PC that played it smoothly in 2007 now plays it smoothly again even with all the graphical upgrades checked.
It may still be the Source Engine, but in terms of it's capabilities it's an entirely different piece of software to what landed in 2004 (or even what was around in 2007).

Valve's art direction tends to do them a lot of favours too, not relying on brown based palettes all the time does an old system a lot of favours.

Going back to Crytek for a minute, Crysis 2 is pretty cast iron proof that pure tech doesn't make a pretty game. Despite it being not quite as pretty or advanced as Crysis most people can agree it looks a million bucks. Crytek's knowing how to use resources effectively and employing proper art direction has meant most people failed notice that it's running on tech that's roughly on par with their first ever release.

Unfortunately people don't tend to look far beyond the headlines.