[foxbat]

If you're Fan of the games that defined the Tactical Realism genre -- a genre we feel has gone back in time and swapped bodies with Rambo in a freak electrical accident involving toothpaste -- we believe we are on track to offering what you've been waiting for.

We've been at it (in our spare time) for over five years, have made impressive progress, but have a ways to go. This is a 'boot-strap' project where we're building it all ourselves from the ground up to offer an engine and platform dedicated to the genre's needs and future, so there's a lot of work involved not seen in the current ilk of games that essentially roll as mods of commercial engines.

Our aims are ambitious but will within reach: a state-of-the-art engine and art pipeline dedicated to the genre, upgrade and expansion by design rather then self-obsolesce, a direct free-to-retail model where core content will be free that not will not only keep Developers in direct contact with Fans, but consign and pay prolific and talented Fan/Mod Developers for their contributions.

Special Warfare Games is our trademark and title, 'built by Fans for Fans' our creed. We're working to bring Tactical Realism back, and invite you to join us. Presently we're looking for: a capable Web Developer; an Animator/Modeler (with emphasis on animation talent as we have a considerable stock of art assets); and a 2D/Texture Artist skilled at unwrapping and texturing models, creating texture maps, and 2D presentation art.

If you are interested in working with us in any of these areas, you are invited and welcome contact us at:

developers at scalerender dot com

This post has been edited by foxbat: 11 March 2010 - 12:36 PM

[firefly2442]

So you built the graphics engine from scratch? That must have taken considerable time. Why not go with something that is already available?

[foxbat]

The game engine is made up of a collection of low level libraries for things like rendering, audio, networking and physics. Our philosophy is to avoid reinventing the wheel wherever possible, so we've taken existing libraries and then built our game engine on top of these. Our graphics is based on the Object-oriented Graphics Rendering Engine (OGRE), but with our own proprietary scene management and shader code.

When I said we've built the engine from the ground up I was referring to the Game Engine layer, and didn't mean to imply that we've built all the underlying systems from scratch as well. Sorry for the ambiguity.

The main reason why we decided to develop our own technology rather than licensing an existing game engine is that the tactical realism FPS genre has many inherent technical hurdles which would have been very difficult to overcome with commercial engines available to us at the time; at least without spending a fortune on licensing fees. While engine licensing has become more affordable over the years, we still feel that the flexibility of having our own engine and owning all of our IP makes it worth while.

This post has been edited by foxbat: 12 March 2010 - 06:44 AM

[Bota:16]

Just curious, why not Unreal 3 UDK. I know they you have to pay them royalties for a commercial product, but seems like there would be less reinventing the wheel for something like this.

[foxbat]

My understanding is that the Unreal 3 UDK only lets you code in Unreal Script, which is too limiting for the kind of features we want to have in the game. It's fine if you don't deviate too far from the feature set they give you, but we have the need to do custom things, particularly with AI, which really requires a true programming language.

[101459]

While I don't think Unreal 3 is a BSP engine, it, and all the games that run on it sure look and feel like BSP engine games as far as scene complexity vs. draw distance. Every large U3 engine map (just like new id Software Tech engine games) is long and narrow, or in some kind of valley and/or has draw distance clipped by carefully placed near field objects. All great and fine for urban maps that have been the focus of games like R6, but Unreal 3 is not an true outdoor engine like the one under say Armed Assault I & II. So I definitely get the idea of a new engine for a game that might want to fill some of the void left by [GR] (which is what this sounds like). But what can this engine really do? And what kind of game features does it offer?

This post has been edited by 101459: 12 March 2010 - 08:56 AM

[foxbat]

Here's a brief rundown on the current engine and game features:

Game Features;
- realistic player movement and weapons handling
- Rainbow 6 style kit selection with custom weapon attachments
- tactical squad AI
- fluid system for issuing commands
- support for 1st person, over the shoulder, and ghost perspective

Graphics:
- per-pixel lighting with normal and specular mapping
- depth shadow mapping with soft shadows
- efficient rendering of detailed terrain tens of kilometers across
- efficient rendering of large amounts of vegetation
- dynamic time of day lighting

Animation:
- combined 1st person / 3rd person skeleton
- procedural control of bones for accurate weapon aim alignment
- hardware skinning with up to 4 vertex weights per bone

Physics:
- 6 DOF rigid body dynamics
- projectile dynamics
- wheeled vehicle physics and accurate aircraft dynamics
- boat and ship physics responsive to dynamic waves

Network:
- low bandwidth network physics
- multiplayer and COOP support

Asset Pipeline:
- level editor
- open support for a variety of 3D applications
- open material and shader scripting system

[firefly2442]

Do you have a website with additional media and progress updates?

[TRC]

Sounds interesting, keep us apprised of further development. If it impresses us you can be sure the membership here will get the word out to other forums. Ahhh, the thought of being able to pick one's own kit like R6 is delightful, as well as tactical ai. Any chance of the old style firefight/recon game modes for sp/coop types? Actually you could combine the 2 and just allow player(s) to kill all or sneak around to an extraction point.

[foxbat]

Quote

Do you have a website with additional media and progress updates?

We are working on a website, however we are hoping to find a capable web developer to help us organize things before we start putting web content up. Being able to show images or videos of the game is contingent on us finding an artist or artists who can help us export animation and model content to the engine. We currently test the game with some placeholder assets which we would like to have upgraded/replaced.

Quote

Any chance of the old style firefight/recon game modes for sp/coop types?

Yes we will have several sp/mp/coop game modes including (but not limited to) types similar to firefight, recon and siege.

[krise madsen]

Sounds interesting. Please keep us updated.

Best of luck.