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Overview
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We started development of Vital Engine in 1998. A year later we sold engine license to GSC Game World and began development
of PC 3D Action game Codename: Outbreak (Venom). In 2001 it was successfully published worldwide by Virgin Interactive.
Now, we are glad to represent the second iteration of our engine. It was developed as a universal engine for creation
first/third person 3D games. We almost completely rewrite render code and significantly changed dynamics code.
Nowadays it is used for development of our new PC 3D Action RPG Xenus. Our game idea requires a lot from the engine.
The world must be very big (25x25km) but very detailed. Engine must render fast up to 200 thousands of
triangles on the screen. Shortly the main features of the engine are:
- Unique technology of rendering huge (but very detailed) territory 25x25km
- Skeleton animation with blending between up to 3 bones. MAX plugin allows to export animated MAX-models to the game's format
- Facial animation
- Multilayered textures of any dimension
- 5000 faces per character
- Lightmaps
- View-independent progressive mesh for models and view-dependent progressive mesh for level geometry
- Rigid body physics comparable with Math Engine (a set of predefined models: car, helicopter, box, player)
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The engine is based on client/server object-oriented architecture and utilizes DirectX 8.
Currently engine supports following video cards:
nVidia GeForce (GeForce 256, GeForce 2MX, GEForce 2 GTS, GeForce 3) and ATI Tech. Radeon (Radeon 32, Radeon LE, Radeon 2).
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VE2 consists from four basic modules that considerably simplify 3D game development process:
- Graphics library
- Sound library
- Collision & dynamics library
- Path Finder library
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What makes VE2 stand out from other engines?
- Total rejection of BSP. Level designer enjoys full freedom of setting level geometry. There is no difference between indoor and vast outdoor levels.
- Multilayered texture technology allows to forget the times when texture tile was visible.
- Ping-independent Client/Server architecture. You can enjoy game play online with ping up to 800ms.
- Powerful sound sub-system. Up to 300 3D sound sources can be simultaneously played on 200x200 meters square.
Editors of the first version of Vital Engine may be freely downloaded from this site (check Download section)
They are almost the same VE2 uses.
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Graphics library
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Visibility determination:
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Geometry:
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- View-depended progressive meshes for geometry simplification both for terrain and level;
- View-independent progressive meshes for geometry simplification;
- Automatic simplification of remote models up to billboard textures (impostors);
- Advanced static geometry and models caching;
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Textures:
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- Textures of any dimensions;
- Alpha-blended and colour key textures;
- Up to 4 textures per triangle;
- Three-layer textures for realisation of smooth transitions between sand, grass and ground on terrain;
- Support of texture compression;
- Advanced texture manager which dynamically adjusts textures quality depending on scene complication and video PCB capacity.
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Physics:
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- The level of physics is comparable with Trespasser & Carmageddon
- The trees stagger on the wind
- Different bullets have the different velocity and are acted by the wind and gravity
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Other:
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- Skeleton animation
- Face animation
- 50000 visible triangles on screen;
- 5000 triangles per soldier model
- up to 3000m visible distance
- Atmospheric effects such as multi-layer sky, water, volumetric and distant fogs, etc.
- Scripted texture layers (multi-texturing)
- Scripted GFX objects
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Due to algorithms used, all above-mentioned characteristics are rather fast-to-use. The opposite case, as this happens with many games, is when activating a function (like dynamic shadows) the engine ends up in unsatisfying speed slow down. Each parameter has broad adjusting limits, enabling level creation with an acceptable various scenes visualization speed. Your imagination now is not limited by weary corridors - the engine "excellently" works as with indoor, so as outdoor areas (terrain). It is optimized for simultaneously rendering of a large amount of level faces and objects on the screen. Within one level a player can pass a huge outdoor area and after that to enter a building with complex architecture. On outdoor areas with lots of simultaneously visible objects, performance problems are solved by means of LOD. That's why you can create levels with numerous objects (f. e. a dense forest). Another powerful engine subsystem is Particle Manager. Using it, you can easily create multifarious special effects: fire, smoke, splinters, sparkles, air bubbles beneath the water etc. If you find the Particle Manager capabilities insufficient, you can write a procedure object of your own.
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Sound library
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The library is a powerful API to play 3D and 2D sounds. The powerful scheduler allows playing an unlimited number of sounds on level. The library supports both static and streaming sounds. Therefore you can instantly create a new sound out of several short ones. For instance, in Codename Outbreak the length of change-weapons-sound varies depending on the angle the drum should be turned at. Vital Engine ZL supports software wave-tracing technology. The library processes a sound audibility/inaudibility not directly, but considering level geometry. Moreover, it is supported not only by A3D/EAX cards, but also by any "common" card without level geometry limitations. You can define ambient sounds for every room and play each of them according to your rules. When leaving a room ambient sounds are not muted immediately but smoothly fade out as the distance grows. The system of step sounds is another good feature of our engine. Sounds depend both on the type of surface object is moving on and room ambience type. Because the sounds can be so numerous, we had to develop a mighty cache-system to allow much lesser number of disk addressing. In cases when disk addressing is inevitable, reading is done asynchronically.
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Collision & Dynamics library
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Vital Engine is based on very powerful rigid body physics. Every object possesses its weight, volume, air and surface friction coefficients. Due to these factors, object movement is processed according to real physics principles. Notwithstanding a complex looking adjustment, you are only to define object parameters, and let the engine care for the rest. Physics library will calculate all the forces effecting on object and generate new coordinates and orientation each frame. Engine has the following preset models: player, car, helicopter. Currently we are also close to finish modeling of junctions between bodies.
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AI library
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Vital Engine substantially simplifies you the task of implementing your boldest plans about AI. Library itself is a powerful pathfinder. It is capable of quick finding both shortest paths, and more complex ones. For instance, the engine can quickly answer to the request of finding the shortest way that brings us to a point that opens a view to the given group of points. Speed, flexibility and extensive possibilities are opening up to you when using Vital Engine.
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How to get a license?
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The general requests may be sent to contact@deep-shadows.com. We'll get back to you as soon as possible.
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