pranjal_halo2freak
Right off the assembly line
Storyline
April 12, 2006, 02:33 p.m.
Chernobyl zone was lit by an intolerably bright light. The clouds were evaporating in the silver bright sky with a thunder and earthquake to follow. People fell on the ground facedown closing their bleeding eyes and ears. The glow spread over an immense territory which was subsequently called the Zone. People ran away saving their lives. It looked like a radioactive explosion at the nuclear plant occurred. The army sealed off the Zone...
The explosion epicenter was a kilometre away from the nuclear plant. Obviously, some tests had been held there and they caused the disaster. Presumably, the entire personnel died within seconds, but still there was a probability of survivals among the staff. It appeared impossible to arrange a rescue operation, as the Zone was characterized by strange energy disturbances posing mortal danger to the explorers. Attempts to use robots were unavailing. Several months after the accident the crisis situation peaked when the Zone abruptly grew five kilometres bigger. People from nearby towns and villages were urgently evacuated, and the peril of a difficult-to-imagine scope loomed over the world.
Year 2008
The Zone exploded, radioactive clouds covered vast territories. A dreadful amount of people, animals and forests perished. Thirty kilometres of the area got cordoned off by the army, scientists failed to explain what had happened. The Zone grew, various death-bearing anomalies were spotted inside. Some invisible force tore living beings apart, inflicted awful blood-sputtering wounds. Expeditions faced mutant animals, unlikely to have appeared in the Zone through natural course of evolution. The catastrophe, mutants, anomalies, contamination… Everything appeared to be a consequence of some eerie phenomenon…
Year 2010
First expeditions can enter the Zone several kilometers deep without mortal danger . Amateur researchers, marauders and poachers, called stalkers, show up. They move around the Zone searching for various anomalous formations, i.e. artifacts, they would sell to various organizations.
X-Ray Engine
X-Ray is a powerful game engine implementing modern technologies. The engine does not support software rendering and requires a DirectX® 8 or higher compatible accelerator.
General:
Levels combining closed spaces as well as enormous open areas
On demand loading makes it possible to create a single huge level
Game time flow, change of time of the day
Powerful skeleton-based animation allows usage of motion-capture hardware and produces smooth and realistic motion of characters
VR-Simulation engine optimized for massive load
Graphics:
Support for all third generation D3D compatible accelerators, optimized for Geforce3 and up
Visualization optimized for hardware TnL (both FF and shading capable parts)
Continuous level of detail technology for all the geometry
~300 000 polygons per frame at 60 fps on average hardware
Detailed character models (500-10 000 polys)
High-speed blended animation system capable of an infinite number of bone interpolation & modulation operations
SSE/3Dnow! Technologies used for skinning and forward kinematics
Visibility determination
Portal-style, non-linear subdivision based visibility detection system
Optimized for T&L hardware by batching primitives in optimally sized groups
Dynamic occlusion culling, contribution culling
Adaptive hardware state caching technology
Lighting
Colored dynamic lights and dynamic "soft" shadows
Breakable light sources
Animated lights
Character shadowing
Intelligent light source selection, clipping, and merging
Detail mapping
Water, flares, coronas, etc.
Particle system with real physics
Screen post-processing
Shading
The Shader library is central to every part of the rendering pipeline
Completely abstracts the graphics API.
Multi-pass Rendering
Fallback Shaders
Facilitates cross-platform development
Separates shader writing from engine development
Pixel and Vertex shaders are automatically used (on shader capable hardware.)
Detail objects:
Grass, small stones, etc.
Enviromental effects, such as wind, turbulence, and tracks
Physics:
Based on ODE engine
Simulation speed outperforms commercial engines such as MathEngine, Havok, etc.
Real-time IK, vehicle physics, etc.
Collision database with low memory usage
Collision detection optimized for a large number of queries in a high concentration polygonal environment
Realistic simulation of ballistics, movement, and fluids
Audio:
High quality HRTF 3D-sound with clipping and partial wave tracing
Location-based environmental audio affected by surrounding obstructions
Context-relative multiple-mixed music streams in MP3/MP2/WMA/ADPCM formats
Network:
Distributed computing
Client-Server based system
Tools
In-house tools ( Level, Shader, Particle, and Actor Editors )
Plug-ins for popular modeling packages
AI:
Simulation Level-Of-Detail and Culling (2 AI models - high and low detail)
Fiber based time distribution allows scalable AI without any slowdown
Virtual senses; sight, hearing and touch
Terrain-aware tactical assessment system
FSM with random factor
Data driven design (pattern based evaluation functions are automatically generated and optimized on training examples - supervised learning)
This article is from
www.stalker-game.com/index_eng.html
April 12, 2006, 02:33 p.m.
Chernobyl zone was lit by an intolerably bright light. The clouds were evaporating in the silver bright sky with a thunder and earthquake to follow. People fell on the ground facedown closing their bleeding eyes and ears. The glow spread over an immense territory which was subsequently called the Zone. People ran away saving their lives. It looked like a radioactive explosion at the nuclear plant occurred. The army sealed off the Zone...
The explosion epicenter was a kilometre away from the nuclear plant. Obviously, some tests had been held there and they caused the disaster. Presumably, the entire personnel died within seconds, but still there was a probability of survivals among the staff. It appeared impossible to arrange a rescue operation, as the Zone was characterized by strange energy disturbances posing mortal danger to the explorers. Attempts to use robots were unavailing. Several months after the accident the crisis situation peaked when the Zone abruptly grew five kilometres bigger. People from nearby towns and villages were urgently evacuated, and the peril of a difficult-to-imagine scope loomed over the world.
Year 2008
The Zone exploded, radioactive clouds covered vast territories. A dreadful amount of people, animals and forests perished. Thirty kilometres of the area got cordoned off by the army, scientists failed to explain what had happened. The Zone grew, various death-bearing anomalies were spotted inside. Some invisible force tore living beings apart, inflicted awful blood-sputtering wounds. Expeditions faced mutant animals, unlikely to have appeared in the Zone through natural course of evolution. The catastrophe, mutants, anomalies, contamination… Everything appeared to be a consequence of some eerie phenomenon…
Year 2010
First expeditions can enter the Zone several kilometers deep without mortal danger . Amateur researchers, marauders and poachers, called stalkers, show up. They move around the Zone searching for various anomalous formations, i.e. artifacts, they would sell to various organizations.
X-Ray Engine
X-Ray is a powerful game engine implementing modern technologies. The engine does not support software rendering and requires a DirectX® 8 or higher compatible accelerator.
General:
Levels combining closed spaces as well as enormous open areas
On demand loading makes it possible to create a single huge level
Game time flow, change of time of the day
Powerful skeleton-based animation allows usage of motion-capture hardware and produces smooth and realistic motion of characters
VR-Simulation engine optimized for massive load
Graphics:
Support for all third generation D3D compatible accelerators, optimized for Geforce3 and up
Visualization optimized for hardware TnL (both FF and shading capable parts)
Continuous level of detail technology for all the geometry
~300 000 polygons per frame at 60 fps on average hardware
Detailed character models (500-10 000 polys)
High-speed blended animation system capable of an infinite number of bone interpolation & modulation operations
SSE/3Dnow! Technologies used for skinning and forward kinematics
Visibility determination
Portal-style, non-linear subdivision based visibility detection system
Optimized for T&L hardware by batching primitives in optimally sized groups
Dynamic occlusion culling, contribution culling
Adaptive hardware state caching technology
Lighting
Colored dynamic lights and dynamic "soft" shadows
Breakable light sources
Animated lights
Character shadowing
Intelligent light source selection, clipping, and merging
Detail mapping
Water, flares, coronas, etc.
Particle system with real physics
Screen post-processing
Shading
The Shader library is central to every part of the rendering pipeline
Completely abstracts the graphics API.
Multi-pass Rendering
Fallback Shaders
Facilitates cross-platform development
Separates shader writing from engine development
Pixel and Vertex shaders are automatically used (on shader capable hardware.)
Detail objects:
Grass, small stones, etc.
Enviromental effects, such as wind, turbulence, and tracks
Physics:
Based on ODE engine
Simulation speed outperforms commercial engines such as MathEngine, Havok, etc.
Real-time IK, vehicle physics, etc.
Collision database with low memory usage
Collision detection optimized for a large number of queries in a high concentration polygonal environment
Realistic simulation of ballistics, movement, and fluids
Audio:
High quality HRTF 3D-sound with clipping and partial wave tracing
Location-based environmental audio affected by surrounding obstructions
Context-relative multiple-mixed music streams in MP3/MP2/WMA/ADPCM formats
Network:
Distributed computing
Client-Server based system
Tools
In-house tools ( Level, Shader, Particle, and Actor Editors )
Plug-ins for popular modeling packages
AI:
Simulation Level-Of-Detail and Culling (2 AI models - high and low detail)
Fiber based time distribution allows scalable AI without any slowdown
Virtual senses; sight, hearing and touch
Terrain-aware tactical assessment system
FSM with random factor
Data driven design (pattern based evaluation functions are automatically generated and optimized on training examples - supervised learning)
This article is from
www.stalker-game.com/index_eng.html
