Glacier 2 Game Engine
The new Glacier 2 Game Engine is a clean cut above its predecessor, Glacier 1 Game Engine. Because in comparison to the older engine which had been modified numerous times to fit the standard and demands at the time of the different game releases, Glacier 2 was built from scratch.
Built from the ground up Glacier 2 is IOI’s new game engine specifically designed with Hitman in mind. Glacier 2 will provide a platform whereby dense crowds of up to 1200 characters can be generated. While not only holding at a steady 30 FPS, these individual characters be influenced and interacted with by the players.
Features
General
- Object-Oriented Design
- Plug-in Architecture
- Save/Load System
- Other
- A math library - for fast vector calculations (will also include support for 3D-now and SIMD).
- An extended polygon based math library - for things like clipping, inclusive polygons, polygon projection etc.
- A zip file system - for easy access to zip-compressed files.
- Robust object-oriented design
- Very low memory footprint as needed for consoles
- Localization module - standalone, web-based localizer, enabling concurrent construction of localization information from remote places
- Debugging support - includes tools for profiling and various runtime feedback mechanisms
- Fixed-function
- Render-to-Texture
- Fonts
- GUI
- Multiple cameras - for instance special cameras for zooming, sniper-scope effects as well as different strategies for a "virtual camera man".
- Advanced 2D GUI API for user interfaces including common windowing controls. Uses 3D hardware for accelerated special effects.
- Environment Mapping
- Lens Flares
- Billboarding
- Particle System
- Depth of Field
- Motion Blur
- Sky
- Water
- Fire
- Explosion
- Decals
- Fog
- Mirror
- Splines
- Patches
- Lighting
- Per-vertex
- Per-pixel
- Volumetric
- Lightmapping
- Pre-rendered lights and shadows for detailed and realistic backgrounds.
- Real-time lights (including volumetric light) - light sources illuminate objects as they pass by.
- Shadows
- Shadow Mapping
- Shadow Volume Real-time shadows - as objects move their shadows change accordingly
- Texturing
- Basic
- Multi-texturing
- Bumpmapping
- Mipmapping
- Shaders
- Pixel
- High Level
- Meshes
- Mesh Loading
- Skinning
- Progressive
- Scene Management
- General
- LOD Advanced culling algorithms for optimal performance
- Animation
- Inverse Kinematics
- Keyframe Animation
- Skeletal Animation
- Animation Blending
- Make realistic looking moving characters possible with and without any pre-stored animation.
- Real-time inverse kinematics and animation blending - for lifelike movement.
- Terrain
- Rendering
- CLOD
- Physics
- Basic Physics
- Collision Detection
- Rigid Body
- Vehicle Physics
- Advanced collision detection - precise at polygon level or a simpler level of detail if needed.
- Advanced dynamics - real-time calculated cloth and hair on characters, plants, hanging bridges etc.
- Rigid-body dynamics - makes possible realistic falling objects and rag-dolls
- Networking
- Client-Server Multiplayer support - both split-screen and net-based.
- Artificial Intelligence
- Pathfinding
- Decision Making
- Finite State Machines
- Scripted hierarchical 3D path planner supporting teleports and special moves (climb over wall, through hole etc.) as well as dynamic obstacles/appearing holes.
- Sound
- 2D Sound
- 3D Sound
- Streaming Sound
- 3D sound effects - includes occlusion, reverb/reflection effects through A3D/EAX APIs
- Direct music support for interactive music - streaming sound is also supported.
- Tools & Editors
- Visual Scene Editor.
- Visual scene player.
- Plug-ins for 3DS MAX, Photoshop and ProTools (the plug-ins).
- The basic workflow supported by the Glacier components consists of producing primitives in commercial geometry editor, texture editors and sound tools like 3DS MAX, Photoshop and Protools, building the sce
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