<img attachment="quake_wars_-_enemy_territory_1.jpeg" align="left" class="frame" caption="Fighting Off the Strogg 'Bugs'">The next installment in the Quake world is being designed not by <a href="http://www.idsoftware.com/">id Software</a>, but by <a href="http://www.splashdamage.com/">Splash Damage</a><fn>. It's a multiplayer-only game set in massive outdoor environments using the Doom3 engine. <a href="http://www.shacknews.com/extras/2006/042806_quakewars_qa_1.x" source="Shack News">Quake Wars: Enemy Territory Q&A</a> is an interview with the lead developer. That's right, you just read "massive outdoor environments" and "Doom3 engine" in the same sentence. How can this be? Those familiar with game engines know that each has its strengths and weaknesses drawn from the <i>type</i> of game for which they were designed. The Doom3 engine is exceedingly good at moodily-lit, shadowy, cramped interiors with its "real-time lighting everywhere" paradigm. The original game had almost no outdoor sequences and the few tiny ones it had made noticeably larger demands on the hardware. The Quake3 engine was similarly built to the specifications of the game design: a fast, good-looking, multiplayer game with battles occurring in small arenas. Carmack<fn>---being Carmack---threw in true bezier curves just to keep things interesting for himself, but otherwise pretty standard for a shooter today (though quite revolutionary at the time). Map designers that attempted larger outdoor environments were either frustrated or learned <i>a lot</i> of mapping tricks to speed up the rendering. However, with the release of Q3: Team Arena, id Software had bolted a terrain-renderer onto the main engine in order to allow much larger maps and relatively-realistic and curvy terrain. <h>Lush Landscapes</h> <img attachment="quake_wars_-_enemy_territory_2.jpeg" align="right" class="frame" caption="Pine Forests"><img attachment="quake_wars_-_enemy_territory_3.jpeg" align="right-column" class="frame" caption="Troops in a Forest">MegaTexture technology is a similar advancement for the Doom3 engine. This technology has two components: a renderer and a toolset to generate content. The renderer---written by John Carmack---lets the game access a <iq>five gigabyte source texture</iq> to draw the visible terrain, while using <iq>only around ten megabytes of video memory and twenty megabytes of system memory</iq>. Content designers use a tool called MegaGen to build and maintain this enormous texture: <bq style="margin-right: 250px">automatically distribute materials such as grass, sand and rocks across the landscape, based on altitudes and the angles of incline. MegaGen makes moss grow up the steeper slopes and cling to rocks, grass grow in the flatter areas, and sand and snow gather appropriately in the crevices between rocks. Our Artists are then able to paint additional fine unique detail such as cracks in road surfaces, or they can texture modeled elements such as shell and plasma blast craters in the terrain.</bq> As the screenshots to the right show, this id engine has no trouble rendering extremely convincing, lush and natural environments on a grand scale. As befits an id engine, the colors are much more muted than in other outdoor games<fn>. Though graphics are what sells the game in many cases, a multiplayer game lives and dies by its immersiveness, which the Doom3 engine had in spades when it was rendering indoor environments. But, what makes a game immersive in multiplayer, outdoor environments? <h>Ensuring Immersion</h> Physics and networking, naturally. If the environment reacts as expected and the player doesn't notice the network, there is no loss of immersion. id Software has a very good reputation in the networking department as well, being known for delivering the tightest networking code around---a fact which accounted for the popularity of Quake 3 and its spawn over a number of years. They've added refinements to networking for large maps, adding an <iq>'Area of Relevance', which works somewhat like 'Level of Detail' for graphics</iq>. That is, the player is sent only the information that is useful in a situation, optimizing away irrelevant details that would be important much closer. <iq>[W]hich way [a player's] head is facing or how many grenades he has</iq> isn't important when that player is a mile away. Easing network load in this way allows more relevant information to be transmitted (like physics data) and allows more players to take part. On the physics front, id Software has worked with Splash Damage to improve the home-grown physics engine they employ to support <iq>suspension, propulsion and friction</iq> and to <iq>derive gameplay-affecting properties from the texture</iq>, which, as mentioned above, is a huge, unique, painted tapestry rather than a collection of large tiles. <bq>This lets us have great off-road vehicles that can climb rocks, boats that have buoyancy and flying vehicles that react the way you'd expect to lift, drag, thrust and friction.</bq> This interview, <a href="http://www.g4tv.com/g4archives/features/51945/Enemy_Mine_Todd_Hollenshead_Speaks.html">Enemy Mine: Todd Hollenshead Speaks</a>, gives a little more information on this game and its immediate precursor (Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory). <hr> <ft>A term coined by id Software to describe incidental damage incurred when a rocket impacted a surface within a certain distance of a player. See the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splash_damage" source="Wikipedia">splash damage</a> entry for more information.</ft> <ft>Like the incredible-looking Crysis, which drives the sequel to Far Cry and looks like it will need an SGI box to run at a respectable frame rate.</ft>