More Real Horizons/Istaria - Warning: Screenshot heavy

[Valherus]

There are several points I would like to make concerning Istaria and how textures/shaders will impact your system.

First and foremost the Istaria graphics quality is, like all games, dependent on your hardware. This is one of those immutable truths that is present on the gaming world. Those of you playing on laptops or desktops with integrated Intel graphics will not experience the full graphics quality of the game no matter what you do.

Intel graphics chips are meant for business charts and not much more. Depending on which Intel graphics chip you have, it will vary from nearly no support for 3D acceleration and shaders to somewhat limited support. The Intel graphics processors also lack the rendering pipelines needed for getting a high frame rate with lots of polygons on the screen.

Bottom line is that there is no Intel graphics chip on the retail market that renders game graphics very well. They just don't. So if you own a machine with one of these chips then you are out of luck in seeing what Istaria is actually capable of.

Graphics processors that are manufactured by Nvidia and ATI can perform quite admirably in Istaria. If you want to experience the full capabilities of the Istaria graphics you do not need a very beefy video card as far as I can tell.

It appears to me that the Istaria engine is supporting only DirectX version 9. That means that even many older ATI and Nvidia graphics cards are capable of rendering them well. But the older cards will suffer from slower GPU clock speeds and less capable rendering pipelines. So they may not get good frame rates on busy screens.

If Istaria does indeed support DirectX 10 then I stand corrected. But I do not see any evidence of that within the game as I have been dissecting it. This is a game engine issue and only the developers can really tell us.

The second point that I would like to make is that there is WITHOUT QUESTION a difference between fullscreen mode and windowed mode from the programmers standpoint. When you run in windowed mode you have to make compromises based on what the operating system will allow your graphics card to do. That is necessary because the operating system does not reset the graphics card when you switch between different windows.

It is normal for things like color saturation and gamma settings to be disabled in windowed mode. It has to be done so that your program doesn't make all of the other open windows look washed out or over-saturated in color. It is possible to program your game so that you can override the limitations placed on you in windowed mode. But in that case you will see the impact by getting the aforementioned washed-out or over-saturated video on other screens when you tab out of the game.

Because of this FACT of programming in Windows, there are a number of graphics features that can often be seen only in fullscreen mode. Many of them have to do with how shaders work and impact the system. But with the limitations that I suspect are in the current game engine the differences will mainly be in things like glare and object reflections.

[Firebrand]

It appears to me that the Istaria engine is supporting only DirectX version 9. That means that even many older ATI and Nvidia graphics cards are capable of rendering them well. But the older cards will suffer from slower GPU clock speeds and less capable rendering pipelines. So they may not get good frame rates on busy screens.

If Istaria does indeed support DirectX 10 then I stand corrected. But I do not see any evidence of that within the game as I have been dissecting it. This is a game engine issue and only the developers can really tell us.

According to game requierements, Istaria graphical engine uses DirectX 8.1.
It also works on Windows 7 that uses DirectX 11.
I wouldn't bet it use any feature above DirectX 8.1 (I don't have programming knowledge so I could be wrong).
Unfortunately, it doesn't use much of the graphic card anyway... lack of hardware acceleration being one of the biggest sin of Istaria since launch.

[Valherus]

Well, if the engine is indeed using DX 8.1 then you have some distinct problems in getting the graphics to look much better. DirectX 8.1 was like a tricycle, DirectX 9 is like a ten speed bicycle, and DirectX 10 is like a motorcycle.

Are there any plans to update the game engine to a newer technology? I don't know much about the way the game is currently programmed, but it does seem to be rudimentary in many ways. I do not mean that in a bad or insulting way. I am just saying that there seems to be a lot of room for improvements to be done.

I have already looked at the textures in the game files thanks to the excellent explanation by RuneDragon on the Runecasting blog.

Has anybody played with the shaders in the game at all?

What about the models? Are there tools for those?

I have done a little searching on this buy have had limited results.

[Valherus]

BTW, the DirectX 8.1 thing may be based on trying to stay as close to the XBox as possible. I looked at some things and it appears that the engine is using Microsoft XNA. The XBox 360 can support DirectX 9.0c but I think the original Xbox was stopped at the 8.1 version.

[Firebrand]

Well, the retail box says DirectX 8.1b, included in the CDs, as requirement (what I remembered). Current requirements on website say DirectX 9.0c. Maybe it has been updated with the time.

For reference:
- requirements on game box:
* Windows Me/2000SP2/XP (2000 or XP recommended)
* CPU 1 GHz
* 256 Mo RAM (512 recommended)
* 2.5 Go free on hard drive
* 8x CD-ROM unit
* 64 Mo graphic card
* sound card compatible with Windows Me/2000SP2/XP
* DirectX 8.1b
* ADSL or cable modem

- requirements on website: http://community.istaria.com/pg.php/faq_requirements

[Cobal]

Microsoft XNA?
I'm quite sure HZ does not use that.
I dont think HZ uses any DX features that were not allready present in DX7.

As far as I know HZ uses a slightly modied version of Granny with irrlicht.

You can use all granny tools, 3dmax, milkshape and various converters (need to convert gr files into smd files if you want to toy with new animations for example) to manipulate HZ's assets.
I did some poking around a few years back and in theory it should be possible to upgrade the granny components (the animation rendering bits that is).

I have been playing with the models quite a bit and altough they are very beautiful they are an unoptimised mess.
The character models contain beginner errors like unwelded vertices, over 2600 tri's for a naked char (thats **** high for an mo of this age and is not even counting gear that will be added) and over 100 animation bones on single characters because the original artist went overboard with bones for attaching spell effects to and to top it off the artist even forgot to remove the endbones (those whose nae ends in _TZL or _tlz, I forgot)that exist purely for ease of the animator.
Still, the animations are very pretty. Especially from the dragon animations it is clear that the artists loves his/her job

The bone thing is the reason that even on modern pc's you will lag to a slideshow when many players are onscreen.

[Valherus]

I have run across some articles that indicate that Istaria uses the Evolution Engine. Now that is a confusing thing. The commercial Evolution Game Engine does not seem to be what they are talking about. What they mean is that Istaria had a proprietary game engine that was built on Microsoft XNA. There is an open source project on it here...

Codeplex - Evolution Game Engine

Now I am positive that this game engine has some relationship to Istaria. Take a look into the source code and you will see the all of the Istaria configuration parameters there. I would say that is a serious indication that this game engine was initially developed for Istaria, even if it is not currently being used. Hence my conjecture about XNA.

[Valherus]

One more point Cobal. While the developers of Istaria may be using Granny, it is not a complete game engine. It is an art production tool, export tool, and animation engine, and a bit more. Istaria would still require a number of pieces over and above what Granny can do to create an entire game. You would still have to include a physics engine, scene management, and several other bits and pieces to make a complete game engine. I am not saying that you are wrong. Grannjy is used in various ways in a ton of game projects. I am just saying that Granny is only a piece of the puzzle. There is nothing that precludes the devlopers from using Granny and still using an XNA engine like Evolution.

[Valherus]

Well, after a lot of dumb conjecture, I decided to actually look at the DLLs in the game folders. It appears that Istaria is using Alchemy version 2.5 as the game engine. While the DLLs are still indicating copyright to Intrinsic Graphics Inc, that company no longer exists. It appears that Alchemy has been taken over by Vicarious Visions, Inc.

That is sort of bad news. Vicarious Visions is a big developer. They are responsible for the Guitar Hero series among several other big console hits. But that is the bottom line. They are a console gaming company. That is why they have stopped the development of the engine at DirectX 9.0c support. Because that is all they need for the Xbox 360. They have not upgraded to later versions of DirectX because they are not really interested in the PC platform. Mainly they are about consoles.

[Firebrand]

It still seems to be used for some PC games: http://www.alchemy.ne.jp/index.html
Anyway, any version above 2.5 with hardware acceleration enabled would be a blessing. But considering the cost of the license and the amount of work to adapt the engine to the game for a small company like Virtrium, I wouldn't set my hopes too high to see this happen. Keeping fingers and toes crossed though, it never hurts.

[Cobal]

Alchemy it is then

Anyway, for the sake of argument(and to continue dumb conjecture because it is fun, doubly so now that it is pointless) As I remember it was indeed a modified engine intended for console games, my memory keeps throwing back that it was irrlicht though I'm obviously mistaken since irrlicht was never intended for consoles and the dll's probably don't lie :P
Based on the general timeline I would say it would have been impossible for Horizons to have an engine based on xna.
Xna is from 2004 and Horizons was released in 2003 and had been in development for quite some time.

I am, btw, wel aware that granny is just a solution for animation and whatnot, I have quite a good grasp about what makes a game. Thats why I said "with irrlicht"
You'll find quite a few people here know what makes a mmorpg, these folks aren't of the wow generation, thats why they rock so much.

Thread makes me wonder though.
There are now dozens of cheap solutions out there that you can use to make yourself a nice little client.
Would it be doable for this community to build a new client (ignore the art conversion related and licens troubles for the moment) and then hand it over to vitrium who can then slot in what they need to connect it to the world.

[neva]

Alchemy it is then

Anyway, for the sake of argument(and to continue dumb conjecture because it is fun, doubly so now that it is pointless) As I remember it was indeed a modified engine intended for console games, my memory keeps throwing back that it was irrlicht though I'm obviously mistaken since irrlicht was never intended for consoles and the dll's probably don't lie :P
Based on the general timeline I would say it would have been impossible for Horizons to have an engine based on xna.
Xna is from 2004 and Horizons was released in 2003 and had been in development for quite some time.

I am, btw, wel aware that granny is just a solution for animation and whatnot, I have quite a good grasp about what makes a game. Thats why I said "with irrlicht"
You'll find quite a few people here know what makes a mmorpg, these folks aren't of the wow generation, thats why they rock so much.

Thread makes me wonder though.
There are now dozens of cheap solutions out there that you can use to make yourself a nice little client.
Would it be doable for this community to build a new client (ignore the art conversion related and licens troubles for the moment) and then hand it over to vitrium who can then slot in what they need to connect it to the world.

Honestly if you guys who actually have the knowledge could do that, I personally thing it would be awesome.
You guys could always then turn around and offer it as a 'free' mod for the current game, that way then people can choose to download it and use it or not.

After all, a ton of mods in Horizons did come about this way didn't it?

[Raeshlavik]

Thread makes me wonder though.
There are now dozens of cheap solutions out there that you can use to make yourself a nice little client.
Would it be doable for this community to build a new client (ignore the art conversion related and licens troubles for the moment) and then hand it over to vitrium who can then slot in what they need to connect it to the world.

If I remember right, they call the server platform 'Mantrid' (the server back-end and communications system - basically all the parts that aren't middleware).

Based on the complexities of creating a full blown client, I'm guessing they'd have to open up the system to the community to get the thousands of man-hours to get it written and tested. Which while not impossible (Second Life has open source viewers and deals in RMT, so the security must not be a real issue), someone on the Vi side would have to ensure that open code became trusted builds.

There's quite a bit of administrivia in that, on top of the licensing issues that arise if they are actively selling the platform.

But, all of that aside, I'd certainly be willing to lend a hand in creating something like an Ogre based client with a database based asset manager.

[Valherus]

Oops, sorry Cobal, my apologies. I didn't mean your dumb conjecture. I was talking about my own. I am sorry I didn't make that more clear. I was specifically talking about my XNA conjecture.

It appears that what I found in the link to the Evolution engine was an aborted in-house attempt to create an updated game engine for Istaria. Apparently the devs canned the in-house engine and went with Alchemy instead when they decided to update it for DirectX 9 support.

As for the new client, that is almost impossible without the cooperation of Virtrium. I am pretty sure the license does not allow reverse engineering of the network protocol.

[Cobal]

Oops, sorry Cobal, my apologies. I didn't mean your dumb conjecture. I was talking about my own. I am sorry I didn't make that more clear. I was specifically talking about my XNA conjecture.

I did not interpret it as such, don't worry.
Guess I'm the one that should apologise for coming across as annoyed while I did not intend to do so

Yay text, in 76% of the cases people misinterpret the tone of a written piece.
(also, 89% of all online percentages are made up on the spot)

As for the new client, that is almost impossible without the cooperation of Virtrium. I am pretty sure the license does not allow reverse engineering of the network protocol.

Hence the request to ignore license technicalities for now.
Basicly we as community produce a modular graphical client and ask vitrium to create the networking module.
Would the required skill sets be present in this community, I think they are.

If I remember right the network protocal was reverse engineered up to a point some time ago, I seem to remember an irc client that connected to the social/chat server.

[Frith-Rae]

*chuckles*

Actually Cobal - you're a little low. Studies have shown that more like 85-90% of "Written" speech is misinterpreted with tone. Seriously, yes they've studied this. I didn't make that number up .

Apparently without voice tone and facial expressions we just SUCK at being able to tell "how" a person is saying something.

So rembmer that next time you (anyone) thinks someone is angry or mad or pissy at you in text - 9 times out of 10 you're actually interpreting it way wrong!

LOL

[Valherus]

OK, here is where I need to say some things that are maybe a bit tough for some to swallow.

I would be willing to help in improving the game. But there are some folks that like it just the way it is. They are entrenched in the game and have placed themselves into positions of (self-)importance. They will complain loudly about any change to the game that threatens their position in the community, because they seem to have built at least some of their self-image upon their status. I am not being mean, I am being factual. It happens in every MMO, and even more so in sandbox games where the community helps to shape the game.

But we have to be real as a community as well. For Istaria to grow something significant will need to happen. Small incremental changes will not excite the media into reporting on Istaria. It is an old game and will always be seen by the trade press as one that is just hanging on and surviving (barely) unless something is done to change that opinion and get some notice.

If the goal is to revamp the client in order to actually IMPROVE the game then sure, I am willing to help, though my true expertise is probably more on the server side. But you are not talking about a little project here. You are talking about an effort that is nearly as large as programming a new game from scratch. In the process you will have all of the entrenched opinions and people protecting their little imagined empires that will criticize you all along the way. It is probably not worth the arguments and agony to bother. You are better off starting a new game from scratch where you don't have to deal with the preconceptions and egos.

[Frith-Rae]

There have been many people over the years who have stated their "willingness to help" in all things you've already mentioned.

*looks around*

Willingness and being allowed by the devs are two different beasts...

And no, most feel when it comes to the engine - Istaria would be better served by being scrapped, going away for a few years, and coming back as an entirely new beast.

[awdz]

There have been many people over the years who have stated their "willingness to help" in all things you've already mentioned.

*looks around*

Willingness and being allowed by the devs are two different beasts...

I think the devs have good reasons for not allowing some things to be done. Alignment with what already exists in game and with what is planned for the future seem to be among the biggest concerns from what I have seen. I'm sure each of the devs have had ideas shot down too; we just don't get to see their behind-the-scenes decisions process, etc.

[Frith-Rae]

Oh, I wasn't protesting the being or not being allowed by the devs at all. I can think of PLENTY Of great reasons why they can't just let everyone who posts and says "I'm willing to help" actually help - lol.

It was more of a..comment to the poster than about the devs . And the sheer fact that yes, we need a new engine basically before much of what people woudl like to see done even can get done . Because writing in the current engine appears to be too much of a pain in the overly-large-dragon-rear , or simply not possible.