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The Evil Within

Started by douglas quaid, September 07, 2014, 09:57:59 PM

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douglas quaid

I've been following this game for a while now and it's supposed to be released in October, can't wait to play it. Anyone else looking forward to it?

http://theevilwithin.com/en-gb
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VGames

Yeah it looks pretty good. Like Silent Hill freaky. Hope the action and combat system are better then the SH series. Although the new SH looks good too.
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The Happy Friar

I get the PR e-mails because of EarthQuake but it's not the type of game I'm interested in.  It looks not but I won't be playing it.

motorsep

So, it's out now. How is it? (first hand experience please)

Reviews say it's all the same as RAGE (initial issues I suppose), but no review mentioned texture quality, new features, etc.

bkt

A lot of mixed reviews coming out.  Plenty of complaints in regards to a few design decisions that are grating PC players.  The 2.35:1 aspect ratio and default 30FPS lock seems to be the major bone of contention amongst Steam reviews.   

The games media reviews are also pretty mixed.  It looks like if you're a Resident Evil/Silent Hill fan then you'll most likely enjoy this, game a lot.  I'm looking forward to getting my hands dirty, as I'm a big fan of Shinji Mikami's work as well as Survival horror in general (Resident Evil 2, 4 and Silent Hill 2, 4 are in my personal top 10 games ever). 

I'm just waiting for it to unlock on Steam before I get into it.  You can bet I'll report back once I've had a go.

oneofthe8devilz

#5
Just got to play the first 2 hours of the game and all I can say is "WOW !"...

I must admit that after Rage and Wolfenstein I pretty much buried any hope that something visually competitive could emerge from idtech5 versus the other big players in the industry (UE4, Cryengine and Unity)...

But at least for me "The Evil Within" turned out to be visually a completely different caliber...

Everything runs dynamic (softshadows, shaders and other gfx effects) and to my surprise at a very rapid performance, namely solid 60 FPS (once you unlock the 30 FPS lock)...

I observed complex physical cloth behavior, advanced liquids simulation and a very controlled "dark & gritty" rendering style which most other engines fail to achieve to that degree.

I actually can't believe that I am writing this, but currently I come to the conclusion that this build of idtech5 is able to blow even Cryengine and UE4 visually out of the water.

Having source-access to this build (preferably with a multiplayer enabled codebase) would be a thing beyond imagination, but at the same time one realizes, that this type of asset-rendering-quality at that quantity and consistency, could hardly ever be achieved by indie & hobby developers and so naturally it also to a degree frightened/demoralized me as I was playing it, gazing at those beautifully rendered environments...     
I got six little friends and they all run faster than you ;)


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motorsep

@oneofthe8devilz: why not just start with idTech 5 by modding Rage? :)

Sir Blackington

Saw the small bits of gameplay a while ago. The real thing that got me excited was that it looked like a lot of the lighting and shadows were real time, but the fotage was too short. What your telling me is exactly what I wanted to hear, thanks

douglas quaid

So far I'm very impressed with the visuals but I keep running into walls with traps blowing me up. Interactions could use a bit of a lift.
TOTAL RECALL - Singleplayer mod for Doom 3 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger
BLACKOUT - Free indie horror game based on the id Tech 4 engine

VGames

Sounds good. What's the combat like? Hopefully not slow and clumsy like the SH franchise. I want something like Resident Evil 5 but with a lot more emphasis on melee combat.
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Sir Blackington

You said the performance is good. You mind sharing what settings and what kind of rig? Also hows the texture detail close up compared to rage and wolf respectivly? Do you or enemies use a flashlight or lamp of anykind to show off the dynamic shadows? Are there any transitions from enclosed areas to open areas and how's the lighting feel in comparison to eachother?
I know my post is a little brief and sparse in questions but I Gtg back to work

oneofthe8devilz

#11
Quote from: Sir Blackington on October 22, 2014, 03:14:41 AM
You mind sharing what settings and what kind of rig?

Maxed out settings @ 1080p with (SMAA) Anti-Aliasing synced to 60 FPS

OS: Win7 X64 Ultimate
CPU: Intel Core I7
RAM: 12 GB RAM
GPU: Nvidia 770 GTX

Quote from: Sir Blackington on October 22, 2014, 03:14:41 AM
Also hows the texture detail close up compared to rage and wolf respectively?

Texture detail and resolution is better than in Rage, but generally a little lower compared to the competition (I guess due to mega-texturing). But every shader-surface so far reacts dynamically to light-sources (normalmap and specular pass and shadowing) which to me is far more important than a super high (but static) shader/texture resolution.

Quote from: Sir Blackington on October 22, 2014, 03:14:41 AM
Do you or enemies use a flashlight or lamp of any kind to show off the dynamic shadows?

You have an oil-lamp that you can light up at will and you can pick up burning torches. Enemies and friendly AI also can pick up and carry burning torches with all those lights casting proper dynamic soft-shadows. Additionally, the entire world is setup with dynamically casting lights such as swinging lamps, camp fires, torches, candles... I paid close attention to the usual problems with dynamic soft-shadow-mapped pointlights and all issues with shadow map resolution and bias have been solved elegantly, IMO to a better degree than in UE3,UE4 and Cryengine and Unity. It becomes quickly obvious that the engine programmers at Tango Gameworks knew what they were doing. It usually takes only minutes for me to spot flaws in the unified rendering of a new released title, but with the Evil within I am still searching...

Quote from: Sir Blackington on October 22, 2014, 03:14:41 AM
Are there any transitions from enclosed areas to open areas and how's the lighting feel in comparison to eachother?

There are plenty of indoor/outdoor transitions and the scale of shadow casting lights can be quite significant... to a degree where I start to wonder how they keep the performance stable with so many shadow casting lights during the transitions... I also noticed a subtle but effective LOD system... The lighting between the indoor/outdoor transitions is consistent without any noticeable hackery/workarounds/trade-offs which makes the world appear very homogeneous...

If I get the time I will record some scenes that showcase the lighting and paste a link here...
I got six little friends and they all run faster than you ;)


Check out our mods at
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oneofthe8devilz

Alright, I took the time to record a quick video...

I focused on showcasing the engine rather than delivering gameplay focused footage to avoid spoilers...



Other effects I came across worth mentioning:

Screen Space Reflections


Subsurface Scattering for Human skin (especially noticeable during thunder lightning)


Alphatested Soft-Shadow-Mapping (I know this is already an industry standard, but I have been missing that in idtech engines for years)


Finally I can say that we have at last reached a quality of real-time rendering that I always hoped we would achieve, namely basic CGI-Movie quality (whoever screams photo-realism IMO might as well look out of the window, it certainly would reduce his power and hardware-expenses bill)

The last thing left would be the community to get source access to the codebase and assets (which will most certainly never happen, taking the disastrous management into account that Zenimax has showcased during the original id software staff departure...
I got six little friends and they all run faster than you ;)


Check out our mods at
moddb or the SPS Homepage

Sir Blackington

I replied much earlier but it didn't post for some reason. To summerize:
Wow, excelent responses. you hit what I was curious about for so long right on the head.

Also your rig is far from being low or even mid range so I woukld have trouble thinking of much that would run poorly on it.

Your also right about not immefiatly seeing any noticeable transition between indoor/ point lit areas to outdoor with more what could be indirect lighting. I was expecting to see something that looked more like mostly baked, realtime lighting inside and then switch to baking in most of the indirect lighting outside, but its just so hard to tell what they did.

Anyone else have theories based on that video posted?
Also, am I wrong in guessing that this is all still foward rendered? It doesn't seem like there would be huge motivation to go to the trouble of going deferred in a game like this where there are seemingly few light sources, usually not oveerlapping much.

revelator

Still suffers from texture pop in and it has some rather gamebreaking bugs in places that i hope the devs will get sorted, besides that its quite fun to play allthough
brutally difficult at times. A few things to note that i find could be better, axes are a oneshot weapon of mass destruction Oo i could literally kill even bosses in one shot
with this which is a bit unrealistic. Besides that you only get that one shot with an axe. The char runs like he has one of those iron balls from prison tied to both his legs +
his stamina is somewhat non existant.  Ammo is scarce even though the game is bristling with tons of knives axes and other goodies that could save your life you cannot pick them up.

game breaking bugs.
camera sometimes goes whack after a cutscene so that no matter which way you run you will run into a wall causing your death if you are chased by some big ugly.
This happens to me in chapter 8 after the cutscene with the huge amalgam monster :( i literally had to get a save from another user to get past this part so it seems not everyone has this issue.

Besides that it looks great in places :)