After... Erm, how should I put it... *playing* The Multiplayer, I can only hope the SP game is as good as the few reviews make it out to be. From what I've seen, yes, the SP *DOES* look a bit generic, but that seems to be Ravens style. However as long as it plays like RtCW, but in HD with Achievments, I'll be golden.
Still a crying shame the MP is so poor But I expected that as soon as they said the Veil was in it
I may pick it up on Steam if it's available, and depending on how the SP reviews. I liked RTCW so if it's anything like that then I'll probably enjoy it!
I also heard about the layoffs, on the day of release...
Adam, you worked with Threewave which I presume was with the awesome sounding old MP they had planned (I read about the classes and stuff). The maps in the MP are spot on. I noticed one single tiny brush work error in the entire collection, and thats something to be proud of. They are also really well planned out, really cool.
I hope some awesome team steps up and makes a "classic" mode for it that gives me back my damn Thompson... Part of knowing what team is what is the gun sounds the MP4) and Thompson make...
I can't get in to details over past & present design chases, but most of those maps are Threewave's design which Endrant made some changes to when they had taken it over. For the tech we had to use, the maps are decent. Glad you liked em.
I may pick it up on Steam if it's available, and depending on how the SP reviews. I liked RTCW so if it's anything like that then I'll probably enjoy it!
Yeah shame for Endrant, I'll pick this up if it seems like a good single player romp
rented this tonight. singleplayer seems pretty straightforward so far, will try multiplayer later. the sound is pretty awesome. the 1st time i picked up the mp40 i had a nice "i said.....dont call me junior" moment unleashing it on the enemies. nice chunky sound to it. ill post more once im done the game but so far it seems pretty good.
When MP gets put as a side project for games it will always suck balls. Just how it works. It's better to not have a MP then to have a bad one. Its just the same as food its better to not get your food then to get food that is covered in mold. Players will remember a bad MP, but not the lack of it.
Its actually not half bad. The single player game is funner than I thought it would be, and the visuals in motion are top notch. The lighting and effects are superb, it doesnt look like an id tech 4 game at all, in fact it looks damn good. I just beat the first level which is an assault on a train station to destroy an experimental train, and it was really intense. Great fire fights, awesome weapons, and because its Raven let me just say the gibbing is spot on. I found all the Gold and Intel, but it took me two tries at the level. The next level seems to be the "hub" level, where you can buy all your upgrades and stuff.
All in all, so far at least, solid. Very solid, and ery nice looking, at least in motion. I would say its up there with Doom 3 easily, if not more so.
Multiplayer... Well, its the exact same thing as the Beta... So in other words, its shite, to the nth degree... But playing the SP, I notice that some things are from RtCW, which are different in the MP. Its almost like they made the MP worse just to be different? Its a strange feeling, but the SP game is classic RtCW, but the MP is just something bad, very bad... I dunno if its possible to mod all the classic stuff back in but I sure hope so because it could be a very intense game...
Oh yeah, and the MP uses a different engine, too. It uses the "ugly as fuck compared to the single player" build, I'm sure... Because the shadowing and lighting in the single player is sex.
All in all, give it a go, at least for the SP game. Its worth it for that alone. Just a shame the MP wasn't like the classic RtCW
Its actually not half bad. The single player game is funner than I thought it would be, and the visuals in motion are top notch. The lighting and effects are superb, it doesnt look like an id tech 4 game at all, in fact it looks damn good. I just beat the first level which is an assault on a train station to destroy an experimental train, and it was really intense. Great fire fights, awesome weapons, and because its Raven let me just say the gibbing is spot on. I found all the Gold and Intel, but it took me two tries at the level. The next level seems to be the "hub" level, where you can buy all your upgrades and stuff.
All in all, so far at least, solid. Very solid, and ery nice looking, at least in motion. I would say its up there with Doom 3 easily, if not more so.
After all the Wolf hating you've done on here and other places, I'm surprised to see this comment out of you. I appreciate that you gave it an honest look and put your perceptions of the fantastic marketing aside.
It was a long road, but I had a good time working on this game. I can't say enough about the team over at Raven who put this together, fine bunch of folks.
The reviews are pretty decent so far. Metacritic is sitting around 80 for all the consoles. Mostly bad points for the multiplayer.
Oh yeah, and the MP uses a different engine, too. It uses the "ugly as fuck compared to the single player" build, I'm sure... Because the shadowing and lighting in the single player is sex.
Or maybe they had to make some concessions with lighting and FX in MP in order to have decent frame rate for multiple players on screen ...
Doubt it AstroZombie, you have tons of enemies on-screen in the SP, why would it be different in the MP? It's not like the MP player models are ten times as poly-heavy as a regular enemy.
It's true that the MP uses a different engine, and I believe the lighting solution was different (ie. no shadow maps or baked lightmaps), so it's understandable that it wouldn't look as good, even without accounting for any performance requirements.
I just beat The Church level, and I think its fair to say that every game from now on should have a Particle Cannon. Its the new Railgun.
EDIT: Oh and as for the "need to tone the graphics down" thing in MP, of course there is always that, its a lag thing more than anything... But the SP has a LOT going on.
I'll check this one out soon, congrats to those who work on it, its getting good reviews. It's kinda crazy how much they're promoting the crap out this game on all the video sites I goto, so far I've seen the same trailer on collegehumor.com, break.com, hulu.com, gametrailers.com, and youtube.com. I'm getting too used to hearing that overdone German accent saying "we have found ze key to anahva voirld, who would try and stop us!?"
after 2 nights of playing it I can say I'm enjoying it but not blown away. the lighintg in most areas looks pretty pimp and the textures are a lot better than all the online pics and vids lead you to believe. the voice acing like ebagg said is a bit took hokey "Zis is vat you vant?" but meh whatever. nice work duders, post some assests!
on teh subject of multiplayer. ugh totally different. choppy, the weapons take a million hits to killsomeone and the animations seem really jerky. I tried to play for more than 20 mins but after playing world at war recently where everything is smooth and polished I just couldnt do it.
just wanted to chime in and say great job to everyone that worked on this. Just beat it a few minutes ago, and i gotta say the sound of the final boss walking around gave me shivers and a nice flashback to one of my favorite games growing up, Thanks!
I've been having a hell of a time trying to get the game to run without crashing.. the gods of irony are smiling on/at me, the one game I've been looking forward to for years, and I can't even get it to play properly
nothing is baked, and I`m not 100% positive on the specifics, but theres been a ton of work done to the engine since quake 4, so expect to see lots of new stuff to the rendering tech.
Are you saying that the singleplayer uses stencil shadows? That these are stencil shadows? Not shadow maps?
Yes sir! Those are soft stencil shadows.
The renderer was practically rewritten entirely from what was seen on Doom3/Quake4/ETQW
In fact, the Multiplayer is using the ETQW engine which is dramatically different in terms of rendering.
Most notable difference is the use of a deferred rendering system, which allows for insane amounts of dynamic lights. You can have a few hundred lights with the only real concern being light overdraw (number of pixels on screen being lit by multiple lights)
Other stuff like realtime lofted splines (I used these on the particle cannon and tesla gun) as well as a really fast GPU particle system (allowing for assloads of particles on screen). Also you'll notice Havok running, and running well. Every explosion in the game has a havok impulse which moves/breaks props.
Here's a pretty cool article about the Wolf engine:
Wow great article, I love when studios give some of their time to explain the tech, really interesting. I wish they went into stencil shadows just a bit more, I understand that they give a nice "soft shadow" feel, but what IS IT exactly, why is it different from dynamically casted shadows (UT3 for example).
And none of the lighting was baked-in using lightmaps? So all lighting is dynamic?
I don't know any specifics since it was not really what I did, but there was a solution for alpha-tested geometry. There are a handful of trees in the city, as well as an entire farm area with lots of foliage which all use some solution for shadowing.
I dunno. I hate to say it but I picked this up thinking it would be awesome..and I'm pretty disappointed really.
The graphics aren't nearly as good, IMO as people seem to be exclaiming. The gameplay feels very samey. One of the main NPC's you encounter obviously has something done differently or incorrectly in the creation of his face/head asset since it reads totally differently than every other one in the game(its like his spec map is way overbright or something so he's perma-shiny). The bad disembodied FPS floaty feel, DESPITE the obtrusively overdone viewbob.
I suppose I got this initial rush of "awww man...this isn't nearly as cool as I thought it would be" and spent the remaining time pouring over it with a critical eye, rather than just enjoying myself and thinking critically after the fact.
I'm going to give it another few hours soon and give it another chance to change my mind.
I guess the worst insult I can hurl is: intensely pedestrian.
For a title with its legacy, expectations were high and were not met.
And I havent even played or factored in the Multiplayer (and dont care about it. I dont play MP)
Just finished it yesterday, after playing nearly non-stop for two days. I loved the chaotic, almost Call of Duty 2 feel to the action, and thought that overall there was a strong Indiana Jones-type vibe to it.
Not revolutionary, but really good fun and some of the death animations (and gruesomely bubbly accompanying sound effects) were top notch. Congrats to everyone that worked on it.
Replies
Still a crying shame the MP is so poor But I expected that as soon as they said the Veil was in it
Endrant had lay offs today, on its release.
Will probably pick this up eventually.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/wolfenstein-multiplayer-team-axed-on-release-day
I may pick it up on Steam if it's available, and depending on how the SP reviews. I liked RTCW so if it's anything like that then I'll probably enjoy it!
Adam, you worked with Threewave which I presume was with the awesome sounding old MP they had planned (I read about the classes and stuff). The maps in the MP are spot on. I noticed one single tiny brush work error in the entire collection, and thats something to be proud of. They are also really well planned out, really cool.
I hope some awesome team steps up and makes a "classic" mode for it that gives me back my damn Thompson... Part of knowing what team is what is the gun sounds the MP4) and Thompson make...
Still waiting for our copies to come in. Can't wait to play it on my 360 at home, and not at work haha.
Yeah shame for Endrant, I'll pick this up if it seems like a good single player romp
Congrats
Gotta get my hands on this.
As for the Game congrats! Looks good!
All in all, so far at least, solid. Very solid, and ery nice looking, at least in motion. I would say its up there with Doom 3 easily, if not more so.
Multiplayer... Well, its the exact same thing as the Beta... So in other words, its shite, to the nth degree... But playing the SP, I notice that some things are from RtCW, which are different in the MP. Its almost like they made the MP worse just to be different? Its a strange feeling, but the SP game is classic RtCW, but the MP is just something bad, very bad... I dunno if its possible to mod all the classic stuff back in but I sure hope so because it could be a very intense game...
Oh yeah, and the MP uses a different engine, too. It uses the "ugly as fuck compared to the single player" build, I'm sure... Because the shadowing and lighting in the single player is sex.
All in all, give it a go, at least for the SP game. Its worth it for that alone. Just a shame the MP wasn't like the classic RtCW
After all the Wolf hating you've done on here and other places, I'm surprised to see this comment out of you. I appreciate that you gave it an honest look and put your perceptions of the fantastic marketing aside.
It was a long road, but I had a good time working on this game. I can't say enough about the team over at Raven who put this together, fine bunch of folks.
The reviews are pretty decent so far. Metacritic is sitting around 80 for all the consoles. Mostly bad points for the multiplayer.
Or maybe they had to make some concessions with lighting and FX in MP in order to have decent frame rate for multiple players on screen ...
It's true that the MP uses a different engine, and I believe the lighting solution was different (ie. no shadow maps or baked lightmaps), so it's understandable that it wouldn't look as good, even without accounting for any performance requirements.
I just beat The Church level, and I think its fair to say that every game from now on should have a Particle Cannon. Its the new Railgun.
EDIT: Oh and as for the "need to tone the graphics down" thing in MP, of course there is always that, its a lag thing more than anything... But the SP has a LOT going on.
Luckily Raven was able to save grace with the single player My hat goes off to that team.
Make sense now?
on teh subject of multiplayer. ugh totally different. choppy, the weapons take a million hits to killsomeone and the animations seem really jerky. I tried to play for more than 20 mins but after playing world at war recently where everything is smooth and polished I just couldnt do it.
First thing i noticed where the stencil shadows had gone and have been replaced with lovely soft shadows.
Did you guys re-write the renderer? It doesn't look like a Idtech4 game. Looks great.
Also is the AO realtime or is it baked?
Are you saying that the singleplayer uses stencil shadows? That these are stencil shadows? Not shadow maps?
Yes sir! Those are soft stencil shadows.
The renderer was practically rewritten entirely from what was seen on Doom3/Quake4/ETQW
In fact, the Multiplayer is using the ETQW engine which is dramatically different in terms of rendering.
Most notable difference is the use of a deferred rendering system, which allows for insane amounts of dynamic lights. You can have a few hundred lights with the only real concern being light overdraw (number of pixels on screen being lit by multiple lights)
Other stuff like realtime lofted splines (I used these on the particle cannon and tesla gun) as well as a really fast GPU particle system (allowing for assloads of particles on screen). Also you'll notice Havok running, and running well. Every explosion in the game has a havok impulse which moves/breaks props.
Here's a pretty cool article about the Wolf engine:
http://software.intel.com/sites/billboard/game-gallery/wolfenstein.php#/featured-article
And none of the lighting was baked-in using lightmaps? So all lighting is dynamic?
I really have to check out this game :P
I remember in Wofleinstein 3D a friend of my fell back out of his chair from getting so scared. He quit playing it after that (he's a pansy )
The graphics aren't nearly as good, IMO as people seem to be exclaiming. The gameplay feels very samey. One of the main NPC's you encounter obviously has something done differently or incorrectly in the creation of his face/head asset since it reads totally differently than every other one in the game(its like his spec map is way overbright or something so he's perma-shiny). The bad disembodied FPS floaty feel, DESPITE the obtrusively overdone viewbob.
I suppose I got this initial rush of "awww man...this isn't nearly as cool as I thought it would be" and spent the remaining time pouring over it with a critical eye, rather than just enjoying myself and thinking critically after the fact.
I'm going to give it another few hours soon and give it another chance to change my mind.
I guess the worst insult I can hurl is: intensely pedestrian.
For a title with its legacy, expectations were high and were not met.
And I havent even played or factored in the Multiplayer (and dont care about it. I dont play MP)
Just finished it yesterday, after playing nearly non-stop for two days. I loved the chaotic, almost Call of Duty 2 feel to the action, and thought that overall there was a strong Indiana Jones-type vibe to it.
Not revolutionary, but really good fun and some of the death animations (and gruesomely bubbly accompanying sound effects) were top notch. Congrats to everyone that worked on it.