August 26, 200916 yr RuneTek 5 By Mod Chris E 26-Aug-2009 There are now six of us working in the Game Engine team, including Andrew himself. For the past eight months, two of us have spent the majority of our time completely rebuilding our graphics engine from the ground up, under Andrew's direction; we are calling this 'RuneTek 5' (RT5)*. RuneTek The primary goal of the rebuild was to allow us to target different graphics platforms (such as DirectX, OpenGL and the various consoles) with just one game engine. Previous iterations of the graphics engine were not designed this way. This meant that when we came to design RuneScape HD's technology, we ended up creating, in effect, two parallel game engines to render the game in two different ways - the current client has both the RuneTek 3 (Standard Detail) AND RuneTek 4 (High Detail) engines built in! This doesn't scale well when we come to target even more platforms, so this change was definitely necessary. You may be wondering how this will affect RuneScape. Well, during the rebuild of the graphics engine, we have taken the time to almost completely rewrite both of our existing platforms to make them compatible with the new cross-platform technology. (You know them as Standard Detail (SD) and High Detail (HD); internally, we call them Software and Hardware.) This has totalled around 40,000 lines of new or improved code, not including the RuneScape game engine changes required to support the new graphics systems, or the changes made by the RuneScape Content teams to support the new options! Revamped SD An RT5 SD screenshot The most immediate impact you will notice is the revamped SD. Many of you will have known we've wanted to do full screen and resizable window modes for SD for a while; RT5 finally makes this a reality. We've also been able to squeeze some other features into SD during the update, including: * Distance fogging and sky colour * Ground-/Path-blending and smoothing * Underwater visibility As these features have a trade-off for performance, they're completely optional and can be toggled on and off in the Graphics Options menu in the normal way. Benefits for HD An RT5 HD screenshot We've also improved the minimap in both modes, and added further shadowing to HD mode, such that shadows show up across all world levels (if your hardware supports it). There are also a couple of other larger features we've integrated into the graphics engine, which you won't see immediately, but we may be introducing into the game over the coming months, including: * Sky boxes * Particle effects * Bloom lighting effects (HD only) * Water reflections (HD only) What next? The impetus for some of these improvements has come from the development of "Mechscape", and RuneScape is now able to benefit from these too. Development is still continuing; another member of the Game Engine team has just commenced work on the DirectX RT5 implementation, and we have several awesome features in the pipeline. For a variety of reasons, this RT5 update also finally allows us to fix the long-standing mis-click bug in the Grand Exchange (unwanted walking/friend adding, etc), along with any number of smaller long-standing issues. *Major iterations of the Jagex graphics engine have included: * RT1: Original Jagex 3D engine used on gamesdomain games (1998) * RT2: RuneScape Classic (2000/2001) * RT3: RuneScape2 SD (2003/2004) * RT4: RuneScape2 HD (2007/2008) * RT5: Cross-platform version that runs both SD and HD on the same engine (2009) RuneTek 1 screenshot RuneTek 2 screenshot RuneTek 3 screenshot Project: Game Engine Tags: development, game engine, technical I can only say: :thumbup: .
August 26, 200916 yr Well my take on it is people had been concerned friends of mine saying "players on consoles will get more features" when really it's just another means of running runescape, I think with consoles it's brought a higher degree of detail in, which is nice to see, players who have been in classic and watched the RuneScape world change graphically it's really come along the past 2 years and for a browser based game I feel texture wise it matches WoW easily. Only part of HD that bugs me is the fact that water edges need softerning as they're jagged, but water reflections? that's a fantastic advancement I don't see that in any other MMORPGS, and from MechScape It's nice to see what's been learned from make MechScape which faces challenges that RuneScape can't meet due to a completely different genre, being applied in RuneScape this for me has to be one of the best development diarys yet. For a browser based game and to achieve such a feat is phenomenal. :thumbsup: Can't wait to see them working in-game.
August 26, 200916 yr [17] -[HL]RuneScript- *** [ 7BEARDMASTER ]: does not appear in the high scores list. :mrgreen: Looks good to! - I'm not proud of everything I've done, but I have no regrets
August 26, 200916 yr http://twitter.com/RuneScapeRSS/statuses/3558559116 Good to see that we'll be getting it this year. Nice update to SD too. New minimap and also a change to that empty button! :? Also a new logout cross in the top-right.
August 26, 200916 yr * Sky boxes * Particle effects * Bloom lighting effects (HD only) * Water reflections (HD only) Will be good to see how those look, but what are sky boxes? Want to be my friend? Look under my name to the left<<< and click the 'Add as friend' button!Big thanks to Stevepole for the signature!^
August 26, 200916 yr I'm most excited that they're finally fixing those GE bugs that annoy me on a daily basis.
August 26, 200916 yr Author * Sky boxes * Particle effects * Bloom lighting effects (HD only) * Water reflections (HD only) Will be good to see how those look, but what are sky boxes? Good stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skybox_(video_games)
August 26, 200916 yr That's the stuff they should be doing. if this is why they're updates have been lacking, I'm totally cool with it. This website and its contents are copyright © 1999 - 2010 Jagex Ltd.
August 26, 200916 yr Also I must ask this now but this from the screenshot is this current or future? another glimpse at the new icon perhaps? Way points? A Starting arrow has been added to your world map.
August 26, 200916 yr Also I must ask this now but this from the screenshot is this current or future? another glimpse at the new icon perhaps? Way points? A Starting arrow has been added to your world map. I was thinking the same thing. Perhaps the "Exploring" skill? Or perhaps just a J Mod feature?
August 26, 200916 yr Author Also I must ask this now but this from the screenshot is this current or future? another glimpse at the new icon perhaps? Way points? A Starting arrow has been added to your world map. They censored the new icon :ohnoes: .
August 26, 200916 yr Also I must ask this now but this from the screenshot is this current or future? another glimpse at the new icon perhaps? Way points? A Starting arrow has been added to your world map. They censored the new icon :ohnoes: . Yes but the icon was already leaked as a sign post on the Portugese world release :P
August 26, 200916 yr runetek three, forever in my heart. Bloom lighting effects (HD only) NO BLOOM IS TERRIBLE AND IS KILLING NEXTGEN GAMING dedicate your idle computer power to a scientific project.
August 26, 200916 yr Author [hide=]Also I must ask this now but this from the screenshot is this current or future? another glimpse at the new icon perhaps? Way points? A Starting arrow has been added to your world map. They censored the new icon :ohnoes: .[/hide] Yes but the icon was already leaked as a sign post on the Portugese world release :P I know, Strange though they start censoring it now, when everyone already knows what's under there.
August 26, 200916 yr [hide=]Also I must ask this now but this from the screenshot is this current or future? another glimpse at the new icon perhaps? Way points? A Starting arrow has been added to your world map. They censored the new icon :ohnoes: .[/hide] Yes but the icon was already leaked as a sign post on the Portugese world release :P I know, Strange though they start censoring it now, when everyone already knows what's under there. They may be changing the icon? :ohnoes:
August 26, 200916 yr Sounds pretty good. Though, I can't see much improvements on the RT5 screenshot. The minimap looks better though. Am I missing something? Twitter ||| Google+ ||| Facebook ||| LinkedIn ||| My very interesting weblog about science
August 26, 200916 yr I don't see any differences between the RT5 HD screenshot and our current version either. And I really wish Jagex would upload their pictures in a better quality. It's all blurry. What's a sky box by the way?
August 26, 200916 yr Sounds interesting enough. Although, are there many changes to the screenshot, or have they not added it in yet? The portions that they say we'll see in the future seem worthy though. :thumbup: PoetryIndexed Picture 1Indexed Picture 2 Killed my maxed Zerker pure April 2010 Rebooting Runescape
August 26, 200916 yr Author I don't see any differences between the RT5 HD screenshot and our current version either. And I really wish Jagex would upload their pictures in a better quality. It's all blurry. What's a sky box by the way? Yes, it all for this: For a variety of reasons, this RT5 update also finally allows us to fix the long-standing mis-click bug in the Grand Exchange (unwanted walking/friend adding, etc), along with any number of smaller long-standing issues. Seriously though, with this RuneTek 5 they create the possibility to add those 4 things (and more) they mentioned in the future, which are pretty sweet: There are also a couple of other larger features we've integrated into the graphics engine, which you won't see immediately, but we may be introducing into the game over the coming months, including: * Sky boxes * Particle effects * Bloom lighting effects (HD only) * Water reflections (HD only) As for the skyboxes: [hide=Skyboxes]* Sky boxes * Particle effects * Bloom lighting effects (HD only) * Water reflections (HD only) Will be good to see how those look, but what are sky boxes? Good stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skybox_(video_games)[/hide]
August 26, 200916 yr Oh, so that's what they've been doing. Cool. I really like the fact that they're properly introducing a sky, it's only a matter of time before we get a weather system. :ohnoes: ~ W ~
August 26, 200916 yr Updates like these can only be good! The only thing I have constructive critisism for is that the transparent chatbox that apparently will be made available in the SD mode. The opaque chatbox is the one reason I play in the SD mode 99% of the time I'm on RuneScape - It makes it much easier for me to participate in conversations. Please, Jagex - when you're adding the switches to tune down the SD mode - add a Opaque/Transparent chatbox option; I'm sure many players would appreciate that. Also, why not add that feature for the HD mode, if it isn't too much work? \ I don't see any differences between the RT5 HD screenshot either. And I really wish Jagex would upload their pictures in a better quality. It's all blurry. What's a sky box by the way? About sky boxes - I'm thinking clouds, or a new terrain layer existing above our characters. : One-Clicking the Summer Garden[AOW]
August 26, 200916 yr I don't see any differences between the RT5 HD screenshot and our current version either. And I really wish Jagex would upload their pictures in a better quality. It's all blurry. What's a sky box by the way? The HD RT5 screenie isn't showing the larger updates yet. There are also a couple of other larger features we've integrated into the graphics engine, which you won't see immediately, but we may be introducing into the game over the coming months, including: Want to be my friend? Look under my name to the left<<< and click the 'Add as friend' button!Big thanks to Stevepole for the signature!^
August 26, 200916 yr Coming months though? could this possibly be released at the same time as a new skill?
August 26, 200916 yr I hope we get the option to choose DirextX, OpenGL, etc. by our self. DirextX means easy 3D! (remember glasses 8-) ) [Whip drops: 13]
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