I'm sitting on the fence as to whether to go ahead with a UT 2003 MOD (which can be easily adapted to 2004), or to check out the Far Cry engine when the SDK engine is released (FYI it's been delayed from this week to an indefinate date).
Obvious benefits to the Far Cry engine are the graphics, specifically the bump-mapping, and lighting in general (because it's not like bump mapping automatically makes everything look good). I have no doubt that with the right artists a photorealistic look can be achieved. On the other hand, I dislike the lighting on static meshes in UT 2003/2004, I think that even it's vertex lighting looks bad. So it's not just the lack of bump mapping, it's also the way lighting is done in general.
Yet, I've coded mutators in UT 2003, I know the engine enough to get a lot done. With Far Cry I'd have to learn a lot over again.
Anyways, I want to ask the PC gamers here what they think. Online play is a big factor, and I don't think Far Cry's online gaming is as smooth as UT's. You need a powerful PC to run it, and by a year's time, I still think most people won't be able to run it that smoothly.
My biggest concern is that Far Cry will not reach the sales numbers to give it a substantial userbase that would try out new mods. Many Serious Sam mods were forced to reconsider moving to another engine not because of the lack of tools and help, but because there wasn't much interest for them.
I'm leaning towards UT 2003 because I plan to focus on having a running game out soon, and the graphics can be an afterthought that will be improved over iterations. A lot of people seem to be picking up UT 2004 as well. Once I have a version out, I can probably easily recruit an experience team that can port it to HL2/FarCry/whatever when the time comes.
Obvious benefits to the Far Cry engine are the graphics, specifically the bump-mapping, and lighting in general (because it's not like bump mapping automatically makes everything look good). I have no doubt that with the right artists a photorealistic look can be achieved. On the other hand, I dislike the lighting on static meshes in UT 2003/2004, I think that even it's vertex lighting looks bad. So it's not just the lack of bump mapping, it's also the way lighting is done in general.
Yet, I've coded mutators in UT 2003, I know the engine enough to get a lot done. With Far Cry I'd have to learn a lot over again.
Anyways, I want to ask the PC gamers here what they think. Online play is a big factor, and I don't think Far Cry's online gaming is as smooth as UT's. You need a powerful PC to run it, and by a year's time, I still think most people won't be able to run it that smoothly.
My biggest concern is that Far Cry will not reach the sales numbers to give it a substantial userbase that would try out new mods. Many Serious Sam mods were forced to reconsider moving to another engine not because of the lack of tools and help, but because there wasn't much interest for them.
I'm leaning towards UT 2003 because I plan to focus on having a running game out soon, and the graphics can be an afterthought that will be improved over iterations. A lot of people seem to be picking up UT 2004 as well. Once I have a version out, I can probably easily recruit an experience team that can port it to HL2/FarCry/whatever when the time comes.
) because the biggest issues with MODs is that the great majority do not come into fruition. Since I have experience with UnrealScript, it means less headaches and a smoother dev process. Though I really don't like it's lighting, this can be overcome with some great texture work.