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Breed Preview
Posted:
3/9/03 by The Shaker
| Comments
(11)
To satisfy the geeks amongst you who might want to know more than 'good' the designers claim that "The Mercury engine (or 'game kernel') has been designed from the ground up to make full use of "next-generation hardware", its primary purpose to simplify the production of 3D action games. Complex multi-part vehicles can also be produced, thanks to Mercury's animating hierarchical object system, which allows, for instance, vehicles to have each wheel individually suspended. This results in the creation of amazingly realistic vehicles and characters with extreme graphical impact. Additionally, Rigid Body Dynamics can also be applied to all objects to give a previously unseen amount of detail and realism.
Graphics-wise, Mercury supports standard 3D engine rendering techniques, including multi-texturing, soft shadowing, spectacular highlights, reflection mapping and real time adjusted 'time of day' lighting, while the sophisticated particle system can produce realistic effects such as rain, snow, explosions, smoke and fire. Furthermore, all collision is per-polygon to enable highly accurate object damage and gameplay effects (such as weapons deflecting off sloped armour)." Using my enormous mental capacity I think that means they can do stuff with it.
Certainly the game needs a bit of work on it from the copy looked at here, there are still graphics glitches, and the AI is pretty ropey at times, also it is either really really hard at times or I am a complete moron (I’ll leave that to the popular vote).
Putting that aside, there is definitely potential for a good tactical shooter, and a good bit of fun as well.
As a final note
The required system specs don’t look too intensive compared to some of the prospective games on the horizon which may well be to the games advantage if it targets the majority of us who don’t have the cash to buy new systems every week. Lovely.
Min:
600 MHz CPU
128 Megabytes of RAM
3D accelerated 32 MB video card or equivalent with HW-T&L
(Hardware Transform & Lightning) and 24-bit z-buffer
1 GB free hard disk space
(additional space required for DirectX 9 installation)
8X Speed CD-ROM/DVD-ROM
100% Direct Sound compatible Sound Card
Best:
1500 MHz CPU
256 Megabytes of RAM
3D accelerated 64 MB video card or equivalent with HW-T&L
(Hardware Transform & Lightning) and 24-bit z-buffer
1.5 GB free hard disk space plus space for saved games
(additional space required for DirectX 9 installation)
40X Speed CD-ROM/DVD-ROM
100% Direct Sound compatible Sound Card
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