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Ageia / Warmonger Chat on Xfire
January 31st, 2008
NetDevil Chris: (Introduction) I am the Producer at NetDevil for the Warmonger Project. I handled the design and content production side for the NetDevil team.
AGEIA David: (Introduction) I am the tech lead from AGEIA that managed the majority of the technical issues in Warmonger.
AGEIA David: Question: Spartan118: Why did you dicide to make Warmonger free
Answer: AGEIA David: We did this because we wanted people to be able to experience the game without worrying about the cost. We want everyone to experience what the PPU can do.
NetDevil Chris: Question: MrHoozer: 1.Are the physics-effects (for example: collapsing walls) within "Warmonger" all exactly the same (velocity, position, rotation etc.) on every machine connected (and somehow synchronized)? OR are these effects unique simulated on every machine (so the optical impression looks similar, BUT is different on every machine)?
Answer: AGEIA David: In Warmonger we do not sync the actual rotation of rigid bodies but rather the states of the individual chuncks (ie. broken, not broken) This allows us to do much more actual physics simulation on each individual machine.
AGEIA David: And if the debris/parts are calculated individually, is the damage caused by those flying parts (if they can inflict any damage to the player, I'm unsure if it's possible, but it should be possible) different for every player? (For example: If the player gets hit by a collapsing wall, but a player beside him does not get hit, because for this player the wall-parts are collapsing different.)
Answer: AGEIA David: Players do not get hurt by flying debris in Warmonger due to the sheer number of rigid bodies and the fact that they do not sync. With fewer rigid bodies this is possible and we have done this in our UT3 levels.
NetDevil Chris: Question: Joe: How long was the production time from idea to release?
Answer: csherland: We spent about a year and a half on Warmonger.
NetDevil Chris: Question: Creamy: Does Warmonger have a possiblity of going to a console such as an Xbox 360?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: Anything is possible. No plan exist at this time.
AGEIA David: Question: -iX.Genesis: The PhysX card seems like an extremely powerful tool, how long until you think it takes off?
Answer: AGEIA David: I think it could take off at any time. I think with one big hit game with a great PhysX implementation we will be good to go.
NetDevil Chris: Question: Venrexx {ulg/1cp}: heres a question: is warmonger specially designed to work around the ageia physics card and if so what kinds of video cards does this acceleration device support?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: Warmonger was built directly to Ageia's PhysX tech, and requires the card in order to perform as designed. A big video card helps for rendering, but at that point it's job is mostl;y to run UE3.
AGEIA David: Question: Do you guys have any new idea's that deal with body physics or is it the ole rag doll physics?
Answer: AGEIA David: In Warmonger it is pretty standard ragdoll stuff. But there is some work being done by a company called Natural Motion which is doing some cool stuff like ragdoll tackles in football, which uses PhysX
NetDevil Chris: Question: =:Z0F:=:Jack Of Spades: What other games at the moment support the PhysX card?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: There is a full list of games supported at Ageia.com
[Xfire] Matteox: PhysX Games: http://www.ageia.com/physx/titles.html
NetDevil Chris: Question: [Lewler.com]Youkosnake.: Why aren't there many developers designing games with PhysX? Other developers jump out there with directing along DX10, and still few people have DX10 systems... Why isn't PhysX like that?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: Its not easy to do... and many developers like to reduce risk ;)
NetDevil Chris: Question: Joe: Do you plan on releasing any expansion packs in the future?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: Again anything is possible
AGEIA David: Question: Max: If you have the PhysX card, will it run cod4, crysis and all those new games on the best Øquality. And do they work with all cpu's``?
Answer: AGEIA David: The PhysX card will not do anything to games that are not programmed to use it.
NetDevil Chris: Question: FPS| Lonewolf: How do you simulate physics of certain objects in Warmonger, especially wind effect?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: The wind effect was a cool use of fluid technology. We just made the fluid particles and properties look like paper and debris :)
NetDevil Chris: Question: legendaryfrog: Was there a specific design ideology you held yourselves to during the development of Warmonger?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: BLOW EVERYTHING UP!! Seriously we wanted to see what was possible with destruction, and Ageia helped us realize a lot more than we had expected we could do.
AGEIA David: Question: Licht ﻼ: Do you have any plans in the future to impliment features found in DirectX 10?
Answer: AGEIA David: DirectX 10 typically is for graphics, sound, etc.. so we have no problems working along side this technology.
AGEIA David: Question: ed0z16k: Are you going to be making different Models of the Ageia PPU's?, e.g. A budget version?
Answer: AGEIA David: You can get a PPU for $99 these days which is quite a drop from the $300 starting price.
AGEIA David: Here are some links for buying cards at $99
AGEIA David: New Egg
[Xfire] Matteox: (Goes to Newegg and TigerDirect)
NetDevil Chris: Question: *DUW*KyleBraegelman: What kind of a performance increase will I get from a physics card that is not attainable with just a better processor?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: Warmonger's destruction and environmental effects were all written directly to the PhysX firmware, so while you can get better performance by throwing gobs of CPU at it, you'll never get the same results as dedicating an entire PPU and firmware to the physics calculations.
AGEIA David: Question: Philboom: Are you attending to create some GPU card with ageia physx features ?
Answer: AGEIA David: No current plans of that nature.
AGEIA David: Question: kidnex1: I heard that in the future that you will be able to use a video card as a physics card. Is this true?
Answer: AGEIA David: There has been talk of this in the past but the reality of it is that none of this has ever hit the market in games.
NetDevil Chris: Question: Slooog: If there was one thing you could change about Warmonger what would it be?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: I think that Warmonger's potential is huge, so in hindsight I'd love to have planned out a larger and longer development cycle. But we were really excited to get the tech out fast. It was a balancing act really. But who knows...we might be able to dip back in and update it...?
AGEIA David: Question: [Admin] Venrexx {ulg/1cp}: so would you say this is more so for getting people onboard the PPU train or onto the new style of game?
Answer: AGEIA David: Both really. The PPU allows you to do more with physics than you could in the past. This opens up new styles of gameplay. This is an exciting time for gamers.
NetDevil Chris: Question: *BennyRom: How was your expirience working with the PPU? The programming side i mean, as a programmer myself i find it highly interesting to know about what is manually done (memory management for example) and automatically done. Was it very difficult to optimize for the PPU or has AGEIA made it a simple and elegant process?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: NetDevil engineers asked a lot of the Agiea tech, and it performed great. Ageia has a great deveopment environment set up and their support is totally hands on. They really wanted us to succede and were able to take our suggestions and impliment them directly into the firmware. Anytime we'd reach the end of what PhysX could do, we'd push it from both ends.
NetDevil Chris: Question: csherland: Slooog: The Physx cards have barely scratched the surface of being used to their capability, do you think Developers are going to more rapidly consider requireing a Physx card for future games?
I hope so. Look at what Lucasarts is doing now....and you can see that developers are taking physics more seriously.
Answer: NetDevil Chris: Physics for show is dying out, but physics as gameplay is just begining.
AGEIA David: Question: Redux/Noobberry: You guys have said everything is destructable but what avbout the idea of being a able to destroy the ground in some way? It would be cool to throw a nade and to create a fox hole so do you have any plans for this?
Answer: Terrain deformation is a different tech than we went after in Warmonger. In Warmonger the push was to develop a system where we could take existing assets and make them destructible. So that is more of what you see in Warmonger.
AGEIA David: Question: tallgeeseIII: are you planning on releasing ageia ppus for notebooks?
Answer: AGEIA David: http://www.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/xpsnb_gaming?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
NetDevil Chris: Question: GenMalid: : Why opt for using the Unreal Engine rather than design a new engine from the ground up?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: Using UE3 brought down our development costs and timeline. If we had made our own engine from scratch it would have taken years to get to Warmonger. Also Ageia and Epic had already agreed to integrate PhysX into the UE3 engine and editor so it was a no-brainer for us. Deliver a fully destructable shooter in 1 or 5 years? ???? We say 1 :)
AGEIA David: Question: Aphelion: Is the gaming aspect of the PhysX card not a bit narrowminded? Will it not be useful for scientific equations and measurement speed-ups in the near future aswell? ( 64 bit BLAS ? )
Answer: AGEIA David: Sure, you can use the card for this if you would like. We provide the software/hardware so that users can come up with their own cool ways to use it.
NetDevil Chris: Question: Venrexx {ulg/1cp}: for any online game if one person has the card and the other doesnt, does that mean only one of the players will see the physics difference and the other will not? wouldnt that cause problems?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: The results of destruction events are the same, but for the guy without the card performance would suffer pretty heavily.
AGEIA David: Question: [FaNtA: Now that we've seen destructable Buildings, Vehicles and other stuff, what about going a step further and trying to make realistic Fire (like they're doing it in FarCry2 with correct physical behaviour) and even more complex things of the nature?
Answer: AGEIA David: If you look in Warmonger you will see more than just destruction of buildings. the particle systems will interact with terrain and explosions, as well as the cloth simulation. So we are already pushing in more directions than just destruction.
NetDevil Chris: Question: {UW} (TC) ÐË√îñ co leader: is there anything you regret about not putting or anything else in warmonger?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: I wish we had more time to make it bigger.
NetDevil Chris: Question: Andy: Why did NET DEVIL decide to break the barrier set by preivous FPS games and decide to make a whole new FPS category all together? Was it your intention to make such a ground-breaking game?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: We're just rad.
AGEIA David: Question: :=:Z0F:=:Jack Of Spades: What advantages does the PhysX have over a regular graphics card?
Answer: AGEIA David: The PhysX card accelerate physics calculations, graphics cards accelerate graphics. So they are two different techs.
NetDevil Chris: Question: Clarkey.xo™: what kind of risks were you taking making warmonger that will only run well with a PhysX card?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: Well the audience is limited to card users, so that was a concern, but when we decided to make it a free game that all fell away. What we really wanted to do with Warmonger was push the limits, and we did that in a big way. So from the NetDevil perspective we did what we set out to do, and in fact we could not have done it so quickly without Ageia.
AGEIA David: Question: {UW} (TC) ÐË√îñ co leader: What about the gamers that cant afford a PhysX card and support the game?
Answer: AGEIA David: We are doing our best make the card affordable for everyone: http://www.ageia.com/where_to_buy/index.html
NetDevil Chris: Question: Kerberos: how about an estimation on how long till phys realy starts to become a major part of gaming because at the moment it seems limited
Answer: NetDevil Chris: It all depends on developers really. We believe that physics as gameplay is the future, so does Lucasarts and Epic, these companies know whats coming. Others will get pn board.
NetDevil Chris: Question: legendaryfrog: What is your vision for gaming in 5 years times?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: NetDevil owns the planet and everyone has a PhysX card?
NetDevil Chris: Physics as gameplay is the future for shooters.
NetDevil Chris: Question: [SLH]Evil007: A game with a fully destructible enviornment has been the dream of gamers for years. How do you feel to be one of the first companies to do this in a game that even uses a next gen engine?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: Well I gotta admit it feels pretty good. UE3, Ageia, and NetDevil all worked together to make this happen, so it's not just NetDevil.
AGEIA David: Question: ■: Do you think that there is any chance that a physx card could be integrated into any already released game, or do the games have to be developed specifiaclly for the AGEIA technology?
Answer: AGEIA David: Games will only work with the PhysX card if they have been written to support it. So in order for an existing game to use it they would need to release a patch that supported PhysX.
NetDevil Chris: Question: Aphelion: I was wondering whether or not in the near future we could see games or updates of existing games to be more dependant on the physics, for instance a rocket launcher show-off in a suburban area where you can use the rocket launcher to bury your enemy in debris rather than to directly shoot at him, allowing more interaction with the environment and resulting in enhanced gameplay.
Answer: AGEIA David: In the UT3 levels it is possible to shoot objects into enemies using weapons and injur them. So yes, we are working towards these kinds of features.
NetDevil Chris: Question: that auto-sniping whore: Do you think that the physics in Warmonger would be able to transfer to a console?
Answer: AGEIA David: Some pieces of Warmogner may transfer while other pieces may be too much for the systems to handle.
NetDevil Chris: Question: Joe: Do you think that Warmonger's physics will revolutionized the next few shooters?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: I think it already has. Look at Unreal Tournament. I hope shooters will really embrace this, but again its all about developers getting how cool it is.
NetDevil Chris: Question: SLH]Evil007: Does the card work in Windows Vista as well as XP, or are compatability issues?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: Yes it works with Vista
NetDevil Chris: Question: that auto-sniping whore: I've had trouble running Warmonger on my non-PhysX pc, is it designed to work like that or is this just because of my own system? I could see alot of gamers not going in for a second look at a new game like this because it didn't run the first time.
Answer: AGEIA David: Yeah, this is a constant struggle when you are trying to get a new product going. The hardware works, it accelerates the physics, if you don't have it you will see reduced performance. Running without the PhysX card would be like trying to run without a video card and expecting to see good perf.
NetDevil Chris: Question: ■: I have heard that without the PHYSX card, performace and stability suffers, even on high end systems, will there be a patch in the future to correct this?
Answer: AGEIA David: The patch for this would be to remove all of the cool physics features and once you do that you lose the essence of Warmonger. So no, there is no plan to do this in the future.
NetDevil Chris: Question: Qlmmy: Since rigid bodies don't sync, does that cause any visual discrepancies?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: Yes it does. But when you ask the other player "which way did that rock go on your front end" you always get shot in the head.
NetDevil Chris: Its too fast paced to notice really.
AGEIA David: Question: NeXuS: You guys have said yourself you love explosions but how BIG can you make them? Like blowing up an entire oil factory? Or can you set up multiple vehicle and wreck havoc in a large scale?
Answer: AGEIA David: How BIG is tough to answer. It really depends on what you want to do in your game and where you put your focus. You could definitley do both of the things that you mentioned.
NetDevil Chris: Question: ed0z16k: I would of thought a Engine like the Source Engine would have been more suitable for the PhysX card, what made you chose unreal?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: Ageia and Epic had already integrated OhysX into UE3 so it made developing Warmonger as easy as possuible. It was still a huge challenge to push the PhysX stuff farther than it had gone, but UE3 gave us a leg up. Awesome editor!!!
AGEIA David: Question: Komah: How far has the Warmonger environment been developed? Are there any plans to further expand the surrounding environment to include natural 'occurances' such as Earthquakes, Hurricanes, and so forth?
Answer: AGEIA David: There aren't currently plans for continuing Warmonger envrionments but you will see more and more of these physical events popping up in games. You can see Tornadoes in the UT3 PhysX levels for instance.
NetDevil Chris: Question: {UW} (TC) ÐË√îñ co leader: what was it like working in the development team?
Answer: NetDevil Chris: It was great. We had a vision of physics as gameplay and we got to realize it. But it was alsio pretty hard work. There were a few times in the cycle when it looked like we would not be able to get to that vision. The Ageia guys never let us put that vision down and they kept pushing for us to get the features in we needed to bring warmonger alive.
[Xfire] Matteox: Ok, time to wrap the Warmonger Dev Chat up. David, Chris, any last thoughts for Xfire?
AGEIA David: Thanks a lot for all of the great questions! Sorry that we couldn't answer them all but it was great to see so many people interested in Warmonger and PhysX. We hope to see your support on future titles!
NetDevil Chris: This has been a blast! Thanks for all the interest in Warmonger. I hope to see each and everyone of you hiding behind something I can blow up so I can frag you :P Seriously, I hope to see you in Warmonger!!
[Xfire] Matteox: Thanks again to the AGEIA / Warmonger Team for Joining us in this special chat.
[Xfire] Matteox: and thanks to the users for attending and contributing great questions!
[Xfire] Matteox: For more Xfire events, check out http://www.xfire.com/cms/xf_events/
[Xfire] Matteox: Now, onto the prizes!
[Xfire] Matteox: 2 PhsyX cards go out to users in this chat, and the third goes to 1 user following in the mirrored main chat room!
[Xfire] Matteox: And, the winners are *drum roll*
[Xfire] Matteox: Aphelion- Angelicgirl
[Xfire] Matteox: and
[Xfire] Matteox: neXus - nexus4904
[Xfire] Matteox: Congrats to the winners of these great prizes from our guests!!!
[Xfire] Matteox: Winners, Xfire me. Everyone, thanks and we'll be seeing you soon
