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Technology Stocks : 3DFX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Robert Grist who wrote (5850)	7/28/1998 5:55:00 PM
From: Chip Anderson	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 16960

Thoughts on SiN - From a fundamental technology/graphics engine perspective, not much has changed from Quake 2. It still looks and feels like Quake2 - lots of sharp edges, polygons, particles, etc. HOWEVER... At a gameplay/detail level, SiN is definitely a step up for Single Player gaming. The move to 16-bit textures has resulted in much better looking levels and "atmosphere" than Q2, however it is nowhere near what Unreal does in this area. The monster AI is on par with Unreal's (i.e., much better than Q2, not as good as Half-Life). The bad guys duck, crouch, run, and call for back-up. The weapons in the demo version were disappointing though - the rocket launcher is severly under powered IMHO. The damage model is interesting, but ultimately disappointing IMHO. Hitting a bad guy in the head does more damage than hitting them in other areas. The problem is in the balance between the areas. One head shot kills, but you need 6 or 7 chest shots to kill - doesn't feel right to me. From a TDFX investor perspective, SiN will keep the Single-Player FPS alive and kicking for quite some time which is good because I believe single-player is more mainstream than multiplayer is. <FARFETCHED> Maybe the most interesting aspect of this release is the cinematic sequences at the beginning. They show the main character learning about a bank robbery and racing to the scene. These are all generated by the game and are fairly immersive. They are so good, they got me thinking of the next "Killer App" for 3D technology. Imagine an entire movie (2+ hours) of this kind of thing but also where it allows you to interact with it in limited ways (camera angles, forward/back, slow mo, different lighting, etc.). So, for instance, you could hit "pause" and then walk around inside the DeathStar for example. Now imagine that the graphics are rendered much, much better (curved polygons, major multi-texturing, etc.) and have high-quality textures generated from from video. Could this be a new form of entertainment that will appear in the next 10 years? Will George Lucas release Star Wars 7,8,& 9 in this format? I hope so. </FARFETCHED> One last point about the game, I tried multiplayer but had numerous problems. ;-( Anywho, if you can manage the 34MB(!) download, be sure to check out this demo! (See bluesnews.com for the file.) Chip