OK so what do you get when you mix Rainbow Six with the Quake 2 engine? Soldier of Fortune? That's not how Raven Software, developers of the Hexen and Heretic series of 3D shooters, see it. Instead, their use of the Quake 2 engine (which they've already made great use of with Heretic II) will be purely action based but with the Solider of Fortune magazine license thrown in for good measure. We asked Raven's Kenn Hoekstra what to expect from them in terms of utilizing the Quake 2 engine,
"Our experience working with the Quake 2 engine for Heretic II was certainly valuable. We've included all of the engine optimizations and special tricks we used in Heretic II as a base for the Quake 2 engine we're using for Soldier of Fortune.
The biggest addition we are making to update the engine involves the implementation of GHOUL, Soldier of Fortune's advanced modeling system developed by Raven technology programmer Gil Gribb.
GHOUL has many features that enhance the Quake II engine technology including (but certainly not limited to) the following:
1. Programmer controlled verts
2. Compression
3. Animating nulls
4. Movement encoding
5. Bolt-on models, gore and other attachments
6. Multiple skin support
7. Accurate/Improved lighting
8. Animations greater than 10HZ
9. New networking model to send info by sequence rather than frames
10. Lights inside GHOUL models
In addition to GHOUL, we have made tons of modifications to the Quake II engine. We started by converting all of the engine code to C++ and then proceeded to add (in no particular order):
1. Detail and damage texturing
2. New lighting system
3. New AI system
4. Full 32 bit texturing
5. New weapon system
6. Designer scripting language
7. Dynamic music system
8. Volumetric Fog
9. 3D Now! And A3D/SBLive! Support
10. Client prediction enhancements
This is just a short list of the (literally) hundreds of changes and enhancements we've made to the engine."
Those of you not yet in the know- the SOF magazine is a bit on the 'odd' side of the fence. Ever month the magazine reports on real world skirmishes and wars. Er… it's not very politically correct under today's climate and most people will likely never have bought a copy of it. Of course with such a tie in, SoF (the game) won't feature aliens, hovering red tomatoes (a la Doom), robots or zombies. It'll be very down to Earth set in 'real world environments' (Iraq etc…) and gritty to boot. We'll be taking a playable look at this game later this week at E3. Till then have a sneaky peaky at a couple of shots Raven's Kenn Hoekstra left on our doorstep:
Developed By: Raven Software
Published By: Activision
3D Card Support: Yes
Multiplayer Support: Yes
Web Site: http://www.ravensoft.com
E.T.A: Q3 99