Different engines for SP and MP?

[Ziskey]

Quick question for RudeDog or anyone else that knows. My understanding is that MOHPA SP uses the new Havok engine with all the cool features that EA has been marketing, but that the MP uses the old Breakthough engine. Is this true? (It certainly appears that way.) If so, why?

Ziskey

[rudedog]

Totaly false

both use the same engine and havoks physics, they just turn the physics in MP off right now because it uses too much recourses.

There is a cvar to control havoks in MP. I should be receiving my copy of MOHPA and can play with this more.

there is a comment in one of the rez files how the havoks physics taxes the engine too much right now for lower end boxes, so it's disabled.

Here are some cvars for the physics. The one that turns it on and off is missing. I will post that when I get home tonight. I need to look for it in one of the rez files.

PS check your dedicated server window, you can see where it turns the physics off when you start your game.


// Max Rag Dolls - The number of bodies that will use the rag
// doll physics

set dm_maxragdolls 0

// Body Time Max - The maximum amount of time to rag doll
// a body

set dm_bodytime_max 60.000000

// Body Time Min - The minimum amount of time to rag doll
// a body

set dm_bodytime_min 5.000000

[rudedog]

OK I havent left for work yet ;)

It looks like dm_effectscontroller controles a lot of things by setting this to 1 you will wake up havok phyics and other things

It then turns on these scr files in your global folder of pack5.rez

exec global/mp_combat_classes.scr
exec global/mp_tuning.scr
exec global/mp_havok_disable_wakeup.scr
exec global/mp_objective_status.scr

I've been working with the MDK stuff , so I don't have a retail copy of PA yet.

[HLC_Moses]

I would advise leaving the Havok engine disabled for MP. Unless you're running a single, small (4 to 8 player) DS on a high-bandwidth box (or LAN).

~MOSES

[Ziskey]

Thanks for the quick reply, Dog. So the Havok "engine" is really some add-on code to the Q3A engine that can be turned on and off? I guess from all the marketing hype I thought that the Havok engine was a totally new engine, designed basically from the ground up for Pacific Assault. So am I right in saying that the PA engine is just another incarnation of the venerable Q3 engine?

[HLC_Moses]

For Pacific Assault, the Quake3 engine has been re-written from the ground up, with the most significant advancements/changes in the rendering engine. The only remnant of the original Q3 engine is the basic "structure", i.e., the cvar-based engine commands, etc.

The Havoc physics engine is incorporated into the code, but like so many other aspects, it too can be disabled.

~MOSES

[Ziskey]

Thanks for the info, Moses. I can't wait for the first patch so that MP is playable.