Gamespy is continuing their Engine Week, today looking at the Serious Engine from Croteam which will power their upcoming shooter Serious Sam and a game currently without title being developped by 3000AD (makers of Battlecruiser 3000AD).
They talk with Alen Ladavac, lead programmer for Croteam, and Dean Sekulic, programmer and level designer.[BLOCK]Alen - As you may know, Serious Sam has become popular partly because of the support for large open spaces. In Serious Engine, we employed a custom visibility algorithm that, coupled with extensive use of level-of-detail both on world and on models, allowed for both indoor and outdoor parts in same level. One other important thing is that you cannot make support for large open spaces by just devising an algorithm that will render such environments quickly.

We had to put in tons of other features that enable level editors to create realistic open-space environments. No vast area is convicing enough without directional light and subtle ambient intensities, flexibile and detailed backgrounds, and similar. You also have to use a completely different texturing approach than for indoor environments. You have to use multilayered texturing to prevent texture repetition (tiling), since the polygons get very big, and you have to use special texturing techniques for texturing terrains. I believe we have done quite good so far and we intend to extend even further in that direction. [/BLOCK]

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