
Enemy Territory:
Quake Wars is a first-person shooter computer game and is the follow-up to
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. However, it is set in the same science fiction
universe as Quake II and Quake 4, with a backstory serving as a prequel to Quake
II. It is the second multiplayer-only game in the Quake series (after Quake III
Arena). Quake Wars will feature similar gameplay to Wolfenstein: Enemy
Territory, but with the addition of controllable vehicles and aircraft,
asymmetric teams, much larger maps and the option of computer-controlled bots.
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is being developed by Splash Damage for the PC using
a modified version of id Software's Doom 3 engine and MegaTexture rendering
technology.
MegaTexture refers to a texture mapping technique used in Splash Damage's
upcoming game, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. It was developed by id Software
technical director John Carmack. Battlefields are rendered to the horizon
without any fogging, with over a square mile of terrain at inch-level detail,
while also providing terrain type detail that defines such factors as bullet hit
effects, vehicle traction, sound effects, and so on.
MegaTexture is designed to eliminate repeating textures over an environment. The
original version of the Doom 3 engine was criticized by the gaming press over
its inability to handle landscapes and large outdoor areas. The MegaTexture
technology addresses this issue by introducing a means to create expansive
outdoor scenes. By painting a single massive texture (about 32768×32768 pixels,
or 1 gibipixel) covering the entire polygon map and highly detailed terrain, the
desired effects can be achieved.
Many previous games and engines have the ability to allow for large landscapes.
The principle difference with the MegaTexture system is that the system uses a
single large image map for static terrain, whereas previous engines required
that textures be either tiled or divided into chunks manually. The MegaTexture
system allows the game to treat the terrain's texture as a single unit, while it
transparently subdivides and streams in texture data as needed. Id Software and
Splash Damage expect that this will result in a considerably more detailed scene
than the majority of existing technologies allow.
The MegaTexture system can affect other parts of the engine besides rendering. A
MegaTexture can store information about the terrain that can be used for
gameplay purposes (for example, the relative traction of a given part of a
surface can affect a vehicle's performance). Other information can be used for
generating different sound effects for different situations; walking on grass
can sound different from walking on rock. It should be noted that other games
and game engines provide similar functionality through a variety of systems.
The next version of MegaTexture will support larger scenes, approximately
131072x131072 pixels in size.