Q: Will there be rounded surfaces, like in the Quake 3 engine?
-With our bend tool smoothing groups and UV unwrapper, we can do some pretty cool "curved" looking surfaces. They do really look amazing, but are not technically curves. A bit of clever lighting also helps to further the illusion of a true curve though. top

Q: How does the engine handle large, outdoor, open environments?
-Outdoor environments are handled sort of like the way Unreal handles them. I suppose that would be the best comparison. There are fairly wide outdoor areas, but it's not like Planetside or MechWarrior 4. The out door areas in RF are generally less detailed than the indoor areas. top

Q: So the engine will be able to handle large outside areas like unreal, but will these areas be really detailed?
-No, Red Faction is not being designed to handle large detailed outside areas. The engine is portal based, so it's optimized to handle interior areas very well. That being said, we will have outdoor areas, but there will not be lots of detailed geometry found there. top

Q: Will bullet holes and bodies remain forever?
-Well, there are some technological limitations that must be factored in here... As much stuff as can be crammed in will be crammed in, but once a limit is reached its out with the old and in with the new across the board in all departments. top

Q: Will Red Faction support OpenGL, Direct 3D, or Glide?
-Direct3D for the PC. top

Q: Will Red Faction support hardware T&L?
-Nope, but it's not really an issue since the performance gain is only marginal at best and the work required to rewrite everything is then not worth the effort. top

Q: Will Red Faction support multiple resolutions?
-Of course. top

Q: Will Red Faction support the T-buffer engine?
-No. top

Q: Will Red Faction support a benchmarking utility?
-No. top

Q: Will Red Faction support Per Pixel Shading?
-No. top

Q: Will Red Faction support AMD's 3Dnow?
-It's doubtful. The way this would work is if Volition were to release an OEM version of Red Faction that came packed with someone's hardware, in this case some sort of AMD system. This would be highly unlikely. top

Q: Will Red Faction support DOT3 bump-mapping or EMBM?
-No. top

Q: What type of lighting do you use?
-Point, Spotlight, and Tube. top

Q: What are tube lights?
-We came up with them when Dave Baranec was working on the capital ship beam weapons for Freespace2. We were going to make a whole bunch of point lights along the length of the beam to cast dynamic light, but that was very slow. So, we came up with the idea of a "tube" light, which is similar to a point light (position and radius) but has two points (or a length). It casts light like a florescent bulb. It's pretty darn useful in some cases. top

Q: It seems as though every light has a lens flare to it, is this put on by the engine or will people have to put in lens flare sprites on their lights to get the same effect?
-Lens flares (actually coronas) are set in text files. When you place a light object, it has a certain corona associated with it. top

Q: Will there be Texture-based lights?
-We are not supporting texture based lighting. I think we can all agree though that good looking lighting is good looking lighting. How it is produced is not relevant, or at least should not be. top

Q: What type of shadowing will be going on in the game? Stencil buffered like Neverwinter Nights, or shadow maps like in Vampire?
-We use shadow maps for world geometry. For characters, expect to see some very nifty shadows. top

Q: Will Red Faction allow colored self-illumination maps and gloss/specular level maps?
-We have support for self-illuminated textures (which is how we can have bright lights on a computer console, even in a dark room). We also support reflection mapping, which I believe is the same thing as specular mapping. top

Q: Does the PS2 version run well?
-It runs at around a steady 30fps and rarely stutters. top

Q: Will the PS2 version run in high-res mode?
-You bet your ass it will. top

Q: Will the PS2 version have FSAA?
-Yup. top

Q: So I hear the PS2 full scene anti-aliasing (FSAA) method has something to do with interlaced TVs, right? Now what if I have a progressive scan television and a progressive scan PS2 (something Sony says they are going to make)?
-The FSAA we're using mainly reduces the flickering from interlacing, but it also does a small amount of edge anti-aliasing also. If the FSAA code is on and your PS2 and TV are non-interlaced, then you're living pretty with your HDTV and the code will still do the small amount of edge anti-aliasing, which is good. So it doesn't really matter and regardless of what kind of setup you have it'll work fine. top

Q: Will the PS2 support some kind of bump-mapping so that we who may go the console route can get the benefits there too?
-No. top

Q: Is Red Faction going ot use DirectX 7 or DirectX 8?
-Well, just for the sake of keeping up to date, it would probably ship with DX 8 whether it totally utilizes the new features or not. top

Q: Will Red Faction have detail texturing?
-Yes. Though it is not present in the PS2 version. top

Q: Will Red Faction have mip-mapping?
-RF has more mipmapping than you can shake a stick at. top

Q: Will we be able to shoot out lights affecting the lighting?
-You can shoot out lights and when you do the cone they emit goes with them, however, the actual ambient lighting is not effected. It is possible the PC version may incorporate this, but it's unlikely. top