Painkiller – PC Winter 2003/ Xbox TBD 2004
Gothic Story, Frantic Gameplay.

Gothic Story

Stranded in a place between Heaven and Hell, your time of judgment is at hand. The Underworld is on the verge of unholy war, and you are but a pawn in the infernal battle. As you fight for your purification, the truths behind the deceptions are revealed.

Frantic Gameplay

Shoot everything that moves. And if it isn’t moving, shoot it just in case!

Each level has different objectives presented to the player in an introduction screen

Health is gained by reclaiming the souls of monsters

When you kill something, it disappears in a puff of smoke, leaving behind its “spiritual essence.” This can be grabbed to increase your health

Spend gold between levels to buy cool stuff

Monsters (and objects!) leave behind gold when destroyed. Buy weapon upgrades, speed upgrades, maps and other “power-ups”

Advanced Physics

Painkiller uses the Havok 2.0 physics engine, all items obey realistic physics simulation

Objects are breakable, flammable, etc.

Collisions, traces, explosions, destructible objects

Inverse Kinematics (“Ragdoll physics”) integrated with skeletal animation system

No static death animations; monsters fall in realistic death physics

Unparalleled level design

20 single-player levels, each entirely unique with virtually no texture reuse between levels

Average level is 350,000 polygons

Lighting is both static and dynamic

Static lighting: a global illumination model. This is accurate "real world" light using a physically correct lighting distribution model, resulting in photorealistic indirect ambient lighting

Dynamic lighting: real-time lights used for enemies, physical objects, weapons etc.

Levels also incorporate advanced vertex and pixel shaders, including water, glass, volumetric lights and fog, etc.

Incredibly detailed monsters

20 different enemies, each with unique behaviors and attacks

Average monster is 3000-4000 polygons, boss monsters are 8000

Enemies also have advanced bump-mapping and lighting models including specular lighting. Animation is skeleton-based, allowing for damage area detection

Textures are very hi-res: average is 1024x1024, bosses are 2x2048x2048!

Weapons

Objective is to avoid “weapon overkill” by providing the right number of weapons so that each is useful

Painkiller features 5 “combo-mode” weapons

Each weapon comes with primary and alternate fire

Primary and alternate fire modes can be combined for spectacular combo attacks

Hardcore Multiplayer

- Developers are national Quake World champs, so they know what makes multiplayer fun!

-Multiplayer powered by GameSpy for in-game and external server browsing

Targeting 32 players with the following 5 modes:
 
Deathmatch - The objective in Deathmatch is to kill as many opponents as possible. The player is on his own, playing in "me against the world" fashion.
Team Deathmatch - A mutation of Deathmatch, in which the competition is between teams made up of a number of players, trying to outkill the other teams.

People Can Fly - A modification of Deathmatch 1 on 1. In this mode both players have only the Rocket Launchers. The damage to the other player can be done only when he is airborne: it can be done by shooting the rocket exactly under the enemy's feet.

Voosh - Voosh is a multiplayer mode in which each player has the same weapon. After a certain period of time each player's weapon is switched to either the next in line (set by the server), or a random one.). All weapons have infinite ammo.

The Light Bearer This mode assumes that Quad Damage never wears off. The first player who takes the Quad, can use as long as he stays alive. Also, with every successful frag, the player gets +10 HP. When he is dead, he drops the Quad, and another player can pick it up. The winner is a person who has the Quad at the end of the game. However, every time someone picks up the Quad, the limit time is raised by 30 seconds, to make it possible for other players to get their chance.

PC Minimum System Requirements

OS: Windows 98ME2000XP
CPU: 1 GHz Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon processor
RAM: 256 MB
CD-ROM or DVD-ROM speed: 4x
Hard Drive space: 1.2 GB available
Video: 32 MB Direct 3D compatible video card
Sound: DirectX 8.1b or better compatible sound card with latest drivers
Input: keyboard and mouse
Supported 3D cards:
NVIDIA GeForce2/GeForce3/GeForce4 and GeForce FX, ATI Radeon 7000/7500/9000/9500/9700, Matrox G550/Parhelia
(note: retail box might list additionally supported cards, depending on compatibility testing results)

Recommended System Requirements

CPU: 1.7 GHz CPU
RAM: 512 MB
CD-ROM or DVD-ROM speed: 16x
Hard Drive space: 1.2 GB available
Video: 64 MB GeForce3 class card or better (not MX)
Sound: SoundBlaster Live or Audigy with Dolby Digital 5.1 support
Input: keyboard and mouse
Required for Multiplayer:
1 disc per player per computer
Internet (2-16 players): 56 Kbps modem minimum, broadband recommended Network (2-16 players): TCP/IP compliant network connection or LAN. Internet service required for Internet play.

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