Mod support/TDS Behavior . . .

New Horizon on 2/1/2006 at 16:36

Quote Posted by OrbWeaver

I don't understand why loading from individual resource files takes so long, when Doom 3 loads all its resources this way with no problem at all.

I've been curious about that myself. The textures we use for Dark Mod, while being compressed tga's, are still much larger than anything in T3 and we can still load a mission up just as fast.

Perhaps we should also start a petition to get the T3 source code released. :D Although there is likely as much chance of peace on earth as there is of that happening.

STiFU on 2/1/2006 at 18:51

I think so too because with that source code and the editor package everyone could compile the full game himself...

Krypt on 2/1/2006 at 21:06

Quote Posted by OrbWeaver

I don't understand why loading from individual resource files takes so long, when Doom 3 loads all its resources this way with no problem at all.

This is because the Flesh engine isn't programmed as well as Doom3's. It all comes down to that, really. The engine and tools were rushed, poorly planned and poorly executed in most aspects. Flesh has some cool features and some things it does well, but it's a mess on the whole.

New Horizon on 2/1/2006 at 21:12

Quote Posted by Krypt

Out of curiosity Krypt, do you think there would be a chance in hell of getting the source code for Flesh released, or at least enough of it to improve the modability? Also, did you guys have access to the Dark Engine source code at any time? If so, I would be curious to know why it wasn't used, instead of Unreal.

Krypt on 2/1/2006 at 23:06

Quote Posted by New Horizon

It's really up to Eidos what happens with the code. I'm no longer working for them so I can't say one way or another, but I really doubt they would ever release it to the public. It was hard enough just to get the editor out.

New Horizon on 2/1/2006 at 23:58

Quote Posted by Krypt

Oh, I totally realize that you no longer work for them. Just wanted to see what your opinon was on the matter.

The second part of the question though. Was there any access to the Dark Engine source code...that you were aware of? There have been rumors from different sources that the T3 team had the Dark Engine source at one point. Warren had mentioned trying to get it released back in 2001 I think, but then nothing else was ever said.

Krypt on 3/1/2006 at 00:24

Oh sorry, I missed that part of the question. I don't know if the programmers had access to the Dark engine code, but I'm pretty sure none of it went into Flesh. We originally licensed the Unreal engine with the intent of using it, but ended up stripping almost everything out besides the editor and making a new engine built from a bare skeleton of Unreal.

The Dark engine code is in the same boat as the T-DS code. It's probably sitting on a hard drive at Eidos somewhere, and it's up to them what they want to do with it.

Flux on 3/1/2006 at 01:07

Thank you very much Krypt. For being honest and informative or for whatever reason. I just couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the "flesh". Cause I know unreal engine is very easy to mod, as it's being used in dozens of games, most comes with the same editor more or less, much easier to mod than FleshEd.

What I don't understand, if you care to enlighten me, who's idea was it to turn the unreal engine into this per-pixel lighting-dancing shadows mess? I mean Warren and his team did a pretty fine job on dx1 and the editor is very easy to use. Was there anybody at ion storm during the time who was proud of the flesh engine? I'm trying to learn what it is like during the development cycle, if you don't mind me asking.

Thanks and I wish you good luck for your future career in game design.

242 on 3/1/2006 at 01:17

Actually Flesh engine still creates best looking honest per-pixel dynamic shadows out there I think. Then, there is D3, it's just more optimized and fast. Was there something better back in 2004 or is there now?

Krypt on 3/1/2006 at 02:38

It's sort of a funny story how that happened really. The creation of the Flesh engine wasn't really planned. Early on in the development of DX2 and T3 we bandied about the idea of using dynamic shadows for gameplay. A certain programmer who will remain nameless was given the task of adding this into the Unreal engine. He went off on his own for a couple weeks and programmed an entirely new per-pixel lighting renderer. No one really asked him to make a completely new engine, but we didn't mind at first because it looked pretty cool. This was before we discovered the crippling limitations it would put on us.

It wasn't until we had worked with it for a while after said programmer was let go that we found out how crappy the engine really was. By the time we realized how much it sucked, we were already beyond the point of no return and just had to try to make the best of it. Out of necessity our efforts shifted from design to figuring out how to get the game to actually run. Instead of developing the game we wanted, we had to develop whatever we could get to work. We had to cut features left and right, shrink down the levels and comprimise our design because of the craptacular engine and physics implementation, and the difficulty of fitting it all into 64mb of Xbox memory.

DX2 suffered the most from this because it was our first try in the engine and we were under a lot of pressure to ship the game for Christmas. T3 fared better because we had more experience on how to get a game working and didn't have to make quite so many comprimises. Still, if we had stuck with Unreal we could have made both games a lot better, I think.