Mod support/TDS Behavior . . .

New Horizon on 3/1/2006 at 03:04

That is certainly the most surprising story I have heard yet. Yikes! It's such a shame that the games were crippled so badly. I certainly agree that both games would have been far better had they used Unreal. Thievery is a fine example of how Thiefy Unreal can look.

So, any of you old T3 petitioners out there want to get started on a 'release the source code' petition! :laff:

Crispy on 3/1/2006 at 04:16

With regards to source code, I think it would probably be quicker to just go with the Dark Mod for now, and wait until id software releases Doom 3's source code under GPL like they've been doing with some of their older engines (like Quake II). Sure, it'll probably be at least 2010 by the time that happens, but I bet it'd take at least 50 years before Eidos would EVER release ANY source code to ANYTHING. :p From what we've seen so far, they are not a caring sharing kind of company.

In any case, from the sound of it I'd rather have Doom 3 source code than Flesh source code. :rolleyes:

New Horizon on 3/1/2006 at 04:35

Quote Posted by Crispy

Yeah, I agree on all counts. My only reason for wanting the flesh source code is that I absolutely 'HATE' to see things go unfinished.

Crispy on 3/1/2006 at 05:30

Yeah. It's annoying, but there's not a whole lot we can do about it. The more I fiddle with this engine the more I'm tempted to just drop the whole thing and wait for TDM.

Speaking of TDM, I should really finish texturing that model I claimed, shouldn't I? :sweat: I need to ask you something about that, actually... check your PMs. :)

Renzatic on 3/1/2006 at 07:01

Quote Posted by Crispy

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say we'll get the D3 source code around 2008 or thereabout. Whenever Id releases a new engine, they'll usually GPL their old engines about 6 months to a year afterwords.

GlasWolf on 3/1/2006 at 07:43

Quote Posted by New Horizon

So, any of you old T3 petitioners out there want to get started on a 'release the source code' petition! :laff:

Inline Image:

http://www.glaswolf.net/images/scream.jpg

STiFU on 3/1/2006 at 09:44

Hmn but who would like to work such a crappy source code like Krypt says. I wouldn't besides i couldn't :p . Anyway! Eidoes will never publish that source code, so we should think of something else.

Quote Posted by 242

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?

I don't know exactly if it was really a new engine or the doom3engine again, but Riddick is definitely a good example for great dynamic shadows in 2004. And in the recent time we could just name Fear. The textures are bad sometimes, but the volumetric lightning, dynamic shadows(+Soft shadows) and most of all the normalmapping is damn great!!! :) And there was still Splinter cell. But i must say that i don't know whether there is a difference between per-pixel dynamic shadows and stencil-shadows, which is more common to me. Plz explain :)

But Krypt!! I can just bear out what NH just said. It was totally interesting to read about that and i will send this thread to some friends.

Ziemanskye on 3/1/2006 at 12:17

There is an important distinction between the shadows and things in TDS compared to F.E.A.R.

You could turn FEARs off, they were just eye-candy. In Thief you had to have them on because they were part of the game.

I mostly mention that because I could only run FEAR with everything off, but at least I can run TDS, and I'm undecided about higher requirements for a thief game...

And I think, though I'm likely to be instantly corrected, that Stencil Shadows are Per-Pixel Shadows - because the shader has to work across the scene into every pixel, while Stencil is just the technique it uses, I think.

Flux on 3/1/2006 at 12:33

Thanks a lot Krypt, very interesting read. I now wonder shamelessly where epicgames stand in all this. On their engine licensing web-site they claim to give full support to developers even 1 year after the public release of the game. Maybe it was to late to call them in? Because they implemented the per-pixel & dynamic shadows stuff only now, for next-generation games. Obviously, whatever his intentions might be, the "nameless" programmer was ahead of his time regarding hardware limitations.

Also for the source code to be released by Eidos, I don't think it is possible at all. Even if they decide to do so, I guess the real owner of the core engine is still Epic Games and they won't like this idea.

OrbWeaver on 3/1/2006 at 13:17

Quote Posted by Krypt

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.

That is absolutely piss-poor management on behalf of the project leads. Stuff like this needs to be designed and documented properly, not dreamt up by some lone ranger in a vacuum.

Quote:

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.

I see this all the time at work. The aformentioned lone ranger (usually a crappy programmer with no idea how to make a good design) produces his gold-plated turd, management fall for the gold plating and approve it, and then the rest of us a left to support the turd with no possibility of persuading anyone to get rid of it, even when it falls far short of the customer's requirements and does a fraction of what another, easier, cheaper solution would do.