Volca on 7/12/2005 at 19:17
Hi guys!
Because there was only a little echo about Opensource thief engine (except for kerrle, who said he likes to work alone), I started the effort myself.
After some time of figuring out, I started a project openDarkEngine.
Today I uploaded a first testing viewer, which is capable of loading and displaying Thief 1/Gold levels (well texturing goes wrong sometimes).
The viewer is only for testing/developing purposes (a quick hack), and needs Irrlicht to work (This won't be the final engine, Irrlicht is not able to display lightmaps of needed counts - 17000 for level0).
Now I'm trying to find a right engine for the purpose of this project (seems that Crystal Space is the right choice).
The result of this effort, which I hope will some day be in existence, is a replacement engine for DarkEngine based games.
Everyone is invited to cooperate.
Well tell me what you think.
ZylonBane on 7/12/2005 at 19:25
"Dark Mod shot the food."
Fingernail on 7/12/2005 at 21:01
Good luck with that.
Assidragon on 7/12/2005 at 21:07
You might want to look into OGRE ((
www.ogre3d.org)), it's the best opensource graphics engine I know of.
TF on 7/12/2005 at 21:16
I don't know, it's far too much work if you're unable to bring over/incorporate...well, everything really into the new open engine, not just levels but seriously everything, a new engine that functions requiring a full Thief install to use files from, only super duper modifiable.
And that's probably too much work too.
But good luck anyway, an open dark engine would still be awesome.
Esme on 7/12/2005 at 22:16
OMG this would mean .... documentation :eek:
you are taking on a serious amount of work there, hope you do it, it would be brilliant :thumb:
ZylonBane on 8/12/2005 at 01:13
All optimistic people in this thread-- wake up. It's never, EVER going to happen.
The intricacies of the Dark Engine are barely understood even by people who've been DromEding for years. Creating a 100% compatible reproduction of this engine would be beyond the capacity of a well-funded team of full-time professional programmers, let alone some part-time amateurs.
Domarius on 8/12/2005 at 01:46
I don't think its that bleak - they don't have to reverse engineer the DarkEngine so much as just re-create the same features.
kamyk on 8/12/2005 at 02:31
I love the idea, but I have the usual question. Is the Thief license public domain yet? If not then an engine that could play the games would be a copyright infringement. If all you are creating is an editor though, I am not sure where that lies legally speaking. It would probably be ok to make an editor if you still needed the original game engine to play resulting levels.
I really hate to bring that up, because I personally could care less, and wish that everything Thief (and Blood) related was available to the fans with no strings attached. If you make it, I'm sure I would use it. Of course I have the originals, so I wouldn't be breaking any copyrights, but I'd use it even if I didn't, and I'd just be quiet about it.
But the subject appears to be a very hot one in the modding community, so I felt obliged to mention it.
