Aja on 13/12/2005 at 00:28
Will we (YOU) never be able to reverse engineer it?
Jonesy on 13/12/2005 at 00:50
Quote Posted by Aja
Will we (YOU) never be able to reverse engineer it?
As it is, probably not. It would stand to reason that you could create a separate (and
better) engine that has the ability to load Thief levels and resources and has legacy support for the Dark Engine. The Sith 2 engine is already an example of that. I'm not saying it'll easy, far from it, but it certainly is possible. Jedi Knight had a
much simpler engine, but thus far they've pretty much gotten to the first alpha where you could load the original game. From that point on, they're building up.
Getting around the copyright issue is child's play. Just make a CD-check to ensure that people aren't using pirate versions (ala Underdogs and System Shock 2).
Volca on 13/12/2005 at 08:51
I've placed 0.0.2 version of testing viewer online. Supports static lightmaps and should fix the issue with strict compilers. Let me know if it didn't help. I'm planning an automake system for next release, so it should be okay then.
sparhawk on 13/12/2005 at 08:52
Quote Posted by David
If they were using it at that point then it still has value to it meaning they are less likely to give it away.
Considering how long it took them to release the TDS editor I would really be surprised if they would ever release the actual sourcecode to anything.
As to reverse engineering it. I once reverse engineered the complete DOS library for the Commodore Amiga together with a friend because the documentation for it was wrong in many aspects. Even though that library was pretty small (compared to Thief gamecode) and quite focused (after all there was ONLY the DOS library and no other modules) AND we had access to the official documentation, which was usefull despite being wrong on many issues, it took us the better of two months to complete it. And this was pretty fast!
Now considering how many modules are in Thief, no documentation available and the size of the binaries, I would say it will take you VERY long, if you are dedicated, to actually reverse engineer it. It's not impossible, but considering the timeline, it's as good as impossible.
David on 13/12/2005 at 08:58
TDS was released in May 2004 and a decision to release the editor was made prior to October of the same year, which is when I got my grubby mitts on it. That's less than 5 months after release, it's not a long time.
Luthien on 13/12/2005 at 09:17
Quote Posted by Volca
I've placed 0.0.2 version of testing viewer online. Supports static lightmaps and should fix the issue with strict compilers. Let me know if it didn't help. I'm planning an automake system for next release, so it should be okay then.
That's grand, but "online" is too vague for me. What's the URL?
Volca on 13/12/2005 at 12:36
About the reverse engineering:
It seems that this should not be needed now. Scripting system is known (telliamed did this great work - mapping interfaces of DarkEngine and the system of function calling). The Mesh Object structure is known to Randy Sybel, who kindly promissed to post me some info. The only thing which may need a further investigation is motion database and AI walk paths. These should not be too hard to do. So if I'm right, the knowledge should be sufficient to implement the engine.
Of course some problems will emerge while implementing, but I hope the display should be finished before the year's end if things go right (without the skeletal animation and menu - e.g. adding objects and fixing it all).
TF on 13/12/2005 at 14:28
Hurm, WinRar says both of those archives are damaged or in unknown format, what are you supposed to use to open Tar.Bz anyway?
Anyway, you have my full support with this.
