New Horizon on 11/2/2006 at 03:56
Quote Posted by Krypt
I guess we figured it would be best to make use of the engine we had spent so much effort to get working. I think the next generation of games built on Flesh could have been cool, despite my overall pessimism regarding the engine :p
There is definately no doubt that the engine does/ did hold promise. :) The editor is pretty easy to use, and it is structured extremely well. If I can use it, then it has to be pretty well designed. It's such a shame that all that work is sitting on a hard drive somewhere, basically rotting. Do you think there is even a glimmer of hope that the source code could be released to the community Krypt? Would another petition help?
Krypt on 11/2/2006 at 04:53
I really doubt it. I don't even know where the source code would be right now since ISA has been shut down for a good while. Even if the legal issues with releasing source code were worked out, there would be no one to put it all together in a deliverable package. I'm not really sure how code distribution works, but I would assume someone familiar with it would have to have input so all the right parts are included and such. That isn't going to happen because none of the programmers work for Eidos anymore. Basically, it's not going to happen (legitimately at least, and no I don't have it).
New Horizon on 11/2/2006 at 04:56
Quote Posted by Krypt
Basically, it's not going to happen (legitimately at least, and no I don't have it).
:laff: I knew you didn't have it Krypt, if you did...I'm sure it would have filtered into our hands by now...just to shut us up. ;)
OrbWeaver on 11/2/2006 at 10:04
Quote Posted by New Horizon
There is definately no doubt that the engine does/ did hold promise.
The renderer is not bad graphically, it is just all the back-end stuff (processing BSP, size limits etc) that is suboptimal. It is possible that it could be made to work by merging the render code into the core Unreal engine, rather than using the Unreal BSP as an input to an entirely separate Flesh BSP stage.
If this worked, you'd get the best of both worlds - improved Flesh renderer with a robust Unreal engine behind it, but as we all know it's not going to happen now.
sparhawk on 16/2/2006 at 12:10
Quote Posted by scumble
It's possible that it may have been better to update the dark engine rather than patch a lot of it into Unreal.
If with 'updating' you mean to bring it up to date for current standards then I disagree. The original engine was designed for a specific task and it took into account limitations that existed in this days. Current limitations are quite different, and rewriting such a thing is quite a lot of work. In most cases it is much faster and cleaner to rewrite it from scratch (or use an existing engine that can be adjusted).
New Horizon on 16/2/2006 at 16:39
Quote Posted by sparhawk
If with 'updating' you mean to bring it up to date for current standards then I disagree. The original engine was designed for a specific task and it took into account limitations that existed in this days. Current limitations are quite different, and rewriting such a thing is quite a lot of work. In most cases it is much faster and cleaner to rewrite it from scratch (or use an existing engine that can be adjusted).
Hmmm, but surely it wouldn't have been easier to rewrite the Unreal engine and update those systems?
All the core functionality of the Dark Engine wouldn't have needed that much updating to get things up to snuff. Fan Mission makers have made the Dark Engine doing amazing things, it was a flexible engine. In the long run, I think the amount of work would have evened out in the end. The dark engine has little traces left in it that indicate bump mapping was probably going to be added. They wouldn't have had to waste so much time attempting to recreate thief style AI in a new engine and no doubt would have had time to include briefings...etc.
deadman on 17/2/2006 at 20:45
Quote Posted by New Horizon
no doubt would have had time to include briefings...etc.
Wasn't that a RustMonkey issue (i.e., not paying RustMonkey enough to make briefings for every mission)? :sly:
Some of the butt-ugliest cutscenes ever (RustMonkey ones aside, obviously). They didn't even use the in-game models, and Garrett's model just looks horrendous. I'd rather just have Garrett's voice and text than half-assed attempts.
[/needless rant on pre-rendered cutscenes]
I don't know anything about writing code, but it does make sense that they perhaps could have just rewritten the renderer to bring it more up-to-date (and allow higher polycounts). From what Krypt has told us, many of Flesh's shortcomings arise from a bad coder putting in dynamic per-pixel lighting and unintentionally screwing up the rest.
deadman.
New Horizon on 18/2/2006 at 00:14
Quote Posted by deadman
Wasn't that a RustMonkey issue (i.e., not paying RustMonkey enough to make briefings for every mission)? :sly:
No, they were cut due to time at the beginning of development.
