Arx - End of Sun

[nbohr1more]

On a tangent of asset sharing it looks like the author of the Arx - End of the Sun mod just killed himself making lots of assets that were already in TDM.

 

Some of of the biggest challenges have been faced for me personally with the actual game code and producing model assets for the game. Having programmed professionally in most languages and technologies except C++, suddenly being faced with a massive SDK all in C++ was the biggest challenge. Next but, by no means least, learning a tool like Blender to produce models for the game is no less of a challenge! - but if you need a medieval torch or a barrel for your mod - I'm your man!

 

The caves in his demo video look pretty nice though...

 

(Edit: understatement... caves look great...)

 

Edit:

 

OK, this is much more of a puzzle to me.

 

1) Neurological is a member here.

 

2) Rich_is_Bored mentioned the existing TDM assets in this thread:

http://www.doom3worl...hp?f=58&t=23479

 

3) The mod still looks like it is missing elements already present in TDM (like a Frob system?)...

 

It seems a crime that all this redundant work was done...

 

Edited August 15, 2010 by nbohr1more

[Bikerdude]

Im gonna email the guy if you havent already and tell him to get his arse over to TDM..

 

hmm there dosent seem to be an email address, so have to join his site and see how I go..

Edited August 15, 2010 by Bikerdude

[nbohr1more]

So it looks like the main man Solarspace is not a member here. Left hand and Right hand not aware of each others' activies eh? Give him a ring Biker ...

[Midnight]

Im gonna email the guy if you havent already and tell him to get his arse over to TDM..

 

hmm there dosent seem to be an email address, so have to join his site and see how I go..

Being a fan of Arx Fatalis I've been following this one for a while. I suggested to Neurological that they may find the TDM team willing to share some resources if asked (hope that's okay), here is his reply:

 

"Yeah we are aware of TheDarkMod, I'm actually a fan of the Thief series and TDM is all what i play at the moment. We took a look at TDM source code to see how some stuff were done, but we had to take our own direction because of some different things like the magic cast system, we can't use anything from TDM code wise mainly also because now we are introducing dynamic level transition and it complicate everything. Basicly the system will allow you to travel back to previously explored levels making everything stays as you left, the system is complicated as we have to hardcode every new stuff we put in the game, like items or weapons.

 

But surely we may need some help from TDM especially for te stealth part even if we don't need the entire TDM system, hiding on shadows would be usefull and save a lot of time."

 

You know what, once they get that dynamic level loading figured out maybe TDM could borrow that! Hell, why not merge the two and have "Arx: Dark Fatalis", with mage thieves!

Edited August 15, 2010 by Midnight

[Bikerdude]

yeah the magic thing looked instresting, as TDM sorly needs some mages..

[nbohr1more]

Actually that "Dynamic Level transition" idea seems to resemble (or could be implemented with?) some upcoming stuff for TDM...

 

But the biggest shame here is the time this guy spent making models of stuff he could have gotten from TDM and thus he could have created other (non-redundant) models that both projects would enjoy...

 

The description of the Cave making process seems like it's been designed to be modular and re-usable so TDM may still benefit from that work unless it's not much of a time saver?

 

(Sorry for the OT Biker, I think we posted right past each other ...)

 

Edit:

 

Looks like Serpentine left another TDM hint in their more recent Doom3world thread...

Edited August 15, 2010 by nbohr1more

[Ishtvan]

For an Arx-like magic cast system, they might be able to use our mouse gesture reading code that we added for combat. Combat only uses four directions, but the general code can read 8 directions. It might be useful for determining what direction someone wants to draw when they are drawing each rune-line or something.

 

In fact, back when we added the gesture system for combat, I was wondering where else we could use it, and the thought of some crazy FM author adding an Arx-like casting system was all I came up with.

[Midnight]

They've already implemented their casting system. I think the combat and stealth elements would probably be helpful to them though.

 

Could a mod split this thread into a new Arx - End of Sun thread to avoid cluttering up the nightblade discussion?

 

Back on topic, that second NB pic is gorgeous, is this a case of baked in lighting for that window light?

[SneaksieDave]

Absolutely adored Arx Fatalis, so I really hope these guys pull this mod off. I would love to be able to play Arx FMs. :wub:

 

The readable system actually looks just like TDM.

 

Good suggestion, Midnight.

[nbohr1more]

Thanks for the topic split SneaksieDave!

 

Can't wait till we can poke around in their Pk4's and look at the Cave building technique...

[Midnight]

Thanks for the split SneaksieDave.

 

But the biggest shame here is the time this guy spent making models of stuff he could have gotten from TDM and thus he could have created other (non-redundant) models that both projects would enjoy...

I agree that there could be a lot of cross-over and both mods could benefit each-other, though I wouldn't immediately assume that the time they spent was wasted. Both Neuro and Solar seem to enjoy the modding aspect of it, not for the recognition but just to learn how to do stuff etc.

 

Still, at some point you've got to ask for help if you ever want to see a project like this completed (and I really hope they succeed, I've just resumed my last Arx savegame and the game still holds up really well to this day).

 

 

[Tels]

I am pretty sure they learned a lot, but OTOH, apart from the casting system and the different menu (which is just artwork, mostly) and the HUD (again, mostly artwork) I see nothing that they have done that isn't in TDM already. (The caves are just Blender models).

 

But their mod misses a lot of stuff from TDM, like the extended frobbing code, the grabber manipulation, all the hundred thousands of fixes we already put in the SDK, the sound stuff, the location settings code, the sound loss, the lightgem and and and and and whatnot.

 

So, I still think it would have been much better if they started with the TDM code base and added their stuff (casting and hud and menu) as plugins, the little bits of code that would have required could have easily be done. All the rest is just entities+spawnargs and new artwork and has nothing to do with the code side.

 

Hopefully they can finish their mod, instead of wasting more time reinventing the wheel, tho..

[solarsplace]

I am pretty sure they learned a lot, but OTOH, apart from the casting system and the different menu (which is just artwork, mostly) and the HUD (again, mostly artwork) I see nothing that they have done that isn't in TDM already. (The caves are just Blender models).

 

But their mod misses a lot of stuff from TDM, like the extended frobbing code, the grabber manipulation, all the hundred thousands of fixes we already put in the SDK, the sound stuff, the location settings code, the sound loss, the lightgem and and and and and whatnot.

 

So, I still think it would have been much better if they started with the TDM code base and added their stuff (casting and hud and menu) as plugins, the little bits of code that would have required could have easily be done. All the rest is just entities+spawnargs and new artwork and has nothing to do with the code side.

 

Hopefully they can finish their mod, instead of wasting more time reinventing the wheel, tho..

 

Hi All

 

Goodness me, it was quite a surprise to find this thread on your marvellous forum!

 

Serpentine suggested I/we pop over here and join in the discussion.... glad I did. Apologies if our absence here seemed like we were ignoring your invitations this was and is not the case.

 

As has been suggested, there probably is a fair amount of re-inventing the wheel been going on with our mod - but the thing is, we always wanted to do as much of the work ourselves for our own satisfaction.

 

The assets in the TDM for example are truly excellent, but personally speaking I would not be satisfied with myself if I made a mod just by taking load of other assets from another teams hard work.

 

Blast... have a work meeting to go to, will finish the post later....

 

Cheers guys!

[nbohr1more]

Cant wait for your first release solarspace!

 

Welcome to TDM forums!

 

I admire your chutzpah for building everything from scratch but please feel no shame about sharing art assets (or anything else) as this is the spirit of the TDM project.

 

If you have anything nifty to contribute please let the Devs know.

 

I hope to see you around the forums more often.

 

Good luck with your project!

Edited August 17, 2010 by nbohr1more

[solarsplace]

Hi nbohr1more, All

 

Thanks for the welcome and suggestions!

 

I have extreme admiration for TDM & especially the fact you have released your source code.

 

This we plan to do also, I have already added 100's of lines of new code and fixed loads of original bugs that went un-noticed in vanilla D3. Granted, not much of what we have done will be of that much interest to TDM - however my current project is non-linear level transitions. I already know there will be certain shortcomings to the solution unfortunately, such as dead bodies cannot remain in position between transitions for example, but TDM is welcome to have the code and solution when it is working. I expect with the talent you already have on-board that you will probably be able to improve and expand it further too beyond my capabilities....

 

The current concern for Neurological & I at present is the apparent ability or lack thereof in finding a concept artist and creature modeller / animator for the mod. We have most other bases covered (albeit at a bare minimum) between the pair of us, but NPC / Creature modeller / animators we are not! so are on the look out for anyone who might be interested...

 

What would be the protocol if we wanted to include one of your models, such as one of the guards in our mod? would this be ok with the appropriate credits?

 

Actually, I was planning to do a small tutorial on making caves realistic caves in Blender for use in D3, hopefully that will be of some use to some TDM map makers...

 

Anyway, thanks again.

 

Regards

Edited August 17, 2010 by solarsplace

[nbohr1more]

AFAIK credits would be the only requirement.

 

I would send a Personal Message to one of the team members to verify.

[Neurological]

Hello everyone, Solar just showed me this thread.

 

I signed in this forum a lot of time ago when the first beta was realeased as i tried to do a fan map for the game but had to left the work after an hd crash and then I've been busy composing music for a lot of projects.

 

By the way, I understand the fact that you guys thinks that remaking most of the work may be a waste of time but we enjoy to do all that stuff and is also a learning experience. When we finished the demo map of the video we just sayd "What? We did that?", is difficult to explain but is an awesome feeling.

 

But as someone already mentioned we can't do all the work in just two, so in the near future we will need help on some aspects of the game.

 

As for sharing assets, me and Solar have no problem to give anything from Arx mod. You like ambient music? You can have it. You like some models or code? You can have it. So if you see anything usefull for your maps or anything else for TDM, don't esitate to ask we are happy to share anything, even the source files for max models or photoshop pics.

[STiFU]

That sounds very promising. I am sure both sides would also benefit from sharing textures. By the way, I am really looking forward to your mod...

 

I also have one technical question: I am just having another look at your video and I notice that everything looks very similar to the HDR shading, which J.C. Denton is currently implementing for us. Do you use the same technique?

 

Also, you definitely need the mantling system of TDM (looking at the scene where the player tries to get out of water)... ;-)

[SneaksieDave]

Awesome. Sharing both ways would definitely be a great thing. Arx! Rock on.

[solarsplace]

Hi

 

With regard to getting out of the water, well that was nothing less than a complete 'balls up' on my part! by that point that was about my 35th attempt to do the demo run and on every attempt just 1 thing would be a disaster! normally getting out of the water is fine, not sure what happened there, there are some invisible brushes to make it easier, but who knows. At that point I just thought ENOUGH! this run will just have to do... The mantling feature sounds a great idea though!

 

With regard to the HDR, Neuro emailed the chap I believe JCDenton and he sent us the code, we implemented but found it was sucking at least 30FPS so for now it is disabled in the build. In the demo video there was no HDR at all totally disabled in the SDK, but we did spend ages re-doing the lighting for the whole level after the HDR was removed.

 

CHeers

[Tels]

Hi All

 

Goodness me, it was quite a surprise to find this thread on your marvellous forum!

 

Erm, gosh, I didn't know you guys would read my sleep-deprived-coffeine-induced-10-seconds-to-think-30-seconds-to-post rants here

 

Anyway,

 

As has been suggested, there probably is a fair amount of re-inventing the wheel been going on with our mod - but the thing is, we always wanted to do as much of the work ourselves for our own satisfaction.

 

This is indeed quite a good thing - I usually work on the same principles. However, sometimes it is easy to get absorbed in the "lets code it" parts and not see that a lot of things can (and should) be re-used. I mean, you use the D3 engine, and are not writing your own engine, either, true?

 

I don't mean to belittle your work, I just think that the *users* would be more happy with a finished mod, than with a half-finished-but-100%-rewritten-to-developer-satisfaction one

 

Anyway, we are open to sharing stuff as all our releases are open source (as much as is possible with D3), so feel free to ask for anything.

 

Btw, I beta-tested Arx[1], so I love to see this game getting some attention and your work surely looks very interesting!

 

1: AFAIR I was the one who complained that rats did not drop meat, then they added it, then players accumulated so much food that they never did run out of it... The developers surely hated me back then

[nbohr1more]

Congrats on the completion of your non-linear level-transition SDK work!

 

(And thanks to solarspace specifically for helping to fix that TDM Arrow bug).

 

I hope someone comes through and makes those monsters for you, that Rat-man concept art is great!

[solarsplace]

Congrats on the completion of your non-linear level-transition SDK work!

 

(And thanks to solarspace specifically for helping to fix that TDM Arrow bug).

 

I hope someone comes through and makes those monsters for you, that Rat-man concept art is great!

 

Hi nbohr1more

 

Thanks for the kind words!

 

It was actually pretty good fun, but also bloody hard work fixing that arrow in the head bug, took quite a while to find that one! - I will try and do some more for you in the future.

 

The hunt for a modeller is not going particularly well unfortunately - taken it upon myself to start learning how to animate models now - it isn't easy - and I'm just working with a chicken model atm

 

oh well....

 

cheers guys

[Baddcog]

I could help animating a chicken model, would be nice to have in TDM too.

 

although monsters and whatnot can take quite awhile and I've got mapping and updates to work on, also working on a monster or 2 of my own that get priorities.

 

Animating the chicken though, I could probably do that and be done within a few weeks

(once my broken wrist is in better shape).

 

I have Max 7 so I'd need compatible files, either Max7/earlier or FBX, obj,3ds...

[Bikerdude]

Actually, I was planning to do a small tutorial on making caves realistic caves in Blender for use in D3, hopefully that will be of some use to some TDM map makers...

 

hey Solar

 

I like the sound of that, I like the sound of that very much indeed

 

;-)

 

ps. Chickens, hell yeah!

Edited October 13, 2010 by Bikerdude