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Thief 2 / SS2 / Deep Cover Source


jaxa

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However, even if that is forthcoming, how much can you realistically do with a 12 year old engine?

Quake 1 -> Darkplaces (Nexuiz, etc.)

Quake 2 -> Overdose (http://team-blur-games.com/overdose/)

 

laugh.gif

Edited by lowenz

Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

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(Duke Nukem 3D)

 

There's also a ~3 GB beautiful texture pack floating around for Quake 1.

 

These engines have real-time lighting/shadows now, but of course it isn't that simple. Somebody has to go through all of the original levels and place light sources or it won't look right. This has already been done for Quake and is being done for Duke3d. Hopefully we'll see classic Doom with real-time lighting some day. That would be cool.

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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(Duke Nukem 3D)

Prettier than some DNF screenshots that were released back in the day. I wonder how one of the more impressive maps like Bedrone would look like with these fixes.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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(Duke Nukem 3D)

 

There's also a ~3 GB beautiful texture pack floating around for Quake 1.

 

These engines have real-time lighting/shadows now, but of course it isn't that simple. Somebody has to go through all of the original levels and place light sources or it won't look right. This has already been done for Quake and is being done for Duke3d. Hopefully we'll see classic Doom with real-time lighting some day. That would be cool.

New complete pack for Q1 Darkplaces is around the corner: http://facelift.quakedev.com/ :D

Edited by lowenz

Task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody see. - E.S.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So I PM'd Rene's replacement at Eidos for an update on the source code that was given to Eidos nearly a year ago. The response...

 

Hey there,

 

I'm not aware of this package Eidos has. Could you shed more light on it?

 

 

They get the code handed to them a year ago and now they're not aware of it. lol

Yup...the source code is in GREAT hands. FFS. <_<

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  • 6 months later...

[DELETED]

 

Seems to me that even if Eidos clamp down on use of the source, eg, to completely recompile and issue a new exe, it could still be used for information to produce code for patches and extensions?

 

Only by blackboxing (according to the pathetic rules surrounding "intellectual property". Basically if you read the source and they can prove it, you're "tainted". You can still make specifications of file formats and such, that another programmer could use to reimplement (but you can't work directly on the code).

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The problem with this concept is that Volca and most of the most talented coders (and avid Thief fans) have seen the source.

 

Who's left to do the blackboxing now?

 

The group that is orchestrating all the code experiments appears to be super-paranoid (for good reason) and thus new blood is already a tough proposition...

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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... or they could ignore the code. Don't touch it, don't work on it, etc. Spend the time improving TDM instead. And when Thief 4 roles around, ignore that too. How well would the game do if there were no fan missions made for it and the community ignored it as a whole?

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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It's worth working on because of all the 700+ past FMs. We want to be damn sure we'll always be able to play them, so we need an open source platform.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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... or they could ignore the code. Don't touch it, don't work on it, etc. Spend the time improving TDM instead. And when Thief 4 roles around, ignore that too. How well would the game do if there were no fan missions made for it and the community ignored it as a whole?

 

It is evident that some people plain do not want to get involved in TDM. Disappointing, and in a way strange, but we should respect their wishes.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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I'll bet by the time they approve the source code release, we'll be able to play Thief 1/2 under ReactOS running on Dosbox. I already ran Windows 95 in Dosbox just because I was bored one day and wanted a bit of a challenge. Somebody is writing a 3DFX Voodoo emulator for Dosbox too, so this really could happen.

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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For a cheap laugh ask on TTLG about the source or look at similar threads and hear the cloak and dagger, wink wink nudge nudge type responses.

 

I think Windows compatibility is on the DOSBox "world domination wishlist". Although I would expect Wine on Windows to dominate by 2020.

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The problem with this concept is that Volca and most of the most talented coders (and avid Thief fans) have seen the source.

 

Who's left to do the blackboxing now?

 

The group that is orchestrating all the code experiments appears to be super-paranoid (for good reason) and thus new blood is already a tough proposition...

 

It's even worse than that - the blackboxing really can only be carried out by companies. A ruthless laywer at Eidos for instance could just prosecute you anyway - even if you "blackboxed", they could easily ruin you by alleging otherwise. Just watch how paranoid the wine project is about you declaring you've never seen the windows source (thus they can't be held responsible if you did, they'll just remove all your code), and they have the EFF.

 

Money rules.

Edited by i30817
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It's sort of a strange practice in terms of social good.

 

I mean if you were writing a constitution and wanted to define the scope of copyright protection, and your goal is what contributes to the most social good, you'd think incentivizing all this redundant time-consuming work for massively outdated software anyway would be sort of an odd solution. It's like we'll let you use these algorithms for public benefit only if you develop them in about the most inefficient, costly, & redundant way possible.

 

But then again if there weren't any protected profit motive coming out of those algorithms then they'd never have been developed in the first place, and society is even worse off and constantly lagging from where the tech could be. So it's not a simple thing, in terms of social benefit, to just make code inherently open source either.

 

But I wonder about just making the duration of copyright protection for code pretty short, like 8-10 years. The public gets the full benefit of outdated tech sooner, and maybe it would really be like fire at the feet to get software innovation moving as quickly as the hardware so companies can't just sit on outdated software that isn't doing them much benefit anymore but could be doing a lot of social benefit if it were released... And then it's an automatic process so companies don't have to spend money analyzing it & worrying about leaks (even if they wanted to release something for PR reasons, they have so many legal traps to worry about as it is now.)

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Failed mod projects and mappers usually don't share their resources - what incentive is there for whistleblowers to go digging if they know a corporate or law anvil is gonna drop on their heads? =-/

"No proposition Euclid wrote,

No formulae the text-books know,

Will turn the bullet from your coat,

Or ward the tulwar's downward blow

Strike hard who cares—shoot straight who can—

The odds are on the cheaper man."

 

From 'Arithmetic on the Frontier' by Rudyard Kipling

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It is evident that some people plain do not want to get involved in TDM. Disappointing, and in a way strange, but we should respect their wishes.

 

Do you think they're simply waiting for the Doom 3 source code release? (IF it gets released)

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Do you think they're simply waiting for the Doom 3 source code release? (IF it gets released)

No, I don't think that's keeping them. Why would it (it's not like Doom3 isn't dirt cheap by now)? A lot of possible reasons from not liking the mod to burnout to old hardware to inertia.

Edited by Melan

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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I was playing Dragon Age 1 yesterday and thought 'these visuals are in many ways not as good as Thief 1 and this is a 2009 game. I noticed the AI have those dummy shadows attached below the feet as it were. It reminded me this is present in T2 but broken so if enabled the AI had like a flashing luminous shadow under the feet. So got me wondering, seems like that might be 'easily' fixable in the source. Anyone know if that is on the agenda to be fixed?

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If they are such good coders why couldn't they have started from scratch and make their own stealth game and not use stolen looking glass code.

 

in the time they've been waiting for eidos to release the code, find the code after losing it, re-release the code, they could have written an emulator to run the old maps better than the dying engine.

Edited by stumpy
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