oneofthe8devilz

Well for now I guess I am planning to keep the stealth aspect in my projects as simplistic and multiplayer compatible as possible. I am aware that The Dark Mod seems to have a very sophisticated AI & Lighting based stealth system but I doubt it has been written with co-op multiplayer in mind which likely will require some rewriting in order to make it compatible within a multiplayer environment. The last thing I currently look for is to initiate another multi-team, multi-year and multi-thousand dollar project. It's just not feasible as a single person at this point in time.

Yeah, I started working on basic AI scripting to introduce stealth gameplay.

Glad you like it... but as you see my client's rendering settings is not everyone's thing. And no matter how often I repeat that the visuals are completely customize-able to everyone's individual/personal liking, it seems to be something that often gets ignored or misunderstood by people that dislike my personal visual preference... Maybe I should create an interactive demonstration in form of an animated GIF to showcase to people how unique and different the client can look with different clientside visual settings/configurations The jerky animations are partly caused by the fact that I have temporarily disabled Doom3's default IK system and partly by collisions with the smaller stone objects in the level. Once I re-enable the IK system and fine-tweak the level objects, navigation and animation playback around that map should become significantly smoother. ***Update*** I made this little comparison GIF animation which only shows a few examples of how differently the game can be setup to look on the Client: So if you don't like the Bloom... just change or disable it, If you don't like the Depth of Field... just change or disable it, If you don't like the HDR Rendering... just change or disable it, If you don't like the SoftShadows... just change or disabled them, If you'd like a different ColorGrading ... just set it ... etc etc etc Example GIF showcase (click to open it) http://www.scared-pixel-studios.com/public/images/venture/Venture.ClientSide.Visual.Settings.gif

Venture Online PlayTest 2019 [idtech] (click the image to watch the youtube video) ClientSide Online Playtest connected to a Dedicated Server testing fully operational FirstPerson and ThirdPerson Views and Animations replicated across the Network/Internet with the new hybrid idtech4 engine. ***Update*** For the people that find the lighting intensity in the video too strong I made this little comparison GIF animation which shows a few of many possible examples of how differently the game can be setup to look on the Client: So if you don't like the Bloom... just change or disable it, If you don't like the Depth of Field... just change or disable it, If you don't like the HDR Rendering... just change or disable it, If you don't like the SoftShadows... just change or disabled them, If you'd like a different ColorGrading ... just set it ... etc etc etc Example GIF showcase (click to open it) http://www.scared-pixel-studios.com/public/images/venture/Venture.ClientSide.Visual.Settings.gif

Hey RPGista, I am and always have been open for cooperation and yes people will be able to create assets mods for any of my idtech4 projects which includes submods, maps and asset modifications of any sort. As for the thief themed coop project, I always strife to develop things in a fashion so that it can be played both by a single person or in cooperative multiplayer. A stealth mechanic is definitely part of the plan (and in fact already rudimentary implemented) as it is crucial to a thief themed game, though it might not be as sophisticated as the TDM stealth system due to resource limitations that come with a 1-man-team. As for the map design.. I plan to recreate some of my favorite Thief: Deadly Shadow missions in idtech4 and potentially expand from there with some adjustments. For example in a coop environment where a mission is played by multiple players an optional "respawn option" for guards and other npcs/monsters might be beneficial to keep the stealth challenge up while the mission is played by several people where neutralized patrolling guards for example will be replaced within a few minutes forcing players to always keep an eye on their surroundings...

It's not about going "as far as doing something"... See most of these projects have begun way before the November 23rd 2011 Doom3 GPL source code release and therefore naturally are based on the 2007 and earlier SDKs. So when you write that I am "subject to the GPL" I simply corrected you about the facts. There is nothing "darn repulsive" about setting the facts straight IMO.

Not if I don't use the GPL code in the first place but instead the Doom3 1.3.1 SDK released back in 2007. DOOM 3 SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT KIT LIMITED USE LICENSE AGREEMENT There has been this great controversy in the past where none of the original Doom3 coop multiplayer mod developers (OpenCoop and LastManStanding) have actually released their source code and they can't be forced to do so due to the original Doom3 1.3.1 SDK Licence. MCS is being developed through that very same licence too and a followup of a thief themed project will most likely be as well.

Greetings to everyone. I have been messaged by Freyk over at moddb.com and decided to reply to his questions and requests here in the forum. The core TDM members and devs might still remember that there had been a couple of attempts in the past by me and others to see if there is any common ground/interest in a cooperation thief themed idtech4 multiplayer/coop project. And back then it seemed that the differences in artistic and gameplay-wise development direction were diverging too much to actually be able to establish a team of devs, ready to dedicate some serious non-paid development time to it. And so I guess everyone went on with what we were busy at the time. Whenever I could, I kept myself updated about the TDM project development and you guys surely made some impressive progress both technically and community wise. In terms of my agenda with a thief based project (among many other projects) I decided to push on development of my Doom3 MCS PVE/COOP project (where an update release is due this year) and then use that new codebase to continue work on a thief themed idtech4 multiplayer/coop title. Now naturally as most of the time I am a "1- man-army-team" these endeavors are multi-year-commitments but the TDM team itself is no stranger to decades long dedication driven by the love and passion for idtech4 and the thief universe... In the past years many iterations of my thief themed idtech4 WIP project have been internally tested and further developed and once the MCS update is published I am looking forward to further delve back into developing those features into a full-fledged playable project, which is also why sadly I am currently not at will or liberty to share assets or code from the project, unless a new dedicated devteam (as unlikely as this may be) is formed with the goal to develop a multiplayer coop thief themed idtech4 project to completion. Thanks for your interest and keep up the great TDM dev work.

Yes, enhanced shadow jittering/filtering is on the to-do list...

IdTech Hybrid Engine and Netcode Showcase ======================================= (click the animated image to watch the youtube video) I remember lately the community having debates about whether to stick with the original Doom3 codebase or to migrate to Doom3 BFG... And while arguments were made for and against from both sides (Sikkmod vs RBDOOM-3-BFG for example) I always wondered why not creating a hybrid approach that takes the advantages of each codebase utilizing the best of both worlds... This showcase consists of a code and assets merge of multiple previous prototype projects incorporating trebor's shadowmapping, sikkpin's hdr lighting, zombie's dungeon map and MCS's game & netcode... It still runs on Doom3's original framework allowing easy modding (with a custom gamex86.dll) and dedicated server hosting and browsing... Aside from the specifically showcased unified soft-shadow-mapping and high-dynamic-range-lighting, it was also as usual important for me to demonstrate that those features flawlessly work together with MCS's network synced AI over a high latency low bandwidth Server <-> Client connection (simulating a server/client distance of about 10000 kilometers). As showcased in its current state, it is a proof of concept build and I don't feel at liberty to predict when and if at all it will make it into a final, releasable project, since there are currently too many factors but as you'll notice, it runs remarkably stable and performant.

Yes indeed, I finally re-discovered this original co-op thread here at the forums and thought I would bring it up to date since the last post here seems to have been from "July 15th 2013"... Feel free to delete the "Offtopic" thread... as this is really the place this update should have gone to in the first place...

A little update on the Thief Deadly Shadows Themed Coop Project.. The "Thievious" project has been renamed to "Venture" and here is some test-footage running on idtech4... Thief: Deadly Shadows @ idtech4 by Oneofthe8devilz ============================================== Now porting a game to a complete different engine/codebase is of course a gigantic task (especially for a "one man" team) so when you watch the early WIP footage below please bear that in mind, with me still figuring out how to rebuild game assets, shaders and code the most efficient way. But the general idea is to slowly port the game mission by mission, asset by asset to idtech4... (click on the image to playback the youtube video) Garrett@NightmareBurrows@Venture (click the image to watch the youtube video) I am still looking for fellow modders to join this project to speed up the development...

Thanks for the nice feedback guys... It indeed is a lot of work and I could use any helping hand... The first one... "modifying the original TDS assets to work on idtech 4"

Garrett@NightmareBurrows@Venture (click the image to watch the youtube video) I am looking for fellow modders to join this project to speed up the development...

All my idtech4 projects are being released supporting windows, macOS and linux. Take a look at FMJ which has been released to all 3 OSs

Hey guys, first of all let me say how glad I am that there seems to be interest within this community to bring coop gameplay to the medieval stealth genre... About the TDS vs TDM discussion and which path I should pursue with this project, I would like to mention that neither option actually excludes the other. I am pretty sure that at a certain point (once we get to AI behavior) having a look at the TDM source code will be very beneficial to progress in that regard. But that door swings both ways because in order to implement a coop mode for TDM, one crucial aspect of that undertaking will be to add proper 3rd person movement animations to the character (until now only basic 3rd person animations have been implemented for TDM, due to design reasons (most TDM players want to play the game in first person only anyways) and due to technical reasons (the effort of getting these animations right, which is a very expensive and time consuming process were left out by the developers of TDM to be able to concentrate on other areas of the single player focused TDM gameplay). So instead of evaluating whether a port of TDS to idtech4 or a coop implementation to TDM would be the right way to go, I am convinced that both things can happen simultaneously. Some people might wonder why it actually takes so long to realize these concepts and while being a single person having to overcome technical and design based challenges on multiple layers of game development, that would be just part of the reason for the slow progress. The second even more important one is the state of the original codebase that we were provided with ( D3 1.3.1 ). In fact the original codebase is "sub-optimal" to provide smooth, lag-less multiplayer gameplay across the internet which would be crucial in order to achieve the atmosphere I am trying to target with this project. So the last one and a half years I spent a significant amount of time and financial resources trying to resolve the shortcomings of the idtech4 codebase, regarding the poorly performing netcode at high latency and low/unstable bandwidth conditions. For the ones of you interested in the details of the problem feel free to visit this d3 1.3.1 netcode thread, which describes the problem in detail. I currently have a AAA-Industry programmer working on the case but still cannot predict when and if at all a rewrite of the netcode will be successful. Once this rewrite is complete though, MCS will be able to roll out as a public beta and I can fully focus on my medieval/fantasy stealth projects here. If you guys have ideas on how we could accelerate this process I will be more than glad to hear about your suggestions. Certainly a reinforcement of capable netcode programmers OR a fund-raise of some sort could significantly speed up this process and free up resources for me so that I can start working faster and more efficient on the stealth projects...

Bikerdude & Goldchocobo, you guys did a fantastic job with this mission making it my absolute favorite TDM mission... Your re-texture work is superb and all those added quests and riddles are amazing (I am loving the mirror/light puzzle) making this a more than worthy reinterpretation of the "Evil Artist's" original design. A coop-spinoff of this TDM GateHouse fan mission with all its puzzles is on my "definite-to-do-list". Keep up that brilliant work

Interesting bias. Being the only person currently working on this project, would you agree that the workload for an individual to create content from scratch is exorbitantly higher, compared to rather recreating the already available story and assets from an existing game ? Second, since the main motivation for this project was to be able to play the game "Thief: Deadly Shadows" in a cooperative multiplayer environment enjoying the assets, the story and the general atmosphere of the original game, wouldn't it actually defy the initial purpose of experiencing that very same story, assets and atmosphere in coop in case I started to create content that deviates from the original game ?

Theoretically, Yes... But, there would be the option to release an installer that checks whether the user has "Thief: Deadly Shadows" installed on his PC. Providing an installer that can extract and copy assets from the "Thief: Deadly Shadows" game folder and place them in the according Doom3 mod folder on the fly... That is certainly technically achievable and should not violate any Copyright as the installer itself only ships with the mentioned instructions (without any of the copyright protected material included). Legal owners of "Thief: Deadly Shadows" and "Doom3" would be able to install and play it. Alternatively, once all major mechanics have been ported and are operational the copyright protected material could be replaced... That would be the beauty of having it running on code and assets that we have complete source access to. I already have created custom main character replacement for testing purposes: Sigh, youtube 3d playback stopped working for me a couple of days ago... So if this happened to you aswell you can still download the youtube 3d video and watch it locally on the sterescopic player of your choice (3D TV owners can also manually switch their TV to SBS stereo input (you might have to swap the left/right input) to watch the footage directly in 3D on youtube). (click the image to playback the youtube video) I haven't fully decided yet what way I will pursue, but I really think that is more a technicality rather than a true insurmountable obstacle. What do you guys think ?

The main reason I do this is because my codebase already supports cooperative multiplayer and while TDM has many very cool features, most of them have not been developed with multiplayer in mind, so getting those to run in a multiplayer environment across the internet might turn out a task, pretty tough pull off...

Oops my bad .. let me correct it

Master-Thief Garrett decided to visit the Venture universe for some quick R&R... High-Res Screenshot Link

Original idtechforums thread Being a big fan of medieval/fantasy/steampunk stealth games, I always regret that up to this point no major AAA studio bothered enough to release a cooperative version of the genre... And so due to the lack of coop content in that genre, I decided to try and get existing builds to work in COOP, that would allow players to enjoy that type of gameplay with friends across the internet... Now of course, given the fact that I am an individual with a fairly limited amount of resources and capabilities, I have to maximize code and asset acquisition, in case I ever expect to complete any project within a reasonable amount of time and release it to the community... Luckily for me the idtech community is an amazing place with extraordinary talented people, that are kind enough allowing me to use their top quality art and code for my community targeted coop projects... In The Shadows, Quake 1 Mod by Simon 'Sock' O'Callaghan ================================================= "In The Shadows" is a Quake 1 conversion that adds a stealth system and whole new campaign to Quake. Sneak past the enemies and/or try kill them safely from within the shadows while playing through the custom campaign avoiding detection... Simon was kind enough to provide his project's source code for internal testing and so with a few quite rudimentary changes to the code, I was able to enable coop-capability for the campaign... ... the Coop test session was recorded (click on the image to playback the youtube video) Then of course I got my own idtech4 based projects (FMJ,MCS,Venture) cooking and in the past I mentioned several times that I am a huge Thief:Deadly Shadows fan and the idea of being able to play it in COOP with a friend across the internet was intriguing enough to me to actually start and rebuilding the game within idtech4... Thief: Deadly Shadows @ idtech4 by Oneofthe8devilz ============================================ Now porting a game to a complete different engine/codebase is of course a gigantic task (especially for a "one man" team) so when you watch the early WIP footage below please bear that in mind, with me still figuring out how to rebuild game assets, shaders and code the most efficient way. But the general idea is to slowly port the game mission by mission, asset by asset to idtech4... (click on the image to playback the youtube video) Garrett@NightmareBurrows@Venture (click the image to watch the youtube video) I am looking for fellow modders to join this project to speed up the development... For the other COOP fanatics here, I will keep this thread updated with the progress I make over time... IdTech Hybrid Engine and Netcode Showcase ======================================= (click the animated image to watch the youtube video) I remember lately the community having debates about whether to stick with the original Doom3 codebase or to migrate to Doom3 BFG... And while arguments were made for and against from both sides (Sikkmod vs RBDOOM-3-BFG for example) I always wondered why not creating a hybrid approach that takes the advantages of each codebase utilizing the best of both worlds... This showcase consists of a code and assets merge of multiple previous prototype projects incorporating trebor's shadowmapping, sikkpin's hdr lighting, zombie's dungeon map and MCS's game & netcode... It still runs on Doom3's original framework allowing easy modding (with a custom gamex86.dll) and dedicated server hosting and browsing... Aside from the specifically showcased unified soft-shadow-mapping and high-dynamic-range-lighting, it was also as usual important for me to demonstrate that those features flawlessly work together with MCS's network synced AI over a high latency low bandwidth Server <-> Client connection (simulating a server/client distance of about 10000 kilometers). Venture Online PlayTest 2019 [idtech] ======================================= (click the image to watch the youtube video) ClientSide Online Playtest connected to a Dedicated Server testing fully operational FirstPerson and ThirdPerson Views and Animations replicated across the Network/Internet with the new hybrid idtech4 engine. ***Update*** For the people that find the lighting intensity in the video too strong I made this little comparison GIF animation which shows a few of many possible examples of how differently the game can be setup to look on the Client: So if you don't like the Bloom... just change or disable it, If you don't like the Depth of Field... just change or disable it, If you don't like the HDR Rendering... just change or disable it, If you don't like the SoftShadows... just change or disabled them, If you'd like a different ColorGrading ... just set it ... etc etc etc Example GIF showcase (click to open it) http://www.scared-pixel-studios.com/public/images/venture/Venture.ClientSide.Visual.Settings.gif As showcased in its current state, it is a proof of concept build and I don't feel at liberty to predict when and if at all it will make it into a final, releasable project, since there are currently too many factors but as you'll notice, it runs remarkably stable and performant.