Hi everyone, and thanks a lot for the quick answers, I really appreciate it, even if I don't quote you personally I'm thankful for every answer
Oh and while I'm at it, thanks for the forum administrator among you that added a Dark Theme to this forum: I cannot stand bright light due to my handicap, usually my own web browser settings (black background + green fonts color) work but sometime it makes some pages unusable if contains white images used as icons for example, so I had to wear sunglasses for a few hours to browse the forum more or less comfortably before noticing that I could turn a Dark Theme on which makes reading much less painful for the eyes, thank your for adding that option
Thanks for the information, HMart, I'll check that
LDAsh, Demagogue and Stgatilov, thanks for your replies, about your interrogations regarding how would I manage to sell a game developed under a GPL licence, well I'll have to remain mysterious for now, but that's something I have thoroughly thought about
I'll never use Steam to sell the game though, I was absolutely against Steam from the very beginning of its appearance and it's only because I'm forced to install it and to play games that I use it, so for me it has always been out of question to become dependent to Steam's system... not to mention that they've started to behave as political censors according to what I've heard not too long ago, so I'm not going to risk investing 5 years of work and expenses just to end up censored for being "problematic" or other vague and non-defined concepts at the whim of anyone from Steam.
Anyway, thank you Nbohr1more and the other TDM developpers
Now all I need to do is to contact someone where I live who's specialized in the legal and fiscal aspects of commerce to see if my idea is viable, but the way I thought it out, it should be.
Actually the only thing that would make it non-viable is whether it would be Governmentally Approved by the State or not to create something and sell it without having to create a company and be registered as a seller/artist/editor first, that whole usual administrative bullshyte here requiring people to find by themselves which pigeonhole they can belong to and face the fiscal consequences if they make the sightliest mistake...
Yeah, that's what I had planned from the beginning actually: to not use your assets since they belong to you all, and also because, as a matter of fact, well, my game's universe being contemporary, I don't need any of TDM's sounds, 3D models, musics, textures, objects etc
For example, most of the locations of the game's story and universe are "modern day-ish" for lack of a better word: glass buildings, appartments, houses, warehouses, etc... about the music and sounds, that's something I've planned to create on my own anyway, I just need to "get back at it again" and find a GPL music editor or maybe, if I finally, definitively, decide to go for a 1970's style music, I'll simply contract Shawn Lee, his work on Bully/Canis Canem Edit's music is exceptionnal.
So in a nutshell, I won't need to use any of TDM's assets, and for the couple of things "close from TDM's assets" such as old manors & antique objects and the related textures that will be needed since I've planned to have "old areas" in the ficticious city I've created as the main location of the game's story, I'll contract people to make that.
Thanks a lot for the clarification OrbWeaver, I tended to confuse Dark Radiant and The Dark Mod source code until then
And about your suggestion, you guessed exactly what I had in mind for the development of my game
Well, the problem with Unity or Unreal is that they remain proprietary engines somehow, at least that's how I understand it, and I think this may cause problems notably with the After-Sales Service Support... since to modify Unity or Unreal one needs to pay a licence as far as I know, it means I'll be the only one, with the dedicated programmer I will hire or form a partnership with, to solve bugs: however, what if some bugs appearing after the game release are way beyond that programmer's capabilities ?
My reasoning is that one of the interests of using a GPL engine such as Id Tech 4, and specifically this one as it's a quite well-known one, is that since anyone can work on it at anytime after the release, even the most complicated bugs to resolve could be solved by people much more competent than my programmer or than me -all I've did until now about coding is trying to write code in Turbo Pascal 7 when I was 12: most of the time it didn't work, and when it did, it actually worked not the way I wanted but I didn't dare to object. It may anger the Machine Spirit, you never know, so let Its Sacred Will decide of what It will do.
Godot, that's an engine I've never heard about... thank you for the information, I'll do some searches on that, however since Datiswous said that their 3D engine may be less sophisticated than id Tech 4, I may not use Godot, but I'll see... for the moment I still tend to think that TDM is the best solution, notably since my game will include stealth gameplay mechanics and Thief-based stealth gameplay is the only viable stealth gameplay method ever made.
One thing I wonder, though, is if Id Tech 4's damage system would work to translate my PnP RPG gameplay system... I will make tests in the coming weeks with Dark Radiant to see what I can do with projectile-based weapons, and study more how the .PAK files about weapons work: in TDM there's only a bow and it seems to be treated as a projectile-based weapon, I'm going to try to see how the whole thing works regarding accuracy, "magazine capacity", etc, by hoping there are comments left beside the code lines.
If anyone has information on this subject, how the bow works technically in its .PAK file, I'm all ears
Thanks for the suggestion, I've started reading about dhewm3 since yesterday, but apart a cleaner code, what more does it have than TDM ?
No offense taken
I'm not surprised that from time to time people pop up here, ask a few enthusiastic questions about a project they're starting and eventually never come back because the task is more difficult than they initially thought, personally I'm fully awayre that creating a FPS-RPG almost "by myself" is the kind of accomplishment that would be called miraculous, but I'm confident I can make it if I find a competent programmer, as I've been creating homebrew RPG systems since a long time and almost made it professionally if the team didn't blew up because of unresolved differences of vision and pent-up animosity between a few people that grew until it was too late, so after modding a few games to test my ideas I think that's doable.
That failed project I just mentioned is actually the reason why I'm more inclined to not form a team of developers and instead to contract people anywhere I could find them: by "contracted", I mean paying people here or there to realize a single work, be it an animation, a 3D model, etc, the same way, say, a shop owner would contract a painter to create a painting for the shop's storefront. When you contract people that are outsiders to your project instead of having to juggle with the egos of a dedicated team, you limit the risk of failure
I do have another potential project on the side, that said, totally unrelated to video games and that is so daring that I'd be the first surprised if I manage to set it in motion, so if suddently I disappear from The Dark Mod Forums after 6 months of activity, don't be surprised, even if I'll do my best to run both projects at the same time, given that this second one is pretty long-winded and can remain casually "tried on the side" while I work on that main video game project.
Anyway, about the recurrent questions that are asked once or twice a year in similar topics such as "Why aren't you on Steam? When is the campaign coming? Can I use your stuff for my commercial project? Why aren't you doing a remake of Thief Gold?", maybe creating a FAQ and making it a sticky topic would work, personally I haven't found something like that in the various sections of the forum, maybe I've missed it that said.