TDM after D3 Source code release

[demagogue]

Bam!

 

Good news is good. =)

[SiyahParsomen]

Yes!

 

It's so close now!

[lost_soul]

So, this probably means "a matter of days", and not "a matter of weeks (or months)"

 

Great news!

[PranQster]

Sweet!

[Glyph Seeker]

Interesting Times! =-3

[New Horizon]

So, this probably means "a matter of days", and not "a matter of weeks (or months)"

 

If they employ the same lawyers Eidos has looking into the Thief 2 source code, then we could be waiting another 2 years. lol

[lost_soul]

I know somebody around here has a time machine, so... When the source code comes out, will we be able to just compile Doom 3 and expect TDM to work as it currently does with the proprietary version? My guess is the TDM team will have to do a little work to get TDM compatible with the open source version, because I would imagine id has changed some things for the OSS version of Doom 3. For example, I'm sure Punkbuster is gone and they may have had to change the shadowing algorithm.

 

@NH: I was so close to making a comment like that, but I managed to restrain myself. lol

Edited October 31, 2011 by lost_soul

[SiyahParsomen]

Think positive, cross fingers.

[Shadowhide]

My guess is the TDM team will have to do a little work to get TDM compatible with the open source version

a little work huh ?

For example, I'm sure Punkbuster is gone and they may have had to change the shadowing algorithm.

punkbuster is the multiplayer feature,it has nothing to do with the shadowing algorithm

[New Horizon]

punkbuster is the multiplayer feature,it has nothing to do with the shadowing algorithm

 

He wasn't suggesting Punkbuster was the shadowing algorithm...he said punkbuster was likely removed....'and'...they may have had to change the shadowing.

[Shadowhide]

aww,im so dumb

[nbohr1more]

I imagine they will release a new executable (and patch) with the Source. So, without doing any nifty optimizations (etc) it will (likely) initially be no more work than if they released another patch.

 

Of course, that is presuming conservative changes... Whether a source release or "just a patch" if the changes are drastic, so too will the amount of work needed...

[deadite4]

Also gotta remember any inherits from /base will need to be made/moved over to the standalone version. We've been figuring at hexen that the most time consuming of it all will be the little nuances that easily go unnoticed. Probably going to be a lot of "yep, we missed that too" moments, just a bunch of little stuff that will be most annoying.

[Springheel]

Also gotta remember any inherits from /base will need to be made/moved over to the standalone version.

 

There's not going to be a standalone version any time soon...we'd have to replace hundreds of assets first.

[rich_is_bored]

From an artistic standpoint a standalone TDM is a far off thing. Obviously you can't replace hundreds of assets with assets of equal or better quality in short order. But from a technical standpoint, it should be fairly simple. Gut the assets that you can't distribute and replace them with a handful of placeholders.

 

Obviously such an incomplete and aesthetically broken package isn't representative of TDM as a final product but that's what separate builds are for. Misconceptions should be easy to avoid. You can incorporate the phrase "experimental build" into every placeholder asset and the official build can remain a mod that requires Doom 3 until you feel merging is appropriate.

[lost_soul]

Hopefully a lot of "good enough" assets can be scraped together from other OSS game projects to fill in at least some of the holes. For example, OpenArena had some pretty good textures (especially gothic ones).

Edited November 1, 2011 by lost_soul

[Hyeron]

Hopefully a lot of "good enough" assets can be scraped together from other OSS game projects to fill in at least some of the holes. For example, OpenArena had some pretty good textures (especially gothic ones).

Or QRP and/or Rygel's pack (all for Quake 1). There should be quite a few easy fits in there (and of a MUCH better quality than OpenArena imho), provided they agree with TDM re-using their work.

[jaxa]

I can't wait to see what changes TDM could make almost immediately. Which brings me to a question: are there plans to roll in a bunch of pending small tweaks and fixes in with 1.07 or a rapid release 1.08? Stuff that ends up being a one line change that adds 5 FPS (lol)? First thing that came to my mind was the lightgem code.

 

(Forums warns of new posts - tis the future!)

Edited November 1, 2011 by jaxa

[New Horizon]

In terms of assets needing replacing, we're not only referring to textures...they're probably the easiest thing to replace. TDM shares animations, particles and sounds with D3. I'm sure there are also scripts...etc. It's going to require a community effort if people are genuniely serious about untethering TDM from D3. I would love to see it, but we can't make any promises until we know we're going to have help doing it.

[Hyeron]

True enough. On days like these I loathe being a complete moron with no coding skill apart from C=64 BASIC.

Edited November 1, 2011 by Hyeron

[Springheel]

But from a technical standpoint, it should be fairly simple. Gut the assets that you can't distribute and replace them with a handful of placeholders.

 

It's not quite that easy. The werebeast, for example, uses the D3 imp skeleton and animations. There's no way to replace those without creating new ones from scratch, which is a lot of work, even if you don't care about the resulting quality.

 

Obviously such an incomplete and aesthetically broken package isn't representative of TDM as a final product but that's what separate builds are for. Misconceptions should be easy to avoid.

 

I'm not confident of any theory that depends on the intelligence and common sense of the end user.

 

An option that might be more realistic is a bare-bones demo version of TDM that can play a few stripped down missions, but even that would take significant effort; just locating and removing all the D3 assets would be challenging.

[Komag]

a Standalone Dark Mod is VERY appealing though! I know this has been discussed ad nauseum, but now that the actual real possibility appears imminent, we can't help but address it again.

 

Imagine how much more fans would enjoy downloading one installer, and installing the whole Dark Mod, rather than dealing with first LOCATING and then BUYING and then INSTALLING Doom 3 (and then PATCHING it), and THEN downloading and installing Dark Mod. It would cut out so many steps which, while we know are not all that hard, DO get in the way mentally at least of a lot of people.

 

But I realize it's a TON of relatively thankless mind-numbing work, and I know I'M not going to do any of it personally, so it's probably pretty pointless for me to say anything ;-p

[demagogue]

@Springheel, Just to put your response into context, the post you were responding to was implying that the Hexen team was already talking about making a standalone version for themselves and replacing the D3 assets they need for that. (Actually: here's their thread about it.) There's bound to be a lot of overlap with what we need, so at the very least it's in our interest to follow it.

 

It seems from their thread that we use more D3 assets, though, so we'd still have a lot of work to do even with their work, but at least they're going to shorten the distance to the finish line if they go ahead.

[New Horizon]

I would be all for helping out in whatever way I could. I would be happy to play around in the particle editor to create our own Dark Mod versions of particles.

 

I think the Hexen folk created a lot of their own animations, at least that's what I recall reading somewhere...so perhaps we could work out a trade with them to replace some of ours that rely on D3 assets.

[New Horizon]

double post