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Roadmap for TDM in 2020


mcmike1489

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third person would be also a nice feature (or more shadows from the player activated) 

well, there is opentomb and Rivensin

list of commercial games with source: 
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games_with_available_source_code 

Edited by freyk

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There are also a lot of fan maps for Tomb Raider, I think the 4th one. Unfortunately they never had a clean & unified FM installer like Thief 2 had, so a lot of TR FMs one has to self-install, and some are installed differently than others. That was always a big stumbling block on the whole scene and community gelling like it did for Thief. 

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Having an open-source engine is a lot more exciting for every programmer than converting a project to a new engine. You can just implement the features you want yourself and actually learn how they work, which is really exciting. And honestly, UE4 doesn't add that many new features. Granted, there is some nice motion blur and depth of field as well as different SSAO implementations. Especially the latter would be a welcome addition to TDM, which I planned to tackle some time ago, but then life got in the way! ?

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6 hours ago, STiFU said:

Having an open-source engine is a lot more exciting for every programmer than converting a project to a new engine. You can just implement the features you want yourself and actually learn how they work, which is really exciting. And honestly, UE4 doesn't add that many new features. Granted, there is some nice motion blur and depth of field as well as different SSAO implementations. Especially the latter would be a welcome addition to TDM, which I planned to tackle some time ago, but then life got in the way! ?

Still have flashbacks of awful motion blur, bloom, HDR in some games. I swear that it worsens my eye sight when done poorly. Some developers don't know the limits.

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"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

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7 hours ago, STiFU said:

UE4 doesn't add that many new features.

UE4 has tons of new features, even in terms of rendering alone. You have BRDF materials, different types of lighting, where you can use forward and deferred rendering where needed, tons of useful material functions, etc. And it offers much better performance in comparison to OpenGL.

Edited by peter_spy
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1 hour ago, peter_spy said:

UE4 has tons of new features, even in terms of rendering alone.

Still UE4 also has disadvantages, even in professional games like "The Outer Worlds" I get ugly texture-popping-in-effects I haven't seen that bad since the original "Rage"!

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That depends stuff like your hardware, texture size, and in-engine texture streaming configuration. It's not engine's fault per se, more like poor optimization on devs' side. Texture popping has been there since UE3, and it most cases it was a problem of optimization.

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A lot of contemporary rendering effects make a bigger difference for outside areas in daylight, but for cramped interior spaces with sparse lighting like our game, there's just not as much opportunities for them to stand out. They'd still be nice to have if someone did the work, but our game is doing great even without them.

For visual improvements, I think the biggest added value for TDM would be more high quality assets, especially set piece types, like set collections of interior pieces and architectural pieces that all fit together for particular types of spaces.

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7 hours ago, mcmike1489 said:

Imagine running TDM in UE4, the graphics would look so realistic.

They look good enough for me now but just getting TDM assets into UE4 (like is) will not make them look any more realistic than they do now, TDM assets were not made for PBR (physically based rendering) and that imo is 99% of what makes UE4 games look like that. 

Also IMO TDM team will never change engines now, not after so many years of work (and learning to master) the current one, specially with so many missions already made. That would be throwing peoples years of work into the trash. No TDM will stay in id tech 4 for years to come and personally I don't see anything bad on that, for the contrary.

Edited by HMart
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Yeah, true. TDM is good just the way it is. One thing I would love to see but it will never happen because of so much work to do is release TDM on the PS4 and Xbox One systems. A console version would be great, but it's alot of work to do and using the source code for that is very difficult.

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Btw. it's not like realistic graphics has anything to do with UE4 or any newer engine specifically. It's just that BRDF shaders make it easier to create more physically-accurate materials. But that doesn't stop artists from creating more stylized look, if that's more suitable for their game.

 

Btw. if anyone's interested: https://80.lv/articles/realistic-vs-stylized-technique-overview/

Edited by peter_spy
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  • 2 months later...

Hi, I have  a new feature for TDM, I'm new to this forum, but I had an idea many years ago that I recently implemented myself.  I downed the source code, learned a little C++ and made it.  It is actually in a "beta stage", so what I want to do first is post a video of my new feature for everyone to see.  I think it's really cool.  I'll post and update when it's ready.  My code is already working, I only compiled and tested on linux.  Next (after my video) could come a windows port for everyone to test.

Please tell me if this is the right thread to post this, or if "new features" should belong somewhere else in the forum.  Thank you.

Edited by No Trickster
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20 minutes ago, No Trickster said:

Hi, I have  a new feature for TDM, I'm new to this forum, but I had an idea many years ago that I recently implemented myself.  I downed the source code, learned a little C++ and made it.  It is actually in a "beta stage", so what I want to do first is post a video of my new feature for everyone to see.  I think it's really cool.  I'll post and update when it's ready.  My code is already working, I only compiled and tested on linux.  Next (after my video) could come a windows port for everyone to test.

Please tell me if this is the right thread to post this, or if "new features" should belong somewhere else in the forum.  Thank you.

Do you want to share what the new feature is?

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8 minutes ago, Springheel said:

Do you want to share what the new feature is?

Not right now, I want first to post the video, so you see I'm not bluffing.  😀 .  I have seen lot's of "I would like to make this" that never come to life.  So I'll start backwards, showing something is done, and then sharing it with everyone.  I can tell you this:  it is "player view" related, so this change won't affect the engine, nor the TDM, nor missions nor anything.  I think this is so basic that it shoulnd't affect anything in the game.  (My previous post told about "windows port" ... I also want to make clear that I won't have any trouble in submitting a patch with the code, it is not my wish to only share the .exe with windows users without providing the code)

Edited by No Trickster
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There is a lot that goes into discussions of new features, so it's good to go in without expectations. But it's always interesting to see what people have been working on.

Also, no expectations or anything, but will 2020 be the year somebody wants to take on multiplayer? I'm just asking for a friend. 😆

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