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Roadmap for TDM in 2020


mcmike1489

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5 hours ago, snowy said:

 For new content authors, the tool requires a large time investment. Maybe there's also room for an easier and much more limited tool. ... Or simply creating and playing their own first missions quickly.

 

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5 hours ago, snowy said:

Moving to another engine killed a number of commercial game projects. Most recently it put System Shock 3 in a lot of trouble. And that project is coming from some of the people that gave us Ultima Underworld, Thief and Deus Ex.

I think moving to another engine was the least of the problem. It's just that those guys are a bunch of incompetent shits. Sorry to have to say it like that. Underworld Ascendant was a pile of crap, and now they don't manage a System Shock 3 either. If it was me, they should sell their franchises to teams which can handle such projects. Otherside Entertainment clearly have proven that they can't.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Thief and System Shock franchises. But, really, they are not capable to do them. 

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Rebuilding the entire game on a different engine is an interesting way to improve the mod, in the same way that rebuilding the whole of human civilisation in a colony on Mars is an interesting solution to climate change.

Fun to discuss, maybe even to write a short story about, but not even remotely feasible in real life.

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3 minutes ago, Jetrell said:

However, is it at all possible to develop a DarkRadiant "lite" version?

In theory it would always be possible to make a build of DarkRadiant without certain features (this is what I usually understand by a "lite version" of software), but I don't really see what problem that would solve. If there are usability issues with DR it would be much better to fix those, rather than maintain a separate version of the software with missing features.

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23 minutes ago, OrbWeaver said:

In theory it would always be possible to make a build of DarkRadiant without certain features (this is what I usually understand by a "lite version" of software), but I don't really see what problem that would solve. If there are usability issues with DR it would be much better to fix those, rather than maintain a separate version of the software with missing features.

A DarkRadiant "lite" version would solve several problems. It would solve the massive learning curve and time investment problem. It would make building FMs more accessible to many more members of this community that haven't been able to make their own FMs and it would also bring in completely new members into this community. Think about how many people have taken the time to download DarkRadiant but when they opened it up they said, no way can I do this... I would love to make FMs for this community but I haven't because learning how to use DarkRadiant would take way too much time and effort.

On 3/8/2020 at 11:32 AM, snowy said:

The DarkRadiant tool is excellent in the hands of a dedicated and talented content author. For new content authors, the tool requires a large time investment. Maybe there's also room for an easier and much more limited tool. A tool for new content creators that are less interested in visuals and more interested in story telling. Or simply creating and playing their own first missions quickly. And getting them excited for creating more advanced missions. For example, this tool could be a strict 2d editor instead of 3d. The author can draw his world on a 2d grid with a selection of prefabs that snap seamlessly on this grid. Then they can tell their story with it. If the author decides he or she wants more control over its game world, then they can move on to DarkRadiant.

I have years and years of mapping experience but it's all based on various Unreal engines which as you already know, is completely different. One more thing, I'm not saying anything bad about DarkRadiant, it's obviously an excellent tool.

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IMO Unreal Editor even the one from Unreal 1 is massively more complicated than DR has the interface is concerned this is, DR is very simplistic in this regard.

Doing a simple, two room with a door in DR imo is easy, if you take one hour to look at a start to finish Tutorial, on to make a simple map for TDM, you will learn the basics in a day, the rest you just ask the community or browse the forum, some people most have asked already, what you want to know.

For those coming from the old Unreal Editors, you just need to learn that in DR you put stuff into a void instead of carving stuff from a solid. Afaik the modern Unreal 4 editor got rid of the "carve from a solid" idea and also uses the void system now, at least that was what I heard, because most of the geometry used on it, is imported from external tools.

About a "lite" DR, IMO makes no sense, why? Because to me DR is "lite" already?! Compared to the likes of Unity, Cryengine editor or Unreal 4 editor is very very basic (not that i'm complaining). For example you don't make scripts or edit scripts from inside DR, like you do on the previous mentioned ones, you don't make materials inside DR, in DR aside from brush based geometry, you just import stuff into it, put lights in the scene, texture surfaces with the pre made materials, import pre made models/entities in, make particle effects, link stuff, put triggers around to trigger events and such. I don't really know how you would make DR more "noob friendly", unless you make it more focused on TDM and way more complicated by making it able to do everything inside DR. 

Don't know if this is a good tutorial or not but browsing youtube saw this one, teaches how to make a simple room in DR.

 

Edited by HMart
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@Jetrell I get what you mean about DR being complicated; there are tons of tools in it that I don't even know how to use, let alone use properly. Hell, I didn't even know how to properly export models until after my FM went into beta. But there are tons of videos at there now that clearly describe the essential ins and outs of how to use DR. I strongly recommend dedicating a few short hours and checking out Springheel's newbie videos, those have been immensely helpful for me. Sotha also has a bunch of good videos too. 

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Ha, don't judge me too harshly, but I just learned that the Texture Tool existed less then a week ago. That would have saved me a lot of time, but I still know nothing about Nurbs curves and the difficulty editor is a bit "unfriendly"

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19 minutes ago, Amadeus said:

Ha, don't judge me too harshly, but I just learned that the Texture Tool existed less then a week ago. That would have saved me a lot of time, but I still know nothing about Nurbs curves and the difficulty editor is a bit "unfriendly"

This is always the case with creative software like this.  There are tons of tools in DR that I don't know how to use either (including nurbs curves).  I always liken this kind of software to living in a city.  You know your neighborhood really well, and several other areas pretty well, but there will always be parts of the city you know nothing about, because you never go there.

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4 minutes ago, Amadeus said:

Ha, thank you HMart! I looked at the wiki, but there was only a dead link to an outside website, not much else on there that I could find on Nurbs

No problem here is also a nice video that uses splines/nurbs curves to do a cinematic for Doom 3, i'm sure it can also be translated into DR and TDM. 

 

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This actually seems easier to use than I thought, might try messing around with it. Seems like it could have some pretty interesting applications too

Edited by Amadeus
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4 hours ago, Jetrell said:

It would solve the massive learning curve and time investment problem.

But there is no way to solve the learning curve and time investment problem. Creating stuff is difficult and time-consuming, and software that helps you create stuff is necessarily complex because creativity is such a vast field of endeavour. It would be exactly the same if you wanted to learn to paint in PhotoShop, or make 3D models in Blender/Maya/Max/Lightwave, or compose music in Cubase/Sonar/Pro Tools/Reason/REAPER/Renoise/whatever. Some of these programs have better interfaces than others, of course,  but all of them are going to be overwhelming for a new user that hasn't followed any tutorials.

Even if it were somehow possible to make an incredibly dumbed-down version of DarkRadiant, what you'd end up with is the Microsoft WordArt of level design, which might allow absolute beginners to churn out almost identical maps which they thought looked awesome but everybody else had seen hundreds of times already. It would hardly be worth the effort to create such a tool given the low quality of work it would produce.

4 hours ago, Jetrell said:

I have years and years of mapping experience but it's all based on various Unreal engines which as you already know, is completely different. One more thing, I'm not saying anything bad about DarkRadiant, it's obviously an excellent tool.

Admittedly I've never used UnrealEd, and maybe it is absolutely awesome and intuitive, but I find it difficult to believe that you could spend years and years creating content for Unreal but find DarkRadiant to be beyond your reach. If you can drag the mouse pointer, you can create wall and floor brushes; if you can right click and navigate a menu, you can insert other entities. Creating more complex setups like patrol routes and frobable switches is of course going to be more complex but that will be true no matter what editor you are using.

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OrbWeaver said: But there is no way to solve the learning curve and time investment problem.  

~ I understand what you are saying but wouldn't you agree that having a DarkRadiant "lite" version would certainly lessen the learning curve and the time investment problem? I would think that would make building FMs more accessible to many more people.

OrbWeaver said: Even if it were somehow possible to make an incredibly dumbed-down version of DarkRadiant, what you'd end up with is the Microsoft WordArt of level design, which might allow absolute beginners to churn out almost identical maps which they thought looked awesome but everybody else had seen hundreds of times already. It would hardly be worth the effort to create such a tool given the low quality of work it would produce.

~ Not necessarily. What I have in mind would work something like this, there would still only be one DarkRadiant but within it would be a "lite" section which would have just the basic components necessary to make a FM. If the mapper wanted, they could still add components from the full version section of DarkRadiant, which would prevent beginners from churning out almost identical maps. In addition, this new feature would give people a lot more freedom and like Snowy said in his/her post, "new content creators that are less interested in visuals and more interested in story telling". A "lite" section of DarkRadiant could open up a new way for people to create a completely different type of content.

OrbWeaver said: Admittedly I've never used UnrealEd, and maybe it is absolutely awesome and intuitive, but I find it difficult to believe that you could spend years and years creating content for Unreal but find DarkRadiant to be beyond your reach.

~ I'm not saying that I couldn't learn how to use DarkRadiant. I'm just saying that, I haven't learned how to use DarkRadiant because it would take me weeks, months, years to learn. That is the sole reason why I haven't learned how to use DarkRadiant. I would however be more than willing to learn how to use a DarkRadiant "lite" version and I'm sure many others would too.

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The practical problem is there isn't dev time to make such a thing.

But that said, interestingly some people have done some of the things you're suggesting for exactly the reason you're talking about. Really early on there was already a beginner's map made (was that Fidcal's?) that already has a functioning base map with AI and objectives, etc,, so the mapper can just take that and add to it. It might be a good idea to make an updated version of that though, because new features have come out since then. But for a newbie, it might be good to start with that map anyway, since it still keeps things simple even today.

And Springheel has made a lot of architecture prefabs so a mapper could just grab these fully made prefabs and stack them together to make an entire room or hallway or whatever. He and others have also made newbie friendly tutorials. A lot of tutorials provide a bullet list of exactly what to do, and you just go down the list verbatim. So they're pretty newbie friendly once you see them that way.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Is there still a possibility of moving TDM to that other branch of IDtech4 which has a vulkan renderer - without it being too disruptive to the tooling, assets and investment that has been put in the version we have now?

It does seem for the long term support of the project that vulkan is the way forward.

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4 hours ago, Jedibeeftrix said:

Is there still a possibility of moving TDM to that other branch of IDtech4 which has a vulkan renderer - without it being too disruptive to the tooling, assets and investment that has been put in the version we have now?

It does seem for the long term support of the project that vulkan is the way forward.

You'd think so, but in reality a lot of people want to play TDM on old computers, that don't support Vulcan at all

That, and there's really nobody volunteering for actually doing such a move

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On 3/4/2020 at 9:14 PM, Capela said:

I haven't been here in a long time, nice to see that people are still around. I think move to U4 could be a good solution to get the mod to a new level, i could even offer some assets to the cause just to start. In the past 3 years im working with Unity trying to make a RPG game, but im interested in put my hands on the Unreal engine editor. Theres an asset in the store called "Shadow Stealth" works with blueprints and i think im going to try it and let you know.

 
 

To finish answering your question, note that the game that TDM was built on - Doom 3, had motion capture, but in view of the issue about getting "the mod to a new level", please watch this video:

 

Edited by Anderson

"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."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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On 3/20/2020 at 7:04 PM, duzenko said:

You'd think so, but in reality a lot of people want to play TDM on old computers, that don't support Vulcan at all

That, and there's really nobody volunteering for actually doing such a move

is that other IDTech4 branch Vulkan only, or does it maintain OpenGL in addition to Vulkan?

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TDM's engine has sufficiently evolved from its Doom3 origins that any such port cannot (easily) be copied over to TDM. In this particular instance, the Doom3 Vulkan renderer is based on the BFG version, while TDM is not, so the difference is even greater.

That being said, Vulkan is currently not something that would benefit TDM too much and might even hurt it. As duzenko mentioned, support for older hardware is still important, which means we have to maintain the OpenGL renderer. Having to maintain an additional renderer (Vulkan) on top of that would only increase the bug count and maintenance cost.

At the same time, many of the immediate issues that TDM faces in terms of performance can (and will) be addressed with OpenGL and do not require Vulkan support, at all.

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