Cryengine is Free...

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

Now that Cryengine is basically free to use for community projects, and has proven itself to be ideal for large open worlds with stealth gameplay like Kingdom Come Deliverance, is there anything stopping anyone from porting TDM over with support for existing fan missions?
I mean legally speaking of course, as I'm sure it would be a lot of work, but there seem to be fewer barriers than ever before. 
It's incredible what people have done with an engine that was built to accommodate tiny corridors on ancient hardware, but imagine an engine purpose built to render large open spaces... No more compromised visions when mapping, no more endless optimization to fit a square peg through a circular hole... 
And if the mission files were to be compatible with the new engine, people could just keep on mapping in DR as if nothing even changed.

Cryengine Community Edition https://engine.pterosoftstudio.com/

Edited November 28 by OnlyTaffingCowardsHide

[chakkman]

1 hour ago, OnlyTaffingCowardsHide said:

Now that Cryengine is basically free to use for community projects, and has proven itself to be ideal for large open worlds with stealth gameplay like Kingdom Come Deliverance, is there anything stopping anyone from porting TDM over with support for existing fan missions?

No. Go right ahead.  

Quote

I mean legally speaking of course, as I'm sure it would be a lot of work,

Yes, it would be. I don't even want to imagine how much. And, I also don't really see the benefit of all that work. TDM engine is solid. Might not be extremely well optimized, but, that's also not really to be expected, with a total conversion. It performs well enough for what it does.

Edited November 28 by chakkman

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

27 minutes ago, chakkman said:

No. Go right ahead.  

Yes, it would be. I don't even want to imagine how much. And, I also don't really see the benefit of all that work. TDM engine is solid. Might not be extremely well optimized, but, that's also not really to be expected, with a total conversion. It performs well enough for what it does.

I'm looking into it, no promises but maybe I can cobble together a proof of concept and get some other people on board.
Mostly the benefit would be optimization and utilization of modern hardware. Modern engines have a lot more options to optimize large open spaces with high object counts. Currently mappers do a lot of extra work to get around this optimization problem using time consuming/outdated techniques that a modern engine can handle automatically, or by crippling their artistic vision to limit draw distances and object counts. 
Even with optimization, you can never really overcome engine limits without a massive performance hit.
It would save experienced mappers quite a bit of time, and newbie mappers even more time and headaches, as they wouldn't need to pay as much attention to optimizing for engine limitations.
There are some other fringe benefits, like access to more modern shading techniques. For example I recently hit a wall in trying to implement reshade for proper ground truth ambient occlusion and global illumination, as the Dark Mod's depth buffer includes some erroneous information around torches/fires. Having those shading techniques in engine would be quite an improvement, rather than hacking them in via reshade.
Lighting in general should be a lot easier to program without tanking performance.
I wholly disagree that TDM performs well enough. Claustrophobic mission design is the norm around here, with people who try to step outside these limitations encountering quite a performance train wreck if they don't know all the advanced tricks that Cryengine can handle much more efficiently. 
You can find examples of large open spaces with details, but these are the result of veteran mappers who know how to get the most out of very little, which just encourages gate keeping and fewer missions being made. 
There are plenty examples of TDM's pitiful default rendering of large areas, one in particular set on a bridge stands out... 
 

 

Edited November 28 by OnlyTaffingCowardsHide

[chakkman]

Yeah, unfortunately, that version of idtech isn't know for dealing with open spaces very well... Not sure how newer versions are.

That said, you also have to consider what other stuff is connected to it. No level editor, people need to learn a new scripting language, and I don't even want to know how much coding has to be done in the new engine.

Edited November 28 by chakkman

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

6 minutes ago, chakkman said:

Yeah, unfortunately, that version of idtech isn't know for dealing with open spaces very well... Not sure how newer versions are.

That said, you also have to consider what other stuff is connected to it. No level editor, people need to learn a new scripting language, and I don't even want to know how much coding has to be done in the new engine.

It depends on how much can be handled by a conversion tool. Ideally people can just keep working in Dark Radiant and convert it over. I don't think there would be much point if mission files couldn't be made compatible, as there is so much content available already...

[datiswous]

Quote

You agree to check www.cryengine.com periodically for new information and terms that govern your use of CRYENGINE. Crytek may modify this Agreement at any time.

No thanks!

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

28 minutes ago, datiswous said:

No thanks!

It's not a commercial project, what terms are even relevant to us?
I'm literally suggesting a free to use tool that would convert all existing assets to a modern engine... and still all we can do is complain... 
I love this community, cynicism on a level that Garrett could only aspire to  
Yes there is a chance that Crytek could shut it down, if there are examples of such a thing happening to non commercial projects I'm happy to hear about it, but ultimately if it does get shutdown you would lose nothing, as mappers would continue to map in Dark Radiant anyways. 

Edited November 28 by OnlyTaffingCowardsHide

[Bikerdude]

The mod and its assets are all under the CC0 licence, so the version of the cry-engine and anything made for tdm would have to be similarly covered.

Then there is the matter of the editor or SDK, does one exist?

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

5 minutes ago, Bikerdude said:

The mod and its assets are all under the CC0 licence, so the version of the cry-engine and anything made for tdm would have to be similarly covered.

Then there is the matter of the editor or SDK, does one exist?

It wouldn't be released under the TDM license, it would be a standalone tool that is merely compatible with TDM mission files, and would ideally use stock TDM assets. Whether those assets are packaged with the installer or pulled in from an existing TDM installation is another matter.
The editor does exist... it's called Dark Radiant. The idea is to keep the editor and only replace the underlying engine. In the style of OpenMW or Oblivion Remastered, compatibility with existing files is key.

Edited November 28 by OnlyTaffingCowardsHide

[wesp5]

The Unreal engine and Unity engine are free to use for non-commercial projects as well, but nobody ever considered porting TDM to them. The work would just be too much for too little benefit! Also AFAIK the Doom 3 engine has some of the best lighting/shadow handling out there, even today?

Edited November 28 by wesp5

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

21 minutes ago, wesp5 said:

The Unreal engine and Unity engine are free to use for non-commercial projects as well, but nobody ever considered porting TDM to them. The work would just be too much for too little benefit! Also AFAIK the Doom 3 engine has some of the best lighting/shadow handling out there, even today?

Well, Unreal is generally trash without significant optimizations. Unity may be viable, as it's certainly shown promise in Daggerfall Unity. and yes there is a lot of work involved. I'm sure there was a lot of work involved in creating TDM in the first place, why not just stick with Dark Engine? It's not really about lighting, it's about making a contribution that everyone can benefit from. Doing the work now so that mappers can save a lot of time overall. Obviously cryengine has superior lighting techniques, but the more important aspect is being able to use more light and shadow casters without performance dropping off a cliff. Largely this is due to using modern gpu resources far more effectively rather than relying on cpu stencils or outdated hardware shadow maps.

Edited November 28 by OnlyTaffingCowardsHide

[chakkman]

I think you vastly underestimate - the amount of work; the incompatibility with mission editors; the ability and availabilty of some sort of "conversion tool".

But, nevermind, just go ahead, and lets us know about your progress. You pointed out the inferiority of TDM's engine often enough now. Time to port it to something superior. Good luck.  

[datiswous]

2 hours ago, OnlyTaffingCowardsHide said:

Yes there is a chance that Crytek could shut it down

They can just say: We don't want you to use our engine for free anymore after a while. End of project. It's not open source so in that way it's already considerably less interesting. Then you have to port all the assets, port the scripting and ai stuff. You have to use another mapper tool, so nobody is going to make new missions.

I think it could be interesting if someone would make a Thief clone in Cryengine and if the editor is good maybe some people like to make missions for it. But I think it should be a new project.

2 hours ago, OnlyTaffingCowardsHide said:

I'm sure there was a lot of work involved in creating TDM in the first place, why not just stick with Dark Engine? It's not really about lighting, it's about making a contribution that everyone can benefit from.

You lost me there..

[JackFarmer]

This thread provides insights from some of the then DM coders and there are other threads as well with similar content.

Edited November 29 by JackFarmer

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

19 hours ago, datiswous said:

They can just say: We don't want you to use our engine for free anymore after a while. End of project.

I think it could be interesting if someone would make a Thief clone in Cryengine and if the editor is good maybe some people like to make missions for it. But I think it should be a new project.

Well, I have faith in greed so I don't see why that would ever happen.
They want people making games because that's a potential product.
Now that every corpo is doing the profit sharing model any corpos that opt out of that model are going to fail overnight.

How is what I'm suggesting not a thief clone in Cryengine? Why have people learn a new editor if the files the current editor creates can be made compatible? I mean sure, we can start by just making a thief clone and letting people muck around in Cryengine to hack together missions, but I don't see why the scope should be limited to a hacked together solution.

[DavyJones]

There is a open source version called Open 3D Engine (O3DE) former Lumberyard from Amazon which based on cryengine

any way main butthurt would come not from engine switch but from assets remaking

for example there is already exists idtech4 version with PBR (Physical Based Rendering) support

so let's say TDM able to support such beauty...
in this case just imagine all the mess about migrating ALL assets to new PBR pipeline... 

Edited November 29 by DavyJones

[datiswous]

Personally I think most of the necessary improvements can probably already been done inside TDM.

• Better models
• Better animation
• Better textures
• Better and more sounds
• More voices from more voice actors
• Better looking (GUI) dialogs
• More and better documentation
• Better and more tools (for example a graphical editor for editing GUI files)

There's so much content wise that can be improved in TDM's engine. And performance and graphics has very much improved over the years, so who knows what else is still possible? If TDM was a stuck engine, but it isn't, it's constantly evolving.

The fact that the Cry engine does better in large areas isn't really something important for TDM missions overall. At least not a reason to port to a new engine.

[chakkman]

Won't happen anyway. See the OP's posting history.

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

1 hour ago, chakkman said:

Won't happen anyway. See the OP's posting history.

Fine, if people don't want nice things who am I to argue. 
Maybe I've got it all wrong, maybe TDM engine is very well optimized but the quality of the average mapper is the only issue. Maybe most of the mappers just need to git gud... 
You certainly wouldn't want an engine that's more forgiving considering the average hobbyist knows jack  about optimizing anything...

Edited November 29 by OnlyTaffingCowardsHide

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

...

Edited November 29 by OnlyTaffingCowardsHide

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

1 hour ago, datiswous said:

Personally I think most of the necessary improvements can probably already been done inside TDM.

• Better models
• Better animation
• Better textures
• Better and more sounds
• More voices from more voice actors
• Better looking (GUI) dialogs
• More and better documentation
• Better and more tools (for example a graphical editor for editing GUI files)

There's so much content wise that can be improved in TDM's engine. And performance and graphics has very much improved over the years, so who knows what else is still possible? If TDM was a stuck engine, but it isn't, it's constantly evolving.

The fact that the Cry engine does better in large areas isn't really something important for TDM missions overall. At least not a reason to port to a new engine.

Fair enough, and the shader pipeline while they're at it, cause the Ambient Occlusion shader looks right out of 2008. 
I tried replacing it with a proper modern method via reshade, but some dumbass turned the depth buffer around torches/fire pits into a cascading arrow, so reshade doesn't even work properly. 

[Bikerdude]

On 11/28/2025 at 7:23 PM, OnlyTaffingCowardsHide said:

• It wouldn't be released under the TDM license, it would be a standalone tool that is merely compatible with TDM mission files, and would ideally use stock TDM assets. Whether those assets are packaged with the installer or pulled in from an existing TDM installation is another matter.

• I don't know how that would work, as packaging CC0 assets with an engine that has its own licence terms.

[chakkman]

@OnlyTaffingCowardsHide Any news on this? Have you looked into porting The Dark Mod to Cry Engine?