I love TC:E, and I refuse to believe its glory days are completely over.

And while other games may have better graphics and mechanics, nothing beats this community. This community shaped me. It helped turn me into not only the person I am today, but also what I plan on doing the rest of my life.

I am a programmer - and a good enough one to put forth the claim I'm capable of programming anything game-related not only well but with enthusiasm.

A bit ago I sent a PM to coroner about asking him if he would be opposed to an engine port. It would be my engine that I am currently working on. I believe the only way to breathe life into this game is through a massive overhaul. This is self-evident, though. If it didn't, people would still be playing it.

This isn't something I am going to do by myself. The only way it'll happen is if some old team members are on board with me. Even if my attempts totally fail, it will still be greatly beneficial for me, as it will help my code base mature.

Thanks everyone,
-Tom

Are you talking about remaking the game for a newer engine or using the old code? Which engine? Something you have made yourself from the scratch?

I've already said that I could help in a project making a new game which aims copying the gameplay of TC:E to a newer engine, if the project otherwise looks serious enough. I don't want to waste my time on something that ends up being buggy, half finished and only has one map.

Yay! That's exactly what I was wanting to hear. I've been creating my own engine (from scratch, or rather from previous iterations of my engine) for several months now. It is written in C++. Currently, its renderer uses OpenGL ES 2.0 for mobile development, but I'm very familiar with D3D and could implement it in a day or so. For physics, it uses Bullet (I haven't had good luck with PhysX.)

Rewriting the game code for TC:E wouldn't be unreasonable difficult. Though my engine, in its current state, does not have an embedded language, it wouldn't be hard to put in. (The only reason why I haven't yet put in a scripting language is because I can't decide on one.)

I'm currently working on this engine full time. The only other thing I've got going on will be classes in the fall. My engine is already being used to target some small, creative iOS games.

Thanks for the quick reply.
-Tom

Sounds promising. The ES versions of OpenGL are unfamiliar for me. I know what it is but how it differs compared to the "real thing" is unknown for me. But I see no reason for D3D.

I'll be away for most of the weekend but hopefully I see you in IRC next week.

PS. I had left IRC yesterday evening. Thus no reply.

ES was like GL 1.4, and ES2 is essentially GL 2.0 (supports shader, etc.) It's extremely easy to set up, which is why I went with it. I haven't felt like investing lots of time in a renderer when I'm targeting weaker platforms.

There are still a few things that need to be figured out as far as the direction of my engine goes. For example, I do not have a scripting language yet. This is because I haven't the need for one at this time. Previously, I had a nice deal going with Lua, but I didn't like how long it took to compile amongst other things.

Supporting D3D is easy. Some video cards have issues with GL stuff, which is why I insist on support it. It's not difficult to support at all.

I have stuff going on this weekend, so that shouldn't be a big deal. Let's see about getting together on Monday or so.

Thanks

One level designer/modeler/texture artist/musician interested.

(Not the best) examples of my work.

Let's talk.

Hey man, this game is all about the community it is what made (and will make) it better than all of the other similar titles.

I like the grass. The textures on the trees are great, but the geometry is really old school (the trunk is like a spear ) The grass on the second page looks exceptionally great.

I idle on quakenet's #tc:elite, so drop by sometime and hit me up

Hi Tom!
I just read your post and am wondering what is your engine/renderer capable of, and what you mean by "weaker platforms"?
I guess I could provide you with some decent textures for easier start. All of them have normal maps and some also have specular and displacement maps. You can take a look at some of them at http://sxy.shrani.si (be prepared for load of random screenshots - the real stuff starts somewhere near page 15). If you are interested, just send a PM.

Hi,

creating an own engine is a tough project.
So, is there any playable proof of concept version of the engine, box map, example player model, animations, network protocol, ui, graphics settings, etc?
What is the motivation for not using Cryengine3 or UDK? Even from there it would be a huge project to only get CQB right with getting full fletched engines and production pipelines laid out on a silver tablet.

Second question, why not upgrading the renderer of ET without making it a never ending story with unreachable goals like Xreal?
Licensing would be cheap if it comes that far, and content could be used from existing CQB.
Compared to creating an own engine from scratch, everything would be soooo simple when starting from ET ...

I am just asking, cause so many engine projects already failed with much smaller goals.
I am willing to get convinced that this is a serious opportunity though ...

I'm not doing it from scratch, really. I have a code base built up from a few years of work. In it, I have everything from A* search algorithms to various library implementations (FBXSDK, libpng, OpenAL, etc.)

In addition, I've had the opportunity to work on some other cool stuff like glyph streaming (for localization) and vector shape streaming for things like menus. I don't like licensing middleware. If you want something done correctly, you must do it yourself.

Pipelines for content are really nontrivial. I'm already familiar with the FBX format, which almost every modeling package uses. It's what is used to get skeletal meshes into UDK (and others like Unity.) Animation is only slightly more involved than figuring out where the vertices are supposed to be at what time, and blending between the different animations.

The reason why this is reasonable is because we wouldn't lack focus or direction. Xreal is, from what I can tell, ioQ3 with a nice renderer. That's all it is, though. It's not a game; people cannot play it. If my engine becomes great enough, I'll look at turning it into middleware. That's currently not my goal. My goal is to produce something I can be proud of. The only way to achieve this in a pure way is by taking the hard route.

There are other numerous reasons why I would want to use my own engine instead of ET. For one, licensing reasons. If we all decide to turn this into an ad-powered f2p game with online stats tracking and ranked matchmaking (in addition to dedicated servers) then there would be no legal hurdles. It's my code. The only libraries I use are the MIT/zlib/BSD-licensed ones (free for commercial use.)

PLEASE don't be pessimistic, coroner we've already got a wealth of content to use for testing purposes. This in itself greatly speeds up the dev process. Also, because the engine is still in its somewhat-early stages, its development can be easily influenced.

I'd like to encourage you to talk with me on Skype, MSN, or IRC sometime. I think I can convince you that this is a real possibility

Supposedly you walk the walk with the engine. What about the maps, models and other artwork that make the atmosphere of the game? How are you planing to deal with this? Who is your lead artist?

As of now I don't have one someone will have to step up and take that roll. However, my side of the job is independent of this.

Edit: I didn't even see your first post in this topic, sxy. My bad yeah man I'll send you a PM

TC:E has a huge advantage of being free and awesome 3rd party content support. A lot of user contributions (maps mostly) is what made TC:E and kept it alive through these years.

By applying the F2P model, you'd basically have to kill off what was mentioned above. No point in paying for features when they can be added by users. I'd say that is the worst thing about modern shooters (CoD and BF) and it weakens the community.

There is one more thing that gives more power to the content developers, making sure open-source and free software are supported. Blender would be a good example.


PS: I also have a bunch of ready to use textures (diffuse, normal and specular maps), custom made from royalty free sources and released as royalty free as well.

I'd like to hear more about your ideas and thoughts.

F2P means "Free to Play." If anything, it'd be ad supported and allow for way more customization than is currently possible. This includes custom maps, textures, guns, skins, models, and even scripts/metamods.

Today coroner and I spoke. He is somewhat interested in what I have, but reluctant until I have a tech demo to present. Today I am working on deferred lighting. Hopefully within the foreseeable future I will have a solid presentation.

Damien, hit me up on quakenet's #tc:elite. I'd like to chat

What about parallax or tessellation? Especially the "fake" parallax where renderer only warps the texture to get the feeling of depth (rather than creates additional polygons). With this technique you can make better looking maps with fewer polygons. (Map geometry with fewer polygons takes less time to make than more detailed one) For example, a map with TCE/cqb polycount will look way more modern.