building a community

[darkhemic]

This isn't an issue with the source code, it's the collection of insights into what I see based on an idea I had at the beginning of 2014 for a college class concerning an innovative project, without looking too deeply into what was currently being developed. The first insight is that we all know John Carmack is no longer working for Id Software and I'm unsure as to who at Id Software is an advocate for open source code, so the future of open sourced Id Tech engines is anyone's guess. The second insight is that much like the art assets developed for any game the engine itself also adds to the feel of any game. The Id Tech engines have always given a game a different feel than if it was developed on another licensed engine. The open sourcing of the Doom 3 BFG version of the engine is possibly the only access anyone is going to have to the engine code that is also in the Id Tech 5 which makes this version a blessing. Everyone that has contributed to this fork of the engine has done some amazing work. And as a future game artist I'd hate to see this gift in addition to all of the great work everyone has contributed just fade away like many of the other open sourced game engine out in the wild. There is the option that open source can't be used commercially and I ask why? Several open source projects are commercially in other technology industries and with great success. The projects that are the most successful are the ones that have a community with documentation, along with project leaders that focus efforts on a set of features and create a stable version based on the agreed features. This fork is well on it way to becoming a complete game developer kit. It currently may not be as user friendly as some commercial tools but that comes with time. I know raynorpat (who pointed me in the direction of this fork) has been working on the tools for mods, but does that mean that the embedded editor will work across windows, linux and mac? If not, as BielBdeLuna suggested can a fork of Darkradiant be included in the code base which may make it easier to create scripts to run additional tools to aid developers and artists and made more user friendly in time? I know nothing is stopping me from attempting to do what I'm talking about, but it's about developing and being part of a community. Most of us know that several companies are creating communities around game engines and charging monthly fees to either use the engine with or without source code. But with all of the great work that everyone is doing I'd love to see this game engine continue to exist in the future and become something that stays up to day as technology advances. In some aspects I think this engine is ahead of the game. As an artist, I believe the same thing that John Carmack spoke about in regards to megatexturing technology, programmers are doing a lot of great things with being able to push the polygon counts beyond what was dreamed of only a few years ago. The next step is doing the same with textures across not just terrains but for adding detail to models, while I know that only an earlier version of the technology was included in release of the pure Id Tech 4 engine it is something that could be developed further after a stable solid build of this engine and tools would be created. I'm going to stop here and also say that I'm sorry if this wasn't the appropriate way to voice this idea.

[BielBdeLuna]

one thing that would help greatly create a new community would be to recuperate the modwiki info. you can find a goldmine of info one the engine (the most user friendly info that is, the one one needs to know for starting scripting and mapping) here: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://modwiki.net keep in mind that modwiki.net was closed down due to an excess of spam, so the only thing we have is the internet archived pages.

with this you can start making maps and scripting (hell you can do AI scripting with this! and very complex AI with this, without ever touching c++) with the Blender plug-ins you can do the models and with Dark radiant you can do your mapping. I'm currently doing mapping and some scripting to 10-12 year olds with dhewm3 and I'm looking forward to bring d3bfg to the mix with all the improvements. it's a very didactic environment, you do art, maths, logic. and entertainment. all in a pack. a reborn community would be great.

[kortemik]

I just collected a bunch of tools for a basis under the repos here https://github.com/OpenTechEngine All kudos to their creators and contributors as always. There is a simple guide for exporting MD5 from blender as it was a bit tricky for a first time blenderer like me.

I am looking forward for creating a basic set of Assets, guides and Open Source Tools and we have a plan to replace the Flash GUI system with CEGUI as there is no gpl SWF editor available there. Of course we could use the CEGUI system for epic in-game editors too!

The Dark Mod crew has also done wonderful work for idTech4 so it's really a worth to study their wiki and forums. I hope we could however collect the crucial guides and engine info under the wikis too.

[darkhemic]

Again I'm sorry if this wasn't the appropriate avenue to bring this topic up. I knew I wasn't the first person to bring up this idea. I know when the vanilla id tech 4 engine was released several projects were talked about doing this but never really continued to develop. I also understand what I'm envision is a lot of work. It's essentially setting up an organization such as the blender foundation to develop a game development package with online tutorials, maybe a youtube channel with tutorials and also developing samples for people use and study for features in the game engine. If people want to move forward with this idea I think what we need to do is develop a long term plan for the best possible choice of an engine and editor. This engine from what I can see is one of the only doom 3 engine still in active development besides the dark mod, and I really don't want to put away or start steering the development they've done into this project. As far as the game engine goes, many of the other doom 3 engine forks haven't seen active development in over a year such is the case with dhewm3, with some exceptions. According to http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3_bfg/ using the doom3-bfg code base lets of many of the underlying features of a modern game engine thanks to the included code from idtech5. But what problems are we going to have with the modifying of code for the game with this engine? Such as what legal problems or tools need to developed because of the .resource files? Can we add or do we even want to add back in the doom 3 script in order to build a kismet / blueprint scripting type tool later on with something like python, which would allow a choice between c++ coding and a scripting? Do we want to add back in the original doom 3 ui scripting as well because people could us it to make 2d games? Should we even be concerned with people making 2d games and just focus on 3d gaming? Or as Kortemik suggested replace the BFG Flash GUI it with CEGUI? If so how is it going to affect the performance of the engine with running the GUI from an outside library. We could also decide if we want to develop the kit to promote other open source projects and decide to build on a linux distro like ubuntu 14.04 lts because of the steam os, and focus on making the editor stable on it and cross-build the windows and mac game packages, and state your mileage may vary if using something else. I'm just getting at as a community if we want to work on a project of this scale we have a lot of questions we need to decide answers for and I'm not the only voice or even the best voice to answer all of these questions. Many of you have been coding on this engine and know what can and can't be done. What I can offer is my background in creating instructional material, help with finding bugs (this feature in the editor doesn't work right) and help guide the tool kit into something more user friendly after we have one code base to work from that includes everything and compiles fairly easily. I can also create assets for people to reference when using and learning the game kit.

BielBdeLuna, that site is a great source of information that can be used and referenced when creating documentation and tutorials. Kortemik, again referencing the dark mod editor information is also a great idea.

[BielBdeLuna]

I've just contacted with the people that added Closed Captioning options for D3, so we could have a CC for both dialogue and sound effects a la HL2, both possibilities optional. it could be a neat addition.

[darkhemic]

Is the closed captioning an addition service for an already created game or are a set of libraries used that analysis the sound files as they are played? If it's a service I don't think it makes much sense to include Closed Captioning for a game development kit that would be a tool package and collection of samples.

[BielBdeLuna]

CC is useful in two fronts, specially for deaf people. which if you're deaf you might value a lot the effort. and also for non native speakers in order to have the characters that speak have their dialogue written in screen. and so with it enable the possibility of translating the game without dubbing the game. it's options. and yes CC is also a tool.

now I haven't seen the code yet. but I guess it's an added abstraction layer for sound. so you can identify with writing what every sound IS. as well as what dialogue SAYS. since d3 doesn't have a dialogue system. dialogue is actually sound emitted by entities which isn't differentiated from footsteps in any way, this mod then could come in very handy in order to implement a separation between sound effects and dialogue sound.

[RobertBeckebans]

CC options would be nice. I already that about implementing that on my own for dialogue features.

[kortemik]

There is now the modWiki restored at https://github.com/OpenTechEngine/modWiki/wiki

I think it needs a bit of a tune-up so one is very much welcome if interested of doing it!

It can be cloned like: git clone https://github.com/OpenTechEngine/modWiki.wiki.git

I created some 'issues' on the repo so that's a first step

[BielBdeLuna]

h-how?... that's grand!

[darkhemic]

I've updated my fork of this Engine and Renamed it Open-BFG-Engine (As in Open Big Free Game) and forked the OpenTechEngine's DarkRadiant and renamed it to Open-BFG-Editor to work with everyone. As I said I haven't programmed in year but I'm going to start another project outside of those 2 Open-BFG-Tech that is a set of scripts to download them, keep both projects up to date locally and also download dependencies and work on pointing both projects to local libraries under Linux. I'm hoping to make so it doesn't matter what linux distro people are using the Engine and Editor will work.

[BielBdeLuna]

great!

[DanielGibson]

Am 27.08.2014 20:35, schrieb Christopher Williams:

I've updated my fork of this Engine and Renamed it Open-BFG-Engine (As in Open Big Free Game) and forked the OpenTechEngine's DarkRadiant and renamed it to Open-BFG-Editor to work with everyone. As I said I haven't programmed in year but I'm going to start another project outside of those 2 Open-BFG-Tech that is a set of scripts to download them, keep both projects up to date locally and also download dependencies and work on pointing both projects to local libraries under Linux. I'm hoping to make so it doesn't matter what linux distro people are using the Engine and Editor will work.

Why don't you just collaborate on https://github.com/OpenTechEngine/OpenTechBFG/ ? I guess we have similar goals :-)

[darkhemic]

Because I didn't want to break anything you were working on lol. Like I said I haven't programmed in years. I figured if I forked the engine and tools, the changes can be merged back and forth.

[darkhemic]

I'm working on the tool kit library build environment and thought I would ask. That are the differences with the engine when using SDL1.2 compared to SDL2, I know the read me states that SDL2 has better input and multi-monitor support, but does it break something else or cause bugs currently that I'm not seeing?

added in edit - I'm just curious because the SDL2 is turned off by default.

[darkhemic]

I found some of my answers in issue 137. https://github.com/RobertBeckebans/RBDOOM-3-BFG/issues/137

[darkhemic]

I finally have a good start on that scripting project I talked about.

https://github.com/darkhemic/Open-BFG-Tech-SDK.git

I know it's not much and a lot of work needs to be done yet but I'm proud since I haven't done anything like this in years. I hope what I have done gives you an idea of my thought process on working on this as a community.

[DanielGibson]

kortemik and me revived the modwiki: https://modwiki.xnet.fi/ In contrast to the earlier attempt above it now has fixed links, images and categories. sometimes the formatting might still be screwed up, but it should be usable and you're free to further improve it :-)

[BielBdeLuna]

great!