any room for alpha/beta testers?

[Guest Guest]

there's plenty of interest. we are all lurking in the shadows, reading the forums everyday.

 

But yes, one of the great things i see in this engine is a way to fix the things that Black Isle overlooked, such as the kit limit. so definately scrollbars! *looks hopeful*

[Avenger]

An average modder (people who already edited areas, scripts, etc) could add the scrollbar to the .chu file and add the necessary 2-3 lines to the guiscript.

I suggest you to try it yourself

[Guest Guest]

hello! Im currently not in possesion of any IE based games (hope that changes during the summer), but if I were, I have a long-standing hope (halted only by damaged CDs) of playing Planeshift Torment - or even better, playing with it

If my hopes get fulfilled during this summer, GemRB would be really interesting to me, cuz I have no intention of ever installing windows on a machine under my control again; though according to the appdb on winehq, PT should work fine with wine, (and thats probably the way im going to try to play it), its only half the fun this game potentially has; the second half could well be working with GemRB

Not wanting to mess with GemRB the code since I have nothing to do with in yet, could I ask - what do you use Python for in this project? I was planning an asocial summer of Python anyways... Would D&D rules be implemented in Python? Do you use SWIG with it to combine with C++? What other libs are you using? What is used for graphics itself? If one were interested in playing with the code, what skills would be required/recommended? I never did any reverse engeneering, and besides, my coding experience is quite limited (though not nonexistant), so Im a bit doubtfull if I could actually be of much use, but was interested to check it out and see, and the documentation links arent functional right now, and I have nothing to test the engine with yet..

 

Also, can the goal of both supporting the orig games and being a platform for new games be reached? I saw that other projects that reverse engeneer an engine used in multiple games, like for instance the SCUMMVM project, discourage from using their engine as a platform for development of new games, cuz to debug the games they were supporting, they often need to support the bugs of the games themselves, to make them run, so are clumsy and unpredictable for use in new games, once the old ones are suficiantly debugged. Would this not eventually be the case with gemRB too? Im not at all familiar with the architecture of infinity-based games, or the modding community around them...

[Avenger]

We use openal, SDL and python.

We plan to create other graphic plugins so a directX support for windows is also planned.

And OpenGL support for both windows/linux.

 

Python is used for the guiscripts, we have nearly 200 guiscript functions you can use from these scripts. There is an online documentation for this:

here.

[jcompton]

Also, can the goal of both supporting the orig games and being a platform for new games be reached? I saw that other projects that reverse engeneer an engine used in multiple games, like for instance the SCUMMVM project, discourage from using their engine as a platform for development of new games, cuz to debug the games they were supporting, they often need to support the bugs of the games themselves, to make them run, so are clumsy and unpredictable for use in new games, once the old ones are suficiantly debugged. Would this not eventually be the case with gemRB too? Im not at all familiar with the architecture of infinity-based games, or the modding community around them...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well, that's the old "You pays your money (or not, in this case) and you takes your chances" tradeoff with legacy code. It's well-established what the legacy code is and is not capable of--you then decide if that really suits your needs for a new project, or if you'd be more comfortable and better served by something designed from the ground up to do exactly what you know you need.

 

I don't know much about SCUMMVM and how it has helped or hindered SCUMM-type development, but intuitively I have a hard time believing that it would somehow have made it more difficult to do a SCUMM-type game than not having the VM at all. Other community-developed game emulator/replicator systems I have known have done a decent job of evolving beyond the limitation and quirks of the source material, offering new capabilities without breaking backwards compatibility. Just look at the Inform language and its associated interpreters, which can still generate gamecode compatible with 8-bit Infocom text adventure interpreters, but are also now capable of quite a bit more.

 

All that said, I suspect that someone going so far as to invest the considerable time and money required to make a new Infinity-type game will not be terribly interested in fighting the vagaries of CombatCounter() and whatnot, so may in fact either hold out for some sort of further "GemRB+" capabilities, or commission a new engine. I speak from experience.

[Avenger]

I don't agree that you cannot use SCUMMVM for a brand new game.

You can take a particular version of it, update the engine to your needs then start with your own art, when you need, you modify the source again (with or without using the mods of the original SCUMMVM). Once you are done, you can distribute your game (with the modified source available).

 

The goal of GemRB is to make the OLD games playable, it is written in a customisable way, but if you don't like it, just modify the source.

The only thing you are constrained with is that you have to publish your changes in the source code.

 

The problem with SCUMM is: no one has time to create a new game for free, the artistic content of these games demand a lot of work.

This may not be a problem with GemRB, as there are still a lot of modders, while i don't really know about SCUMM (or related) engine modders.

[jcompton]

The problem with SCUMM is: no one has time to create a new game for free, the artistic content of these games demand a lot of work.

This may not be a problem with GemRB, as there are still a lot of modders, while i don't really know about SCUMM (or related) engine modders.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

The artistic demands to do an entry-level SCUMM game (Maniac Mansion, Zak McCracken, etc.) are substantially lighter than they are to do an Infinity-type game--you need a few moving sprites and a bunch of backgrounds with some light animation, and it's all at a framerate you can acceptably do by hand if necessary. I would not rely too heavily on the kindness of unpaid modders to create Infinity area and sprites.

[Avenger]

Well, i agree i have yet to see new IE sprites, but there are many talented people who can create at least mediocre area art. And some of those areas reach the BlackIsle/BW level of quality.

 

The lack of sprites is mostly because of the lack of tools, not because of the lack of capable modders.

[jcompton]

Well, i agree i have yet to see new IE sprites, but there are many talented people who can create at least mediocre area art. And some of those areas reach the BlackIsle/BW level of quality.

 

This may have something to do with the fact that most of them are copy/pasting new areas together from pieces of old Black Isle/Bioware areas. (yes, I know there have been exceptions. However, one of them is probably getting accustomed to being paid for the work right about now...)

 

The lack of sprites is mostly because of the lack of tools, not because of the lack of capable modders.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

You might be surprised... finding people who

- understand the concept of sprites

- understand the concept of layerable (equippable) sprites

- understand the concept of recolorable sprites*

- are willing to produce such output an an affordable price to the independent developer on a budget

 

is fairly difficult. Again, I speak from experience here.

 

* - I'm curious, what algorithm did you end up using for recolorable sprites in GemRB? What source file is it in? We ended up with about 6 different color selection methods and two or three recoloration schemes in Weingine trying to find a really good one.

[Fyorl]

Someone with enough time on their hands (or not) and enough desire to create their own world would probably be capable of creating their own IE sprites. Even if they don't have the knowhow, they can research it. If someone wants to make their dreams a (virtual) reality enough then they will probably do it if it's possible and for free.

[devSin]

Well, i agree i have yet to see new IE sprites, but there are many talented people who can create at least mediocre area art. And some of those areas reach the BlackIsle/BW level of quality.

Do you have any links or screenshots to these BIS/BioWare-quality maps? Or are they just cut/paste jobs from maps that started out as BIS/BioWare-quality?

 

* - I'm curious, what algorithm did you end up using for recolorable sprites in GemRB? What source file is it in? We ended up with about 6 different color selection methods and two or three recoloration schemes in Weingine trying to find a really good one.

You didn't just do the straight palette swap? Or are you talking about shifts to tint/hue/etc.?

[Avenger]

Well, i agree i have yet to see new IE sprites, but there are many talented people who can create at least mediocre area art. And some of those areas reach the BlackIsle/BW level of quality.

Do you have any links or screenshots to these BIS/BioWare-quality maps? Or are they just cut/paste jobs from maps that started out as BIS/BioWare-quality?

 

Glory of Istar:

http://www.dragonlancetc.com/?page=screens

 

Tower of Iron Will:

http://bwenglish.idnes.cz/interviews/towerofironwillint.html

[Avenger]

The low level palette code is in CharAnimations::SetupColors()

It is of course modified by lightmap.

And it should be modified by the various glow/pulse etc opcodes which are not fully implemented yet.

[jcompton]

Someone with enough time on their hands (or not) and enough desire to create their own world would probably be capable of creating their own IE sprites. Even if they don't have the knowhow, they can research it. If someone wants to make their dreams a (virtual) reality enough then they will probably do it if it's possible and for free.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

This is a very optimistic attitude, but I assure you, someone with an active imagination is not necessarily a skilled 3D artist.

 

You didn't just do the straight palette swap? Or are you talking about shifts to tint/hue/etc.?

 

Wes could of course explain it better than I can, but there are four different ways to convert the old pixel color into a new one. Only one of them tends to look good, but I'm sure there's a creative use for the others.

[Avenger]

You didn't just do the straight palette swap? Or are you talking about shifts to tint/hue/etc.?

 

Wes could of course explain it better than I can, but there are four different ways to convert the old pixel color into a new one. Only one of them tends to look good, but I'm sure there's a creative use for the others.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

We don't care about the original pixel colour, we simply replace fixed parts of the palette with gradient colours.

The only difference is between PST and the rest of the games (so we support 2 different recolouring methods).