Definition of GemRB in non-technical terms

[Grunker]

I've been following the development of GemRB for a while now, but one thing still eludes me. What is the exact nature of GemRB? Is it like a new source code, a new engine, or? What I'm asking is; what exactly happens when you open the program? I have searched the various FAQs, but found nothing that satisfies my enquiries. I'm not a modder, and have little technical knowledge.

 

Thanks in advance,

Grunker

[Avenger]

GemRB is like IE V2.0

Or 4.0 or whatever.

[jcompton]

Think of it as a replacement for baldur.exe. It's the program that makes sense of the gobs and gobs of 2DAs and sprites and area backdrops and whatnot. Without baldur.exe, you cannot play BG2, but without all of the BG2 data, baldur.exe is worthless.

 

From a player perspective, GemRB is analagous to game front-ends such as Frotz, ZDoom, ScummVM, and so forth. They require and support the same gameplay data that the original commercial game used, but typically let you play them in a different way (i.e., on an atypical computing platform--see other threads where people are compiling GemRB for PDAs and PPC Linux-y machines.)

[Grunker]

Thanks for the explanation guys.

 

Another question: Does/will GemRB ligthen the burden of modders or is the aim to enable the modders to bend the engine more? Or is the goal another?

[jcompton]

Avenger et al can give you a more comprehensive overview, but if you scan some of the threads here you can draw some conclusions. My conclusion is that it tends to favor "bend more" more than it favors "lighten the burden"--things which were otherwise impossible to do to Infinity (such as enabling new resolutions) are possible with GemRB (see references to "GUIscript"), but I haven't seen much which makes existing, established tasks markedly easier. CRE creation is still CRE creation. DLG calls don't change. Etc.

 

Maybe that will change, but I suspect they'll work on perfecting gameplay of core Infinity data first before trying to introduce new "Version 2" file formats which might make modding easier/faster/whatever.

[Avenger]

Yes, JC sees the scope quite well.

 

We first want to make a perfect (better than the original) IE clone.

This doesn't make small (trivial) additions impossible, but large fundamental changes must wait.

At least, I don't plan to implement those myself.

If there is a donation of code for a new format, i would merge it in (i've written the conditions for adding new fileformats in multiple times).

I don't really expect this to happen, because most people just now start to test GemRB, let alone tamper with the guiscripts. So we are quite far from significant code contributions.

 

Once GemRB works more or less, i will rebuild Glory of Istar for GemRB (it won't work with the original IE). This will give me enough idea how to improve DLTCEP (which will stay my main editing tool).

[Grunker]

Thanks, guys