Wirehead Studios

That was taken from John Carmack's blog... If the Quake III source code were to be released, what would that mean for Generations Arena? Is there any interesting functions that you could then implement with the newly aquired knowledge? Would it greatly improve the chances of Ressurgence? Just curious if there was ever a time when you said "Man, I wish I had the full thing, then I could do this!".

I can think of a few things I'd like to do with it.  The first is to fix the server uptime framerate decay problem that's requiring us to have server admins restart once a day.  Also I'd like to be able to have clients retain a memory cache of models and graphics so they don't have to be reloaded every time you change maps.  Beyond that, there's a few other things that have been floating in the back of my mind, but I can't quite bring them all to mind at present.

Resurgence has nothing to do with the quake3.exe at this point.  It's a question of getting all the other major stuff done for Gen before adding another large amount of complex code.

Needless to say, the source's release would open up alot of oppurtunities and possibly make the code that was hacked in easier to deal with for the mod.*

*I know nothing about coding. Correct me if I'm wrong on anything.

*cough*eyecandy*cough*

The .exe source would give us access to the renderer, and some more freedom with the bot code.

What does that mean in english? The potential to fix/add lighting functions, bumpmapping, etc. And to improve (provided we have time and a crazy coder) the botcode.

Beyond that, the vast majority of what we have slated in generations is already possible, or being worked on.

Resurgence is still a possibility, even without the .exe source, but the gameplay code needs to be finalized before we start doing monsters.

Pho's said it before, if someone feels like footing the bills, he can dedicate more time to it :P.

Hmmm, eye candy would be awsome... But wouldn't the addition of bump mapping require that all of the skins and textures be redone... Or at least have those additional layers added?

Support for the extra layers. if the layer is lacking, it'd be flat-shaded as it were.

And frankly, normal-mapping would be a post 1.0 feature anyway I'd imagine.

Not to mention that I know absolutely nothing about OpenGL programming...

Adding normal-mapping to the Q3A engine would be a bit like making gold decorations on a rusty old bike. Don't see why, it runs fine without - let the Tenebrae fans worry about all that ;]

It'd look like this:

normal maps are like alpha channels, if they're used improperly, they make it look funky.

tek , I would remove that ricer before rick sees it .

It'd look like some Fast and the Furious-esque wiger-mobile?

I whould love to see normal maps in q3..but i rather have REAL dynamic lights :)

I really don't understand why though... If you want fancy new graphics, there's HL2 and D3 -- Q3 will NEVER be like that, even if all the technical implementations are made, the artwork won't match, and when the artwork is re-made (which will take YEARS), you have an old physics engine with nice graphics, while you could be playing a new physics engine with nice graphics :]

Bump-mapping on our weapons could, in theory, make them look very nice, but the problem is the textures have to be created with bump mapping in mind from the start.  It's not enough to just start pushing pixels up or down, it has to be thought out.  It would certainly do a disservice to Tab's existing artwork, which I think is outstanding enough without bump maps, and I certainly wouldn't ask our skinner to redo all that hard work all over again.  If bump mapping were an option from the beginning, then sure, we could have used it for some finer detail that's done with geometry and texturing right now, but I'd rather not mess with what already looks great.  It's a fine concept, but I think our energies can be better spent on other things, such as actual gameplay, and those animations everyone's been wanting to see.  :)

I actually wanna see lights be triggable , so that you can switch the lights in a room out and fight in the dark or so .
but iwould like animations to :D

about the mobile , I like his exhaust .

:offtopic: By the time you get done "tricking out" a ricer, you could have paid the same to buy a real car, like this:

(http://www.fantasycars.com/derek/cars/images/pontiac/firebird_2.jpg)

and if you save enough, maybe even something like this:

(http://www.pontiac.cz/graphics/gallery/full/1973-Pontiac-Trans-Am.008.jpg)
(http://www.pontiacserver.com/blackhawk02/73ta-fl800c.jpg)

Actually Phoenix, that is my pictorial point. I hope everyone understands my correlation between the cars and the game engines =]

that would be a firebirdwich I wouldnt buy since for a little bit more monyey you can buy a trans am wich has a v8 engine instead of a v6 engine .
and t be honest , i like the plymouth roadrunner , ford mustang and dodge charger more .

but I wouldnt buy those cars for every day use sincegasoline costs 1+ euro/liter thanks to your precious iraqi war .

< :offtopic: >As my father commented to someone a little while ago, the Trans Am is a penis envy car. I'd never buy one. Firebird all the way.< /:offtopic: >

:offtopic:  Newsflash:  OPEC sets fuel prices, and they decided to jack the rates up because they're greedy.  Iraq had nothing to do with it, unless of course you consider the illegal export of oil and resultant bloodmoney during the Oil for Food program to have been a good thing?  First the US went to war for Iraq's oil, now everyone's bitching because there's not enough oil.  Sorry, can't have it both ways.  In addition to that, I can assure you that the United States has absolutely zero control over the EU's price regulations, since the EU hates the US and wants to be the big power on the world stage and has been nudging the US out of everything it can as often as possible for the last decade.  You want cheaper gas over there?  Start drilling, lobby to relax fuel taxes, or else pipe down and deal with it.  Gas prices in Europe are high because your politicians allow it and seem to desire it that way.  In the US you pay on average between $1.70 ~ $2.10 a gallon depending on where you live and what grade you want.  I see no reason why Europeans couldn't pay the same rates, at least, no market-related reason that is.  :offtopic:

Tek:  Well the Q3 engine is a decent engine.  It's just lacking some features I'd like to see.  Speaking of those, and moving back on topic (at least until Games Keeper posts a rebuttal rant), here's a few I remembered just recently:

An rgbGen entityDiffuse shader keyword.  This would allow the code to control what color an item gets painted, but still pass it through lightmaps.  Think glow-in-the-dark Skippy no longer glowing in the dark.

Better access to some cvar variables that are currently set at annoying defaults.

Raw RGB control for Doom's invulnerability effect so I don't have to use a multi-pass shader hack, AND we could give it the true monochrome effect.

The ability to add new variables to entityState and playerState that currently require clever hacks to work around.

I'll add to the list as things come to mind.  :)

pho , and why just During the war did the prices go from high to skyhigh .
the reason of the high gaspricing is to protect the market .
this way people aint gonna buy amercan fuelconsuming cars that fast .
because those cars also got a lot of torque and here you get axed on that .
in your country you will probably get taxed on other stuff on cars and thats why you peope would never drive a smart .

http://www.supercars.de/?show=single_scree...DAvMDEzLmpwZw== (http://www.supercars.de/?show=single_screen&do=car&modell_id=523&modell=Roadster&marken_id=146&markenname=Smart©=2&url=Li9kYXRhL3NtYXJ0LzIwMDNyb2Fkc3Rlci80ODAvMDEzLmpwZw==)

I already answered that question, OPEC raised the prices because they're greedy.  That's the plain truth.  If you're unwilling to accept that fact it's no down off my back.

What you're also forgetting is that Americans are fiercely independent and don't like being told what to do by anybody.  As long as they have enough cash they're going to keep buying whatever they want to.  Sure, some prefer fuel economy and buy smaller cars as a result, but many people in the US have a love of big, powerful vehicles that (unfortunately) tend to guzzle lots of gas.  It's no different than people who like big, powerful firearms, or big powerful biceps.  It's the reason you go for the Quad Damage, or that BFG.  Powerful feels good. :smirk:

The problem is, we're stuck with the old car we have. We can't get a better ride, so we're stuck with modding up the old one. So you can just forget about that Fireb-- er, better engine.

and what for car is that old car .

btw pho , instead of a pontiac firebird , go out and buy a plymouth superbird .
thats power and gas eating .

...what the hell does power and gas and technical car crap have to do with the Quake 3 source??

======////// Thread Derailed.

Your fault Tek, you posted the Ricer pic.  You should have known there would be consequences!  :ninja:

Especially with car-nuts like GK around.

Cars: Dodge Viper all the way. (couldn't drive one in this country, though ...)

Oil prices: "So what if it gets three miles to the gallon? I'm a mom, not a conservationist!"

Q3 source: Forget bump-mapping, my hardware's crap enough, thank you.

maybe we should make a seperate car topic .

IT WAS A METAPHOR. :wall:

Tenebrae was so poorly coded that it slowed my Athlon 2700+ and ATi Radeon 9200 down into framerates best described in seconds per frame even when only one brush was visible. It was slower than Doom 3, slower even than Far Cry at high detail in 1024x768.

Pho: A '70 Dodge Challenger with a 426 Hemi could own your pitiful GM car:
(http://p.webshots.com/ProThumbs/5/38905_poster405.jpg)

I don't think I'd ever buy one in purple though.

The FS2_Open engine for FreeSpace 2 supports specularity, environment mapping, 32-bit textures, and effects, HT&L, hi-poly models, and more, and, except for the hi-poly models, all of the new textures and stuff required for this to look its best have been made. The hi-res textures for ALL ships are about 90% complete, and the specular maps for every ship and object were done in months. A complete hi-res texture set has been made for Doom II. If there is a concerted effort among many people in the community, we can pull this off.

Complete? Yes.
Hi-Res? ehr.. yes, I guess.
Quality? None.

I have seen retexturing projects, and they generally suck. One or two able artists make a handful of textures for them, but the remainder is slammed together by utter newbies, resulting in a horrible collection of low quality psuedo-improved textures. Par example: they used my (gen) doom-door, and cut it up into bits to 'make' other textures, which all sucked as a result.

No, I don't think retexturing 'projects' are the way to go. Especially not if the textures have to be normal mapped.

P.S. And please people, stop discussing bloody automobiles in the Generations forum...

:offtopic: Woolie:  It's not just about horsepower.  It's a balance of power, style, appearance, and of course, name.  Besides, you're opening up a whole new car discussion which could go into stock vs modified, etc, of which we really need to go back on topic as Tabun has stated.  The only "such-n-such would own such-n-such" that belongs on this forum would read "Generation A would own Generation B".  :offtopic:

Now, back to the discussion of the topic:  Quake III Arena engine modification, as opposed to automobile engines and their accompanying housings.  :smirk:

Uhh, the FreeSpace texture projects are the best I've ever seen. They have some very talented people there, and the textures look just like the originals, except better (actually, they're made using the originals as a base, unlike the Doom ones). The specular maps in particular are beautiful, and make FS2 look a lot better than it did in 1999.  The percentage of really talented people in the FreeSpace community is much higher than in most other game communities as the game was never really advertised by its publisher except for a couple of internet trailers (it deserved more; the game was easily in the top three best PC games of 1999), and thus never had the chance to attract a following outside of the diehards.

Well if you can get the FS people to learn about new mapping techniques, and get the whole team organised and working on Q3Vanillaebra, go right ahead. If you're counting on people from the average/normal communities to work on it, expect garbage, that's all I'm saying.

It's starting to seem as if the larger a community is, the harder it is to get a decent pool of talent together. Doom 3 sites are jammed with "I'm going to make a TC even though I've never touched a map or even an image editor before in my life" hosted projects. I wonder if even 5% of the Doom 3 projects under construction today will ever reach fruition.

Aye, it looks like a lot of 'teams' are in for a big shock. The problem with the older and larger communities is generally that (good) artists are all too eager to move on. Old engines limit their possibilities and they don't like getting tied down to an 'old' project. I seem to be an exception to that rule ;]

The talented FS2 editors will probably never "move on",. and most Doom I/II mod makers are far beyond the point of moving on--if you want to move on whenever the Next Big Thing comes out, you won't be editing an 11-year-old game.

One interesting thing about the major Doom mods being made today, though, is that they exceed almost all modern games in every area except graphics and AI (the AI is hardcoded so it can't really be changed). RTC-3057 has a better storyline, better gameplay and balance, almost as much architectural detail, more extensive and sophisticated scripting, and a better overall experience than Doom 3, Far Cry, or Half-Life 2. Do something for 10 years, and you can become very, very good at it (I say 10 instead of 11 because the first Doom map editor wasn't released until some time after Doom was released)..

They sure do make good use of what they have, even in graphics:

Screenshots can be found by clicking here because the board software doesn't like dynamic stuff in IMG tags (http://www.wadsinprogress.info/index.php?a=listwads&wad=41)]

:offtopic:  That third screenshot Woolie just made me think "BUILD!".  Few on here will get what I'm actually referring to.

Also,  I agree with Tab about the re-texturing groups.  Take a look over at 3D Realms forum - there are plenty of users doing their very best to output textures...but it's a hit and miss affair.  Then again, like me, they're (mostly) amateurs when it comes to texture work,  so as Tab says: expect crap.

Indeed, I can only think of one retexturing project that worked out well and that is for DX:IW...and most of what had been accomlished twas made by people numbering in the single digits.  Resulting in a far more consistent quality (bad or good is open to debate and will, of course, change from person to person).   :offtopic:

Ok, on topic, almost...well I'm more interested in the history of the code than anything else.  That being the one reason why I've downloaded over years everything from the Wolf 3D source to the Duke 3D source releases...=]  

New features...meh! Pigeon no able think of new features that he'd like - pigeon go coo!

Regards,

Yickle.

Let me guess - it's either the bridge or those slanted bits!

ZDoom supports slopes and faux 3D bridges have been around since 1995.

Scalliano: the entire shot reminds me of E2M1 from Duke 3D :} Not a bad thing imho.

Woolie:  When I said "BUILD!" in my previous post, I am referring to Ken Silverman's Build tech that powered such games as Duke Nukem 3D and Blood - not that I wanted to build what I seen in the screenshot :}

Regards,

Yickle.

I know you meant the Build engine. I was just telling how they managed to implement Build-like slopes and 3D bridges in the ZDoom engine (for the bridges, they use invisible THINGs and two-sided linedefs. For the slopes, they use a special linetype.).

I spent about a month trying to clean up messes like that in the Doom 2 retexture project :(

Now I am pretty much bored of it. Its impossible to know what came from where anymore. Why bother trying to do something good when people are happy with a bump map + sharpen filter.

:offtopic: Speaking of retexturing projects, does anyone know where I can find the old Quake 1 retexturing files that were recommended for Tenebrae and such? Everywhere I go points to a German link, which either doesn't work or doesn't seem to have the file anywhere.

Try this page http://np.teamfortress.org/iM/textures/ (http://np.teamfortress.org/iM/textures/)