Enemy Territory + Cube 2 = wOOt?

by ezombie on 01/19/2008 16:25, 258 messages, last message: 04/03/2008 21:39, 195224 views, last view: 09/29/2024 06:22

I made an actual thread for this, since we are still yacking about it. To bring the others up to speed:

"Some of us weirdos have been kicking around the thought of making a community edition of Enemy Territory (the FIRST one). I suggested the Cube 2 engine might be a good base...

This would be a straight port of ETPro gameplay to a standalone open source game, using new 'HD' assets. Nothing too fancy, just better graphics and netcode are what we would be looking for."

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#73: ..

by ezombie on 01/26/2008 20:40

Yeah, I started with those :)

The engine started bucking like a bronco when editing. It seems OK at 512x512. I'm thinking to make the base set ground textures at 512, since they look so darn nice. Then add about 10 common wall and floor textures at that level, with the rest at 256. This would let most maps fit into a 64-128MB video card footprint.

We can add menu options for compression and some of the other texture controls, so older cards wouldn't be left in the dust.

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#74: SourceForge project site

by ezombie on 01/26/2008 21:07

https://sourceforge.net/projects/etce/

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#75: Gor Textures

by asdfadsfconorfhdjsk on 01/26/2008 21:48

The "Gor" texture set has a 2048x2048 one...

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#76: ..

by ezombie on 01/27/2008 00:35

So I'm getting 'shimming seams' in medium sized open areas off in the distance on the ground (using CVS).

Is this a known thing, or should I put it on our list to ferret it out?

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#77: ..

by ezombie on 01/27/2008 01:25

I indicated the effect, since it is not very noticeable when standing still.

http://www.usef-et.org/images/temp/seams.jpg

When you are moving, it creates a crawling line effect along the cube seams.

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#78: ..

by ezombie on 01/27/2008 01:28

BTW, I'm using a 'caulk' texture for the map defaults. It's a grided, matte image that stands out against the regular textures. This makes editing much easier.

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#79: ..

by ezombie on 01/27/2008 02:56

Caulk is great to have, since it tells you when the cube edges are nicely equal (like when deforming cubes).

In the screenshot, I circled it with bright red. This is a flat, smooth surface. Those little squigly lines keep popping up as I walk around.

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#80: ..

by RealNitro on 01/27/2008 11:48

I think he means something like the black 'sparkles' that appear when running around some maps. (I thought this was ATI-only?)

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#81: Darkplace

by Temp user on 01/27/2008 16:58

Just wanted to make a last point for darkplace. In darkplace the mappers can use the same technique to create terrain as in ET. Look at that video to see the first terrain created with this technique in nexuiz (saying first means also that it's just a quick test).

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9JXVaV9ec0o

and i can only say again that typical ET gamers come from the Quake world, so will have a much easier task to find quake developers than whatever else developers.

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#82: ..

by ezombie on 01/27/2008 16:58

Well, I have my nVidia OpenGL render setting on 'performance', let me switch it to 'normal' and see what happens.

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#83: ..

by ezombie on 01/27/2008 17:07

I do agree with that statement.

But Nexuiz is just so relatively slow on typical hardware. I mean, it's about the same as ET:QW! If I wanted to buy a new vid card to play a game at decent FPS, I would just play that...

This project was first spurred on due to haveing ALL my long time teammates not being able to 'penny up' to the current batch of games out there. Everyone would just say "You can always just keep playing ET", which is what we are doing right now. But after 5 years, we all want something new, but still ET (in gameplay). AKA - objectives, no combat vehicles, fast and smooth melee, less or equal lag at a given ping and slow speed connection friendly.

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#84: ..

by Temp user on 01/27/2008 17:15

ezombie:
Nexuiz realy isnt slow, at least not in the latest svn version, you can find nightly builds here:

http://emptyset.endoftheinternet.org/~polzer/nexuiz/builds/

Of course you have to watch out for a few resource hungry options (dynamic lights), but the advantage of nexuiz (or darkplace, because a darkplace based game can have a much better performance than nexuiz), is that it can look like quake 1 (ok, better, but no effects etc) for low end pcs, or like doom 3 for high end pcs

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#85: Re: ..

by tentus_ on 01/27/2008 18:13, refers to #84

You say that as if this is something Sauer can't do. Forgive my impertinence, but we're talking about the *Cube* 2 engine: Cube was famous for running on the lowest end pcs, while Sauer takes off from there and goes all the way up to today's standards. Turn everything off in Sauer and you'll be surprised just how low-end it can go.

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#86: ..

by ezombie on 01/27/2008 18:21

Tried the SVN. Same speed as 2.3. Turned EVERYTHING off. Got 30-50fps on most maps with bumpmapping & 1024x768

I'm sorry, but in a relative sense, it's slow. I get almost double that on Cube 2. And it's not smooth - feels like tech 4 on my machine.

I know that Cube 2 has some shortcomings with regards to architecture. I have been able to duplicate ETish maps with heavy use of models though. Basically, if it's not a wall, staircase, or ceiling/floor/ground, I use a model.

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#87: Content Download.

by jsfdlconorhjfd on 01/27/2008 18:29

Sauer Maps and such are *tiny* so downloading content from a server should be fine.

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#88: ..

by ezombie on 01/27/2008 18:46

LOL - I still get 90-120 FPS @ 1280x1028 in Sauer on FreeBSD 7.0 with official nVidia drivers on a 6600 - not GT, not overclocked, just a vanilla 6600. And that's not on low settings.

I guess part of me wants to also *help* an engine. What if this is a complete failure? At least we would've bumped Sauer up a notch (hopefully).

Everything else being equal, I would say we go with a Quake derived engine simply to bring in the current ET mappers (those that have not retired that is). But I tried ALL of them, from Darkplaces to QFusion to Evolution3D. And they are all slower (significantly) then ET when set to the same visual quality level on the same machine.

What's a dev to do?

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#89: ..

by ezombie on 01/27/2008 18:51

And yes, Cube 2 maps are itty bitty. I would love to have central map hosting as an option if possible. This way mappers could post their maps to the master servers, and the the server and client would grab it from there.

Want to run a map on your server? Just add it to the rotation, and wala!

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#90: ..

by ezombie on 01/27/2008 20:35

md3translucent <mesh> <float>

Any info on using this?

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#91: ..

by ezombie on 01/27/2008 20:36

NVRMD, wrong thread

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#92: ..

by ezombie on 01/27/2008 21:48

Well, it appears the one major thing for ET gameplay that we will need to implement is:

Interactive Models

Which of course is the same thing we would have to do with almost ANY engine. At least the code is clean and concise in Cube 2.

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