Sauerbraten engine development

by Aardappel on 03/03/2004 05:18, 1571 messages, last message: 03/14/2008 18:53, 1351271 views, last view: 12/09/2021 04:21

This thread is for discussion of Sauerbraten coding issues / implementation ideas etc.

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#816: ..

by makkE on 06/07/2005 13:25

Aard : Great idea to use sauerbraten as a modeller as well. Still md2 or md3 will need to be used if you want a descent skin on an object (I donīt think saurbraten could do that,or am I wrong?)

Remouk: I donīt think itīs a good idea to use nexuiz content in sauer.
Nexuiz models have a special format (.zym) and wouldnīt be easily implemented (I think they are skeleton based), plus, they arenīt too great, and it would just look silly to just "go shopping at nexuiz". Itīs gpl yea, but every gamer would think it sauer was a cheap rip off ;)

I wonder where DCP is btw ;)

Nexuiz textures arenīt too nice as well (they tend to look very ugly at 16bpp), and they have a really diffrent style.
Sauerbraten opens up so many new possibilitys, that the "old" textureset is far from becomming boring, and every mapper knows em inside out.
The models are fine so far as well, some things need a polish (maybe hud and items, they look a little out of place now compared to sauerīs newly accired beauty )

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#817: Re: ..

by remouk_ on 06/07/2005 14:19, refers to #817

Yes, I meant _some of_ Nexuiz's ressources could be used where needed (especially weapons and textures). :)

The idea was to look for something different than Cube's current artistic content, since they looks old (in my own opinion). ;)

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#818: Re: ..

by eihrul on 06/07/2005 17:10, refers to #817

Using GPL'd content in Sauerbraten would be a huge landmine of legal issues. Does using a GPL'd model in the engine for instance constitute linking and a derived work? Well, Sauerbraten isn't GPL, so that needs to be answered before anyone thinks about it.

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#819: Re: ..

by eihrul on 06/07/2005 18:06, refers to #819

If the content can't be distributed with the engine like our other content, then it is useless.

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#820: Re: "pistol" concept

by CC_machine on 06/07/2005 18:54, refers to #776

lol, link doent work, it says, sorry, the page you requested was not found

and i have tried save target as

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#821: ..

by CC_machine on 06/07/2005 18:56

idea: make a new material called 'tag'.
this would work just the same as tags in cube, but it would be a material

p.s. you may need to add properties to materials so you can have tags for the different triggers

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#822: ..

by makkE on 06/07/2005 19:01

Well, who said all popular content will be in that package? Since aard wants to add "approved" mods to it only, it wonīt grow like you are proposing it.

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#823: Re: ..

by dcp on 06/07/2005 20:34, refers to #816

>>I wonder where DCP is btw ;) <<

hm..? yes?

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#824: Re: Textures and models

by Aardappel_ on 06/07/2005 21:12, refers to #815

I have looked at Nexuiz, of course. I found the textures to be rather ugly, and I didn't see any models I was excited about.

Yeah, maybe we've been looking at the cube textures for too long by now, but they are also *the highest quality large, free, consistent texture set available on the net* ! Just look at Sock's and Iikka's textures in particular, and they are in terms of graphic quality miles ahead of the Nexuiz textures, and pretty much any texture set out there.

I am always interested in new texture sets. But textures are expensive in size, so they must meet quality criteria, as well as consistency, completeness, universality of use and amount of them to choose from. If anyone knows of any sets I haven't seen yet, let me know, but I guarantee you most sets miss some of these.

Once we find a set of the same quality of Sock's an Iikka's stuff all with normalmaps, we will talk about per pixel light :)

Btw, Cube already contains GPL content. But it is in completely seperate files, not linked to the engine, so it is my understanding that this is ok.

I tried out Nexuiz a fair bit. I must say that as a programmer I do not have a lot of respect for these kinds of projects, simply because working on top of the quake engine is 10x easier than making a good FPS from scratch (which noone besides us have done yet). It ran terribly slow on my machine (about 15x less fps than sauer!), lots of graphic errors, and did't look all that good. And the worst thing is that the base engine has nice physics, but they chose to completely modify it into a wobbly mess. I hope they improve on it since they clearly put some work into it, but it doesn't show (yet).

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#825: ..

by CC_machine on 06/07/2005 23:20

plz make a sauer masterserver you cant multiplayer without one :(

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#826: Re: Textures and models

by da-mitaman on 06/08/2005 00:56, refers to #824

Aard,

These two sites have very nice textures and both authors have given me written permission to use these textueres in an open source game such as CUBE. I would be happy to forward Chris Zastrow's email to you if you so desire (I deleted Rorshach's when cleaning up my email, sorry).

Author: Chris Zastrow
http://www.planetquake.com/subverse/

Author : Kevin 'Rorshach'
http://www.planetquake.com/polycount/cottages/rorshach/index2.shtml

Please read this important note:

The author of textures within the "dg" folder in cube DOES NOT give permission to use his textures in an open source game such as CUBE. It has something to do with the way the textures are not "intergrated" into the game engine. Again, I would be happy to forward his email to you for your own interprtation.

Author: David Gurrea (textures in the DG folder).
http://www.davegh.com/blade/davegh.htm

I think it's great there are so many textures out on the web, but I think we all need to be 100% sure it's ok to use them.

Just thought I'd pass this information along.

As always - best wishes to this community.

MitaMAN

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#827: Re: Textures and models

by Aardappel_ on 06/08/2005 01:27, refers to #826

Some of Zastrow's textures are good, but the majority has exactly the problem I spoke of: lack of consistency. They are all photographically sourced, and do not necessarily fit at all together. However, I have just downloaded them all, will pick out a high quality set from them, and add it to Sauerbraten. At least quite a few texture may mix well with current textures and provide some new looks in levels.

Rorshach's stuff is probably the highest quality stuff that is not yet included in Cube/Sauer. I have thought a few times of including it, and though his stuff is consistent, it has many special purpose textures and often lacks generic textures. But they are pretty good, I will add a lot of them.

DG has apparently changed his "terms of use", I am pretty sure that the first time I downloaded them and added them to Cube, he did not have such overly strict rules. I am not sure what the legal status is on changing terms of use after people are already using it, but I very much doubt that he would be against our projects.

Yes, forward me your emails, if you wish.

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#828: ..

by Sparr on 06/08/2005 03:31

one thing nexuiz has that i think cube/sauer really needs is a more "normal" interface. throwing people into the game then making them open the menu to find things like settings and game joining is interesting, but confuses a lot of new players. putting people to a menu FIRST, and letting them choose to begin playing, is the norm.

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#829: ..

by makkE on 06/08/2005 04:07

Talking about generic textures: Sauerbraten will need a few of those I guess.. the cube set is perfect with the cube way of texturing, but especialy when it gets to modellling/fine detail, one will need more generic textures that can be used as materials rather.

Since it seems we will probably exceed the 256 texture limit (already exceeded with the dg-set) it could be a good idea to either expand that limit or to offer some .cfg-files to the mapper that have sets focused on certain themes (like egypt+dg+rorshach or techsok+rorshach or whatever).

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#830: Re: ..

by shadow516 on 06/08/2005 04:25, refers to #828

There should be a default "normal" mode with a startup menu, a "classic" mode that puts you right into the game, and an "enhanced" mode aimed towards serious mappers and modders.

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#831: Re: Textures and models

by Pxtl on 06/08/2005 04:57, refers to #827

Well, to be fair, the same complaints you have about Nexuiz could be applied to Cube, but exchanging the content for the code. Nexuiz uses existing code (a barely modified Darkplaces engine) but provides whole new content from scratch - which is no mean feat. Cube provides an engine from scratch, but supplies very little original content.

I don't think either project should be considered "simple". Many 100% content replacements fail, just as many engines do. Look at previous attempts to repackage Quake - i.e. the OpenQuartz game, which was freaking hideous.

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#832: Re: ..

by TOGoS_1u2kuhbui on 06/08/2005 05:17, refers to #829

> it could be a good idea to either expand
> that limit or to offer some .cfg-files
> to the mapper that have sets focused on
> certain themes

You know about TCubeTex, right?

http://www.uwplatt.edu/~stevenda/projects/TCubeTex

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#833: Re: Textures and models

by tentus on 06/08/2005 05:31, refers to #827

"You can use this material for create your personal or professional projects, with the exception of commercial videogames, and whenever it is an integral part of your work"

DG's new stance on redistribution (which i have quoted above) sounds like he's giving open source projects a wide opening. In his examples of permitted use DG even says "You can make your personal videogame scenary [...] if it is for free".

Also, Cube (and CL even more so) rely heavily on the DG textures for many maps, and as such fall under the "integral part" clause. "You can make your own commercial projects with this material if it is not a commercial videogame, and it is an integral part of your work."

I don't think Aard has anything to worry about. I may want to send DG an email asking for express permission, but i'd say DG's homemade license works with Cube, it's Mods, and Sauer.

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#834: I'm going into jean pierre mode

by TOGoS_1u2kuhbui on 06/08/2005 07:33

Speaking of models and stuff, pretend I said that stuff (http://www.cubeengine.com/forum.php4?action=display_thread&thread_id=469&start=148) about map linking here.

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#835: Re: Textures and models

by jean pierre on 06/08/2005 07:44, refers to #833

I got an idea why dont you just add the texutres/models to the defaultmapsettings.cfg instead of making a .cfg file of that map and change some of the textures?
It would be more easy or that is bad cause of the texture slots?

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