[Reaper_Man]

I think you are sorely underestimating what use the engine is. I think if you step outside of the box of cartoony shooters from the 90's like Duke, and modern shooters that would needlessly draw negative parallels, I think some really interesting things are more than capable with the tech. Greenlight is for small, independent launches and the people playing these games more than likely aren't going to scoff at dated looking visuals. These are the people that made Minecraft a sensation, who enjoy Braid or Super Meat Boy or VVVVVV.

I think if you can bring interesting and unique gameplay, regardless of engine quality, that you'll find an audience.

[Mblackwell]

Tea Monster, on 27 July 2012 - 02:28 PM, said:

The OP and Helixhorned are talking about presenting EDuke32 as a modern gaming tool. It just isn't. That is due both to the technology of the engine and the attitude of a lot of Dukers.

If you want Duke to look just like it did in 1996, then that's great, be happy. If you want to present it as a modern game engine, then it IS a problem.

Completely apart from the point of this thread, 'classic' Dukers can be a problem for those trying to modernise it. Just look at what's happened to the HRP thread in the last month.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here... or behind ourselves as the case may be. Feature wise the engine is able to pull off most the same results as something like id Tech 4. The only things really lacking are ragdolls (because of lack of bones), and certain types of shaders. And I suppose Patches too, but we won't get into that and it's not really necessary for building an environment in EDuke32. The problem you'll run into with any mod is more a question of time and resources. The average modder lacks the skill or the time to pull off the same quality of art assets. And until the community gets enough talented artists that's where we'll hit the brick wall.

If you're willing to take a step back you can generally get the same quality as a Source based title without much effort.

As far as game types, if you have the coding skill (heck even if you don't, these days) and a goal in mind you can make almost any game type. Even before the advent of EDuke32 Diaz was toying with building a fighting game (which would be cake now... I still have his prototype somewhere I think). In a weekend I did a top down shooter. People have done third person platform and action games, as well as sidescrollers. I have code laying around for different styles of adventure games, and RPG game systems which only took me a day or two to build a quick prototype.

All of these can be done without much effort. The engine in this case isn't the problem, it's that the people that are using the engine don't have access to the same people, skill, talent, or time (among other resources) as most commercial projects. Why do you think most Indie projects skew toward a consistent and interesting style rather than simply trying to ramp up the graphics to 11? They'd never ever be able to compete. It's not worth your time and energy to do so when you could spend it making an interesting game.

Plagman, on 27 July 2012 - 09:59 AM, said:

I've been waiting for this for a long while, also. The truth is that even though the platform has a lot of paradigms that give it huge potential as an standalone game development tool, there simply are too many quirks and arcane things to work through to be able to use it that way. Hardcore Duke fans are used to all these things by now, but outsiders get really turned off and (usually) run away screaming.

If I could work full-time on EDuke32, I would focus 100% on making it a good tool for anyone to quickly prototype and develop games; that's always been my vision.

The bolded is a better point to make. There are a lot of really obscure tools or tricks that once you know them are really obvious but until you do they just seem obtuse. The scripting language for example makes it easy to accomplish simple small changes, but larger changes require longer blocks of code than they should just due to the parser needing everything broken down for it. It's similar (not the same of course) in many ways to trying to write ASM. (There's ways of fixing that however, which are being done, and it's generally easy enough to learn that it can be overcome)

A bigger issue (to me) is that Mapster32 while being a powerful and "simple" editor is not "obvious" by any stretch of the imagine. If you know all of the key commands and what they do it isn't difficult (in fact it's probably the quickest level editor I've toyed with), but it's a lot to try to absorb all at once and you have no other choice if you want to accomplish even simple things.

[Reaper_Man]

Mblackwell, on 27 July 2012 - 06:44 PM, said:

I have code laying around for different styles of adventure games, and RPG game systems which only took me a day or two to build a quick prototype.

Any reason you haven't released any of this stuff?

[Mblackwell]

I just generally never release anything completely unpolished, buggy, or early alpha. At least, not for the last decade. Also some are just hacked enough for me to understand how the concept I'm working out in my head would play out, but not really release-able (too obscure).

It's just not in my nature to release something only partially finished.

[Fox]

Reaper_Man, on 27 July 2012 - 06:55 PM, said:

Any reason you haven't released any of this stuff?

Normally if it takes only one or two days, probably someone else would prefer to create a code of his own.

[Reaper_Man]

That's kind of assuming that everyone has the same knowledge and skill set though, isn't it? I'm sure if someone who was newer to CON and was interested in making an RPG, having a working example would be super useful to them.

[Jimmy]

Still playing Cyborg's opposite, eh?

My main buff with the HRP is that it just doesn't look good. Too many artists and styles going on, not to mention the fact it's not a modification, it's just a pile of assets dropped onto a different pile of assets. It's like trying to fit Mason cap on a bottle of soda.

[Mark]

I understand your point. The inconsistencies will show up more when a map uses many hundreds of different textures. But for the map I'm working on, I'm guessing about 75 percent of the map is made from less than 30 textures with a dozen or two more for details. I haven't found a noticable weakness in anything so far. But maybe I'm easier to please than others.

[Hendricks266]

Captain Awesome, on 28 July 2012 - 01:32 PM, said:

My main buff with the HRP is that it just doesn't look good. Too many artists and styles going on, not to mention the fact it's not a modification, it's just a pile of assets dropped onto a different pile of assets. It's like trying to fit Mason cap on a bottle of soda.

This is really true but only for the hodgepodge old Polymost HRP when everyone and their dog made textures that didn't measure up. I too am guilty but I've since seen to it that all offending tiles have been replaced.

(Tangent: The worst example of this I've seen is this guy submitting absolutely horrendous stuff to the VacaHRP that I rejected immediately. We're talking MS Paint freehand airbrushing text and details, messy-ass colors, models made of perfect cylinders and toruses, terrible misuse of UV maps, fonts without hinting and antialiasing, and pixelated freehand cutouts of photographs layered into a texture. Then, to top it off, some guy had the nerve to package up the pile of shit thrown in a random def file where it didn't belong as "VacaHRP v1.5 Unofficial".)

Now that Roma Loom, Marked, Spiker, and co. are slowly remaking the HRP one texture at a time, I predict we will see a visible upsurge in quality.

[Tea Monster]

The visual quality of the old HRP was very varied. Looking at it wasn't too good, but one thing I really thought was good about it was that we did get dozens of people who wanted to contribute to it. I think that the fact that all those people wanted to contribute to DN3D should be looked on highly, even if you don't like the textures.

Back on topic, how likely would it be to give Mapster a 'real' user interface (using buttons and such)? Also, is there a concise, 'real world' manual for con coding anywhere? By 'real world' I mean with subheadings of "How do I replace a weapon" and "how do I change enemy behaviour?"

If you could put all this stuff in one place, you could package it up as a game kit for Android or iPhone (that's assuming you can get it to run on either of those platforms.

Then there is the problem of Polymer optimisation and the fact that no importers/exporters exist for 3DMax/Maya.

[Mblackwell]

To answer your Con question, yes!
http://wiki.eduke32.com/wiki/Scripting

Thank Hendricks for that one.

Between that and the various FAQs about older versions of CON you should be able to get started.

However you may want to add/edit things on this page:

http://wiki.eduke32.com/wiki/Tutorials

[Reaper_Man]

I can't think of any engine in any language that has any sort of guide broken up into nice neat categories like "How do I replace a weapon" and "how do I change enemy behaviour". Changing weapons is simple enough, but "enemy behavior" is more of a concept than a simple copy and paste job.

[Jimmy]

And to boot, code is really one of those things you just 'get' or you don't. I'm an idiot and I suck at math and I can code for EDuke32. (I'm saved by my buff with language. Programming is equal parts math and language.) It's not that hard, you just can't be lazy.

[Jblade]

Captain Awesome, on 29 July 2012 - 05:59 PM, said:

And to boot, code is really one of those things you just 'get' or you don't. I'm an idiot and I suck at math and I can code for EDuke32. (I'm saved by my buff with language. Programming is equal parts math and language.) It's not that hard, you just can't be lazy.

This is true. My maths is pretty...fucking shit by all standards but I've still been able to code lots of cool stuff.

[Skulldog]

Bump, any chance of eduke32 on steam, with all the changes going on with 3d realms?

[Master Fibbles]

There is the Megaton pack. Duke3D is already on Steam. eduke32 is an engine port and does not contain any game materials.

Integrating/replacing the port used in Megaton with eduke32 may be possible (in a strict sense) but is not necessarily ever going to happen.

[Hendricks266]

Devolver sank money into financing General Arcade to put together Megaton, and neither would be happy if that would be replaced.

[Skulldog]

Good point.

[icecoldduke]

Since Duke3d/shadow warrior was released under GPL, having to statically link in a non-gpl'ed library(aka the build engine) would have made Ken's license incompatible with the Duke3d source code license right?