[Juris3D]

StrikerMan780, on 05 July 2015 - 07:00 PM, said:

Preview of what our team has put together for the Unity port:

POD file loading screen.

So exciting things are happening now!
Slightly off topic - what are next best things after "Terminal Velocity" in airborne shooters for you all? For me those are "Crimson Skies" (PC) and "Rogue Squadron 3D" (PC). And in space - "Starlancer". With various fixes and hacks all those are playable on Win7 64bit and decent resolutions. Sure, all of them has some "age problems". If anyone knows some reverse enginiering efforts, or remakes, or clones for any of these, would you share please?

[filipetolhuizen]

MrFlibble, on 05 July 2015 - 11:14 AM, said:

I think filipetolhuizen was referring to your question about keeping selectable episodes. I also agree that there doesn't seem to be a need to change that.

Yes, that's exactly what I was refering to. Any other improvements are welcome. I liked the HUD.

[Striker]

Juris3D, on 05 July 2015 - 10:07 PM, said:

So exciting things are happening now!
Slightly off topic - what are next best things after "Terminal Velocity" in airborne shooters for you all? For me those are "Crimson Skies" (PC) and "Rogue Squadron 3D" (PC). And in space - "Starlancer". With various fixes and hacks all those are playable on Win7 64bit and decent resolutions. Sure, all of them has some "age problems". If anyone knows some reverse enginiering efforts, or remakes, or clones for any of these, would you share please?

For me, it's Hellbender. It uses a much more advanced version of Terminal Velocity's engine.

Rogue Squadron 3D was awesome however.

[filipetolhuizen]

Hellbender was indeed ahead of its time. Outstanding graphics and complex gameplay features.

[Striker]

Indeed it was. If it weren't for poor performance on older hardware and some bugs, it could have beaten out Descent.

[Striker]

I'm looking for anyone out there with exceptional experience with OpenGL who'd like to help me out.

If you wish to take part, post some demos of stuff you've done in the past.

[Juris3D]

I am wondering, what about 3D-accelerated features in "TV". Besides full boxed "TV" game I also had (maybe still have CD somewhere) "Terminal Velocity" version for "S3 Virge" graphics card, CD came bundled. That version has bilinear filtering on textures. Is that somehow in source code too? Can it be used maybe? I know it was stupidly S3-specific. Question is, can we expect some acclelerated 3D graphics features in modified "TV", or that will be only in remake "from scratch" in Unity engine?

Video "Terminal Velocity" S3 Virge version running:

[Striker]

I cannot say for certain as of yet.

[Striker]

Smoke_Fumus has got models rendering in Unity now!

[Juris3D]

Congrats about 3D models! I think as an option in-game models could be enhanced, changed, but I think everybody will agree with me that there is one essential thing from original "Terminal Velocity" that has to be copied exact the same as possible: flight mechanics / controls. That feels so right in "TV".

[Smoke Fumus]

Juris3D, on 08 July 2015 - 11:00 PM, said:

Congrats about 3D models! I think as an option in-game models could be enhanced, changed, but I think everybody will agree with me that there is one essential thing from original "Terminal Velocity" that has to be copied exact the same as possible: flight mechanics / controls. That feels so right in "TV".

Not for Velocity³. Velocity³ is only a back-to-back port of functional of fury³ with support of every POD file from both terminal velocity and fury³ (that includes F!Zone, trials and both disk and cd versions).

The reason for the project is portability (and a groundwork for tvhd) - Terminal Fury as of today can only work on windows systems, and even then there are some problems with windows 8. You, of course, can still play dos version but you going to loose ability to set any resolution, and you also will be stuck with stereo-only sound. Velocity³ fixes that but running on modern engine, supporting any resolution and 5.1 sound with immediate windows/linux/mac releases.

As for "enhanced" models - that's where TVHD comes in. It's gonna concentrate on reworking most of the graphical assets to bring them to at least 2006~ level of quality, including models, textures, terrain and effects, while trying to keep original gameplay, only making compromises where necessary.

[Juris3D]

Thanks for information. That is a lot good things to wait for now My most important point in previous post was about flight model and controls - it was/is so good in "TV", please leave it exactly the same in remakes I always played and still play with joystick, btw. For flight games joystick is just obviously natural.

[Smoke Fumus]

Juris3D, on 09 July 2015 - 12:46 AM, said:

Thanks for information. That is a lot good things to wait for now My most important point in previous post was about flight model and controls - it was/is so good in "TV", please leave it exactly the same in remakes I always played and still play with joystick, btw. For flight games joystick is just obviously natural.

With all honesty - they're not as good as you make them out to be. Problem is that ship lacks in weight and inertia since there is no physical system, beyond simplistic gravity pull, to speak of. After playing dozens of games where inertia present (planetside 2, unreal tournament 2004 vehicular combat, freelancer, star conflict etc) TV does feel more like an old arcade shootemup in first person, rather than, say, flight simulator.
But yea, i'll copy-paste all flight mechanics directly from original source.

[Juris3D]

Smoke Fumus, on 09 July 2015 - 08:18 AM, said:

... TV does feel more like an old arcade shootemup in first person, ...

And that's what it is, arcade 3D FPS shooter . By "good" I mean good for such shooter, where craft is "gravity canceled, inertia dampened" Sci-Fi cool thing .

[Smoke Fumus]

Juris3D, on 09 July 2015 - 09:15 AM, said:

And that's what it is, arcade 3D FPS shooter . By "good" I mean good for such shooter, where craft is "gravity canceled, inertia dampened" Sci-Fi cool thing .

Ah, okay.

Speaking of which, here are few previews from TVHD wips

Spoiler

[Carl Winslow]

I feel like you should really be drawing out how the ships should look as a hi-def model before you go straight into making a new model based on the old one. it was cool at the time, but the design is kind of a mess and it wouldn't hurt to do some changing to it to fit better with the graphical update.
(also preeeeeetty sure the windows on the ship aren't meant to simple jut outward like that)

[Juris3D]

Smoke Fumus, on 09 July 2015 - 09:38 AM, said:

..., here are few previews from TVHD wips

Yes, yes, yes! Seriously, I am so exited that I am going to see something like "TVHD". I was dreaming somebody would do that, but those dreams seamed not very realistic. And now it is really coming.

btw, here is a ship 3D model by somebody who obviously also loves "TV":
http://crazyyoda.dev...2-WIP1-33965531

[Smoke Fumus]

Carl Winslow, on 09 July 2015 - 10:23 AM, said:

I feel like you should really be drawing out how the ships should look as a hi-def model before you go straight into making a new model based on the old one. it was cool at the time, but the design is kind of a mess and it wouldn't hurt to do some changing to it to fit better with the graphical update.
(also preeeeeetty sure the windows on the ship aren't meant to simple jut outward like that)

I do not draw - i 3d doodle directly - easier to come up with better topology that way. This one is 6th iteration.


Also i don't think these are windows (or else middle of cockpit doesn't make any sense), besides if you look beneath TV-202 - same 'windows', so my guess is that they're actually armor plates and internal cockpit has no window

Juris3D, on 09 July 2015 - 10:24 AM, said:

Yes, yes, yes! Seriously, I am so exited that I am going to see something like "TVHD". I was dreaming somebody would do that, but those dreams seamed not very realistic. And now it is really coming.

btw, here is a ship 3D model by somebody who obviously also loves "TV":
http://crazyyoda.dev...2-WIP1-33965531

Thank you

[Carl Winslow]

I tended to file the windows as 'rule of cool' design, since the ship was described as a 'flying coffin' and having dumb windows on it fits with the absurdity of it all.

It's weird when you consider how much better the Fury3 ship looked, too. it almost looks viable, and it's design plays with the advantages of low polygon counts rather than against them.
...then Hellbender fucks that right up all over again.

[Smoke Fumus]

Carl Winslow, on 09 July 2015 - 09:17 PM, said:

I tended to file the windows as 'rule of cool' design, since the ship was described as a 'flying coffin' and having dumb windows on it fits with the absurdity of it all.

It's weird when you consider how much better the Fury3 ship looked, too. it almost looks viable, and it's design plays with the advantages of low polygon counts rather than against them.
...then Hellbender fucks that right up all over again.

It actually doesn't. Hellbender, for interstellar ship with inertia dampener installed is quiet viable design. It's a curved wing, yes, but those can technically survive in atmosphere.

If you look at it - it's just a shortened harrier design but with overhead wing and rocket pods located at edges.

[Juris3D]

Slightly off-topic. Maybe this is known, maybe not. Anyway, here is some attempt to reverse enginiering of "Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3D":
http://satd.sk/web/rs/

... and while i am on off-topic, here is a project in memories of "Crimson Skies", called "Anarchy Skies" (Unity3D):
http://www.anarchyskies.com/
http://forum.unity3d...y-skies.288301/

I thought, since "RS 3D" and "Crimson Skies" are close relatives to "Terminal Velocity" as aerial 3D shooters and flight no-so-sims, and since you guys are doing reverse engineering and also Unity3D engine, maybe those links could be of interest.

[Smoke Fumus]

Alright, Got proper heightmap loading working.

[filipetolhuizen]

I remember the first versions of Terminal Velocity had this planet all covered in snow. The patch changed it to vegetation mixed with snow. The later feels more realistic. IIRC the Macintosh version already came with the later look. I don't remember if anything else changed with the patch.

[Smoke Fumus]

filipetolhuizen, on 11 July 2015 - 04:31 PM, said:

I remember the first versions of Terminal Velocity had this planet all covered in snow. The patch changed it to vegetation mixed with snow. The later feels more realistic. IIRC the Macintosh version already came with the later look. I don't remember if anything else changed with the patch.

What they essentially did is they converted arctic landscape into tundra landscape, both are valid, it wasn't about realism but about better looking overall picture.

[filipetolhuizen]

Smoke Fumus, on 11 July 2015 - 06:41 PM, said:

What they essentially did is they converted arctic landscape into tundra landscape, both are valid, it wasn't about realism but about better looking overall picture.

That's what I meant, thanks.

[Smoke Fumus]

And here is updated terrain for TVHD

[MrBlackCat]

Back in the days of Christopher Columbus, he was certain the world was round and knew he could prove it. I was pretty certain the world was round in Terminal Velocity. So these images are a shocker.

While I own and played Terminal Velocity a good bit back at release, and I read this thread whenever I visit the forum, I don't have anything to add beyond "Thank you for your work."

Interesting view though.

Back to lurking...
MrBlackCat

[Carl Winslow]

I feel like the deal with the game is the heightmaps looped around after a point, or there were more than one connected together to make bigger maps possibly. (though looking at TV probably not) in Fury3, if you knew how to do it, you could find locations for bosses before their intended mission and finish a planet off early. Granted, it was kinda hard unless you knew exactly where to go, but that's how it goes.

[Smoke Fumus]

MrBlackCat, on 12 July 2015 - 10:21 AM, said:

Back in the days of Christopher Columbus, he was certain the world was round and knew he could prove it. I was pretty certain the world was round in Terminal Velocity. So these images are a shocker.

While I own and played Terminal Velocity a good bit back at release, and I read this thread whenever I visit the forum, I don't have anything to add beyond "Thank you for your work."

Interesting view though.

Back to lurking...
MrBlackCat

Carl Winslow, on 12 July 2015 - 11:51 AM, said:

I feel like the deal with the game is the heightmaps looped around after a point, or there were more than one connected together to make bigger maps possibly. (though looking at TV probably not) in Fury3, if you knew how to do it, you could find locations for bosses before their intended mission and finish a planet off early. Granted, it was kinda hard unless you knew exactly where to go, but that's how it goes.

Ok to eliminate any speculation, here's a quote from Chuck Ritola (developer of another enhanced port - terminal recall)

Quote

AFAIK TV/F3 uses integers for coordinates and so the wraparound occurs naturally: When an int overflows is simply resets to zero (unsigned) or MIN_VALUE (signed) so in the original game nothing likely had to be done at all.

This means that engine loaded terrain tiles and enemy positions gradually from x/y and when it overflew it continued from the other side.

Here's the problem with constructing round worlds:

• First of all - every level wraps. This means that if you perform your mission on single planet - planet is different 3 times each level - which doesn't make any sense. It's a cool trick, but nothing more.
  
• Secondly - some worlds are actually suppose to be on the huge object - like moon dagger missions.
  
• And third - level territory is miniscule - each tile is 64 feet, whole map is suppose to be - excerpt from the actual code

Quote

#define groundXZ (256 * 16) /* Ground tile block size in iiii feet */

which is 3.103~ miles or roughly 5 kilometers wide. For comparison moon equatorial length is 11 km. Trees cannot grow with such conditions, so planetoid this small surely gonna be a naked rock without atmosphere.

My idea right now (for tvhd) is to not implement wrapping for sake of making resemblance of sense (and also because if i am gonna implement it with use of old 'short' (16bit) buffer it will result in rewriting unity collision system completely from scratch) - here's how i gonna achieve it:

• Worlds gonna have limiter edges with abandon mission trigger if player stays starts approaching edge for more than 15 seconds. That's for fully fleshed out maps - say first 3 levels on a planet
  
• For the canyons i will implement singular world with conditional rules (energy field above canyons).
  
• Moon dagger gonna be one huge ship with a lot of deathstar greeble over the surface (it is a trench homage after all).
  
• Et cetera.

[Juris3D]

Smoke Fumus, on 12 July 2015 - 07:20 PM, said:

My idea right now (for tvhd) is to not implement wrapping ...

When I played "TV" I kinda felt, or understood, that those "planets" are not round, that they are flat but wrapped, cycled. I knew it is a trick, but it was nice feeling of continuity, that I can go anywhere, just fly around and not bouncing into any artificial border (like in "G-Police", nice game, bad boundaries). I understand that in "TVHD" some changes are inevitable, I am just saying those wrapped levels in original was good thing . Well, just my personal opinion, of course.