Game engines

[SimplySerenity]

leileilol is right, I've had a terrible experience with the source sdk. I downloaded it just to see what it was like, and it was fairly simple, but the first time i tried using it the sdk didn't work at all. So I had to browse the forums looking for a user submitted fix. After that the sdk ran, but was still buggy (more fixes). After a few hours I was able to make a simple map..

[toneddu2000]

as far as I know kot-in-action never touched the engine code and they did a game, an expansion, and in the next months (hopefully) , another game!
Content pipeline in DarkPlaces engine is pretty straightforward: IQM to make character models, OBJ/ASE to props models. All of these directly output from Blender. No converter, no inbetween steps. Shaders to make things look better and you're done!
Only things I miss from UDK is a Kismet-like application (even for cut scene acting), a decent Physics System (ODE?! come ON...), a REAL menu system and particle editor.
But don't worry, just the time to learn C programming, and in maximum 40 years and I'll update DP myself!!

[Jukki]

Yeah, kot did awesome job. We probaply stick with darkplaces becaue 1. blender 2. code that we know how to use 3. its better to start full time game project on something familiar than non familiar

Myabe next source

[r00k]

Maybe next UDK? Has iOS support. Tools look pretty good. But, why do most people who just wanna make a game think Skyrim clone? Cant game dev be something small and simple to make and hella fun to play??!
Maybe im just old from games in the 80s but gameplay was key. If you are just starting out, (teamwise) and want recognition do something soild and simple.

[leileilol]

Indeed. Limit your scope; you do not have the luxury of having china outsourcing.

[Baker]

Maybe next UDK? Has iOS support.

UDK only supports devices in a paid version, as far as I know. And I'm not claiming to know a lot about UDK, but I usually notice and think about licensing terms for things like UDK, Crysis, Source so I can remember why I think "freedom" is important (freedom = "not playing on someone's playground" ... which is not always something worth considering when making a game).

[ajay]

Tentatively on topic: has Darkplaces got BSP2 support now?

[taniwha]

ajay: considering I found bsp2 related header file bugs (harmless other than to those reading the code), I'd say so (I used a combination of darkplaces and fte to figure out how to add bsp2 support to quakeforge).

[goldenboy]

As far as I know, DP does have BSP2 support but you'll have to use hmap2 for compiling.

[Baker]

As far as I know, DP does have BSP2 support but you'll have to use hmap2 for compiling.

That doesn't make any sense. How can the map compiler matter for a standardized binary format?

[goldenboy]

Due to the premature demise of RMQ, BSP2 never became standardised. The changes made to the DP implementation of it were supposed to become the standard.

[leileilol]

the nice thing about standards is that there's so many of them

[Spike]

if you've already got two versions of the loader, what harm is there in a third?...
other than that its annoying, that tools are not cross-compatible, users might get weird format unrecognised errors, and it being a waste of code, there's no harm in it...

the nice thing about standards is that there's so many of them

Fully agree!

[Baker]

the nice thing about standards is that there's so many of them

I see the +3 bonus already got claimed.

Ok, so BSP2 might not be BSP2 and an undocumented and only secretly known alternate BSP2 format exists which no one has ever mentioned.

[Spike]

the original 'BSP2' format is actually the '2PSB' format... and has shorts for the minmax values in the node+leaf lumps, while the later (actual) 'BSP2' format has floats there. there is no other difference.
The '2PSB' format should be left to rot, just need someone attached to the SCHISM project to update their tools+engine (likely requires recompiling the maps, so needs someone still attached to the project to authorise it etc).