OpenWolf

[SamOz]

I'm a member of the TremZ project. We're currently using the OpenWolf engine and building our game in cooperation with TheDushan. TremZ is concieved as an RTS/FPS aliens vs humans team game with strategy, including buildables within the game. It's a similar concept to that of Natural Selection and Tremulous. The project was started in July last year (2011). We're still creating an overall background storyline and setting. The story development (I'm the head of that) will have the background setting finalised by the end of March. The game isn't playable as yet, as we're currently engaged in replacing all of the "inherited" assets that we recieved from Tremulous, as well any that are shared with a forked version of the game. That means we need new models, levels, and sound FX. We want to fully take advantage of the best features of the OpenWolf engine. Any assistance in this regard would be highly appreciated as it's a vast undertaking, of course. As part of this process, I've been recruiting everywhere, primarily by contacting talented people rather than simply waiting for anyone to reply to posted adverts for recruits. It's far more effective to actually get out there, and search for what you need for a project than just hang around with a hat begging for help. I advise all of you who are involved in similar situations to do the same. Don't just rely on a few posted advertisements for finding the sort of skilled people that you need - look for them as well!

Not that I mind when someone answers an advertisement that I posted for recruiting After all, with a project as ambitious as TremZ, you can never have too many people who are highly talented, imaginative, and focused on the bigger picture; making a great game.

Our newest modeller to join the team is also a software developer, which should certainly be appreciated by the rest of the team as he'll know how best to use the features of the OpenWolf engine in ways that most modellers probably wouldn't know. Hopefully he can also be a better liason between the other modellers on the development team and the coders, as well.

Here is his DeviantArt page if you're interested in guessing what his human models will possibly look like for the game;
http://xnaaral.deviantart.com/

Our current team of developers is around 10 or so; although a couple of people left recently, others have joined. There are 4 people developing the code of the OpenWolf engine at the current time, in addition to this, the engine development benefits from the upstream improvements/commits/bug-fixes flowing from a forked version of the engine which is already being used in a publicly released game among a small community.

This an example of the Newton Physics used in the OpenWolf engine;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7y4VpPUucU
That was in January, it's been improved since then.

These are tests of the dynamic shadows;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNwlCRndCxI
and here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN-wF3S4-JQ

This is an example of the water effects;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsbfX4AgMBg


You can read more about TremZ here;
The TremZ blog
TremZ community

By the way, TheDushan is a funny guy to chat with online if you get the chance, but please don't distract him too much from making OpenWolf a truly great open-source engine. It could benefit many other Quake-based games in the future.

[Julius]

Yeah, thanks for the heads-up SamOz!

We featured TremZ before on the blog... a bit of a pity to see so much drama lately. But that was kind of implied with the Tremolous community

I really hope you keep ETs cool flamethrower effect in TremZ btw. With dynamic lights and shadows it's even greater I see

[TheDushan]

Hi guys, it was been a long time since my last post here

Very nice work. Where I can get this?

You can get Source Code without problems if you wish of, just I believe code is unoptimized, and dirty, and that need to be fixed until I share "proper" source with community.

I have been working with TremZ and still working with them, problem is because there is still drama there, like in all Tremulous community.

Julius I will see about flamethrower for TremZ and what can be done there.

So far I have added this for OpenWolf/TremZ
I really hope that you guys like it.

This is video demonstration of working attack model system for alien class in Tremulous GPP what we are using inside OpenWolf/TremZ.


youtu.be/y4KhtLAMSSM


youtu.be/tOO1u2BIYiY


youtu.be/Y2pLe-F_16c


youtu.be/ZrDdk0NEdMw

I believe that this is major addon, because in any other version of Tremulous (regardless if that is mod/fork), that kind system isn't present there.

[Julius]

Ahh, cool. definitly adds to the look of the aliens to have some nice claws in view.
However, currently some of them obstruct the view a bit too much, and thus will likely be turned off by many players.

P.S.: We will not tolerate the spillover of any drama to this forum... I will swing my ban-hammer without mercy!
Play nice (as currently) and we will tolerate both TremZ and Unvanquished news over here.
My personal credo towards all this (and I have followed it quite closely): put up or shut up... e.g. concentrate on making a nice game, not trolling forums.

[TheDushan]

I understand, and I never start trolling, like I explained on Tremulous forum, just things escalated there and because of that I am sorry.

You can turn that if you dont like it, just I dont understand how you will have problems with that if you dont have with human HUD and weapon system there.

[Julius]

Currently everything is fine... I just wanted to put out a word of warning

The difference to the human weapons is that they occupy space at the lower part of the screen (like the last of the alien claws you posted), but especially the second one is right there at both side of the screen, taking away precious screenspace and blocking the view where potentially enemies could be. This could be of course intentional as a sort of handicap for this particular alien class, but since it is almost impossible to forbid players to turn off such graphical features, most will find a way and thus get an unfair advantage.

[leilei]

I should mention years ago I did try to make an unannounced GPL data project for the RTCW source, but ran into a roadblock that makes it impossible to do it Free -

No Blender MDS exporter. (RTCW's supposedly hideous skeletal mesh format)


MD3 as an alternate substitute for MDS models aren't technically possible (crashes).

All the work i've odne on it are a bunch of low quality sound replacements, shader replacements (mostly about cgame effects that warning the console every frame when non-existent i.e. shadow, marks, flames)

[Julius]

AFAIK, The source improvements like OpenWolf support MD5 and iqm, so that shouldn't be a problem. But yeah, the entire MDS situation really sucked for RTCW Mods too

Edit: Doesn't support iqm as leilei writes below. See feature list here: http://www.moddb.com/games/openwolf

[leilei]

I haven't seen a notscrewed up IQM rendered in any io project yet....

which is a shame, I love the IQM format (more logical than using MD5), and its implementation in Darkplaces - it's just ztm did it very wrong in ioq3, with pretty much little actual testing of his own (using testmodel, nextframe/prevframe on an exported iqm would have spelled out the issues clearly in front of him, without the need of bug reports in a tracker)

[TheDushan]

To tell truth, I didn't know about IQM until a few months ago.
When I asked, people told me that MD5 is better, so I just ignored IQM file format.

Just to post here video
This is my last work with Tremulous atm


youtu.be/clmD3c8kZY8

I am sorry if there are mistakes in translations, I have translated all that with help from Google Translator.

My work concerning ET ...
I have finally created auto update server for ET (OpenWolf) personally I dont understand why Splash Damage never had that.
I can tell you that it was painful process to get that to work because there is no documentation and nobody had any info regarding that.

I will share three pictures here and explain how it is working.

This is about the same message what I posted on SD forum.

On first picture, you can see that OpenWolf Auto Update server is live and working

2nd attached picture is with update server running while 3rd attached picture is without update server running
You can clearly see, that on 3rd picture (without update server running) auto-updater address isn't resolved and cvar "cl_updateavailable" isnt set.
Also update server didn't response with "updateResponse" command.

Currently auto update server is working like dedicated
People will get OpenWolf.exe, OpenWolf-Dedicated.exe and brand new OpenWolf-AutoUpdate.exe.
Engine is already capable to have up to 5 update servers like with master servers.

Update server only allows files that are in config file to download and what are located inside "/update" folder.
In autoupdate config file as version mapping, there must defined platform, version and installer name.
And ofc maximum of supported versions is 128 and that number is hardcoded into engine.

Now I have UI popup what is displayed on main menu when there is new version available, and you can see it only when update is available.

[TheDushan]

Hi guys
I have decided to share and open to public one stable build of TremZ.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/open-wolf/files/TremZ

Currently in zip folder is Windows build of engine (both x86 and x64) along with Tremulous 1.1.0 game modules. (I personally don't care about other non-Windows platforms at this moment, ).
P.S. I will try to fix Windows compiling soon.

In this milestone version you have most of features what I presented with engine (Autoupdate server, new updated OpenGL 3.x renderer, new Windows console ...)

One of reason why I have decided to push 1.1.0 game logic with TremZ is, because most (about 90%) of development team who should work here are MIA for some unknown reason for me, and because I am not mapper or model maker I cannot provide new models.
This doesn't mean that there will not be GPP game logic along with 1.1.0 in future version of TremZ, on the contrary I will try to provide both versions along with TremZ in future, and of course continue to update 1.1.0 with necessary updates to keep compatibility with models and maps (a.k.a Newton Physics, MD5 model support, MySQL, YouTube integration ...).

And I believe that there are errors and bugs in this build and would like that people know that this is mainly one man work (others are MIA like I said).

GPP section of development is still closed for public, but all code what I used for compiling this binary files is available on https://github.com/TheDushan/OpenWolf/ along with textures what mappers can use. (it's not shared at this moment because I need to update license file with all available textures on Github).

I will share new testing build of TremZ, when I hit another big milestone version.

[MCMic]

I personally don't care about other non-Windows platforms at this moment

I personally don't care about your game then. (but closed development is a bad idea, I'll be playing unvanquished)

[TheDushan]

I personally don't care about other non-Windows platforms at this moment

I personally don't care about your game then. (but closed development is a bad idea, I'll be playing unvanquished)

I respect your choice

[Julius]

Nice to hear about some updates on open-wolf. It's a pity how everything went with TremZ, but that you now say that 90% of the team are MIA confirms my suspicion that TremZ is pretty much dead as a project.

I think it's great that you seem to have switched back to open development style for this 1.1.0 release, however I have to agree that Windows only and integration of unfree components (FMOD... is that even GPL compatible?) is probably not the best way to go.

[TheDushan]

Ye, I understand why you thought that development is dead, in some hand I wanted to look like that. Let me explain my actions why I wanted to look like that. You and everybody else have read various forums and "know" actions what some people from old TremZ team did (I will not tell names) and how much flaming and trolling happened there between people who have worked together in past. That is fact. Now, I am not here to judge or point fingers so I thought at that time because I left alone that it would be better if I move my repo from open revision control system to closed one. I say better because how I thought then I believe that if people know and think that there are no updates or any talk about product that it is dead and there are no updates, and that flaming and trolling would stop. So far how I see in some hand I was right with that. Flaming stopped, and some people continued with their work and didn't pay attention of what I am doing, but some people didn't and they continued. It's OK I don't mind. One's again, I can speak only for myself, and I am one of few people who didn't started random attacking and flaming.

About non-Windows platform, I am aware that most (about 97%) of dedicated servers who host games are on Linux. Personally I don't have anything against other platforms (Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS, MorphOS ...), just at this time I am focusing myself on Windows development. Like I said, (P.S. I will try to fix [non]-Windows compiling soon.), so all people can play it regardless of platform, and because of auto-update server I can push all versions in same time (client have pop-up menu when he start game [tested on ET part of engine])

Back to open-source waters Code was there, just location was unknown to others. DerSaidin from Weaver projects asked me to open it for all because of my addons for XreaL renderer engines what I have added in OpenWolf. As result you can see that some of my updates was pushed into XreaL repo (some of changes was from Unvanquished fork to be fair and honest with everybody). Just I am not mapper so I cannot provided any of new advantages what new OpenGL 3.x renderer can offer (Volumetric Lighting, Volumetric Fog, Light Scattering (I have YouTube video about that one ...).


youtu.be/KYH94_vTS2s

EDIT: I will open fully source along with GPP module, just I would like to provide something new and fresh with that (you have here few videos demonstration of alien attack models [a.k.a claws ...]. Some people may say that is wrong to have and that they would like to turn that off, but my arguments for that are - Natural Selection 2 have same system as I presented in videos, and nobody cared or say that its wrong, and for other argument is that its something fresh and what nobody so far have it.
I would really like to present something new and different.

Just of that reason because I cannot provide new advantages to maps I have focused myself on engine development and optimizations and I can say that I am proud on it.
This is picture of memory requirements at this moment (tested with Vanilla renderer and XreaL renderer) between Unvanquished and TremZ.

About FMOD, according to http://www.calculate-linux.org/packages/licenses/fmod FMOD is free of charge and there are no license fees for non-commercial applications. That part of engine is at this moment only experimental.

[Julius]

Well maybe you should focus on updating open-wolf for Wolf:ET as originally intended to avoid further flaming with the Tremulous community...

About FMOD... I think the problem is rather on the GPL side of things, e.g. that you can't link to a lib that isn't GPL compatible, and the license from above clearly isn't.

[TheDushan]

Thanks for info about FMOD and linking GPLed software to a non-GPLed, I will remove that from repo.

For me, there is something terrible wrong with Tremulous community, don't understand why they flame and troll too much without proper reason. And how I see at their forum, whole community is like that, just at least I don't understand what is logic and point in doing that. Tremulous as game is very good. I believe that all applications are good, because people wouldn't spend hours in developing it if it isnt good

[charlie]

If it is just playing of XM files that you need, you could try ufmod.

For a good open source alternative that is a bit more flexible, try SFML.

Apparently it is a very underrated audio library (according to the upvoted question/answer where I discovered it).

Features pertaining to audio:

Audio

• Uses hardware acceleration whenever possible
• Can load and save standard sound formats : ogg, wav, flac, aiff, au, raw, paf, svx, nist, voc, ircam, w64, mat4, mat5 pvf, htk, sds, avr, sd2, caf, wve, mpc2k, rf64
• Can load all audio resources directly from files in memory
• 3D sound spacialization
• Easy interface for capturing audio
• Manages memory efficiently, so that you don't have to worry about resources lifetime or storage
• Supports streaming for big files ; you can even write your custom streaming class for any source (network, ...)
• Supports multi-channels formats (mono, stereo, 4.0, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1)

[leilei]

For me, there is something terrible wrong with Tremulous community, don't understand why they flame and troll too much without proper reason.

In my experience, it's a standard feature equipped with every community based on an id Tech 3 product. The only exception I know is WoP, because that project's direction is more of a fun niche.

Being an admin of one of those said projects, I can assure you that moderating is like playing russian roulette. Let's not get started on the crazy entitlements from the competitive community like default autodownloading, default brightskins and forcemodel, allowing invisible players to be very visible, not supporting progress yet demanding new releases asap, etc... when your game reaches a certain point of popularity, half of your development time will be babysitting the internet.

[Julius]

when your game reaches a certain point of popularity, half of your development time will be babysitting the internet.

this should be in every game developers guide!

[Cire]

leilei: Is that RtCW data project available for download?

[leilei]

No because I never got a player model working (no pipeline to the mds/mdx format, plus the iqm support doesn't work), therefore. All it is, is new from-scratch (but very low quality) sounds, and new shader files (in an effort to shutup warnings mostly).

[TheDushan]

Hi.

I want to share little more information about my project, so others know that its still alive.
After GarageGames opened their Torque3D under MIT license, I have stopped with developing OpenWolf on idTech3 and moved it to another engine.

I have moved from idTech3 to T3D engine because I believe that its better and T3D already had many of features what I wanted to provide with my idTech3 build of OpenWolf.

How I see everybody is interested in progress of Linux client of Torque 3D (T3D) engine.
For my T3D Linux build much of errors at this moment are undefined reference "to something", as shown in my pastebin http://pastebin.com/GMhEznvT. I believe that soon I can provide debug build of Torque3D on Linux platform.

And I want with this engine still to provide remake of Wolfenstein Enemy Territory and Tremulous and of course they will be released as FOSS and F2P.
Currently I am on half way to do that.

I can provide much more information's if needed.

[Evropi]

Hey, aren't you that guy that caused the split? Just get over it and use the Daemon engine. As you may have heard, the Daemon engine is expanding in feature set really fast. And unlike most open source game engines, it actually uses straight OpenGL for most things.

I wish you the best of luck in getting Torque 3D to build on Linux. You are obviously a great software engineer and you could definitely pull it off, the problem is the fact you are probably unpaidand can't maintain it forever I guess and it's a pretty big task in itself. Additionally, it's just the client and not the toolkit. Why not invest a few dollars in the Linux port - at least it shows some interest in one. That said, I wish you the best of luck and it's good that really smart (you can actually use low-level libraries like OGL!) people like you are contributing to open source gaming.

By the way, avoid the word F2P. F2P means 'free-to-play', which in business we use to describe a model whereby the game (haven't heard of any software doing this) is released as freeware, but you can pay for additional features usually on a microtransaction or subscription basis. A lot of MMOs, as well as games such as Riot Games' League of Legends use this model. Unless you want to use this model, in that case go for it!

[TheDushan]

Well, I can say that people can do what they want. I am not the only one responsible for the split, and whole Daemon engine is fork of my idTech3 OpenWolf (so most of stuff what they have it's from me and my) engine, but I believe that you know that. I don't want to return and talk about what happen then, why it happen and stuff like that. For me all that is behind me, and I moved on. I hope that you understand that.

Everybody need to do what they think is best for them. I can say only that.

Thank you on your wishes about T3D. My testing build was build with toolkit, but until I fix all problems I will not know what else it need to be updated.
I will keep you all informed about everything.