FreeGameDev

DDay Normandy was first released in 2000 as a mod for Quake 2. The final "official" version 4.1 was released by Vipersoft in 2002 as a standalone game. The current 5.0 version of the game is a community edition that compiles all the add-on teams and many of the most common maps and code additions and fixes that have been made since the '02 release.

D-Day is primarily a multiplayer game but it also has bot support for offline play. Currently there are 8 different teams you can play as, each with different weapons, skins and maps: USA, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, Poland, Italy, Japan, and US Marines. There are around 60 different weapons available for the various teams and hundreds of community made maps.

http://www.ddaydev.com/

There is a small group of us working on bringing some life to this game with a (slightly) newer engine. We are looking for someone that could help with coding for the game developing a specific engine for it!

Anyone interested in such a project?

Hello!

If it is currently idtech2 based (quake2) if would make much more sense using on of the exisiting highly advanced quake2 based engines. Have a look at CRX (AlienArena) or qfusion (Warsow). Ya3dag might also be interesting given its (in game editable) terrain and bullet physics support.

Given the legacy of the assets I assume they can't be make Creative Commons licensed? Is at least the mod code available under the GPL?

Thanks for your reply!

I am checking out the suggested engines as we speak.

Currently we are using such an engine to do this. EGL features (some) of what we want.. primarily q3 map support and shader support (although this is limited.. we do want larger map sizes and more functionality with our shader scripts)

http://www.ddaydev.com/downloads/code/?C=M;O=D The mods source code is open for use. The last code developer we had is not interested in the project anymore.

qfusion: https://github.com/viciious/qfusion is probably the best choice, but I am not sure how gracefully it will deal with the old quake2 assets. CRX might be better in that regard. q3map (incl. larger maps) and GLSL shaders are supported by all of these to varying degrees.

Otherwise: what does "open for use" mean exactly? Without a proper license or at least an official word by the creator that it is "public domain" this is worth very little.

I am positive that the creator does not care at all. I have asked him openly in the dday forums to confirm this matter to make sure.

Looking at both crx and qfusion and it seems like it would definitely fit our needs. If crx would be an easier one to use I think it would be great. We just need someone that knows how to let our dday assets work with the game engine

Boons {l Wrote}:I am positive that the creator does not care at all. I have asked him openly in the dday forums to confirm this matter to make sure.

"does not care" it sadly not a usage license. I know these legalities can be annoying, but for it to become a thriving open-source project those questions need to be clarified as soon as possible.

Personally I would suggest qfusion, the CRX comment was merely a question of md2 compatibility. Not sure though which of those engines is better in that regard. Multiplayer and scripting features of qfusion are a lot better though.

Sorry can't help directly (and also wouldn't want until the license question is solved), but why not just try it with a Warsow build? Join their IRC asking regarding quake2 mod compatibility and I am sure they will give you some pointers in that regard.

Just looking at the structure of both qfusion and crx they call on the game assets in a different manner than q2 does. Unfortunately I doubt it will be straight forward enough for me to figure out even with help! I will try the IRC channel though Thanks for the help!

As soon as fafner replies to my post I will link it here for the clarification on editing the game.

http://ddaydev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=7592 it was released under GNU license

Ok great, what about the art assets? Some creative commons license maybe (preferrably CC-by SA, not NC though).

To the best of my knowledge that would blanket all the assets for the original game. The added teams have been posted about free for use, however if the game is to move forward one of our plans is to remodel/texture weapons and players...

Well, I'm just glad it's happening! I played this game a lot back in the day over LAN. I still haven't found a shooter with as 'Rambo-like' handling as this one. You really felt the weapons' power! The quick movement (but still not Quake-fast) was just perfect. All in all, it's the penultimate Rambo title, just one step short of the heroic bloodshed genre and set in WW2!

I really do hope you move to a newer engine at some point -- and preferably not a Quake-derived one as their netcode was always a little lacking.

I take it you won't be reusing much code or assets (please not the horrible assets!) from the original, right? In that case, you can comfortably move to something like Tesseract or another ultramodern engine.

Uhmm, they don't even seem to have a coder yet and you are proposing to ditch what is there already? IMHO initially just porting the code and assets to qfusion will be already quite a bit of work. Form there one can start improving then. Netcode is fine in qfusion btw. it is used in a quite popular online game already without issues.

We have people able to edit the very basics of code.. we have people that can map and model mostly though.

Qfusion seems reasonable. I was able to load dday q3maps into the engine through warsow.. I think its an excellent option. I am running into issues with loading ddays core game dll though.. not really sure how I will get it do that for me.

Any hobbyist game coders are welcome! The more we have working on it the sooner we have a free fun paced ww2 shooter for everyone

Just to run over a few of the highlights of the game for me..

Small squad based infantry combat.. I find this to be much more fun then having 32v32 games.
Objective maps where you have to work as a team to destroy certain objects (usually allies destroying german stuff)
Capture games.. hold an area for a certain amount of time to win... adds a nice push pull feel to the game.

The gameplay for D-Day is fantastic.. I wouldnt want to change much.. the game itself however is not pretty and needs a facelift... I think staying on a quake engine would keep the feel the same!

For getting it to work with qfusion those core game dlls will probably have to be converted into the script language use for game-play by the engine. It is Angelscript which is intentionally very close to C to allow this to be relatively easy though AFAIK.

Briefly from what I read it looks like angelscript allows you to edit the game without editing the core dll... maybe I am wrong? I guess the core dll would have to be changed to reflect angelscript to allow that as a possibility.. again I really have no idea

With scripting you can modify the game without changing the core dll, that is why you need to move the dday specific stuff out of the core dll and into the script and just use the qfusion core dll as it is. At least that is how I think it should work Never done any programming with quake2.

Have you done stuff with q3 before?

Nope, I am actually more of a 3d artist. Did some minor coding with Quake1 derived engines, but that's it. You will have more luck finding people interested in Quake2 coding on the boards of those engines or maybe on inside3d.

If you were interested we could use someone to model the axis team .md3 format

qfusion supports .iqm, no need to waste time using the outdated .md3 format.

But sorry, I don't have time nor motivation to work on that right now.

What are your thoughts on the FTEQW engine?

Interesting because it is the only actively developed & graphically modern Quake1 based engine and has some cool features like in-game terrain and real-time lights editing. Unproven game wise though (thus you will likely run into problems) and from what I hear relatively unstable.

However I don't see any advantages of it compared to qfusion or CRX for your specific purpose (but plenty of disadvantages because it is not quake2 based). Any particular reason why you are even considering it?

I would definitely stay conservative engine wise. qfusion looks good, runs well, is game-proven and already very close to what you want.

Yes.. because even I can make it run D-Day? haha.. no other real reason..

Realistically we just need someone who knows how to edit EGL to mold it for our own purposes... as that is a very very easy transition for us.

Qfusion is great but I myself will not be able to get d-day to run using it. CRX I am having similar issues with..

FTEQW runs quake2 mods natively? Interesting & quite surprising given that it is based on Quake1. Edit: Well it's clrearly written on their very outdated website
However I guess sooner or later (for expandability reasons) you will want to switch to FTEQW's internal script engine for coding game-play enhancements. This however might be more difficult given that it is a script language called QuakeC, which is only somewhat compatible with the Quake2 C code base you have (and not too many people know how to write QuakeC).

But ultimately what matters is that it works. If you want you can start working with FTEQW and see what comes out of it. As long as you updated the graphics only, very little work will be lost if you find someone to properly port it to another engine (or rewrites the game-play code in quakeC). However having a playable game with updated graphics is much more likely to attract an developer for it that just the "idea" of updating it.

P.S.: You are aware of their more up to date repository here: http://triptohell.info/moodles/ ? (I really don't get why they don't take that website offline if they can't be bothered to update it for years...)