Terminal Overload status?

[reves]

Hey, I was trying to look for any activity regarding terminal overload in general.
I was pretty interested to see how development of the game would be going, but it seems like it's stopped at ~2015? Are there plans for development of the game to continue? Will it keep going with Torque3D?

I would be very interested to see what happens, though to me it feels like there is absolutely no community for this game at the present, and that it's going to die sooner or later.

[Julius]

AFAIK there was a bit of further work, but with some drastic game-play changes and a different license, so that didn't see too much love by other potential developers.

But the main issue is that Torque3D is in development hell. Their long promised updated version is overdue for years now, and yet so much has changed under the hood that a port of Terminal Overload to the development version seems difficult. But there is also AFAIK no new stable release of Torque3D in sight, so you would be aiming at a moving target with your code-update, which simply isn't a very enjoyable thing to do.

[reves]

Recently I've been doing a lot of Rust(the programming language) and I was trying to make up an engine from scratch entirely, would having a game engine this way sound better than having to deal with Torque3D at the present?
I was really thinking that maybe I can just try to start replicating how Terminal Overload is made with Torque3D, and create the game for this custom engine

Only problem is I'm still in the process of learning, plus I don't have a lot of time on my hands (IRL work I guess). So at the present there isn't too much I got up and running, it's more like I'm still in the process of learning, but what would be the general opinion about Terminal Overload moving on from Torque3D?

[fr1tz]

Looking back TOL could be considered dead since March 13 2015. That's when the last play session was scheduled and nobody showed up. I actually don't remember ever having played any 0.7.x release with human players. The change from MIT to GPL happened months after this and is probably partly a consequence of TOL's death rather than the reason for it. I don't remember any drastic gameplay changes either so I don't really know what killed it.

Other than that I can echo what Julius said about the state of Torque3D.

Recently I've been doing a lot of Rust(the programming language) and I was trying to make up an engine from scratch entirely, would having a game engine this way sound better than having to deal with Torque3D at the present?

Depends. If you have an engine that's simpler than Torque3D, open-source, popular and is suited for TOL then yes. Problem will be getting there

what would be the general opinion about Terminal Overload moving on from Torque3D?

I'd love to see that. But I'm not in a position to make it happen. Well... maybe a port to the doom engine?

[reves]

Looking back TOL could be considered dead since March 13 2015. That's when the last play session was scheduled and nobody showed up. I actually don't remember ever having played any 0.7.x release with human players. The change from MIT to GPL happened months after this and is probably partly a consequence of TOL's death rather than the reason for it. I don't remember any drastic gameplay changes either so I don't really know what killed it.

So the license changed because the game was really just dead at that point?

Depends. If you have an engine that's simpler than Torque3D, open-source, popular and is suited for TOL then yes. Problem will be getting there

Yeah--that's why I think about starting out simple.
What's the earliest version of TOL? And did it have minimal features? If so, I could start out from there.
If not, should I just go all the way back to RoTC? Will that be simpler in terms of how many features/data the game supported?

I'd love to see that. But I'm not in a position to make it happen. Well... maybe a port to the doom engine?

Well look, this may probably sound dumb but I've been playing a game for a pretty long time that underwent the doom engine treatment--Sonic Robo Blast 2.

Initially the whole game was gonna have an engine of its own, but that was scrapped since it was so much work and the guys chose to take SRB2 on the Doom engine(Legacy). At first things seemed to work fine, but as time progressed the whole game just got more and more resource intensive. The codebase grew really large, and there were features being added that made the game get more and more alienated from the initial legacy doom engine, which as a direct result made it so that adding new features would be more or less incompatible with what was already there, and giving way for more awkward workarounds. Of course you could say the developers were probably too lazy to just take the game's engine at the time and change it up, but do note that it was all for free, and no one had all the time of the world in their hands.

The obvious factors to note here is that this was supposed to be a sonic game--not a first person shooter, though the fact that it was Doom and that you had to have any form of first person gameplay prompted SRB2 to have its very own unique match system from the beginning.
If you look at SRB2 in the present, the difference is day and night; There are many new things in regards to both code and assets, but the many glaring issues are still there and SRB2 is hella unoptimized and prone to issues, like for instance the game can just crash out of nowhere--this is very common.

Basically, if it's not going to behave like doom in the long run, then it may not be a good idea to use the doom engine. I think going through the trouble of creating a whole game engine, as troublesome as it may sound, may be more worth it in the long run. Though take it with a grain of salt--I was not directly involved in the development of SRB2, I just mostly saw how the developers reacted to things through time.

[Julius]

I was referring to those tests fr1tz did with the hexagonal terrain, but yes in the end those were not really TO anymore and happened after the "death" of TO. It's really a pity that it ended up never attracting many players... too innovative for its own good I guess.

As for starting with your own engine... sure, if that is what you would like to spend you time on Really only up for you to decide, but IMHO unlikely to succeed. I guess the highest chance of a TO remake to survive would be utilizing the base of another FOSS FPS, maybe Unvanquished? There are some others like Xonotic, but their code-base are AFAIK in even worse legacy state then Unvanquished

On a side note: complex multiplayer games requiring 4+ players to be enjoyed (as TO or Unvanquished) really seem to struggle to attract a dynamic ad-hoc internet player-base. I am not sure if games like that are viable at all as FOSS multiplayer games due to this issue (and developers subsequently losing motivation to work on their games). But this even effects commercial titles... except for a few big advertisement budget games, they are either dead as well or intentionally design their games to work best with less players.

[fr1tz]

Julius answered quicker and better, so I'm just going to comment on the specific questions.

So the license changed because the game was really just dead at that point?

I found this thread. Maybe it clears things up, maybe it raises more questions but there you go

What's the earliest version of TOL? And did it have minimal features? If so, I could start out from there.

Nope, base Torque3D is already fairly large.

If not, should I just go all the way back to RoTC? Will that be simpler in terms of how many features/data the game supported?

This might make things a little simpler but ultimately there's just a fundamental complexity to 3D multiplayer engines that can't be avoided. So if you try to create one from scratch, I recommend you treat it as a learning experince/experiment and expect it to fail.

[reves]

I found this thread. Maybe it clears things up, maybe it raises more questions but there you go

Okay yeah, that makes more sense.

This might make things a little simpler but ultimately there's just a fundamental complexity to 3D multiplayer engines that can't be avoided. So if you try to create one from scratch, I recommend you treat it as a learning experince/experiment and expect it to fail.

You have a point there, and that's exactly how I'd handle it.


Since the doom engine was raised up previously, how would the quake engine fare compared to the doom engine? Or just pretty much any of the id tech engines past id tech 2? I'm not sure about id tech 2 (quake 2), I feel like that may not go as well.
Do you think that TO moving over into either one of those engines would still work finely with the proper changes?

[Julius]

Games like Xonotic certainly proof that Quake1 based engines can run modern looking games, but there is a huge amount of cruft going on behind the scenes (QuakeC scripting etc.) that is unlikely to be very enjoyable to work with as a developer not having grown up the last 20 years or so with it. But if you want to start from a relatively clean base I recommend looking into this: https://shp.itch.io/sands-of-liberty (FTEQW engine based, source repo here: https://github.com/shpuld/7dfps2020).

For a Quake2 base there is https://github.com/Qfusion/qfusion (used in Warsow/Warfork), but the developer is a bit grumpy and thus not very helpful for getting support when learning

Unvanquished is Quake3 based, but they are currently transitioning away from their old NaCl based scripting system, so that might not be the best place to start a TC mod on right now.

There are also some Doom3 derived modernized engines, but multiplayer was never a strength of that engine.

IMHO, why not look into the Godot engine? That is where the most community development happens right now.

P.s.: if you want to discuss Quake-engine based games further, why not start a new topic here: https://freegamedev.net/t/quake-engine

[reves]

IMHO, why not look into the Godot engine? That is where the most community development happens right now.

Surprising that you bring up Godot--I thought you'd still have to do a lot of work there, though it would certainly be much much less compared to starting from scratch! I've dealt a bit with Godot and did have several unfinished stuff, but ultimately it was 2D only. I did plan on going 3D at any point sooner or later but that never happened. I'm gonna write that down now as well!

As for the rest, I'll also take that into consideration and see what I can get. I think I'll prioritize looking into Godot first, and then several of the mentioned game engines. Going scratch isn't gonna really happen any time now--but I'll still do it for the sake of the learning experience.