Hello,
Id Tech 4 (i.e. Doom 3) was state-of-the-art when it was released, and still looks good today, but it was ignored by both commercial developers and mod makers.
There's only one commercial game made with the engine: Prey. There are also a few mods (TDM, MITM) and SP maps, but nothing approaching the number or content of UT or HL...
as I see it Id Tech 4 has several advantages over others:
runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, Xbox
has a large user base (D3 alone sold 3.5m copies)
will have the full source released under the GPL eventually, so you can make your TC into a standalone game and even sell it.
looks nice with modest requirements (I can run ETQW on high settings, whereas BS just barely worked on low)
the updated engine for ETQW can render huge environments very well
Looks and feels unique. There's no Havok, SpeedTree, etc. Id make everything by themselves.
Why's everyone using that broken pile of brokeness, U3?
I didn't find the right solution from the internet.
References:
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=118962
explainer video (https://blog.advids.co/20-animated-explainer-videos-that-are-awesome/)
John Carmack himself said the engine was not "future proof", never supposed to be, and infact has a lot of terrible issues with high polycounts and wide open areas inherent in the engine itself, regardless of the hardware you throw at it. It's a relic from over a decade ago. You can argue with me about it all you want, but it would be outright delusional to argue with the author of the engine itself.
Yeah it's time has been over man. If devs aren't flocking to it in droves by now then there are obviously limitations within the engine that hindered devs in various ways depending on what they wanted out of it. Listen to Carmack, he built it.
I like Doom 3 tech because I know it. I also like Q2 tech. I admit they're no where near what modern engines offer though, and Torque 3D is open source MIT license vs GPL, which I consider an advantage of id's GPL licenses.
However, Q1/2/3/D3 are great for small teams: no royalties, super-easy to use, lots of engine updates out there, Q1/2/3 are perhaps the most documented engines out there, all run an almost any device in existence...
Quote from: Shawnturner on November 10, 2017, 06:49:29 AM
as I see it Id Tech 4 has several advantages over others:
runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, Xbox
Maybe the original did, but the one you can get your hands on won't run on XBox. And Xbox is dead anyway.
UE4 runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS, XB1/Xb1X, PS4, and mobile/desktop/console VR. Unity runs one even more platforms.
Quote from: Shawnturner on November 10, 2017, 06:49:29 AM
has a large user base (D3 alone sold 3.5m copies)
Really!? Go check how many people bought Valve games (or Source 2 based games) and UE3-based games..
Quote from: Shawnturner on November 10, 2017, 06:49:29 AM
will have the full source released under the GPL eventually, so you can make your TC into a standalone game and even sell it.
So you can with Unity (no source code available, but who cares) and UE4 (source code is available, including XB1/X and PS4).
Quote from: Shawnturner on November 10, 2017, 06:49:29 AM
looks nice with modest requirements (I can run ETQW on high settings, whereas BS just barely worked on low)
Only looks nice because of the art created by iD Software. Has nothing to do with the engine.
Quote from: Shawnturner on November 10, 2017, 06:49:29 AM
the updated engine for ETQW can render huge environments very well
Except that's not included into released source code. So id Tech 4 out of the box doesn't do huge environments well at all.
Quote from: Shawnturner on November 10, 2017, 06:49:29 AMLooks and feels unique. There's no Havok, SpeedTree, etc. Id make everything by themselves.
You can make any engine look unique if you can work with shaders. Who uses Havok noways? o.O Good luck making good foliage without SteepTree. I talked to several ex-ID employees who said that not using middleware was one of the biggest mistakes of iD Software. Look at them now - they use every middleware there is to get the job done and I am happy they do. No need to wait for games to be released in 5-7 years and have a way less features and effects they could have had with middleware.
Quote from: Shawnturner on November 10, 2017, 06:49:29 AM
Why's everyone using that broken pile of brokeness, U3?
No one uses UE3. Everyone uses UE4 or Unity. Id Tech 4 a way more broken than UE4 for example (I've worked with both and I can tell you from the experience). UE4 just works. No restrictions, no limitation. You might want to grad id Tech 4 and try making a small game using it. I am confident that you won't be able to make anything but Doom 3 mod that plays and feels exactly like Doom3 (or worse). With UE4 you can make any game, free or commercial.
is the OP like a time capsule/repost? People can still use Doom 3. I mean Quadrilateral Cowboy was a critically acclaimed game made with Doom 3 and Blender. There is a path, tho few use it.
Quote from: aphexjh on November 13, 2017, 12:27:48 PM
is the OP like a time capsule/repost? People can still use Doom 3. I mean Quadrilateral Cowboy was a critically acclaimed game made with Doom 3 and Blender. There is a path, tho few use it.
There is a better game made with Doom 3 engine, but no one heard of it. Simply because the author of Quadrilateral Cowboy has a higher publicity than the other guy. If you track his progress however, you'll see how long it took to build and how much he was fighting the engine. It would have been done much much quicker using UE4 or Unity.
You guys do love to complain, specially motorsep that loves this kind of threads, any opportunity to shit on idtech 4 and glorify UE4 and Unity is a most for him.
Why so few uses of idTech 4 by comercial AAA studios? Id contrary to Epic is not focused in the engine business so they didn't tried to sell the engine that strongly, even tho id sold licenses to their engines, they didn't worked on the tools to make them very easy for other developers, they expected them to get used to the tools or make their own or not bother at all and many didn't so idtech 4 saw few uses from outside teams.
Id tech 4 also came about when the engine market was imploding, everyone and their mother add now access, almost for free, for engines that were prohibitively expensive before. Engine tools also improved to the point that now, engines like idtech 4 that don't hold your hand, are not very noob friendly and don't make a single developer a power house are deamed has inferior, etc.
Taking that out, Idtech 4 is a very versatile engine and very maliable, to do big changes it does require developers with experience in c++ and OpenGL, but if you don't try to get to much outside of what the engine already provides, you can do pretty awesome stuff with it, motorsep only likes to mention comercial games, but there's some really cool mods made with idtech4, some with very unique stuff on them.
And Man Frictional games has made a awesome game (penumbra) with a engine (HPL 1) much more restrictive and inferior to even vanilla idtech 4 even the tools were inferior to those of idtech 4, the problem is not the engine is the ones using it.
"argoon" stands for "I like pointless arguments" - I don't see any track record of you making games. I've worked with idTech 1, idTech 4 and UE4 and I can tell you that id tech 4 is not malleable and is not versatile, it' was made to run Doom 3 and that's it. If you want to make something else you have to essentially rewrite it. Even recent attempt to integrate Vulkan into BFG engine stopped when the author dug deeper and discovered there half of the engine needs to be refactored.
The reason idTech 4 isn't used is simple - it's not flexible, it's limited and it's old. Once can make 3 games using UE4 before you make one game using idTech 4. Even Splash Damage ditched it at the end.
Quote from: motorsep on November 13, 2017, 01:42:18 PM
"argoon" stands for "I like pointless arguments" - I don't see any track record of you making games. I've worked with idTech 1, idTech 4 and UE4 and I can tell you that id tech 4 is not malleable and is not versatile, it' was made to run Doom 3 and that's it. If you want to make something else you have to essentially rewrite it. Even recent attempt to integrate Vulkan into BFG engine stopped when the author dug deeper and discovered there half of the engine needs to be refactored.
The reason idTech 4 isn't used is simple - it's not flexible, it's limited and it's old. Once can make 3 games using UE4 before you make one game using idTech 4. Even Splash Damage ditched it at the end.
Tell me mister "I've made one game now my opinion matters more than yours", if the engine is not versatile why are people working on different versions of it, including rewriting it into a completely different programming language, some guy even made a fantastic VR version with it, etc? The TDM team has even announced they implemented multi-core support, OpenGL 3.2, soft stencil shadows and many more features, in their spare time, you on other end have nothing to show on your awesome UE4 game.
No I've never made a game nor mod and that is because i really never add that intention and had other things to do, for me this is a hobby period, but that in no way invalidates my point, at lest i don't waist my time complaining and hating on a engine forum i don't like, contrary to you.
Quote from: argoon on November 13, 2017, 06:24:22 PM
No I've never made a game nor mod and that is because i really never add that intention and had other things to do
Then you have no weight in this argument, at all.
motorsep's right, doom 3 tech isn't very flexible. it does what id designed it to do very, very well. TDM plays on it's strengths very well. TDM has also been in development for about 14 years. With previous id game GPL releases there were several games based on the GPL engine released within ~5 years of release.
As for a specific reason D3 tech hasn't been popular is, to me at least, a very simple reason: only the engine is GPL, no weapon, AI, shaders, etc. available. For Quad Cowboy the hardest part was writing all those basics. Wolf3D, Doom, Q1, Q2, Q3A, RTCW, etc. all have everything you need to make a game except assets where as Doom 3 is lacking, basically, the whole gameplay part of the game: someone could make a clone of one of those games in months with just asset work. Doom 3 requires more code to get to the point where you can have some gameplay going.
In arguments like this the irony is lost by almost everyone: epic/valve fans for decades claimed id was nothing but an engine tech company that made games to show off tech. The reality became that valve & epic are engine tech companies & id is still a game company but nobody's hollering it off the roof tops like when id made mega-hit game after game decades ago. :)
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Quote from: The Happy Friar on November 13, 2017, 10:42:05 PM
motorsep's right, doom 3 tech isn't very flexible. it does what id designed it to do very, very well. TDM plays on it's strengths very well. TDM has also been in development for about 14 years. With previous id game GPL releases there were several games based on the GPL engine released within ~5 years of release.
As for a specific reason D3 tech hasn't been popular is, to me at least, a very simple reason: only the engine is GPL, no weapon, AI, shaders, etc. available. For Quad Cowboy the hardest part was writing all those basics. Wolf3D, Doom, Q1, Q2, Q3A, RTCW, etc. all have everything you need to make a game except assets where as Doom 3 is lacking, basically, the whole gameplay part of the game: someone could make a clone of one of those games in months with just asset work. Doom 3 requires more code to get to the point where you can have some gameplay going.
In arguments like this the irony is lost by almost everyone: epic/valve fans for decades claimed id was nothing but an engine tech company that made games to show off tech. The reality became that valve & epic are engine tech companies & id is still a game company but nobody's hollering it off the roof tops like when id made mega-hit game after game decades ago. :) Save
Motorsep is not "right" is has real arguments, and i agree with some of them, but his way of presenting them and the way he pretty much calls anyone using idtech 4 has a dumb person, even ones making mods or just fan's of id engines, removes from him any reason whatsoever.
Yes the vanilla idtech 4 is to old, that is why i'm using fhdoom, yes the original tools are old, not artist friendly and not very stable, but you have better alternatives for some of them and they do their job well. Yes the engine lacks many modern features like open spaces and stuff, but for corridor shooters is just fine. What i see here is a guy that instead of going to other engines if idtech 4 is not right for him or instead of trying to work with what he has, like some of the others that already finished mods and games in idtech 4, he complains and worse he actively tries to make other people stop using the engine (to the detriment of his own BFG modification), and that is Motorsep, if you condone this kind of behavior i don't. I don't mind people complaining about idtech 4, i also complain about it, what i don't agree are those that complain and instead of helping improving the engine/tool/documentation instead go out of their way to kill it.
Second the TDM mod has indeed been worked for 14 years or so but these new engine features are not something that took 14 years to make, it was a resent addition to the engine because they add new coders and they also add other idtech 4 modifications and i stress MODIFICATIONS from hum they got some of their tech and you don't see them complaining and lamenting they are stuck with a "garbage engine".
Yes only the engine is GPL the game assets are not, but even if they were i'm pretty sure that would not matter, many would still complain the engine lacks many of the capabilities of modern engines, and so would not use it, hell even Cryengine 5 a modern engine with state of the art tech is full of "motorseps" on their forum, grass is always green on the other side.
And motorsep i've used Unity 4 for many of my exploits and even played with UE4 and Cryengine a little but in the end i prefer using this garbage engine, but that's me.
Now you are just being ridiculous @argoon and you sound like a blind fanboy who refuses to accept the facts and reality because you are stuck in the past.
I worked with different engines - Build, GoldSrc, Source, Darkplaces, ioquake3, UE4, id Tech 4 (GPL, BFG and their forks), mostly for personal projects, prototypes or learning purposes. I do it for fun, and will continue with it.
The problem of nothing released along with the engine could be fixed in a rather simple way. There were many modders back in the day, many resources were available, as well as information on how to do different things. With release of the engine, it could be as easy as simply getting it all together, but that for some reason never happened.
University is slowing down progress of my development base right now, but once I'll find enough time, I'll improve it significantly, then work on a version for fhdoom/GPL.
I don't care what anyone is using for development, projects, design, rocket science or even quantum physics in their spare time. It's their right to be stuck in the past, use ancient or modern technology or anything they want. People are still using Quake and Doom deriative engines!
If someone wants to live under a rock, I don't pry it off their back nor take a sit on it just to add some weight. Stopping every time I see a caveman, or to stare in awe at wonders of modern technology would only slow me down. My solution to every problem is to act. Do something, improve and fix until the problem is gone - just keep doing your thing, and don't bother with others.
I don't think anyone is slagging whatever people do as a hobby for fun, people can even use Torque or GameGuru if they want. The implication is concerning "serious" development and the OP was talking about commercial use. There's no need to be defensive about what at this point are facts, not opinions.
TDM is certainly an impressive achievement in many ways but the fact remains that the engine still can't handle wide-open detailed worlds (even by 2004 standards) and modern polycounts, and this isn't going to change. Much of the content is on-par with mobile gaming by now, I would say. This is mainly due to lack of "real" LOD, so I don't mean swapping models off the hard drive but actually having the stages in the vertex buffer. Every time some new trick is implemented like fake-PBR or some post-processing shiny or soft shadows, the performance hit and possible affect on minimum system requirements is usually intolerably bad and not worth it compared to what engines like UE4 can already do with the same hardware and much higher framerates, with a LOT more content getting chewed and digested. This is simply fact.
A Commodore64 emulator written in Java that requires 8GB RAM and quad-core CPU at minimum before it will even show the splash screen, bogged down by layers upon layers of abstraction, does not impress anyone. And yes, they do exist.
Quote from: Snehk on November 14, 2017, 05:29:00 PM
I don't care what anyone is using for development, projects, design, rocket science or even quantum physics in their spare time. It's their right to be stuck in the past, use ancient or modern technology or anything they want. People are still using Quake and Doom deriative engines!
Exactly, that is something guys like Motorsep don't understand.
Quote from: LDAsh on November 15, 2017, 12:58:04 AM
I don't think anyone is slagging whatever people do as a hobby for fun, people can even use Torque or GameGuru if they want. The implication is concerning "serious" development and the OP was talking about commercial use. There's no need to be defensive about what at this point are facts, not opinions.
Motorsep has called on people including me for still using this engine, going has far has to say that he is here to remind us everyday that we are wasting our time.
Yes the op was talking about comercial usage and i among others explained why the engine saw few comercial realeases, and i also agree that idtech 4 has it stands is not really the best choice for comercial games but i don't care if anyone wants to make a comercial game with it, i will certainly not call those people stupid or stuck in the past.
Quote from: LDAsh on November 15, 2017, 12:58:04 AM
TDM is certainly an impressive achievement in many ways but the fact remains that the engine still can't handle wide-open detailed worlds (even by 2004 standards) and modern polycounts, and this isn't going to change. Much of the content is on-par with mobile gaming by now, I would say. This is mainly due to lack of "real" LOD, so I don't mean swapping models off the hard drive but actually having the stages in the vertex buffer. Every time some new trick is implemented like fake-PBR or some post-processing shiny or soft shadows, the performance hit and possible affect on minimum system requirements is usually intolerably bad and not worth it compared to what engines like UE4 can already do with the same hardware and much higher framerates, with a LOT more content getting chewed and digested. This is simply fact.
A Commodore64 emulator written in Java that requires 8GB RAM and quad-core CPU at minimum before it will even show the splash screen, bogged down by layers upon layers of abstraction, does not impress anyone. And yes, they do exist.
TDM is indeed a great achievement and that is in part the way that community is very mature and focused and because idtech 4 was fortunately open enough for their needs.
Yes idtech 4 has no real "wide-open detailed worlds" and that is a petty but in now way does it make the engine useless, if it can't do that, don't make a game with it that needs that capability, play with the engine strengths not weaknesses and if your game really needs that (and you don't have the ability to change the engine internals) then go to other engine, i'm not saying that to attack you in any way, i would do the same if my current idea needed wide open spaces fortunately it does not.
No one is claiming idtech 4 can do everything what UE4 can, no one is claiming idtech 4 is easier to use than UE4, for the contrary, i'm just saying idtech 4 is not a useless engine, it has it's place and it's charm, i specially like the cleanness, sharpness of its render, contrary to UE4 and Unity, but that is me, is just a preference.
Quote from: MotorsepI am confident that you won't be able to make anything but Doom 3 mod that plays and feels exactly like Doom3 (or worse)
And this is why this guy should not be taken seriously, there's many examples of idtech 4 games and mods that feel very different to Doom 3.
Quote from: MotorsepEven recent attempt to integrate Vulkan into BFG engine stopped when the author dug deeper and discovered there half of the engine needs to be refactored.
Of course Sherlock ANY engine will need heavy refactoring for Vulkan, is a total different way to code renders and shader's, this new API needs engines to be made from the ground up with it in mind, any engine slapping a Vulkan render onto their old architecture will never rip it real benefits, this came from the mouth of Croteam engine developer Alan Ladavac and the Khronos Group it self. Btw, i would love to read the post, where the idSoftware employee working on this Vulkan render, claimed he stooped because he didn't knew needed to change the engine to much for it, i pretty much doubt that a professional engine developer/ coder would be so ignorant about the engine he worked before (unless is a totally new employee that only worked with idtech 5 and 6).
@argoon You are simply f#cking returd, that's all. Modders mod the game - Doom 3. I never had anything against modding Doom 3. However, you simply refuse to understand that the engine is not suitable for anything else. As an example, there are artists who can make 3D sculptures of people to look life-like using Blender alone. I am sure they can single handily make something like Final Fantasy movies in their lifetime. However, it will never happen in production settings. A large team will be working on such movie and they will use tools (and quality) that will allow them to built said movie within a reasonable time frame and with reasonable quality (no one in the right mind will go all out with tiny details in production if those won't be visible or bring value to the viewer). So they will use Maya or Max, not Blender.
Same goes for id tech 4. There are a handful of devs who would be willing to work with idTech 4 in commercial settings and they don't have enough skills to get idTech 4 to the level of idTech 5/6 or UE4 in the reasonable amount of time (before idTech 7 or UE5 come out). Tools is another story. It will take another team and another skillset to make state of art tools. And on top of that you still need art and gamecode.
But apparently you plainly refuse to acknowledge the facts.
So why don't you GFY and stop advising people on using idTech 4 for commercial production?!
Quote from: motorsep on November 15, 2017, 10:59:12 AM
So why don't you GFY and stop advising people on using idTech 4 for commercial production?!
Quote from: Argoon... i also agree that idtech 4 has it stands is not really the best choice for comercial games...
You are not only a guy with a really poisonous personality you also have reading disabilities...
This place would be almost dead without those quarrels shaking it up... Can't you guys just get it over with already? It's been a few years since BFG engine release, even more so since GPL. At this point, everyone should be happy that it works at all and still have fun with just fiddling with this old tech! Arguments won't change anything. Well, maybe they'll make the atmosphere here more toxic, I can feel that the amount of salt here is approximately four times bigger than the one of Dead Sea!
The engine is not really used by independent developers, because there are better and easier engines out there. Majority of them are artists, that's why things should be greatly simplified. Large studios may consider it a relic of past. But guess what, large studios don't care about UE4 or Unity, or other miraculous engines available for everyone (unless they try to sell it) as well. Large studios have invested too much time, effort and money in their own technology. Now, with that in mind we can say that only hobbyists, or Doom 3 modders that are experienced with the engine remain. Once in a while some looney with idea for a great game on this old engine appears, gets fed up quickly with obscurity of the engine or toxicity of this place, and leaves. This is a normal thing for any existing game engine.
Anyone is entitled to use anything they want (as long as it's legal) to develop their projects. If an indie team insists on using Doom 3 engine, then it's their decision and nobody should care. Were should provide technical information to help such a team work instead.
Shut up Snehk! :P
JK. You're absolutely right. People just use what you want. I think the OP has been answered to death now.
Old topic but heres my take.
While BFG is newer and arguably runs better on newer hardware it has the "exact" same limitations idtech4 has.
Namely piss poor support for big open world maps.
In fact besides BFG running better id removed megamaps from the code,
so idtech4 has an edge there as it can actually support huge maps.
The downside to idtech 4's megamap code is that it is a very early format with little to no compression so the maps will be freaking huge.
One mod i know of used this and its one map was in excess of 10 gb Oo.
Still it looked pretty good :) but sizes like that simply makes using megamaps unfeasible, since a game with 10 maps would amass to around 100gb of drive space.
If someone tried tinkering with a good compression algorithm for the megamaps it might actually make a solid engine for modders to work on.
Nowadays we have have some modernized versions of idtech4 like fhdoom (uses a full GLSL backend has shadowmaps and SSAO and other goodies) still needs work on the expansion though.
And even though im practically retired i been working on backporting stuff from TDM to idtech4 like support for AVX and AVX2 and multicore rendering using MH's idtech4 port as a base.
Atm im updating the old OpenAL and EAX code to OpenAL-Soft and EFX so that people without a creative card can also use the environmental sounds.
My engine uses a hybrid ARB2 GLSL renderer where all interactions are handled by GLSL and the rest is still ARB2 assembly, so that mods like sikkmod will still work.
This took some tinkering as the code is very fragile, but i managed to cut a sizeable ammount of state changes making it rock solid.
@revelator:
Megatextures is utter crap compare to VT 2.0 in Rage 1 and even other games that use id Tech 5 (id Tech 6 has even better VT tech). Open world maps is so much harder to make play well and look good. Stick with conventional maps. Also, I made massive open map to run with Doom 3 BFG engine - it was massive, if you were to walk across.
It's funny how I see talks about modernizing id tech 4, when there is Storm Engine 2 with working tools and enhanced graphics (based of earlier RBDoom 3 BFG before it became a mess). Just no one really cares to make anything using the engine (and I recall there was some much shit that I didn't release the code back then - now it's open and no one cares).
It was only a take on what was possible by default between the two engines :), better formats do exist, quake 4 used megamaps for only a few outdoor areas, rage used them extensively but at the time it still looked like crap compared to many other games with huge outdoor areas.
Still i kinda like how megamaps look in idtech 6 now :) and with some (or a lot) of work, the megamap code in tech4 could possibly be made usefull.
And yeah since most large gaming corporations have opened up for the free use of there tech like unreal and cryengine,
not many feel the need to make use of code that would require for them to gasp... do some work themselfs.
Its sad really, because even though the code might lack some features or be in need of some polish to bring it up to date,
it seems noone can be arsed to make that sacrifice even if it means your game might become unique.
Sadly we newer got to see the original Prey2 which used a heavily modified tech4 engine,
from the early pics though it looked freaking awesome and seems to have supported some pretty large maps.
Motorsep, help me out here.
Why are you so keen on trolling and picking fights on this board all the time?
We know you've done some impressive things in the past, but if you consider idtech4 that outdated, your time is surely better spent on forums dealing with more up to date engines?
Why do you have to act like such a dick?
Quote from: EoceneMiacid on September 13, 2019, 04:12:27 AM
Motorsep, help me out here.
I'll try my best O0
Quote from: EoceneMiacid on September 13, 2019, 04:12:27 AM
Why are you so keen on trolling and picking fights on this board all the time?
Trolling and picking fights? Not really - only speaking the truth. Only you and maybe a few more people get offended by it, because you idolize id tech 4 and not willing to accept that the world have moved on.
Quote from: EoceneMiacid on September 13, 2019, 04:12:27 AM
We know you've done some impressive things in the past, but if you consider idtech4 that outdated, your time is surely better spent on forums dealing with more up to date engines?
Well, thank you :) And indeed I spend my time in UE4. If you look at my posts, I post here quite infrequently.
Quote from: EoceneMiacid on September 13, 2019, 04:12:27 AM
Why do you have to act like such a dick?
Can't just have you and the devilz carry all this load >:D
Well lets not turn this into a flame war :) motorsep is right in regards to the older tech in idtech4 being substandard as of today,
but that is where indie coders might actually shine by creating updates to old paths that in some circumstances are not only just as good as current tech but sometimes even better :).
Most teams today unfortunatly seem to focus on the art and dont give a flying f... about what engine they want to run it on as long as it has the stuff they want by default.
And while corporations opening the code to their propriarity engines to the public for a modest fee if it goes into production might have sounded like a good idea,
it actually killed the coding scene because now the artists push engine side feature request to whatever corp holds the rights to that engine benefitting them
for whatever game they themself plan on developing.
Indie coders rarely if ever have a chance of keeping up with the big boys when it comes to manpower, so it is a lost battle sadly :(.
So there you have it, and im being rather blunt about it now.
@revelator:
I can tell you this much - before I went with UE4, I was asking programmers about getting work done on Storm Engine 2. No one wanted to touch it with long stick, even for standard amount of money for indie devs (they could, for a lot of money I didn't have).
Btw, there is no modest fee for UE4 - it's literally free until you ship your game, and if it's not doing great (there is a limit per quarter) - it's literally free, you pay nothing to Epic.
It's all about money. If people want to get down and dirty, they can either go with Unity or UE4, or write their own engines. If they don't want to dig C++ source or code in C#, they go with UE4 and Blueprints (this is what I do).
I was told that it makes sense to work with UE4 and Unity, for a programmer, because that's what's required in AAA companies. So gaining knowledge in those engines makes monetary and career sense.
Indies are not some kind of sponsored teams where someone pays their bills to have them coding for fun (even if it was a case, I was told by many programmers it's fun to code in C# for Unity and no fun at all dig id tech 4). They are people with families and bills to pay. It only makes sense to use engine + tools that will help them to ship game faster, and on as many platforms as possible.
The momentum has been lost with id tech 4.
Btw, as game modding engine , if you are focusing on improving gameplay of Doom 3 and not planning on making a total conversion, it's great. However, even for making TC is sucks because of tools (or lack of such) and limited user base (or whatever is left of it).
You're not wrong Motorsep, we know idtech4 isn't competitive with the likes of UE4.
And that's fine as far as I'm concerned because my goal isn't to create a modern AAA game from scratch, something I don't have the time, skill or resources for.
Learning from industry standard game engines, can be good but most studios are starting to move away from third parties like UE and focussing on in house code.
Just look at what happened between mass effect 3 and mass effect andromeda. All previous games in that series has used unreal tech, but andromeda and in fact all upcomming titles from EA
will use EA's own inhouse frostbite engine.
There was a time when money was not everything... most coders i learned from over the years did it mostly for fun and to tinker with ideas.
This has lead to some amazing projects over the years -> darkplaces FTE xonotic xash to name a few, by coders who did not accept the "this can not be done" clause :).
Sure development on some of these projects has taken years but quite a lot of them are even used today by artists who dont need the latest and most flashy toys,
it all comes down to what you intend to make.
idtech4 is mostly geared towards corridor shooters, it can do large outdoor areas but it is not where it shines (in that regard it was actually less flexible than idtech3).
Personally, for myself, I find it hard to justify using Id Tech 4. Quake 1/2 were fairly similar in terms of design and Quake 3 carried many similarities in the source itself. This helped pioneer development on these early idtech engines. Also when they were released we didnt have as many FOSS game projects so they carved a niche.
Doom3 (and id tech 4), has a few key shortcomings.
1) Multiplayer (or lack thereof)
2) When designing D3, the multiplayer code that was present was incorporated directly into the single player code, unlike Q3 with cgame/game. Although there is some simplicity gained from this approach, it sacrifices some security. Additionally, in my personal preference I prefer having two isolated code bases because it helps me separate the client and server logic clearly.
3) Engine. Many modders lack the tools/care to deal with high quality sprites/textures. I personally prefer a simple texture to having to deal with bump/normal maps.
4) I love Carmack to death, but the Physics in D3 did not age well. They are completely software based unlike PhysX or Bullet. You can find some QuakeCon talks on this subject.
5) The niche. D3 engine is very optimized for a very small subset of gameplay.
6) When released, it did not hold the spotlight for long. Gameplay/mod enthusiasts had gotten the UDK in 2009, and then right around D3s release, we also got Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, and the Jedi Academy/Outcast.
Agreed idtech4 is a niche product as it is, dependant on the work we put into expanding its capabilities.
Things that may make sense would be to expand the work done on fhDoom's tools to port and expand the toolset.
QT is excellent for that purpose :) as was shown with fhDoom.
Next would be to expand the engines uses by introducing virtual texturing (not nessesarily megatextures, there are other options we can use),
this would push it in a more all purpose direction, though we would still have to expand a few other areas to truely take advantage of the engine.
Physics could be changed to take advantage of bullet or the open dynamics engine ODE, not sure how much work it would take though.
Bump and normal maps can be produced by code but the generated images would lack certain details that artists making them by hand can, but its entirely possible to do.
As for the multiplayer part, idtech 1 and 2 also used this approach so it is not uncommon in id's engines,
however security concerns are definatly valid so maybe change the NET code to SSL based ?.
I admit most grievances i heard about idtechs NET code was about bad performance :P because it does not compress the stream (LAG galore).
Quote from: revelator on September 14, 2019, 06:01:18 AM
Agreed idtech4 is a niche product as it is, dependant on the work we put into expanding its capabilities.
Things that may make sense would be to expand the work done on fhDoom's tools to port and expand the toolset.
QT is excellent for that purpose :) as was shown with fhDoom.
Next would be to expand the engines uses by introducing virtual texturing (not nessesarily megatextures, there are other options we can use),
this would push it in a more all purpose direction, though we would still have to expand a few other areas to truely take advantage of the engine.
Physics could be changed to take advantage of bullet or the open dynamics engine ODE, not sure how much work it would take though.
Bump and normal maps can be produced by code but the generated images would lack certain details that artists making them by hand can, but its entirely possible to do.
As for the multiplayer part, idtech 1 and 2 also used this approach so it is not uncommon in id's engines,
however security concerns are definatly valid so maybe change the NET code to SSL based ?.
I admit most grievances i heard about idtechs NET code was about bad performance :P because it does not compress the stream (LAG galore).
Yes. From an engine perspective, I have seen good progress from some devs. Ultimately, I plan on observing the scene before deciding because you have the benefits of dhewm3 being 64bit, fhdoom for the engine, TDM for some improvements and then RBDoomBFG. I plan on observing for awhile longer before making a list and porting the features wanted to the engine of choice. Megatextures are a dead end imho. They were kinda present in d3, but until we would have a way to compress the files and use them effectively, they are a dev trap.
My first project d3 related is actually to work my way through trying to replace the physics with a 3rd party library. Rather than ODE/Newton I had been looking into either Bullet or PhysX due to the fact that they can run some calculations on the GPU (afaik) rather than being purely software. Based on a preliminary glance last night, the physics is rather tightly integrated with the actual game (physics code is built into the game dll on d3). As a result, there is no way to add physics to the engine and have it work with existing mods as a drop in solution.
Yeah. I have seen some tools that will do that, I had previously used Unity3D, and I was using one. It was just an extra level of complexity.
Well, pretty sure that the D3 server model is authoritative. I more meant along the lines of ease of end user use/separation of logic.
That and also, I noticed something when I was looking through the physics. The way that they are synced through the network appears to be quite heavy. Especially if you are using a UDP/snapshot based network and have to worry about fragmentation.
Unfortunatly physx will only run on the GPU with nvidia cards since it relies on the cuda core,
so bullet would be a better choice i reckon ?. It would probably break existing game code as you noticed,
but might come in handy for new games developed using it.
We also have a plethora of different idtech4 projects that each have there strengths like you noticed.
It would be a nice move to consolidate the work on those into a shared project i think.
The goal for my little side project is in fact similar since im consolidating work from various ports into an all purpose engine.
So far i have added the SMP changes from darkmod as well as newer CPU intrinsics like AVX and AVX2.
Still in progress is porting the OpenAL Soft implementation from dhewm as well as 64 bit support.
Engine uses a hybrid GLSL ARB assembly backend which allows use of old shader mods like sikkmod,
but that might change if someone can port sikkpins shaders to GLSL.
But its a huge undertaking so it will take a while.
@revelator:
It's been said many times that one of the reasons latest games from EA suck is due to Frostbite engine being used. Had they used Unity or UE4, they'd had less issues on launch. The only reason some companies still roll with their own engine is that they sank a lot of money into development and they don't want to write it off, re-train staff (or fire them and hire UE4/Unity devs) and also pay royalties to Epic/Unity. Not because in-house engines are somehow better.
As for PhysX, well, you'd be surprised to know it runs on AMD as well as on Nvidia, since like long time ago :)
Eh yes ?!?.
What i meant with physx is that it will only run with "GPU acceleration" on nvidia cards.
It runs fine on AMD but with lower performance as a side effect.
Bullet runs with hardware accelleration on both AMD and Nvidia.
Frostbite is actually a pretty good engine but as was the case with idtech4 it was a niche product since it could not handle an RPG out of the box (it was mostly used for shooters and car games).
Bioware had to implement a facial animation system as well as several other elements like inventory and whatnot.
Sadly this coupled with a troubled development cycle, with problems with procedurally generated environments and starting over on a totally different engine,
ment a 5 year project suddenly had to be finished in 18 months.
Anthem makes use of the new frostbite developed for mass effect andromeda, though it has had a bit more polish now:).
Well my experiments with using darkmods SMP system has yielded some interresting results.
vsync on 58.5 fps on sikkmod Oo. sadly SSAO and softshadows continue to be major FPS sinks due to the fact that sikkmod uses a hacked depthrenderer to simulate real depthrender access.
But everything else was on and previous runs without the darkmod optimizations only yielded about 25 to 30 fps with
those options.
So it gives a rather neat speed boost :).
One gripe though was with the hybrid GLSL ARB2 renderer, it causes bad UV's in maps with loads of decal blood, so it might be prudent to turn of GLSL interactions when using sikkmod.
Weird thing is that it only affects sikkmod other mods work fine so wtf...
Ok yesterday i got updated to win10 1903 and now gamma is no longer working wtf... ?!?
Does not work on any opengl engines that uses wingdi actually ???, this seems to be a bug in 1903 but microsnot
seems to believe they fixed it (well they did not...) sigh.
Quote from: revelator on October 28, 2019, 01:48:24 PM
Ok yesterday i got updated to win10 1903 and now gamma is no longer working wtf... ?!?
Does not work on any opengl engines that uses wingdi actually ???, this seems to be a bug in 1903 but microsnot
seems to believe they fixed it (well they did not...) sigh.
Update your video drivers?
They are the latest :-[
Ok heres how to fix it and it has nothing at all to do with "your" drivers in case you are wondering.
Open the -> (old control panel) go down to system -> device installation.
Find your monitor and hit update drivers, do not let windows auto install instead chose look on my pc for drivers and let me select from availiable devices.
Now choose pnp screen (standard) reboot and lo and behold gamma works again.
This bug also broke color calibration, nightlight, and various other apps.
Hope it helps anyone else with this problem.
My engine now builds cleanly with msvc 2017 and 2019 ^-^
still uv bugs on some sikkmod enabled mods like grimm quest (seems to be the only one with that bug so far, so i suspect the mod might have gotten corrupted in a drive crash now ugh).
as long as you stay away from enabling SSAO and softshadows sikkmod looks like a million dollars and runs pretty purty on this engine.
The only sad thing about it is that i removed all editors from the code early in development due to not being cross platform and generally badly implemented code,
so unfortunatly you can not use it for creating your own mods, you can however use it as an sdk for game dll changes (which is pretty much a must if you want to play your mod on this since it is no longer compatible with stock doom3).
My project is dead and will not return, github destroyed all my changes when committing and overwrote my local copy with a mix of old and new code. I deleted the repositories because there is no way to get the changes reverted i tried.
So this is the end.
scrounging up what i could from this disaster, i started adding in the SMP and timing changes to dhewm as well as the multicore renderer.
Its a big job though so might take a while.
Well i got the UV problem fixed and readded the AVX intrinsics.
Still lacking the SMP changes from TDM, code was quite a mess and some functions had to be changed rather heavy handedly i remember.
The problem with the bad UV's was a silly one in the GLSL code, i forgot to detach the shaders when the program object had been created (most of the earlier GLSL examples actually forgot to do that) which also caused numerous bugs with them :)). Well i guess we can be excused, neither of us had much experience at the time with GLSL so that it actually worked to some degree was in itself pretty amazing heh.