Re: Doom 3 Supremacy

[The Happy Friar]

this the name of a mod you're working on?

[EoceneMiacid]

Indeed - more news to come soon!

[Arl]

Well, we'll see...

[EoceneMiacid]

It's a bit early to start stirring up hype, but it's hard to resist not to

[EoceneMiacid]

Right!

The time has come to shed some light on this project I've worked on, since it is beginning to approach a state that's fit for public release.

There are some traditions I deem worthy upholding in life - upgrading my rig whenever a new Doom game comes out is one of them. The technology of Doom 3 had my jaw firmly on the floor throughout my first playthrough, and I knew that this would be the engine I'd ultimately settle for. The source code release in 2011 prompted me to actually start doing something with it.

After years of trying to make peace with the way you are supposed to build a Doom 3 mod, I realized I was never going to be entirely happy with the end result. Looking at the gamedata, it is obvious id Software couldn't afford the luxury spending time cleaning everything up, probably because of the publisher's deadline. Roughly half (probably more) of all texture definitions refer to work-in-progress textures that are not present in the final game.

Simply put - the Doom 3 data is a bloated, hard-to-navigate mess.

So I ultimately decided upon building a brand new data set, from scratch, with the aim of providing the best possible base to build new mods on.

Some of my design goals are:

- Target modern source ports on any supported operating system;
- Keep the data as consistent, compact, clean, bloat-free, and easy to read as possible;
- Pre-configure the game for best possible image quality (since even ghetto PC's can run the game effortlessly these days)
- Provide as much professional-quality assets for modders to use as possible;
- Completely rework every aspect of the game, to make it much more fun to play than the vanilla game ever was;
- Modernize controls and add features common in modern FPS games;
- Provide any useful prefab I can think of to simplify map building;

Technically speaking, Supremacy 3 isn't even a Doom 3 mod anymore, but rather a standalone game that happens to run on the same engine, and also featuring it's assets.

Probably the nicest bonus feature is that all the assets from engine stablemates Quake 4 and Prey are also included; massively increasing the amount of available content to play around with. I guess one could call it an idTech4 sandbox game.

[Strannix]

Ohhhh this sounds very interesting. Can't wait to here some progress news

[EoceneMiacid]

So, I've got this alpha version packaged up, ready to be tested.

Obviously it's full of (what I presume to be) copyrighted assets, from a number of different copyright owners.

So, what to do with it? Can I upload it and expect not to get in trouble?

ModDB is full of stuff with copyrighted assets, so...

[The Happy Friar]

Depends on what's the owner of the assets.  If it was my assets, for example, if you asked me I'd say sure (unless I say in the readme just credit me, then I wouldn't care), because I don't really care as long as you don't steal.  If it's stock D3 assets, unless they're modified in some way it's basically a no-no.

[caedes]

Depends on what's the owner of the assets.  If it was my assets, for example, if you asked me I'd say sure (unless I say in the readme just credit me, then I wouldn't care), because I don't really care as long as you don't steal.  If it's stock D3 assets, unless they're modified in some way it's basically a no-no.

"Probably the nicest bonus feature is that all the assets from engine stablemates Quake 4 and Prey are also included"

So it's Q4 and Prey assets so I doubt this is legal.

[The Happy Friar]

Did you modify the assets themselves?  If not, give instructions on how to extract those assets yourself & tell them what to do.  Most people who play Doom 3 mods aren't stupid.  When I was a kid (in grade school) I was modding & creating code from magazines/text documents saying "Find code XXXXXXX on line 265 & replace it with YYYYYYY" w/o issue.
Hopefully kids & adults these days aren't to stupid for that.

[EoceneMiacid]

The problem with this is that it's practically an entire new codebase. Nearly every asset is modified or re-assembled from the ground up.

[LDAsh]

How about making some batch files, packaging in 7-Zip and something like XDelta, and then using diff patches?  It could potentially automate the entire extracting and patching process.  It may still not be 1000% legal, but at least not SO illegal (not that anyone would really care these days anyway if you don't howl at the moon about it) 

[aphexjh]

Taking Arcane Dimensions as an example, it seems that people have gotten away with something very similar in the past, but I think that maybe relying on people to verify that they have purchased copies of each game would be the best way to go. I realize this is not a trivial task, but something like a batch file seems like it would work. I would imagine many script assets, materials, etc. would have been modified in the course of this development, so I don't know how easy it would be to track and apply those changes, but the pk4 loading sequence might help with that.

Since these are newer games, its possible the publisher will be more scrutinizing. I think you would just get a cease and desist type letter if you ran afoul of them, but if you are redistributing raven, human head and id assets, they might have grounds to seek damages, so thats why I'd avoid that. Although, again, judging by Arcane Dimensions, I am not sure how likely this is to happen.

[EoceneMiacid]

I've considered developing a tool that would extract the assets from installed versions of Quake 4 and Prey and then re-assemble them for use in Doom 3, but the changes are so severe (on so many levels) means it's such a big task I'd rather
spend the time developing and improving the actual project. Pretty much all the text definition files are all-new, with some copy-pasted chunks here and there, obviously. Raven Entertainment claims copyright to those original files.

I would love to release it as-is, obviously there's still a lot left to do because there's only so much time I can devote to learning all of Doom 3's subsystems in-depth, it would be awesome if others could lend their experience and contribute to what ultimately could become the definitive Doom 3 assets pack.

So, I'm on the fence here.

What do you guys think I should do?

Ask for permission and risk being shot down, and possibly monitored for at least a while?

Provide a download link to anyone asking for it in a private message, under condition they can provide proof of ownership of Doom 3, RoE, Quake 4 and Prey? (How the hell am I going to verify that?)

Provide a download link anyway, at the risk of a c&d?

[EoceneMiacid]

The name is also outdated, since it's not really a Doom 3 mod anymore.

IdTech4 MegaMix?