[Inquisitor]

I don't think we know what we want to make, truthfully.

[Valin Halcyon]

Well, if you going for a new FS game, you might as well aim high and miss low, than aim low and miss alltogether.

We're using the CS engine.  It needs some work to make it how we need it, but shouldn't take too much effort.

I took a look at Torque.  1 big problem with it.  Any game you make, HAS to be published by them...read the fine print in the EULA.

D4 is shipping with a complete modding tool we call D4Edit or DIVE.  If you tack on FS3 to D4, making mods would be incredibly easy.

As for OS support...hehehehe.  
CS supports:
Win32
Linux
BeOS
MacOSX
PS2
DOS
OS/2 Warp
UNIX
Other *nix flavors
(Did I miss any?  )

That's actually part of our current problem.  To MUCH support for too many things.  CS has over 30 dlls...that will be fixed for each platform release.

I'd love to help you make the real FS3, and I do think it's possible, but I won't say it'll be easy.  It'll be part of a retail package, and as such, you'll have to learn project management from the level of a Game Designer.  You'll be expected to write documents, set goals and timeframes.  

Game Design isn't all roses and butterflies, it's hard work.  If you're not ready to take it on and stick with it even when it gets stressful, don't even bother to think about trying.


BTW, thanks for the big welcome all!  It's nice and refreshing from spending time on the DBB where I post any news of D4 and a flamewar breaks out.

[CP5670]

Actually I think that we are intending this to be a freeware open-source type of thing, according to the current plan anyway...

[15thRampage]

well u are talking a lot of good and valid points, and bad ponts (haven't read all the treads), but does anyone of you have ever seen the VERAS STRIKE ENGIEN, if not go to http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/ ask the guy for some tips. you all shoud go there and check it up

[gevatter Lars]

Or try to ask this people http://mods.firstones.com/ifh/
They have also made a very goog engine.

[EdrickV]

I would be interested in helping, but at the moment I think my C++ skills are inadequate to the task as I'm mainly used to Windows programming with Borland C++ Builder. I could test any programs that are made though, I can crash just about anything. (And actually managed to get into the credits of MV in my initial foray into modding. ) I am, and will be, learning more about C++ under Linux and likely SDL and Open GL so maybe I could be of use in the future.

[Zarax]

Originally posted by Styxx


MVE must be the crappiest movie encoder since flic....

Do you need to pay any liscence to encode "commercial" movies in DivX? I know that you can use the encoder for free when you're not making any profits...

Why are you using such old stuff like this?
Try WMV and Enjoy QUALITY with a free encoder.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Inquisitor
Well, using an existing engine is something Kazan seems to be against.
 

Actually, using an exsisting one seems not to bad an idea, now I think of it.  i realise that Kaz probably wants to learn fully 3d coding, but a lot of companies use altered versions of other enginexs- like Raven (who modfied the Q3 engine for Jed Knight, Soldier of Fortune, etc).

Maybe reverse engineering a (probably very simple) freeware exsiting engine could be of use?

[Executor]

Originally posted by Zarax


Why are you using such old stuff like this?
Try WMV and Enjoy QUALITY with a free encoder.

Except WMV probably wouldn't work with Linux. I also get the impression that Kazan isn't too fond of Microsoft.

[Valin Halcyon]

Jeez...just use Bink.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Valin Halcyon
Jeez...just use Bink.

yeah, it's good, and it's free, and... well, every game company uses that for their trailers, I guess it's for a reason

[TrashMan]

The FS FOREVER is a great idea. A new engine - even better, but it will have to be done right!
It has to be as fast as possible, so we can make really large, legendary battles with tons of ships.
That means usage of all tricks, such as not rendering objects(or parts of objects) that are not on the screen, or cannot be seen from the players angle (if you look at a ship from the left, the right side wont be renderd), and so on...
Hope that you programmers are up to the job.
Good luck people!

[TurboNed]

EDIT - I should post stuff to the right thread in the future.....ACK!  It's 4am - BED, I need to go to BED!

  --TurboNed

[Kazan]

Bink.. bink sucks large..

DivX or Die

[TurboNed]

Originally posted by Kazan
Bink.. bink sucks large..

DivX or Die

DivX is a CPU hog at hires, whereas Bink &/or Smacker were built from the ground up to blaze through frames at high speed on relatively low CPU.

  --TurboNed

[Kazan]

I have a Pentium III 600mhz and decoding a DivX smooth stretched to 1600x1200 it's only running around 25%.. DivX is fine

[Inquisitor]

Maybe arguing about the finer points of video codecs can wait for a while

[CP5670]

Resource-hogging movie formats are probably okay as they are not going to be played during the game itself but between missions, where the processor does not have any in-game floating point tasks. As long as they are not really bad in that respect.

One thing that I wanted to mention earlier but forgot: lets try to add support for ingame resolutions other than 640x480 and 1024x768. The menus can remain at the currently supported resolutions (maybe there can be an option to switch between the menu resolution as well as the game resolution), but the game itself should support others as well. Should be fairly easy to do.

[Inquisitor]

Again, from working with Torque, the video resolution capability is determined by the engines evaluation of your card.

So, on my test machine with out put to a TV monitor, I get 640x480 and 800x600 as my selectable resolutions, but on my dev machine here, I get 640 up to 12something and above.

Both machines have a GF2 MX400, just one is output to a TV monitor.

Just another illustration (from an engine we are unlikely to use for the final product ).

[Fr3z3r]

Guess the best idea would be to make FS3...
But heck, Kazan, know that we're @ll with ya!