Try The Sword of Ares shareware
(Heh heh. I'll put this here without an explanation and see how frustrated people get)
DARK CORE
Check out the latest additions to the Dark Core page. This is the RPG TC we used to just call "The Game". A lot of people are working on this project but we need more programmers. Right now we are planning on making this as a Quake 2 TC but this is not set in stone.
CASTLEVANIA TC
Acid Corndog is making a Castlevania TC and needs lots of models. Some of the classic monsters and other things in Castlevania are copyleft-safe and would make great FMP models. There is already a skeleton from the defunct Q-Files TC for instance, although even that model could use more animation and weapon combinations.
Rene Post has released a new preview version of the qME model editor. Check out the new interface and inverse kinematics. (move arms and legs just by dragging hands and feet with the mouse!)
This is one of the few model editing programs used as the only tool of many modelers (like me) and as a favorite tool of many others to assemble Quake/Quake2/Hexen2 models made in other modeling programs.
Key to the success of this program has been the free "lite" shareware version (limited to saving 20 frames of animation), continuing support from the original programmer, and extensive use of user feedback.
LISCENSE AGREEMENT NONSENSE
Anyone who frequented the HexenWorld message board about the time the Hexen 2 was released might remember some of my rantings on the subject of their end-user license agreement (EULA) In retrospect there was nothing special about Activision's EULA - it basically just restated certain basic rights they have to derivative products made from their game and utilities.
However I still feel that these companies attitude about their EULAs are patronizing and dishonest. First of all they claim to be "protecting" players from low-quality software (If that isn't a monopolistic attitude, I dont' know what is), but these licenses don't protect players from shovelware (Quake had a very similar agreement and it didn't help).
Second it's another one of those "by opening the box you agree to..." which is a load of crap if the license is not printed outside of the box/archive/whatever (Schroedinger's cat and all that :) That kind of attitude is only adding more fuel for silliness like the Ultima Online lawsuit.
I'd have to say the best EULA so far is the Quake 2 EULA. Essentially it makes an exception (in almost intelligible english) for non-commercial Quake 2 mods. This is important because it is exactly how the game's creator's want the game used. (except for a few who don't like other people defacing their precious artistic masterpeice :)
At any rate the Q2 EULA is positive - actually giving users some rights they didn't automatically have before - relevant (except possibly for the part about their textures which are no longer part of the BSP format) and maybe it is even legally enforceable :)
SQUAWK - updated rules and equipment
I was thinking about my combined 2D/3D graphics engine last night and I probably won't need to use any "2D" graphics (background tiles for instance) at all. I can get the full 3D graphics engine to run on any pentium class computer or possibly even some 486 computers.
How can I do this? Well in an average Quake scene about half of the triangles being drawn are part of the background. (actually more if you spend most of your time running around in a maze) Drawing this at over 20 frames per second is very difficult, but why do I have to redraw the background in each frame?
By simply drawing 4-9 screens of 3D graphics (instead of just what is currently in the camera's view) I can simply scroll the background around until the player moves far enough for another redraw, or until the camera view rotates. The only challenge to making this pay off is designing the game so that the camera will not rotate too often. This will work especially well for a 3rd person POV like Diablo and countless other 2D games.
It could possibly be applied to a 1st person POV by realistic spherical projection of a scene but the whole thing would be redrawn whenever the character moved - in other words the camera could rotate a lot but only if it doesn't move very often.
The brainstorm that hit me last night is that this trick would work just as well with full-3D perspective as parallel projection (a.k.a. orthographic perspective). A character can move around in the scene as if it were pre-rendered on a huge canvas (larger than the player's screen) until the camera actually has to rotate. This means half of the triangles (the static scene) only has to be drawn a few times per MINUTE instead of many times per SECOND.
I'm not the first person to realize this, it just took a little while for it to sink in. Perhaps even better than the fact that this will be helpful on some slower computers, is that it can also be scaled-up to help high-end computers with lots of RAM for offscreen rendering allowing for extremely detailed scenery.
Most of the big game companies don't want to look at a game until it is mosly finished. If anyone knows a good way to raise money for the development of a new game by a new company, drop me a line.
This screenshot is my combined 2D/3D graphics applet with a 3D model against a tiled background. The blue areas at the top are holes in the tile-map where the sky shows through. The two cubes in the middle are made from 12 triangles each and z-buffered so they can intersect realistically as you see here.
FREE MODELS PROJECT - new model by QuakedMan
Three new models by Lingo (car, spaceship, truck)
Everyone has been asking me if I'm going to start a free MD2 project. I've been doing this for a long time! The Free Models Project will take mdl and md2 models as well as many other editor-specific and game-specific formats including detail brushes (as used in Quake / Quake 2 style maps)
SQUAWK - New format - new tables and information - too many changes to count - check it out.
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