what needs to be done to get at least a playable version out the door?

It would be a terrible shame if all that work got wasted.

Serious? This project is no more? This was THE mod I was looking forward to. With what they have finished, is it even possible to put it together into some cohesive form? Or is it simply going to be a collection of maps with minimal story attached and just 'playthrough' only? Would be a shame.

I think a playable version cannot be released for now because no monster and weapon placement has been done, although many maps are completed.
If Zizz wants to complete this work in order to release them I offer him my help as coder/scripter if needed.

I left the team long time ago while it was still going so I don't know exactly what has been done and what not.

Maps:
I'm checking now the contenent and it seems that not much has been done mapping-wise since then.
I'd like to complete my 2 maps (that is more 1 splitted in 2

), and since I have no time to seriously map again, I'll took some pieces (that fit!) from my brother's maps from FragginFree to fill the gaps and finally having a playable version of it.
That's the only thing I can release on my own without asking someone else first.

Weapons:
There are 3 completely new weapons that are fully working and animated. I don't see worldmodels in game but they could be somewhere in the files.
They only require a bit of work (5 minutes) on projectiles defs and weapon scripts.
They would perfectly fit Phobos or other mods with futuristic settings

Monsters:
Didn't checked yet. Do Satan or Zizz know if is there something new and working apart from reskinned monsters?
The stuff on the FTP is a bit messy...I mean... I have to manually put them together to test things in game...

@ Zizz & Ivan:

If you want I can help you out with all sorts of environment prop models and textures.
Let me know.

HOLA fellows! It's been a while. Almost two years since the infamous 2nd forum hack.
Glad to see you people are still working on this kind of stuff.
Sadly, yes. The persistent forum hackage has worn away at our resolve. The Doom 3 engine itself has been surpassed many times over, by now. New technology, new ideas. This engine does not have all we need.
We had talked a little, toward the end, about porting over to ET: Quake Wars engine. I know it's a refurbished version but it's very good on LIGHTING, something the D3 engine had many problems with.
I think this would be a good idea, if possible to do. I think these maps would do well on ET, plus whatever ideas we had for outdoor areas. I remember we put some code together to improve the outdoor draw capabilities of D3 that are no longer necessary.
Great to see you people.
Sorry that we fell out.
Looking forward to see what the mappers can do.

So the maps needs monsters/props, weapons need the "finishing touches", and a few major coding/modeling things?

Why not throw up a list of what you think needs to be done. I can do some. I'm not great, but I can place monsters & do def/projectile weapon work.

Kristus wrote:

It would be a terrible shame if all that work got wasted.

+1

I also would think it would be a waste to transfer it to Quake Wars as well. Because that isn't a game I ever plan on buying, so transfering it over to that one would completely cut me off and I'm sure quite a few other players off from the set as well who are not interested in getting Quake Wars.

Meh.

/me goes to start work on some Crysis or UE3 stuff.

ETQW was game of the year for me.
But moving over to it because of the lighting is pretty stupid.

I've not checked all the contents yet so hard to answer.
I'll let all know what is really done and what is missing as soon as I can.

@Satan, Friar and anyone else: help is certainly welcomed and...needed

In fact I won't be able to spent much time on this.
I'm going to check all the stuff, think what could be used and what should be discarded and eventually do a bit of mapping and not much more.
At most, some coding if it's really needed in order to release it in a decent state.

This is how things could work in order:
- I'll take what is usable and I'll put it in a standard mod-folder structure for everyone to use
- Me and Friar could set up weapons/monsters scripts and defs
- Zizz will do what he wants mapping wise ofc... and may be placing monsters on his own maps??
- Friar could place monsters on other maps
- I can complete my map(s) and place monsters on it
- Satan... I cannot know what you can do for now

what do you think??

Anyone alse willing to help, may be just to place enemies/weapons around, is welcomed

@TainInfernus: I don't even own Quake Wars so for me it's a no-no

Plus, it would require much more work... and it'll already be a great result if we'll be able to release something for D3 :lol:

Sounds good!

So we got a small team gathered here! I dont have alot of time now either and need to finish other things first before i can start on this anyway.

We can take it slow, there is no need to rush anything. I'll also take a better look on all the things we got and see how we can fit it all together.
I dont know how many maps we'll have...it depends on other ex members but i think it could become a nice amount of gameplay on there.

hey Tain! Nice to see you too!

I can help with music and sounds if is needed, my portfolio is on the sign.

if I have a list, I can work very well. I work well with lists. Ask my wife.... the grocery list, every week, is PERFECTLY done. Yes, even though there's something I knew we needed, I didn't get it because it wasn't on the list.

pisses her off.

She also hates it when she goes shopping with me. I do the list in order, so I isle jump. she hates that!

As a general note to mod authors considering switching to another title or engine...

Neither the ROE expansion, Quake 4, ETQW, nor Prey offer extended functionality worthy of a switch. They are all idTech 4 based games. Aside from ETQW's megatexture, which you can now use with Doom 3 (do a search here on the forums for proof and details), the functional differences between the titles are marginal. The only practical reason to use the idTech 4 engine, yet use a title other than Doom 3 for a base is the art assets.

If Doom 3's feature set doesn't satisfy your needs, none of the idTech 4 games will. They all use dynamic lighting. They all use normal maps. They all use plain text file formats. They all have buggy, unstable, unfriendly modding tools. If you haven't learned to overcome those issues you're better off using a different engine entirely or waiting for the source code for Doom 3 to be released.

If you like working with idTech 4 but you can't wait for that, might I suggest something like Xreal which is nearly on par with Doom 3 and in some cases exceeds it. It's already open source which means it can easily be extended to incorporate whatever functionality you find it's lacking and as a bonus instead of distributing a mod you can distribute a standalone game.

rich_is_bored wrote:

As a general note to mod authors considering switching to another title or engine...

Neither the ROE expansion, Quake 4, ETQW, nor Prey offer extended functionality worthy of a switch. They are all idTech 4 based games. Aside from ETQW's megatexture, which you can now use with Doom 3 (do a search here on the forums for proof and details), the functional differences between the titles are marginal. The only practical reason to use the idTech 4 engine, yet use a title other than Doom 3 for a base is the art assets.

If Doom 3's feature set doesn't satisfy your needs, none of the idTech 4 games will. They all use dynamic lighting. They all use normal maps. They all use plain text file formats. They all have buggy, unstable, unfriendly modding tools. If you haven't learned to overcome those issues you're better off using a different engine entirely or waiting for the source code for Doom 3 to be released.

If you like working with idTech 4 but you can't wait for that, might I suggest something like Xreal which is nearly on par with Doom 3 and in some cases exceeds it. It's already open source which means it can easily be extended to incorporate whatever functionality you find it's lacking and as a bonus instead of distributing a mod you can distribute a standalone game.

In addition: Hexen Edge of Chaos was set back a full year while switching to the quake 4 engine, incompatibility issues were a plenty. In the end we decided to go back to Doom3. Prey is even less compatible.

Why would you switch engine why you had so many cool looking dark screenshots made by use of D3 lightning?
In ETQW scripting and such is also way different then Doom3 so it would take really long to finish everything

.

There is no team leader, so I'll say it myself: no one is going to switch engine :lol:

@Neurological: we could need something for sure... I'll contact you soon.

@Frial: I'll make a beautiful list for you

BloodRayne wrote:

Prey is even less compatible.

really? I was always under the impression Prey was = to doom 3 (minus data)

Ivan_the_B wrote:

Ofc we can skip animated worldmodels for weapons.
But we need at least static models for pickups.

Use same model as the worldmodel. Just don't rig it to a single bone. Export it as an ASE or LWO

just to make things more clear to the public, should this project be slightly renamed as to say it's not the original RTH but something the community finished up? Like "RTH: D3W Edition" or something? I know the project has had certain expectations that won't be met by some players.

I've already done the weapons worldmodels stuff, even with the little icons you get on the HUD. Its just the normal viewmodels scaled down a bit.
I'll package everything new I've got and upload it on the ftp in a separate folder. If anyone wants to hack away at monsters like the rugrat, feel free to do so.

Quote:

From what I've gotten from the mod, *THE* monster everyone wants to see is the spider mastermind

Absolutely think so too! I did some work on it earlier this year to get it ready for rigging and animation. Its brain is now enveloped in a yellow shield, to make the fight more tricky, since its the only vulnable area. If wind up "finishing" the venus episode, it'll definitely be in there.

updated darkbeast & rugrat skins:

aaand to round it off, some mapshots

Vile was the main man behind bringing Spider Mastermind so ... well .... tempting.

About Wasteman: Please forget about that model completely. It has illegal polygons like anything. It would be the worst rig, if ever rigged.

About that unknown creature Ivan was showing: It's the Genetic Imp done by Ep******* forgot the name partially. It was rigged most probably. (maybe Epignosis)

Can anybody tell me if there are D3 exporters for 3Dsmax 2009? I'm unfortunately using that now.

Edit: The Characters that were in progress were:

Blauhörnchen: Highpoly was made by Richard Kansley(now in R* North) looong time back. I was working on the lowpoly and suddenly had to stop as I was hunting for job in the industry. Since then nobody touched it. Here are some last WIP shots:
http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/2439/larry3fl.jpg
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/1736/wip14zo.jpg
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/3589/wip20sr.jpg
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/5963/wip31vd.jpg

Mining Commando: Well it only has concept art. So I don't think there's any point discussing.

Genesis Eve: It only has a uber-highpoly (over a million) modeled by Norman from CG-Talk. Back then it was really difficult working with such a heavy mesh. The team had decided to ALTER it's design a bit though (for gameplay reasons). One of my lazy friend was asked to make the lowpoly for it. He just did a bit and it's still like that ..... a highpoly XSI file.

Shadow: Which is kind of a retextured cherub. The strength of this creature was the concept. It was also supposed to have black smokes around it. I wonder what happened to that. Vile was doing the retexturing and Style was doing the smoke particles. Please enlighten us. Here's a pic:
http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/3150/cherub46se.jpg

Wishmaster: No idea what's up with that.

Voiciferor: Was in concept stage. Forget about it.

Genetic Cyborg: Was in concept stage. Forget about it.

Ceiling Creeper: I wonder what's the stage of this. Been a long time.

Lastly the RTH forum seems to be very disorganized. Assets are so confusing to find. :oops:

satan wrote:

Shadow: Which is kind of a retextured cherub. The strength of this creature was the concept. It was also supposed to have black smokes around it. I wonder what happened to that. Vile was doing the retexturing and Style was doing the smoke particles. Please enlighten us. Here's a pic:
http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/3150/cherub46se.jpg

All I see is a face?

I still have the flamethrower stuff I provided to you guys somewhere on my drive. Code + particles I made up.

Yeah the shadow was meant to actually be just a face, with a body that blended nicely into the darker areas in levels.
Imagine that thing jumping at you from a dark corner:

Also, the creeper is nearly fully textured, but like most other things it lacks rigging & anims.
Oh btw@satan: does der_tons exporter not work with 3ds max 2009? Pity, guess its time to downgrade

I'd like to fight it/him/her in the boss contest! :twisted:

Wow, everyone's going nuts about reviving this, all of a sudden. I'll try to help with sounds. It will have to be after the break, though. I left all my resources down at college. Think the second week of January will be good for me.
I remember completely copypasting the entire FTP to my HD after the first hack. I also would download pretty much anything that was posted on the forums, so I believe that I have most of the files that were created for these things.
I'll have to excavate deep into my hard drive to find them.

About the story: completely all over the place. Was a main source of contention within the team and it was pretty convoluted. Towards the end, it was looking like a decent story. There is just one problem with this mod: TOO MUCH AMBITION.
Every idea we had ever thought of, we tried to implement: bad idea!

As for the monsters: animators for D3 were and are very hard to come by. Animators in general are extremely hard to find for any project because it is such a cumbersome process.

I like what we're doing. I think it should still be RTH. We could have the credits be like:
Team RTH: (11/2004 - 2/2007)
Blah
blah
blah
blah

Team D3W: (12/2008 - End)
Name
Name
Name
Name

I also do remember working with people on a noclipping monster. We got it to work on a Cacodemon.
This is an idea that could be fleshed out pretty well. I think it's worth it just for the effect.

It's great to see you all again.
To victory!

TainInfernus wrote:

Wow, everyone's going nuts about reviving this, all of a sudden. I'll try to help with sounds. It will have to be after the break, though. I left all my resources down at college. Think the second week of January will be good for me.
I remember completely copypasting the entire FTP to my HD after the first hack. I also would download pretty much anything that was posted on the forums, so I believe that I have most of the files that were created for these things.
I'll have to excavate deep into my hard drive to find them.

About the story: completely all over the place. Was a main source of contention within the team and it was pretty convoluted. Towards the end, it was looking like a decent story. There is just one problem with this mod: TOO MUCH AMBITION.
Every idea we had ever thought of, we tried to implement: bad idea!

As for the monsters: animators for D3 were and are very hard to come by. Animators in general are extremely hard to find for any project because it is such a cumbersome process.

I like what we're doing. I think it should still be RTH. We could have the credits be like:
Team RTH: (11/2004 - 2/2007)
Blah
blah
blah
blah

Team D3W: (12/2008 - End)
Name
Name
Name
Name

I also do remember working with people on a noclipping monster. We got it to work on a Cacodemon.
This is an idea that could be fleshed out pretty well. I think it's worth it just for the effect.

It's great to see you all again.
To victory!

Just kind of throwing this out there, but have you ever considered using DMS-type systems to either generate animations at runtime or "precompute" and store them in an md5anim? Obviously much research has been done into animating humans and bipeds (SIMBICON is a pretty well-rounded solution to walking/running; google it) but most of the concepts are extendable to work with creatures with odd mass distributions, monsters w/ odd leg constructions, so forth.

Wow, I'm glad to hear that weapons models are ready and there are improvements on monsters.
If you could upload the new stuff on the FTP it would be great. We could start placing at least weapons and standard d3 monsters.
I'd suggest to put them in a new folder because the ftp is already a real mess and I had to figure out which file was the most updated one for each single thing. :roll:

Quote:

Lastly the RTH forum seems to be very disorganized. Assets are so confusing to find.

Indeed. That's why I'm creating a typical mod-folder containing all and only the most updated and working stuff, paced in few pk4s with meaningful names.
I'll upload it on the ftp so that everyone can dl and start the mod without losing 2 weeks to search, unpack and pack again the assets.

Quote:

I also do remember working with people on a noclipping monster. We got it to work on a Cacodemon.

I've found a video showing that and another one showing a gravitational grenade.
Cool, but where is the source code? There are many sdk-folders on the ftp and none of them seems updated to 1.3.1 patch.
I hope the new code is well commented

Ivan_the_B wrote:

Cool, but where is the source code? There are many sdk-folders on the ftp and none of them seems updated to 1.3.1 patch.
I hope the new code is well commented

Elu will know. Get in touch.

as much as I want to see this mod come to life, Ivan, will this work interfere with the release of your FF patch?

satan wrote:

Can anybody tell me if there are D3 exporters for 3Dsmax 2009? I'm unfortunately using that now.

I'm pretty sure my exporter works with 3dsmax 2009. I don't have that version myself so I can't test it. If it doesn't work (test it on a model that is known to export successfully with an earlier 3dsmax version), let me know.

zidane_matthew wrote:

as much as I want to see this mod come to life, Ivan, will this work interfere with the release of your FF patch?

May be a bit. But it's almost ready.

I mailed Elu and he said he has GBs of updated stuff on his HD but he probably won't find the time to check the assets in order to upload them for us.
He also said that the code was never ported to 1.3.1.

I'm waiting for a second answer to know if he is willing to upload everything without losing time to check it, or at least the maps.

I still have to check his old maps that I downloaded from the FTP.

der_ton wrote:

satan wrote:

Can anybody tell me if there are D3 exporters for 3Dsmax 2009? I'm unfortunately using that now.

I'm pretty sure my exporter works with 3dsmax 2009. I don't have that version myself so I can't test it. If it doesn't work (test it on a model that is known to export successfully with an earlier 3dsmax version), let me know.

I'll let you know after I've tried it out.

Is there any raw video footage in the site I could make a "it's not dead!" teaser for? something ~10-15 seconds long.

How's the sorting through content going? Hoping you're taking a day off for christmas?

The only videos I've found are about not yet completed monsters or code features that are lost unless someone update the code to 1.3.1.

I still have to check Elusive maps in detail.
Up to now I've only loaded some of them just to see if somewthing was missing.

I'll find some time to complete this work in the next 4-5 days and after this I'll upload a working rth-mod-folder including only the completed or/and useful wip stuff.
My idea is to directly update that folder as soon as something gets completed instead of having thousands of separated archieves and folders all around.

A good news: Elusive will upload his updated maps and the other needed assets, including the only new completed monster (Genetic Imp). But we have to wait at least for a month.
In the meantime, we can start with the maps we have that are already completed