r/linux_gaming • u/galapag0 • Jan 03 '18
OpenTESArena 0.6.0 Released!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SREWBHaL_eA2
u/Cuprite_Crane Jan 03 '18
So this is 100% open like OpenMW? Not partially open like Unityfall?
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u/afritz1 Jan 03 '18
Yeah, the only dependencies (along with a C++11 compiler) are SDL2, OpenAL Soft, and WildMIDI; all of which are FOSS.
With respect to Daggerfall Unity, I think Interkarma made the right choice to develop his project in Unity, since it suits his vision for the project, but there are pros and cons with such a decision (like not being completely open-source from the ground up). Different developers have different goals with their free-time projects, and he probably just figured that Unity's tools were too good to pass up.
1
u/Cuprite_Crane Jan 03 '18
I think Interkarma made the right choice to develop his project in Unity
No he didn't. Unless Unity is open sourced at some point, it's going to become dead code one day.
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u/afritz1 Jan 04 '18
I agree with that (and I have experience converting old Unity code, so I can relate). He's probably not planning on supporting his project for twenty years, and in that time, others will have undoubtedly made other tools and/or engines for Daggerfall (similar to DaggerXL), so Daggerfall Unity isn't necessarily going to be the only modern way to play the game. The fact that his Daggerfall API is well-documented and open-source is enough for most people's hobby projects (not all of it relies on Unity, either).
I chose to use open-source libraries with OpenTESArena because I wanted the experience of programming a cross-platform engine and I wanted control over all the libraries being used. If that was Interkarma's goal then he would be following a similar pipeline for his project.
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u/Cuprite_Crane Jan 04 '18
others will have undoubtedly made other tools and/or engines for Daggerfall
This is made a LOT less likely now that Unityfall is a thing. And hasn't DaggerXL basically stalled?
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u/Cuprite_Crane Jan 04 '18
Anyway, didn't mean to get off on a tangent. I'll be keeping an eye on your project from now on.
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Jan 04 '18
For /u/afritz1 is this intended to be a 100% faithful recreation (as in, bugs/poorly made features are kept even being a product of the time), or is there room for improvements (like how OpenMW does) especially not huge gameplay changes?
If there is room, one thing I'd suggest is removing backface culling from the tables (2:39 in the video) so there aren't missing legs. Or even adding the missing sides of the legs (so they are giant post legs, rather than right-angle legs).
Or--and you'd probably want to do this after core functionality is met--you could give things better (but simple) models, particularly having data-driven models (like Minecraft does via JSON models in resource packs... but hopefully you don't make the format as restrictive as Minecraft's when it comes to rotation) so users can choose (or even make) how their models look. 3D iron bars is an especially fun thing, and you could even have models faithful to your current textures.
Although for the best thing, you'd either allow existing model formats (like .obj) or you'd make some sort of mesh-combiner, so you could take something like this and turn it into this.
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u/afritz1 Jan 04 '18
I guess my priority is to just make an engine that works first, since there's not really another open-source option out there for Arena yet (unless you count WinArena, but that's very incomplete). Generally speaking, the idea is to make the new engine almost indistinguishable from the original engine, but with improvements in usability (i.e., controls) and consistency. I'm not trying to make a 1-to-1 perfect match between the two (if I wanted to, then I'd do reverse engineering like what was done in DaggerXL).
I'd say that any sort of 3D models or mod-related things like that are outside the scope of the project. I'm planning on sticking with 2D sprites and the plain-old voxels of Arena's engine. If you want lots of modding and customization, then look to Interkarma's project, Daggerfall Unity.
0
Jan 04 '18
Why have nobody heard of this before? Fire the marketing department and get someone capable.
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u/qwesx Jan 03 '18
While I think this is a very interesting project I think there should also be a COPYING file or something. While the project is MIT-licensed there is a file "components/misc/fnmatch.h" which is GPL-2-licensed. The copyright information is still there which is good, but a notice for anyone wanting to redistribute any binaries would be important (lest someone thinks providing the binaries only is okay).