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Post Posted: 18 Apr 2017, 00:16
UBerserker wrote:Reading more about BFNP makes it really sounded just too massive to be done. Plot seemed quite super complicated, 30+ NEW maps, new weapons, new monsters (making one new monster is already an over the top thing). I honestly have no idea how could you have even finished this, it sounds more like something that an indie gaming dev team would do (and iirc indie gaming wasn't still a thing 12 years ago or so).
Post Posted: 18 Apr 2017, 22:56
Hellscrag wrote: Enigma was well on the way to totally revolutionising the 3d engine itself.
Post Posted: 18 Apr 2017, 23:52
UBerserker wrote:Hellscrag wrote: Enigma was well on the way to totally revolutionising the 3d engine itself.What was this about actually? I don't remember most of BFNP's features but was it already in effect in some of the shots you posted? (some just looked way too good)
Post Posted: 19 Apr 2017, 00:50
Hellscrag wrote:UBerserker wrote:Hellscrag wrote: Enigma was well on the way to totally revolutionising the 3d engine itself.What was this about actually? I don't remember most of BFNP's features but was it already in effect in some of the shots you posted? (some just looked way too good)Well with the shots, that could just be because we were using more detailed textures. As a prelude to adding S3TC textures, our new textures were imported to display at half scale, so for example a 256x256 texture would actually have a detail level of 512x512. This wasn't an engine mod, just a standard feature of Unreal texture files.(EDIT: Well, actually, no, some of the shots do also show the distance fog support.)Enigma knew we wanted distance fog support and he also wanted to see if he could optimise the engine so that the fog could occlude distant polygons and thereby improve framerates. Well, he found of course that these optimisations were not possible with the standard engine. UE1 was originally built to work with 3DFX Voodoo accelerators using a Glide renderer, and as such a large part of the rendering work is done on the CPU rather than the GPU. Even the most enhanced OpenGL / D3D9 renderers can only accelerate the software rendering. With an engine that worked this way, the more advanced features of OpenGL that Enigma wanted to use for his optimisations weren't available.Well, Enigma is a coding genius - it's no surprise that he now works professionally for a game design studio - and somehow (don't ask me how), he managed to actually bypass the parts of the engine that were CPU-bound and create a full OpenGL renderer. At the time work on BfNP stopped, he had overcome the engine's node limit, allowing us to build larger and more detailed maps; he had introduced occluding distance fog; and I believe he was also going to investigate adding support for greater light radii, making it easier to add realistic sunlight and shadows to large outdoor areas. However, the renderer was not finished to a releasable state at the time the project was shelved.Enigma got involved because he was a friend of mine at University and we actually shared a house for two years. We were extraordinarily lucky to have him on the team, and it's yet another reason to be sad that BfNP was never completed. Our legacy would have been a great array of new code and tools for future mappers to draw upon.
Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.
Post Posted: 19 Apr 2017, 01:54
Post Posted: 19 Apr 2017, 14:00
Post Posted: 19 Apr 2017, 20:42
Post Posted: 19 Apr 2017, 21:04
Semfry wrote:One Enigma thing that did get finished was something that increased the vertex limit, which was related to issues with having lots of movers in a level. I just checked it (since I still have the file for it) and it seems it's linked to the BFNP OpenGL renderer that was being made though, as it seems to just ask for that now (Guess I still have that around somewhere too).There was also BFNPDepends for making sorting file dependancies simple, which I already "unofficially" released a while ago: http://www.unrealsp.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3484
Post Posted: 20 Apr 2017, 00:25
Sat42 wrote:Semfry wrote:One Enigma thing that did get finished was something that increased the vertex limit, which was related to issues with having lots of movers in a level. I just checked it (since I still have the file for it) and it seems it's linked to the BFNP OpenGL renderer that was being made though, as it seems to just ask for that now (Guess I still have that around somewhere too).There was also BFNPDepends for making sorting file dependancies simple, which I already "unofficially" released a while ago: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3484Hey thanks for the reply Semfry, if you find the BFNP OpenGL renderer together with the file increasing the vertex limit, could you make it available? (I guess Hellscrag is cool with that now) I would be interested in taking a look - and I am sure there are others too. Someone might even pick up the slack for finishing up the renderer if there are still major issues with it. No idea how hard that would be, just a thought!
Semfry wrote:One Enigma thing that did get finished was something that increased the vertex limit, which was related to issues with having lots of movers in a level. I just checked it (since I still have the file for it) and it seems it's linked to the BFNP OpenGL renderer that was being made though, as it seems to just ask for that now (Guess I still have that around somewhere too).There was also BFNPDepends for making sorting file dependancies simple, which I already "unofficially" released a while ago: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3484
Post Posted: 20 Apr 2017, 21:35
Hellscrag wrote:Sat42 wrote:Semfry wrote:One Enigma thing that did get finished was something that increased the vertex limit, which was related to issues with having lots of movers in a level. I just checked it (since I still have the file for it) and it seems it's linked to the BFNP OpenGL renderer that was being made though, as it seems to just ask for that now (Guess I still have that around somewhere too).There was also BFNPDepends for making sorting file dependancies simple, which I already "unofficially" released a while ago: http://www.unrealsp.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3484Hey thanks for the reply Semfry, if you find the BFNP OpenGL renderer together with the file increasing the vertex limit, could you make it available? (I guess Hellscrag is cool with that now) I would be interested in taking a look - and I am sure there are others too. Someone might even pick up the slack for finishing up the renderer if there are still major issues with it. No idea how hard that would be, just a thought!The fixes weren't finished. The vertex limit was raised, but IIRC vertices that exceeded the limit weren't rendered.My initial reaction would be that it would be very difficult for anyone to pick up where Enigma left off, even if they did have the sources. Any coder working on something that advanced has a thought process that it would probably be difficult to replicate / break into.
Sat42 wrote:Semfry wrote:One Enigma thing that did get finished was something that increased the vertex limit, which was related to issues with having lots of movers in a level. I just checked it (since I still have the file for it) and it seems it's linked to the BFNP OpenGL renderer that was being made though, as it seems to just ask for that now (Guess I still have that around somewhere too).There was also BFNPDepends for making sorting file dependancies simple, which I already "unofficially" released a while ago: http://www.unrealsp.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3484Hey thanks for the reply Semfry, if you find the BFNP OpenGL renderer together with the file increasing the vertex limit, could you make it available? (I guess Hellscrag is cool with that now) I would be interested in taking a look - and I am sure there are others too. Someone might even pick up the slack for finishing up the renderer if there are still major issues with it. No idea how hard that would be, just a thought!
Post Posted: 22 Apr 2017, 17:01
Post Posted: 23 Apr 2017, 03:02
Post Posted: 23 Apr 2017, 08:40
Hellscrag wrote:I'll throw one thing into the mix re Deja Vu - the story of the 'artifact' was meant to be a bit further developed, but the map that was going to feature it - Nuk'Ratha Village - was never built. Willis' map was meant to feature both the valley and village, but he made the decision to split it into two maps and only had time to finish the first one. Nuk'Ratha Village was going to be a battleground, with Skaarj and Mercs vying for possession of the artifact. Having said that, I don't think we ever developed a very clear idea of what the artifact was going to be. Remember - the first version of Deja Vu was speedmapped over the course of one month to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of UnrealSP.Org.
Post Posted: 24 Apr 2017, 13:21
Post Posted: 25 Apr 2017, 00:15
UBerserker wrote:Oops I missed that I guess. Truth to say while I think Map 14 is where things go a bit downhill in DV2, Map 13 felt like something was missing - it truly had a filler aura to it. It was also extremely linear and the boss fight location didn't work at all. Wasn't Willis also working on something else at that time?
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