Remnants

IndependentHat · Post by **IndependentHat** » Sat Dec 26, 2009 4:47 am

So its Christmas day, Ive decided to finally move my project into the community to see what you guys think and gauge interest.
Some of you may remember me from way back when fallout tactics was played on game spy arcade, I was pretty quick to start pumping out maps when the editor was released as well. I have been unemployed for a while now and have the luxury of time to make something I've always wanted, my own game.

Remnants is going to be a free MMO game similar to the game play of Fallout tactics demo utilizing the fallout tactics assets. I say fallout tactics demo because the demo was far more balanced, strategic and fun then the full version game has ever been. I intend to address many of the faults with the original game such as the stat system, the continuous turn based system and total lack of proper RPG elements while adding many things their previous engine could never do. To give a full description on the game concept would take alot more posts so I'll just leave it at that for now.

I'm approximately one month in now, and I'll explain what my engine currently uses:

The game engine utilizes openGL and I have implemented a fragment shader in GLSL to decode the fallout tactics artwork in its native compressed ZAR format. Not only does this mean I can render far more sprites more efficiently then the original fallout tactics engine (which actually doesn't run very well on my computer at 1920x1080 : O), I can also store them in video memory in an extremely efficient manner. The sprite data is also translated into pseudo 3d geometry while still appearing exactly the same as the original game but allowing me to use per pixel lighting much improved over fallout tactics original lighting system. To my knowledge, fallout tactics also used a sorting system which rendered their map tiles completely static. My game will allow completely dynamic and modifiable environments. A rocket exploding against a wall can destroy the wall or a mine going off could create a crater on the ground as well as being able to possibly create structures in the long run ETC. The game engine also supports zooming in and out and rotating the camera.

The interface to the game utilizes angelscript scripting language with a self produced window environment. Although Ive only made simple widgets thus far such as buttons, scrollbars, and UTF8 text boxes, it should be fairly easy in the future to add much more complex widgets such as one for parsing html.
I haven't implemented sound yet but I intend to use openAL.
Ive done some early netcode tests with winsock and I'm about to implement the backbone of the server structure.

If you are interested in becoming involved in this project, give me a shout!
If you have knowledge in any of the technologies I mentioned, that would be awesome, but even if you aren't a programmer, I'm gonna need some map designers and possibly someone with decent art skills for UI skins. (Don't worry, I intend to make tools to VASTLY improve map making over the horrible methods used in the original fallout tactics tools.

Post by **King of Creation** » Sat Dec 26, 2009 9:39 am

Interesting, how about some screenshots?

IndependentHat · Post by **IndependentHat** » Sat Dec 26, 2009 10:38 am

Unfortunately since I'm not an artist, I cant really show you anything you haven't already seen in fallout tactics as far as artwork is concerned. The only thing id have to show is engine performance tests Ive been running which aren't very interesting to look at. Though im pretty happy with 400fps with 6K+ unique dynamic tiles

. As I finish the servers map sector streaming system, i can make some actual maps and have something to show for, but that's probably a week off.

Post by **King of Creation** » Sat Dec 26, 2009 10:45 am

Cool, keep me updated. When you're ready to show some things off, PM me and I'll make a newspost on the front page about it.

Frater Perdurabo · Post by **Frater Perdurabo** » Sat Dec 26, 2009 10:48 am

Interesting.
No vaporware, I hope.

Superhaze · Post by **Superhaze** » Sat Dec 26, 2009 9:14 pm

Very good. Time to brush of the ol' dusty Tactics box.

IndependentHat · Post by **IndependentHat** » Wed Dec 30, 2009 7:26 am

I just optimized the rendering engine to the point i can now load the ENTIRE fallout tactics data set into ram. It is hefty at almost 1.2 million images and can sit cozy in ram for a mere 1.3gb.

Other then your video drivers swapping out new textures from a page file occasionally, there will not be any loading while wandering the game world no matter how far you go. No data will need to be reloaded. I wont need to program load zones or limit the tiles or sprites used in a specific area like fallout tactics had.

Post by **King of Creation** » Wed Dec 30, 2009 9:12 am

Post a video on YouTube or something. I'd really like to see this in action.

Superhaze · Post by **Superhaze** » Mon Jan 04, 2010 5:04 pm

John Matrix has spoken. Time is running out.

IndependentHat · Post by **IndependentHat** » Fri Jan 08, 2010 2:05 pm

I just got back from a vacation. The problem is there isn't much to show.
Perhaps when i do lighting it will look better.

Im interested in knowing some of the hardware you guys are using right now...
my zar decoder requires some relatively new opengl extensions and hardware older then say, geforce 8 series might not be able to run it...pretty pathetic requirements for an essentially 2d game but what can i do.

One thing that saddens me is that because im decoding the image data on the fly, it would be pretty expensive to do any sort of texture filtering... So if the camera is at an odd angle or you zoom in, it looks fairly rough.

Post by **King of Creation** » Thu Jan 14, 2010 10:24 am

I just got a new laptop, so I hope it would be compatible:
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2Ghz
Geforce GT 240M 1gb
4gb RAM

IndependentHat · Post by **IndependentHat** » Sun Jan 17, 2010 7:57 pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQH7VG_2VSY

Here is something to give you an idea...

Post by **King of Creation** » Sun Jan 17, 2010 8:20 pm

Nice! Check out the main page.

Superhaze · Post by **Superhaze** » Mon Jan 18, 2010 1:51 am

Holy shit, that is awesome. Nice work man. Will you release the engine once you have a working alpha/beta?

Cakester · Post by **Cakester** » Tue Jan 19, 2010 6:35 am

Very very good. How long before you can have an example that shows all the basic functionality that FOT had for it's maps?

You are FOT man of the year!