wonderfield on 8/9/2011 at 19:54
Patching in major changes to the binary like that sounds like an absolute nightmare. Not only do you lose a lot of your capacity for debugging, but it's going to be nightmarishly difficult to achieve, and Square will probably still take issue with it (depending on the exact verbiage in the EULA, anyway).
That's just one hell of a tough road. Wouldn't want to walk it.
Volca on 8/9/2011 at 20:57
Quote Posted by MoroseTroll
AFAIK, Volca has became a father about year ago, so I personally don't wonder that he is little busy now.
It'll be 8 months soon, yes :)
Quote Posted by John5zimzum
OPDE was like 30% finished and still quiet impressing. The missing 70% were physics and game mechanics, while nearly all of the graphics stuff worked. So you were able to load a mission and move through it - just without sound and "living" guards.
I wonder what Volca is working on at the moment.
Thanks dude :)
Right now I am quite glad to have some short time in the evening - so I moved back to improving (
https://bitbucket.org/ifcaro/open-ps2-loader/overview) open-ps2-loader, dunno yet if it'll produce any results though...
sparhawk on 12/9/2011 at 09:48
Quote Posted by nbohr1more
who would believe him if he said he never looked at the source code anyway? So there's no getting around it. OPDE cannot make any "legal" progress.
In most courts the accused doesn't have to prove that he is NOT guilty, but the plaintiff has to prove it. So its certainly not true that OPDE can not proceed because of legal issues, because there are none. Especially when there is already a big chunk of existing code been developed BEFORE the source was ever found.
nbohr1more on 13/9/2011 at 21:57
Quote Posted by sparhawk
In most courts the accused doesn't have to prove that he is NOT guilty, but the plaintiff has to prove it. So its certainly not true that OPDE can not proceed because of legal issues, because there are none. Especially when there is already a big chunk of existing code been developed BEFORE the source was ever found.
Perhaps I remembered incorrectly, but that was what I recalled about what the contributors were concerned about with the continuation of OPDE.
It's hard to say how courts will judge a case like this though. More frivolous patent lawsuits have won and cases against emulators have been won by Nintendo and Sony. I'd say that from the stance of pure logic, you are correct. I would've said that emulator developers should be in the clear too... it didn't work out that way though. :(
Albert on 18/9/2011 at 05:01
Well now, seeing as people have brought up OPDE as being a fairly good project besides being dead now...
What's the standstill, still?
Sorry to sound so stubborn about that; I really only just got around to checking this place out today, and thought I'd read up on the issue at hand w/ the source. And from my perspective, not a whole lot. But this slight talk about how an open source project like OPDE has been able to accomplish so much, has gotten me wondering, "Well why hasn't anyone with the time and ability (We obviously have a couple of those, here) just gone about continuing OPDE from where it was left off?"
Or is everyone still godsmacked about that ridiculous matter with Eidos? Because that looks dead to me. It's better to continue OPDE than to jump around with the notion that we'd all get shot down if Eidos were to decline the possible release of the source into GPL or whatever.
jtr7 on 18/9/2011 at 06:08
Are you offering? Simply put: No one with the credentials has the time, and many who are putting their skills to use are already working on the projects that matter most to themselves, such as TDM, if at all Thief-related. Almost every dedicated thread about a major fan-project has one person doing the heavy work, while others come and go, and mostly stay away, or are fortunate enough to have a small team holding together, but still asking for help. In other words, this is how it is, how it generally has been, as much as we'd like it to change. The exceptions are very few.
wonderfield on 19/9/2011 at 04:08
Quote Posted by Albert
But this slight talk about how an open source project like OPDE has been able to accomplish so much, has gotten me wondering, "Well why hasn't anyone with the time and ability (We obviously have a couple of those, here) just gone about continuing OPDE from where it was left off?"
There are multiple
potential reasons:
* Those who can and would help don't have the time to spare
* Those who have the time may rather approach a Dark Engine 'source port' from another angle
* Related to the above: those who have the time are working directly with the leaked source code instead
I'd guess it's mostly a combination of the first and last items. It's been suggested that the code's been compiled, and this happened — assuming it did in fact happen — months ago. I'd suggest that some people do have a reasonably functional build of the Dark Engine going at this time. The "godsmacked" issue enters here. It's reasonable, however, to keep those developments away from prying eyes so as not to sour whatever opinion Square has of us (if any [unlikely]) and due to legal complications. Then again, the idea that Square Enix would actually consider releasing the source is almost so unlikely as to be almost guaranteed never to happen (in my opinion), so one does have to wonder whether the obfuscation efforts have been truly worthwhile.
I believe John's earlier 30%-of-OPDE-is-done estimate is quite optimistic as well, so understand that the continuation of OPDE is not really a very simple matter. At the time OPDE development ceased, it comprised of a basic renderer, without particle, dynamic lighting and animation support, and very basic input. There's no collision, physics, frobbing, object system, state system, scripting methods, AI, sound, a full input implementation, particle rendering, dynamic lighting, animation, HUD and other UI elements or menu system, and what's currently there is in a very rough, fairly unoptimized state. That said, Volca et al managed to figure out a some of the cryptic and undocumented Dark Engine formats and implement them into a basic rendering framework, so that's going to be a fairly strong guiding light and jumping-off point for other developers with other Thief- or Shock-related ambitions. The usefulness of the work they've done shouldn't be understated.
I do feel like, eventually, we'll have something. There's a certain level of 'complacency' with respect to where the games are now thanks to ddfix, where things are in a really very decent state thanks to the efforts there, and there doesn't appear to be an end-of-the-road in sight with respect to running Thief on modern hardware and modern versions of Windows. We're going to be running x86 processors, GPUs that are essentially quite a lot like the modern GPUs of today (where's it's all about doing things with polygons and pixel and vertex shaders) and Windows operating systems that are basically just incremental versions of build 7600 (Vista). Thief probably runs fine on Windows 8 with no modification. Thief will probably run fine on Windows 9, with little or no modification. We're probably going to be playing Thief on modern hardware without much difficulty through
at least 2015. At some point that will no longer be the case and there'll be a renewed interest in preserving the operability of these games on modern hardware, and it's certainly likely that there'll be a renewed interest in it sooner than that, so don't fret the lack of development in these various projects too much at this point.
SeriousCallersOnly on 26/9/2011 at 21:00
Quote Posted by wonderfield
There are multiple
potential reasons:
* Those who can and would help don't have the time to spare
* Those who have the time may rather approach a Dark Engine 'source port' from another angle
* Related to the above: those who have the time are working directly with the leaked source code instead
I'd guess it's mostly a combination of the first and last items. It's been suggested that the code's been compiled, and this happened — assuming it did in fact happen — months ago. I'd suggest that some people do have a reasonably functional build of the Dark Engine going at this time. The "godsmacked" issue enters here. It's reasonable, however, to keep those developments away from prying eyes so as not to sour whatever opinion Square has of us (if any [unlikely]) and due to legal complications. Then again, the idea that Square Enix would actually consider releasing the source is almost so unlikely as to be almost guaranteed never to happen (in my opinion), so one does have to wonder whether the obfuscation efforts have been truly worthwhile.
I believe John's earlier 30%-of-OPDE-is-done estimate is quite optimistic as well, so understand that the continuation of OPDE is not really a very simple matter. At the time OPDE development ceased, it comprised of a basic renderer, without particle, dynamic lighting and animation support, and very basic input. There's no collision, physics, frobbing, object system, state system, scripting methods, AI, sound, a full input implementation, particle rendering, dynamic lighting, animation, HUD and other UI elements or menu system, and what's currently there is in a very rough, fairly unoptimized state. That said, Volca et al managed to figure out a some of the cryptic and undocumented Dark Engine formats and implement them into a basic rendering framework, so that's going to be a fairly strong guiding light and jumping-off point for other developers with other Thief- or Shock-related ambitions. The usefulness of the work they've done shouldn't be understated.
I do feel like, eventually, we'll have something. There's a certain level of 'complacency' with respect to where the games are now thanks to ddfix, where things are in a really very decent state thanks to the efforts there, and there doesn't appear to be an end-of-the-road in sight with respect to running Thief on modern hardware and modern versions of Windows. We're going to be running x86 processors, GPUs that are essentially quite a lot like the modern GPUs of today (where's it's all about doing things with polygons and pixel and vertex shaders) and Windows operating systems that are basically just incremental versions of build 7600 (Vista). Thief probably runs fine on Windows 8 with no modification. Thief will probably run fine on Windows 9, with little or no modification. We're probably going to be playing Thief on modern hardware without much difficulty through
at least 2015. At some point that will no longer be the case and there'll be a renewed interest in preserving the operability of these games on modern hardware, and it's certainly likely that there'll be a renewed interest in it sooner than that, so don't fret the lack of development in these various projects too much at this point.
DDfix latest version doesn't work in wine.
wonderfield on 26/9/2011 at 21:22
That isn't surprising. I don't believe Wine compatibility was ever a ddfix priority — that usage is an edge case.
Thief + ddfix does, however, appear to run just fine in Windows 8.
voodoo47 on 26/9/2011 at 22:07
Quote Posted by SeriousCallersOnly
DDfix latest version doesn't work in wine.
I believe the last version that worked fine with wine was 1.5.6.
