Remnants

[King of Creation]

<strong>[ Mod -> Preview ]</strong> - More info on <a href="http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Remnants">Mod: Remnants</a>

<p>There's a very promising looking project in the works right now by <strong>IndependentHat</strong> called <em><strong>Remnants</strong></em> which <a href="../../forums/viewtopic.php?t=23535">he announced in the forums</a>. I'll let him do the talking:</p>
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<p><em>So its Christmas day, Ive decided to finally move my project into the community to see what you guys think and gauge interest.</em></p>
<p><em>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.</em></p>
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<p>And an update:</p>
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<p><em>I just optimized the rendering engine to the point<strong> i can now load the ENTIRE fallout tactics data set into ram</strong>. 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.</em></p>
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<p>IndependentHat has also posted a video of a tile render test:</p>
<p>
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</p>
<p>About the video:</p>
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<p><em><span>Remnants is an isometric game engine I have made capable of displaying the art assets of the fallout game series by interplay. This is an early rendering test displaying the entire fallout tactics tileset (~30000 tiles). The tileset is prerendered at 4 fixed camera angles so that displaying it at any angle is difficult.</span></em></p>
<p><em><span>In this video I have created vertex coordinates based on the bounding volume of the object the frame is meant to represent. Since all objects in fallout tactics have an AABB bounding volume, this method only shows acceptable results in objects that are close to matching their bounding volume. For objects that do not match this, I will instead render them as camera alligned billboards to reduce the distortions when rotating the camera. The framerate is butchered by fraps but is otherwise well over 60fps under normal condition.</span></em></p>
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<p><span>Looks very cool! Thanks very much IndependentHat, and we'll be keeping an eye on this!
</span></p>

[S4ur0n27]

Neato.

[SenisterDenister]

Neato.

Yea and verily.