May 13, 2013

0.8.5b demo (well kind of)

After checking my inbox and reading through hundreds of thousands of hatemails and REVERT3D questions I decided its seriously time to do an update here :p (just kidding - partially) I'm astonished just how many people still seem to be interested in this stuff and try to get their hands on. So, I tried to get the downloads back online which led me to the conclusion that I should begin to backup my release packages :( I finally had to take the "brand new" developement branch and convert it into a more or less stable release version - There werent any older releases left. And thats where eerie problems may pop up...

- Key mappings have changed. Check the help pages using F1
- The whole scripting part was torn apart and redesigned heavily
- To end the game-testmode press CTRL+F9 ! Theres just no other way out
- I discovered there are still some test routines left which could do funny stuff with the bots in some situations - Just for the case you're wondering whats up with these AI buddies in the demo map.

... and just thousands of things which I certainly forgot about - for sure. I'll really do my best to get back into this stuff but as you probably have noticed: I've been really busy with a lot of things which weren't related to developement of oldschool game engines for quite a long time.

Thanks to Kyle, who provided a better, safer webspace at: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2321290/REVERT3D_085_20130513.rar

May 8, 2012

Now featuring: New features

Hi folks! In order to prevent people from thinking we dropped dead, lying under our computer desks, its time to post some news :) Its been some time but much has happened although there were no news until now. Some of you already heard about some trouble with former teammates, arguing about wether to release what portions of the sourcecode and stuff. I don't want to bother you much with stuff like that - So, the only thing I want to say is, we're still very motivated on R3D and we will do the best to finish this thing to become a useful tool, even if this means to redesign/reimplement stuff we did some time before. So whats new? First of all, we set up a VS 2010 sourcecode port which works quite fine. We also implemented new stuff like:

Designation of special map areas
Enables you to handle events on stuff entering or leaving a specific region of the map.

Script system redesign
Cleaned up the scripting part, divided code into logical groups like gui/hud/input/game stuff...
New game functions
Simple cutscene events for demo game, HUD, basic inventory, combining/using objects.

New visual effects:
Additive/adaptive blending used for transparency/blending stuff

New GUI elements:
Allows you to add regular objects to a GUI page including animations, events, and stuff.

And last but not least: Lots of bugfixes, major improvements and reimplementation of crappy stuff :)

December 21, 2011

2011 progress report

Hi folks! With the year coming to an end its time to do one of those infamous 2011-in-review posts :) We're happy to see, we were indeed able to complete a sh!tload of work and even managed to follow the roadmap (most of the time) - Although we're software developers and naturally tend to promise unrealistic bullsh!t :p December 2010 was a point, when things really got in motion. The team was highly motivated and began to focus on the hard stuff: 3D collision detection and physics - yikes! We tried out many approaches until we managed to find a solution that felt realistic enough for an oldschool engine. As its often while hacking together complicated stuff, things get clearer and clearer the longer you think about it. Most features in REVERT3D grow like this which makes it a neverending construction site in some way :) We released our first demo after finishing the basic physics stuff, which was big step because R3D hasn't gone public ever since then. We got some nice feedback from people around the world. Most of them came from the System Shock community and were happy to see another approach on recreating "Shock related stuff" - Quite impressive with this game being about 17 years old!
At this point my former teammate, getting troubled with his school works, had to leave the team (He will hopefully rejoin in the future) Being on my own things slowed a bit down since then, but I was happy to find some other people who would help me every now and then.
Next milestone on the roadmap was the huge scripting part, which was planned to feature a Lua interface accessing a completely mapped engine function library. This really helped to get R3D on the "becoming a useful tool" path and so I even started to write down some basic tutorials to give an impression how things would work when all this stuff will be released someday. Since september, we focus on the standard game implementation which will be the core of functionality around which you will implement your game someday. This also includes a basic AI, which features a fast pathfinder for now - Basic enemy AI is something we're also working on at the moment. All this will be shown in the next demo, which will feature a simple demo game including stuff like inventory, enemies, useable objects and even more! All in all we got pretty far, although we will not be able to finish milestone v1.0 until the end of year - But hey, we're software developers and tend to promise unrealistic bullsh!it :)
Thanks for your attention on our little insignificant project. We wish you a happy christmas and a prosperous new year!