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Presenting My Engine, And My Idea
Hi all !

My name is Nicola, I'm an italian programmer, and a DooM-Quake addicted :) I was convinced by a very gentle and helpful mapper (RickyT23) to introduce here my own engine made from scratch.

It's a deferred renderer engine on which I've been working for almost two years. It is NOT made using some existing code, like the quake engine source code, so it's completely different from all the existing quake-based engines.

In fact, it doesn't read BSP file, but the source MAP files. It has a per-pixel colored lightning, smooth shadows (for now only on spot lights), bloom and SSAO. However, everything is still in process and being improved.
It has also a basic physics system (quake-like), writen by me, of course, but maybe in the future I will switch to some library. And it has a basic AI.
It implements all the basic weapons, like pistols, shotguns, rocket and grenade launcher. However, everything is possible.. for example I'll make the DukeNukem3D weapon that resises the enemies :D

It has to be considered as an "amateur" engine, not a commerciable one. Not for now at least. Plus, I'm working alone... it's hard ;)

In fact, it misses many things: sound system, a menu, a HUD. Moreover, it doesn't have a stable version for now.

It's worth saying also that a friend of mine is helping me on writing the LAN code.

I'm gonna link some screen shots, taken from some maps RickyT23 gave to me.

http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/9094/shot523.jpg
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/2545/shot4268.jpg
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/2545/shot4268.jpg
http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/9831/shot3188.jpg
http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/6889/shot3102.jpg
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/3013/starkmon.jpg

------------------------------------------

My idea, or better, my dream-proposal, is to make a survival horror game. I was talking with RickyT23 about some maps set like the horror movie "The Thing", in a scientific base in a some isolated place, like the south-pole, with snows, fog, open spaces, lots of scary enemies and everything that can contribute to having a distressing, stressful and neurotic scenario.

I'm a programmer, not a mapper at all.

Question is: is there someone who could help me in this ?

Ok, I've talked too much, it's enough for now :D!

Thank you for reading !
Bye,

-NiG
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Library Oriented 
vs. framework oriented, of course. 
Oh Wait 
you don't want to release the src :) 
Reply 
@ijed:
you're right. It can be frustrating for a mapper to make a map without the possibility to test it, if you meant this.
All I can say is that soon (months ?) I caould release the bins in order to launch maps. But the engine right now has TONS of limitations: for example, textures cannot be packed in a unique file. To load a map, the .map file has to be provided along with all the textures.
To grab a video, something like 'fraps' can be used.

LUA is scheduled. Recently I bought the book "game coding complete - 3rd" which has an entire chapter for LUA.

@megaman:
It's too soon to talk about a "framework". Hey, does anyone have any clue about the difficulty to make a game engine, which includes a 3D graphic engine, a physics engine and a logic system ??? :P
I'd like to have people who could help me, but I'm alone ;)

THANKS,
-NiG 
We're Just Appreciating Your Work... 
by bouncing crazy ideas off you. ;)

Engine programming is certainly harder than mapping, hence there's lots of mappers but engine gurus are few and far between. What you have already is very impressive. The pifalls of BSP compiling and visibility calculations have always been a weak point of Quake. Bypassing those stages entirely would be a really nice option to have as a mapper. I could probably create some really interesting environments that would never compile well in Quake. 
@Grahf 
THANK YOU guy !
I'm very glad about your reply.

Yes, engine programmers are few, I kinda know only 3-4 italian game programmers. This doesn't help :(
Well, right now my engine doesn't suffer from the open-space limitations of Quake, yet it's not a Crysis map-like engine. Games like Far Cry or Stalker use a terrain engine, a thing that I am not interested in.

Anyway I remember very big spaces in Return to Castle Wolfstein (2001 I think), and it was using a Quake-3 engine, which is similar to quale-2, which has the same limits.

Grahf, if you would like to challenge yourself with a "The Thing" like enviroment, my engine would be happy to run it :D!

thanks,
-NiG 
In Engine Editing 
If you are using Quake's .map format and not bsp for your level data then perhaps you could implement an editor in the engine? Having a full real-time lighting preview at all times would rock.

I am just starting to write a Quake map editor, but I suck at programming :( 
Hi, Nig ..yes I'm Interested In.. 
..your opportunity:

I perfectly get the point of your idea.. cause icy/snowy setting in a game is one I really love.

I'm a mapper/musician mostly(with little qc code knowledge), I've been using Worldcraft/Hammer editors for 6 years, my completed works are:

-HalfLife mod: TheCircle(she never sleeps) based on blockbuster movie TheRing

-Quake: nothin published yet, but some completed projects lying in my hdd

..If you're interested in sort of collaboration
let me know and I could show you somethin 
Heya :D! 
@delor3:

hi man, that's a good news :)
Ok, so I have to talk about two things.

1) My idea: a single/multi player big map (or two-three maps) settled on a "the thing" like scenario. Kinda horror ambient, a base isolated by the rest of the world which has all the facilities needed to live (a warehouse, a power plant, a tech lab, and so on), that has some floors underground. A level, however, where you don't just have to shot and survive, but maybe to interact with the map.

2) This is the MAIN issue: please, do not start making anything expressly for my engine, because, as I said many times, it's more a tech demo than a complete game. It has tons of bugs/limitations compared to a commercial game.
I would propose this kind of map/game just like I was proposing a map for an existing quake-engine. That's all. If my engine fails, the map is still usable with other engines.


So, finally, yes, I'm interested. I would be glad to see somthing you made, delor3.

thanks !!!
bye

-NiG 
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