''Open Generals Zero Hour'' engine in teh works

[UnholyLiberator 0]

https://github.com/TheAssemblyArmada/Thyme

 

OmniBlade is currently developing his own SAGE engine custom framework, much like chipgw (?). Pity development goes super slow, its 2/3 guys doing all the handy work.

 

Duh wish I have had learned C++ to help out.

 

Anyhoo what happened with chipgw's same project?

[Lauren 78]

Reading some of the stuff this guy needs quite some help from someone who actually modded the game. Esp reading the wiki about the commandbar stuff was pretty hilarious because he doesn't seem to have a clue what the game is actually doing there while it's super easy.

I gave him a hint on his irc.

Edited October 25, 2017 by Lauren

[UnholyLiberator 0]

Though still with something of this caliber done right, games can become limitless foundation for mods. I always felt pathfinding be gross. Tidal Wars I look forward to being an example of real innovation, unfortunately hindered by weird limits.

[Lauren 78]

If I didn't think it's a good effort I wouldn't have pitched in but instead would have just laughed about it.

[Luvaskot 2]

Previously I saw couple of projects tried to implement SAGE 3D. None of them succeeded unfortunately. Maybe these can be helpful.

https://github.com/feliwir/openSage

https://github.com/feliwir/sage

[PurpleGaga27 39]

I was hoping for an "open C&C3" or "open RA3" engine.

[Blade 12]

On 25/10/2017 at 7:48 PM, Lauren said:

If I didn't think it's a good effort I wouldn't have pitched in but instead would have just laughed about it.

The wiki is open for anyone to contribute to and unfortunately the project has an over zealous fan Zexaron who wrote those pages. I'll probably put a disclaimer on the main wiki page or something as we don't want misunderstandings like that to put people off contributing. I've not done any actual work on the way the in game view is rendered yet and I assure you I would rather ask people who knew more than me about it than spout nonsense on the wiki that I wasn't sure was accurate.

There seems to be no end of attempts at an open source SAGE engine clone, this one is different to all the rest in that its attempting an accurate bottom up recreation like OpenRCT2, replacing the original game one function at a time until the entire thing is recreated in C++. Good thing about this approach is that you could build the code and play the game now. You wouldn't be able to tell much difference right now of course, so from a player POV this isn't all that useful, but for development it makes it much easier to verify the new code behaves as expected. I can't guarantee it will get any further than the other attempts if I get burned out and I'm also working on RA++ as well.

Additionally it will make documenting the file formats more accurately possible so it will provide additional resources for people to build modding tools for the game, though thankfully it is reasonably well covered already.

[Traymen 6]

There are few game engines worth rewriting from scratch and SAGE isn't one of them. While it can be a good practice to understand how to write own game engine I wouldn't focus too much in developing SAGE's clone. I have very little understanding in programming and my opinion isn't based on any kind of experience but from what i understand game engine written in C++ is very "homogeneous" in comparison to Java. While application written in Java can be run on any kind of device with JRE, C++ need to be written for each Windows, Mac OS X and Linux separately.

Aside from that, I understand the urge of some people to challenge themselves working over obsolete engine and I honestly encourage them to study even more about game design but once they gain expertise in game's engine field they should move on with this nice chart in their CV's.

Edited November 3, 2017 by Traymen
Spelling

[Blade 12]

I have less interest in writing my own game engine than I do in making an version of an existing engine that can be ported to other operating systems and patched effectively to fix bugs the original developers/publishers never go around to.

Your understanding of Java vs C++ portability is inaccurate. Java in theory can be compiled once and then ran anywhere the JRE is available with some penalties usually in terms of performance because it is compiled to java byte code, machine code that doesn't have a physical machine that runs it, it is instead processed by a kind of virtual cpu that runs on different physical cpus (and is probably written in C or C++). C++ on the other hand is always compiled to a real CPU machine code. Apart from calls to the platform API to do things like open files, enumerate directories and handle input, most of the game engine is portable and can be compiled against many platforms and CPU's and will behave the same (more or less). It can be made more portable by writing it against wrapper APIs that abstract the platform differences such as SDL, QT, wxWidgets and the like rather than against the platform API directly (plaforms such as windows, macos, linux, android and such).

[Traymen 6]

Still, I don't understand the SAGE fascination. Back in the days when it was fully compatible with hardware and software it was a pain in the less noble part of back to play longer games. RTS w/o unit limit cap is pretty crappy when it comes to 30 minutes (and longer) skirmishes because It can't sustain framerate so the longer game gets the slower it is. It can be a good start point for game developer journey but if I had some time and better than basic knowledge in programming I would just learn how to make better game engine than W3D/SAGE.

IMHO it's like playing with microcomputers from 80's. You can add Internet browser, drivers for modern printers etc., but in reality solving the problems which apply to less than 1% of human population is art for art's sake. Admirable but nostalgia finally ends and developer ends with huge expertise in things no one cares about. 

[Plok 320]

1 hour ago, Traymen said:

Back in the days when it was fully compatible with hardware and software

How is it not still?

 

1 hour ago, Traymen said:

IMHO it's like playing with microcomputers from 80's. You can add Internet browser, drivers for modern printers etc., but in reality solving the problems which apply to less than 1% of human population is art for art's sake.

It's more like playing with tools that nobody bothers to make or support these days, as no developer makes (proper) RTS games anymore except for Relic's AoE4.

 

1 hour ago, Traymen said:

Admirable but nostalgia finally ends and developer ends with huge expertise in things no one cares about. 

Correction: in things you personally don't care about.

[Traymen 6]

1 hour ago, Plokite_Wolf said:

How is it not still?

You know, if - for example - C&C: Generals would run flawlessly w/o Gentool and some properties adjusting in executables I would say it is still compatible. Just look at the C&C: Generals topic "How to Play Generals / Zero Hour In Windows 7 x64". It has 6 pages and some people from time to time asks for help there having problem with some errors occurring here and there.

1 hour ago, Plokite_Wolf said:

It's more like playing with tools that nobody bothers to make or support these days, as no developer makes (proper) RTS games anymore except for Relic's AoE4.

This reminds me the AmigaOS developers. They sweat over very restricted source code to deliver things as basic as TCP/IP protocol. They could write something visually similar to AmigaOS and compatible with modern hardware but they crossed a point of no return so long ago, that abandoning that much work after so many years of development would be more devastating than maintaining of AmigaOS.

The SAGE is same thing. Nowadays, you can write much more flexible and lightweight game engine offering same capabilities to SAGE. Moreover, you could monetize it if game demo would be eye-catching or deliver it as open source and gaining attention of other developers trying to create something together.

2 hours ago, Plokite_Wolf said:

Correction: in things you personally don't care about.

This is why it's called nostalgia. Majority don't care about things that passionate minority.

[Tore 33]

Quote

This reminds me the AmigaOS developers. They sweat over very restricted source code to deliver things as basic as TCP/IP protocol. They could write something visually similar to AmigaOS and compatible with modern hardware but they crossed a point of no return so long ago, that abandoning that much work after so many years of development would be more devastating than maintaining of AmigaOS.

Creating an entirely new OS looking like Amiga Workbench would be missing the point entirely. AmigaOS is about the passionate Amiga and Commodore fanbases. They want a continuation of the OS some of them started using 32 years ago which is compatible with the old software they still like to use.

Not to mention that creating a new OS from scratch would take years to reach the stage AmigaOS is at now and be incompatible with the software library of Amiga's making the entire project kind of pointless.

Implementing anything "basic" like TCP/IP into an OS is not easy especially with most likely a tiny group of developers. Initially even Microsoft didn't entirely write the TCP/IP support built into Windows themselves even with their gigantic budget and tons of developers the TCP/IP stack in Windows was based upon BSD.

Quote

IMHO it's like playing with microcomputers from 80's. You can add Internet browser, drivers for modern printers etc., but in reality solving the problems which apply to less than 1% of human population is art for art's sake. Admirable but nostalgia finally ends and developer ends with huge expertise in things no one cares about. 

Not sure about that. "Playing with 80's micros" even for nostalgia's sake can be a very educational experience especially if it leads in to an understanding about soldering, electronics repair, PCB design, how operating systems work, microcode, the manufacturing of chips, programming etc. while the methods used in creating old microcomputers are obsolete, the basics behind it all are still highly relevant today and skills regularly sought after. 

Even if things are old doesn't make them automatically bad.

Edited November 4, 2017 by Tore

[Plok 320]

4 hours ago, Traymen said:

You know, if - for example - C&C: Generals would run flawlessly w/o Gentool and some properties adjusting in executables I would say it is still compatible

If that's what you count as compatibility (poorly defined, mind you), then Generals was never compatible with anything, because the engine was unoptimized as fuck. It performed poorly in 2003, and it performs poorly now.

 

4 hours ago, Traymen said:

Just look at the C&C: Generals topic "How to Play Generals / Zero Hour In Windows 7 x64".

Yeah, it's basically an elaborate workaround for "turn UAC off, you simpletons".

 

4 hours ago, Traymen said:

This reminds me the AmigaOS developers. They sweat over very restricted source code to deliver things as basic as TCP/IP protocol. They could write something visually similar to AmigaOS and compatible with modern hardware but they crossed a point of no return so long ago, that abandoning that much work after so many years of development would be more devastating than maintaining of AmigaOS.

The SAGE is same thing. Nowadays, you can write much more flexible and lightweight game engine offering same capabilities to SAGE. Moreover, you could monetize it if game demo would be eye-catching or deliver it as open source and gaining attention of other developers trying to create something together.

Sorry, let me reiterate - there is point in recreating old RTS engines because there's no new RTS engines to speak of to potentially base something off of them. RTSes have a different set of controls and requirements than your usual FPSes and RPGs, so you can't simply take an existing engine and think it'll be easy to make an RTS in it. And unless you're making a 2D engine, making a custom engine for something as demanding, especially for today's ludicrous standards with graphics and physics, means that you're either backed with a lot of money or you're a fool who will immediately go bankrupt or insane or both.

 

4 hours ago, Traymen said:

This is why it's called nostalgia. Majority don't care about things that passionate minority.

Why are you even here, then? All the games in this series have long past their prime, to put it generously, so if you don't have nostalgia, why waste time here?

[Blade 12]

On 04/11/2017 at 6:17 PM, Traymen said:

The SAGE is same thing. Nowadays, you can write much more flexible and lightweight game engine offering same capabilities to SAGE. Moreover, you could monetize it if game demo would be eye-catching or deliver it as open source and gaining attention of other developers trying to create something together.

This is why it's called nostalgia. Majority don't care about things that passionate minority.

You make these pronouncements, yet already admitted you know next to nothing about programming. Nowadays you could write a more flexible and lightweight engine? You could back when Generals was written and indeed it seems it was quite flexible since they managed to get 7 games out of it if you count expansions. Lightweight? Why do you think you could write a more lightweight engine now rather than then, if anything engines should have been more light weight back then because they couldn't rely on having multiple CPU's and the shed loads of memory and GPU compute that we can take for granted now. That said, maybe generals can be optimized more, I doubt they did more than they needed to to ship it working on systems that met some average spec back in the day.

Frankly is seems like you are just trolling and looking for an argument, do you even C&C bro? What do YOU think I should be spending my time doing?

Edited November 5, 2017 by Blade

[OWA 22]

If this open SAGE engine becomes viable in the future, I would totally design a non-C&C game for it. It would be good to actually have a semi-decent RTS-centric engine to develop on. A lot of modern engines are designed around making games with limited amounts of actors (FPS, RPS etc) which isn't too great when making an RTS. Basically, creating an RTS without a unit cap on a modern game engine is fairly tricky to do without having big performance hits.

So there are more applications for a project like this rather than just remaking the original games. Just sayin'.

Edited November 6, 2017 by OWA

[Guest Rabbit]

Yeah, I feel the same way.  It would be really neat if there was a general-purpose RTS engine.  I just hope it's powerful enough to make a decent game, but I admittedly have no knowledge of how to program this kind of thing either, so I can only wish you luck.

[PurpleGaga27 39]

Once again, another developer has put in.... now what is called the real unofficial OpenSAGE: https://github.com/OpenSAGE/OpenSAGE

[Blade 12]

Open source SAGE projects seem to be in vogue, like any top down project, this one will take a while to get to the point where it playable. The way its being developed doesn't really draw devs away from Thyme as the skills needed for each are somewhat different and the research being done for it will be applicable to both projects anyway.