- #HEXEN 2 DARKPLACES MOD#
- #HEXEN 2 DARKPLACES CODE#
- #HEXEN 2 DARKPLACES PC#
- #HEXEN 2 DARKPLACES PLUS#
Game development SHOULD start with writing. This is akin to saying, “hold on a moment, put down whatever tool you’re using and start actually thinking.” And this is the opposite of the modding mentality, which is “I’ll just go in and do this…”
#HEXEN 2 DARKPLACES CODE#
Simply put, a lot more development happens BEFORE the art and code stages. That is doomed to fail, and is what I’m NOT doing. It is a common complaint by game writers that companies are trying to tack on some writing on the tail end of an already half finished game. The holy trinity of Scout’s Journey style game development are actually writing, art and programming, with the latter two being extensions of the former. Not 3D modelling suites and not level editors and not IDEs. This brings with it the realization that scriptwriting is in fact the new engine room. The mechanical aspect of code and polygons is only an extension of the ephemeral core that is plot and design. It is turned inside out, or rather, right side out. Scout’s Journey development isn’t based around just going in and writing code or smacking brushes together. Real game development in 2016 is a completely different thing. Very down to earth stuff in gamedev terms.
#HEXEN 2 DARKPLACES PLUS#
Roughly the stuff we did in Remake Quake, plus new problems such as doing terrain, being a lot more detailed and breaking the BSP visibility stuff to get it running fast enough.
![hexen 2 darkplaces hexen 2 darkplaces](http://fps.maros.pri.ee/images/galleries/darkpl0673034.jpg)
Development was largely writing code and painting textures, blocking in level geometry or modelling weapons.
#HEXEN 2 DARKPLACES MOD#
In late 2013, Scout’s Journey was basically a Quake mod that started to mightily rattle the cage. It’s like the language isn’t even the same. The communication problem simply lies in the fact that modding Quake’s pineapple launcher and making a game like Scout’s Journey are two different universes. Change a line of code, and you’ll make the grenade launcher spit voreballs instead. It is simply the case that the style of game development I’m currently doing is so far removed from Quake modding that there’s not even any common ground I could use to explain it to that crowd. I won’t go into it much further, just know that the script basically IS the game, just minus the technical implementation side. People tend to not understand why all this writing is necessary. Of course that’s not what most of the development time was sunk into over the last two years or so. Not least because I was busy thinking about more fundamental things. So engine wise, cutting the cable sort of spun me into a different orbit. One of the environments was already dropped into Unity just to see what happens. We’re slowly coming up, by our own boot-straps if you will, to a state where we can likely do a hopefully soft landing on a different platform. It just didn’t seem like a smart thing to do.
![hexen 2 darkplaces hexen 2 darkplaces](http://fps.maros.pri.ee/images/galleries/dp_t2772765.jpg)
There is Darkplaces, but that would have meant another risky wager that a largely untested engine based on 1996 tech would be better suited than the first one. So while the engine switch did end up hurting the project, there really was no alternative. It’s simply a fact of life that the FTE engine was too buggy, that I couldn’t do the things I needed to do, and that every time I broke one of those invisible Quake-technology walls I ended up in a minefield of untested things prone to failure. So I still feel the switch was necessary and justified. This is not 1997 and Quake doesn’t cut it anymore, not in the face of Unreal, Unity and Cryengine. It may look like the old Daikatana mistake, but there’s a difference. But in the end, it’s better for the project. Truth is, as may be obvious in hindsight, that the switch away from the Quake engine was more of an obstacle than it should have been. We’ll see when I get that running, I might feel inspired to start porting the first level to Unreal.
#HEXEN 2 DARKPLACES PC#
On the technical side, I’m now working on a new PC that should be Unreal-capable.