[OT] Tell me what you think

[Andrea B Previtera]

Slowly, I progress into the development of this 3d game which aims to have the same "feeling" of U7 in terms of graphics, interactivity with the world and so on. I must thank the Exult Team which has often answered my pedant questions, the questions of someone who's just too lazy and distract to make a good use of opensource code..

Now all is coming together - the world structure, eggs, scripts, pathfinding, schedules, weather, night/day cycle, GUI, paperdolling etc. - so although the graphics are absolutely not definitive (it's a patchwork of Ultima 7 objects transformed into textures, photoshopped ultima 9 textures, 3d models taken from quake mods and so on...) - I'd like you to know what you think about some screenshots.

Thanks









More (from older builds) *here*

[Dominus]

Looks nice.

[Jeffrey (I have a login?)]

Its hard to explain, but something about it I really like.

[Dominus]

Yeah, andrea might be on to something here.

[zosX]

It'll be interesting to see how both 3d engines play out. I was secretly rooting for Sam, but now I'm really starting to like the look of this engine. Nice job!

[SB-X]

Heretic! This isn't a U7 engine, it's a new game entirely.

Screenshots look good. Graphics are crisp and colorful. Could use more lighting. (but the shadows are nice)

[SB-X]

Oh, all the graphics hadn't loaded yet. I love the different terrain types.

[Sgt. Crown Jewels]

Looks amazing!

[Gradilla Dragon]

Yay!

What's cooking there, Andrea?

[Andrea B Previtera]

Thanks everyone : )
A lot is cooking, and something is starting to boil a bit.
Namely, I hope to release a tech demo soon, but before I must hunt down a couple tedious bugs and build at least a little dungeon and a little house. My editor is still more user-hostile than Exult Studio : \

[Withstand the Fury Dragon]

Andrea, this looks really great - spectacular work overall.

Did you want me to post the project on Aiera. If so, contact me at...well, my email is in the header of the message, so just contact me there.

WtF Dragon

[noja888]

looks cool !!!!!!!!

[WalterMß]

Yeah... keep on debugging!
I had the priviledge of seeing an animated "pre-demo": it works smoothly, the look-n-feel of the setting is both original and U7-recalling at the same time. I wish Andrea good work.

[Vasculio294]

Its good!

[Aaron Thompson aka theosprey]

Looks good mate, can't wait to try it out.

[Andrea B Previtera]

Further progress made. Sam (Exult 3d) initially sent me all the models he made and I must thank him for being so generous. Anyway I was contacted by a 3d modeler which wanted to take part to the ashes project so I decided not to use Sam's models anymore. On the opposite side... hey sam, if you need something I think the artist won't be upset about sharing his creations!

So, now we have a new site, http://ashes.lalista.org, and some nice new screenshots you may want to check: I need suggestions! Useless to say, I definitely included links and thanks to the Exult team, always tolerating my offtopic and helping me with my weird coding questions

[zosX]

That's awesome! Is this going to be an open sores engine?

[Andrea B Previtera]

No, the site says why (who wants to put his hands on a PASCAL + ASSEMBLER and TOTALLY UNCOMMENTED engine?)

[draadje]

that looks really nice

[zos]

Uh, are you serious about the pascal?

[Andrea B Previtera]

Sure. It's 100% pascal and assembler. Being the only coder of this project I have to manage 100,000 (and growing) lines of code all by myself. It's a matter of fact that pascal syntax is the most clear and readable out there. C/C++ would bring me daily migraines and Basic is just lousy. Pascal comfortably sits in the middle: you just have to find a good compiler since Borland's standard is terrible and unoptimized.

Critical routines, on the other hand, are pure assembler. Wouldn't it be for a couple bottlenecks which I plan removing in the future, the game may run on a Pentium II.

[zos]

Hey a PII is not a bad target platform in a lot of ways. It at least gives everyone who has a PIII (hey, I got a few) a chance.

That's funny its all in pascal though, I never thought anyone would try to code a modern game in Pascal or that anyone ever used pascal seriously anymore.
I personally don't think C/C++ is all that bad, but hey, whatever works for you right?

[SB-X]

(who wants to put his hands on a PASCAL + ASSEMBLER and TOTALLY UNCOMMENTED engine?)

Someone who thinks they can quickly fix a bug they find (that may only be present on their system/platform), or wants to add a new feature that you don't have time to work on?

[Andrea B Previtera]

SB-X:
But as we discussed on IRC, who uses pascal? Not enough people for the pain of extensive commenting and CVS maintenance being worth

ZOS:
Yes I know it's funny! I am always a bit uncomfortable when asked about the code, infact. I must always go through the things of reminding people that for example the legendary tracker Fast Tracker II was written in pure dos pascal, Myth was written in pascal as well, and someone ported Quake 2 to delphi as soon as it was opensourced

[Gunnar]

But as we discussed on IRC, who uses pascal? Not enough people for the pain of extensive commenting and CVS maintenance being worth

Actually I would at least like to read it. Who knows maybe someone even tries to convert it to c/c++. the most problematic parts would be the assmebler parts But for me there is no need to have constant CVS access. I would be happy with just a snapshot of the source.

[SB-X]

I recommend you consider providing it just to people who ask, on AS-IS terms, if they don't redistribute.

[zosX]

It is interesting that Myth and Fast Tracker were both written in pascal. I used to really like Fast Tracker II, though I did end up preferring scream tracker....Speaking of trackers, has anyone here had a chance to use Renoise? If you like trackers, it is certainly one of the best I've used. It is Windows based I might add....

With the advent of Reason and ReBirth, trackers have long since fallen out of favor tho....

Anyways, getting back on topic, I'm sure that a bunch of people would be interested in source, and I agree with SB-X, that is once you ever finish your project.

[Andrea B Previtera]

Nice coincidence, the game's music is being created with Renoise