Reply With QuoteShort answer: no. Long answer: you'll need to read the whole thread.
small question i saw in first post it said edios canda has the source for thief 1 and 2,if that is so ,does that mean thief 4 will play like thief 1 and 2 and not like the sluggish thief 3?
Short answer: no. Long answer: you'll need to read the whole thread.
There's no connection between the T2 source code and T4 in any way.Originally Posted by downwinder
If you need more than 2000 polys for a prop object, you're doing it wrong.
These are two very different statements. The first is a statement which is verifiable as incorrect. The second is a matter of opinion. For some objects, I would agree. For others, I disagree. In any event, the current limit of somewhere around 1600-1800 polys seems to be artificial since AIs can go upwards of 3000. It would be nice to remove that artificial boundary. I suspect it is there because of the limitations of the then current video cards.
What LarryG said. For some things, 2k polys is overkill. But what if you want to do a detailed fountain? What about architectural details? A statue? In some cases, it'd be nice to use a few more polys than what Dark allows.
Not that incorrect. There's nothing stopping you from having very detailed terrain made out of objects, except that objects are not lit properly and don't have proper polygon-based physics models (both unrelated to complexity). The limit of ~2000 polygons per object isn't such a huge deal in most cases - consider that ideally objects should be built of as few polies as possible, but with efficient use of those polies. The onscreen object limit of ~128 is a much more significant issue, in this case. And it should hopefully be quite easy to remove that particular limit.
I stand by my statement that objects with too many polys cause DromEd to crash immediately. This was made abundantly apparent when making my OEM bone replacements. The quality of the ribs in particular were severely limited by by the per object poly restriction. I had to do a lot to bring down the polys in some of the larger skeleton pieces, and I was never able to get a truly satisfactory spine modeled within the poly limits. The whole skeleton objects I didn't even attempt because of the limit.
That is true, though generally speaking it's only very complex (organic) shapes that need that many polygons. Accursed organics and their bones.
...unless you're Saturnine, in which case you make a fancy bed with 2300 polys that crashes Dromed.
He wasn't happy with having to lower the polys.
nickie: Alas, Eidos still haven't released the source. So our crusade isn't over.
AFAIK, both Thief 1&2 are DX6-applications (i.e. with no Hardware T&L in DX7+), so, in case of increasing of polygon count, a CPU will handle all of them, not a GPU. And since the Dark Engine is a single-threaded application, its upgrade will take a significant amount of time, IMHO. Perhaps, OPDE is much more optimized. If it so, maybe we'd use the Dreamcast-talk.com materials to complete the OPDE, not to build the Thief 1&2 fixed executables?
Last edited by MoroseTroll; 13th Dec 2010 at 07:45.
I don't see why everyone's making such a big fuzz about Eidos getting in on this. After all they were already considering to release the code, but stuck on the legal implications, god bless 'em.
Although at this point they might simply not know about the leak yet, when they learn, Eidos may well be relieved that this isn't their problem any more and further on ignore it.
What's in it for them when they came crashing down on this, except annoying a bunch of potential THI4F and DX:R customers? It's not harmful to them and they certainly will understand that they cannot reverse the leak anyway.
they simply hate it,just like they hate it when people trade 2nd hand games (or,god forbid,fileshare).they somehow feel their holy rights are being violated,and their just retribution must be swift and deadly.no logic or reason in this,it is simply how things are.
just like when EA stopped the SS2 remake-there was no way how this project could have been harmful to them in any way,yet,they destroyed it as soon as they could..
Maybe it's just me, but I think such companies will always say they're considering something, because it gives them goodwill "oh look how nice they are, they're thinking about releasing the source/editor/sdk", even if they internally immediately thought "no way in hell". I wouldn't put too much weight on such statements made, only actions count on this matter, and on that front there has been painfully little.
That was a long time ago, before EA had decided to make Dead Space instead of System Shock 3.
I think you should put a bit more trust into people, even if you're bound to get disappointed by some. Because if I was an Eidos employee (which I'm not) and read how many here are snickering about Eidos having no clue yet, the perceived need to go underground, because Eidos will do this and that and was "sitting on the source code" and all that - then I'd be pissed.
As some have suggested here, I'd just go and inform them that we have it. They might say: Oh well. They might say: We cannot allow you to distribute and use it. - but not do anything. And finally they might send those cease and desist letters. In that case it would still be an option to work underground.
But at least we knew then what their stance is and we could say with a clean conscience that we tried our best and showed goodwill, even when we didn't had to, and not just when we wanted something from them.
The fact that they haven't released the code themselves yet, says nothing about their attitude, it might very well be a complicated legal issue. And one that's understandably not very high on their priority list. But that still doesn't make them the devil worshipping bastards from hell that some paint them as here.
In any case, the way it's going now, you're provoking them to come down on this by acting like snickering smartasses yourselves.
Last edited by Syndy/3; 13th Dec 2010 at 09:47.
Better that they don't find out until we get the source code compiling, so we can publicly share a working package in case were are forced to go underground later.
I don't think they're devil worshipers or bastards, I'm simply annoyed with them.
As for snickering that they don't have a clue...for me it's the posters on the Eidos forums that I'm having a snicker at, not Eidos management. Management no doubt already knows about the leak, but I certainly don't expect them to post about it...considering they haven't posted about anything pertaining to the fact the community found the source code in February and gave it to them. lol
You are probably right though, it is likely time to drop them a line and let them know there has been a leak....but that we would still like an official release.
@NV: I understand the logic, but you're risking to miss the chance to show your decency, under the premise that they will close you down anyway.
Has anyone ever considered making a offer to buy the rights? Close to 1800 people have signed the petition. Given the age and technical obsolescence of these assets, perhaps we could raise enough in pledges to make a good faith offer? How much could they be worth, after all, to EIDOS? It's not like we would be asking for anything with real, current intrinsic value to anyone but us. Before the code was rediscovered, there was nothing to buy, but now ... what do you think?
Yet we already showed them our decency by completely side stepping the source code when it was found in February. MoroseTroll probably could have arranged to have it given to us by the ex LGS staff member, but instead he chose to have the LGS developer send it directly to Eidos....leading us to wait, and wait, and wait...with no communication from Eidos and inquiries falling on deaf ears.
Their community relations practices are terrible...it's a fact that they really need to work on that.
It has been the same story for the last ten years though. Numerous petitions and requests to Eidos to help us find the source code.
There is a hard working community here who has built hundreds of fan missions, a complete unofficial campaign, and a Thief inspired Mod / Mapping kit for idtech 4...all for free!
All we've been asking in exchange is for the source code. At the very least, they could ask the community manager give us an update once in awhile. Even if it is just a..."they're still working on it". lol
In any case, as I said earlier...I agree that we should probably send a note to the community manager to see if he knows about the unofficial release.
Don't give them any ideas. Seriously. Id software and other companies do this for free. They see the potential behind open sourcing their old tech.
Eidos isn't going to do anything with the Dark Engine at this point. lol
Aliotroph? over at Doomworld forums raises an interresting point: "Often they can't [release the code], or won't, because they would have to spend time excising third party code they can't re-license." I did see some third party copyrighted stuff in my casual perusal of the source.
WildWeasel over there has this thought: "Actually, I don't think Eidos would own the rights to the code - I think that falls to Electronic Arts. Which just makes things that much worse, because they're more legally-active than most publishers."
Edit: I just think this is pretty.
4982448320_8f5f1ba8.jpg
Last edited by LarryG; 13th Dec 2010 at 12:46.
IIRC the source code now in Eidos' possession has had EA's property stripped from it.
I believe Queue offered $5 once.
Work in progress then and obviously you would change the names! Perhaps one of the fans' favourites - Edios!
MoroseTroll - I haven't posted here before that comment but I signed the petition and I have read this thread regularly and kept up with all the news. I have to say that I'm enormously impressed by the effort that was put in to this. I sincerely hope that the final outcome will be what you/we all wish for.
Last edited by nickie; 13th Dec 2010 at 16:26.
My offer still stands.
...though I think I may have to check out my "source", so to speak. Seems to be drinking a lot more these days than usual.
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