by AlienKinetics » Nov 14, 2003 @ 7:39am
Hi Guys,
wow, people talking about my work. Its kinda a strange feeling.
Ok, RE: GPL. Yes, I beleive you can develope under GPL and then purchase a license apon release. The choice is yours.
My understanding is, data files loaded at runtime do not have to be released with the source. ie: Quake II GPL doesn't come with Quake II data files. You must still purchase the full Quake II CD to play. (Idea!)
RE: Yeti3D limitations. Yes, the current version has geometry limitations, but there are many tricks I'll be adding soon. ie: 45 degree corners, curved floors and ceilings. The world is made up of quads, so you can always render cracks, skirting boards or switchs. ie: You could have a control panel texture that is extruded to 3D when its rendered using a high map. Imagine each quad as a 64x64 terrain! You can revert to single square in the distance. Corridor beams would jut out from the walls.
Other tricks involve using models to render world objects like beds, lamps, candels, trees, doors, boxes, wooded beams and lifts. You can also map cell lighting onto models for real time shadows.
You can use the old "build" engine water trick. ie: Have water at level 0 and use two maps. Swap the maps when the entity moves from negitive Z space to positive Z space.
The great thing about using these tricks is, they can be switched off or swapped to sprites on low end processors! Plus, everything can be blown to bits. Something you cant do in a BSP style world.
Plus, the world map format is a little over 64kb! Even if Quake I/II ran on mobile phones, who would pay the phone bill to download new levels? At just 64kb, you can write real time RPG games, or sell extra maps via phone call payments. All these business options will boom late 2004. Maybe mid 2005 for countries like Australia.
The CUBE engine is amazingly flexable. It just takes a little bit of experimenting.
Im pretty sure the Tomb Raider engine used the same algorithms, so lets see.... You have the GPL code, you have the power, go forth and create. If you have some cool ideas, contact me.
Anyway, thanks for the great comments and interest. It makes living off peanut butter on toast worth while :-)
Kind Regards
Derek Evans (Yeti3D Author)