One Of The Few Games On The Open-Source id Tech 4 Engine Sees Big Update

[phoronix]

Phoronix: One Of The Few Games On The Open-Source id Tech 4 Engine Sees Big Update

While the id Tech 4 game engine that powered Doom 3 has been open-source now since 2011, there are few notable users of this open-source engine that is a step above the still popular id Tech 3 / ioquake3 engine. But The Dark Mod is one of the few notable successes off this id Tech 4 open-source engine and this weekend they put out a big update...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=TDM-2.06-idTech4-2018-Progress

[microcode]

Wow, this is a beautiful thing they've put together, the atmospherics are excellent.

[aksdb]

I'm not surprised that there are few users. Most big engines are now kinda free anyway (partially even open source).
As powerfull as all these engines are, the biggest problem in using them properly is having high quality assets. Without really good artistic skills / manpower to produce high quality textures, models and sounds, no Unreal/Cry/Source/idTech/Unigine can help you deliver a good and noteworthy game.

If you are only about content, then anything 2D (or 2.5D) is probably better suited anyway.

[GunpowaderGuy]

one would have thought that the id 4 would be terrible for a sthealth game , but this looks like it has global ilumination

[grok]

Doom 3 engine had fully dynamic lighting and shadowing and would probably run on a $50 smartphone today. It was first demoed in 2001 in fact, on Geforce 3.

It was very impressive but needs you to design your environments and partitioning maps with BSP around its performance limitations i.e. if you just free-form design your maps and have big outdoor or indoor spaces without caring your performance will tank. You also need/want to use normal maps on every single surface (i.e. make a very high poly model, turn it into a low poly model plus texture data to fake the high polygons) which was probably cumbersome back in the days but is probably easier with modern tools. Still, even if you're not aiming for a high end result this looks fairly demanding and also isn't suited for huge areas or forests where showing 50 trees would tank your performance and the lighting would probably be weird.

[Guest]

How have I missed this? An open source Thief clone. This is so awesome!

[FireBurn]

How many games from that era do you know that have added these kind of features?

[DMJC]

TDM is a lot of fun, I started playing it a few weeks ago. Like most engines in the open source scene we need better modelling/texturing tools to really unlock the power of the engine. Blender and Maya are the only heavy lifting choices for this stuff on Linux. We need more 3D viewers that can dynamically reload textures/lightmaps, and update in real time when you save in the GIMP/Krita/inkscape so you can see instantly what you're doing updated on the model.

[waxhead]

While I don't play much games the dark mod really impressed me. Stunning visuals, and I have to constantly remind me that this is a *free* game. The only thing I hate about it is that it does not exist in the Debian repo's and that I had to install some old libs to get it working (a while ago admittedly). Glad to see a 64bit version , and I am crossing my fingers that it has proper alt-tab support now as this is one of my main annoyances that prevents me from playing it more often. Downloading (updating) as we speak, will be fun to check out the new changes!

[PackRat]

TDM is a lot of fun, I started playing it a few weeks ago. Like most engines in the open source scene we need better modelling/texturing tools to really unlock the power of the engine. Blender and Maya are the only heavy lifting choices for this stuff on Linux. We need more 3D viewers that can dynamically reload textures/lightmaps, and update in real time when you save in the GIMP/Krita/inkscape so you can see instantly what you're doing updated on the model.

Sidefx houdini works on Linux too (even freebsd according to houdini's forum). The apprentice version can be downloaded and used non-commercially also has a indie version for $200. The foundry has a non-comercial version of Mari you can paint right on the models. Mari has a indie version om steam costd like $150.

This engine still looks great.