Question concerning Food Fight

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UTNerd24
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Question concerning Food Fight

Post by UTNerd24 »

Papercoffee told me that Feralidragon would be taking over Food Fight's development...But Feralidragon told me he'd be retiring from UT mods after he finished Nali Weapons Final.

Can someone try and elaborate all this?
I've been playing UT for so long it's practically tradition.
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Feralidragon
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Re: Question concerning Food Fight

Post by Feralidragon »

I understand your confusion.

Well, basically after NW3 I will indeed retire from "UT mods" per-se, meaning that I won't do more new mods for UT itself (as it is).
However, I do intend to lend a hand on Food Fight so it can make a proper release after that. I don't consider my intervention on Food Fight as "mod making" because I will just make things work rather than actually do the mod (in other words, pretty much just code, I won't make models or edit sounds or anything like that like I generally do in my mods).
Food Fight belongs to Paper (he's the founder and leader of that project), and therefore he's the one who is still going to have some work in a way or another (specially on the graphical aspect of it, along with the help of Gen).

But, in parallel with Food Fight, since probably it won't take much of my time to pull it out (I am slow making the resources, not the code itself), I will do something else using UT as a base. It's not exactly a UT mod, but it's something that will use UT and its engine as base for something new (along the lines of a TC [total conversion] and which can be legally distributed for free). However, that bigger project is rather vaporware for now and so officially after NW3 (and some coding for FF) I am out of the development regarding anything to do with UT, at least for a good while, so you could say that after NW3 I am officially retired from UT modding, and after FF I am officially retired from anything regarding coding for UT as it is.

I hope that's more clear now. :)
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UTNerd24
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Re: Question concerning Food Fight

Post by UTNerd24 »

Thanks for that!
It's just still a shame to see you go.

Oh well...At least EXU2 Might bring some cool stuff.
I've been playing UT for so long it's practically tradition.
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Re: Question concerning Food Fight

Post by EvilGrins »

UTNerd24 wrote:Feralidragon told me he'd be retiring from UT mods after he finished Nali Weapons Final.
Feralidragon wrote:Well, basically after NW3 I will indeed retire from "UT mods" per-se, meaning that I won't do more new mods for UT itself
I wouldn't worry about it. Ferali isn't "going" and given that he originally said after NW3 he'd be done... the fact he keeps adding things to NW3 gives me the impression he actually can't stop making things.

He's addicted.

He's got a Nali on his back.

Only downside I see is he'll keep adding things to NW3, unless he caves and starts NW4, or SW1 (Skaarj Weapons), well until he's 80 years old.
http://unreal-games.livejournal.com/
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medor wrote:Replace Skaarj with EvilGrins :mrgreen:
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Re: Question concerning Food Fight

Post by Dr.Flay »

Our Ferali does not like loose-ends, and takes a very professional attitude to completeness.

These additions to the NW3 framework, should really be seen to inspire others to bolt-in more mayhem.
Imagine using the damage-effect of the chunks of fake scenery (think nukes) with any other ammo, so you can always chip debris from a wall etc.

Actually Ferali, would your mystery project not benefit from the Unreal 227 functionality ?
Unless Shadow is about to make us all very happy, I would have thought the extra funky stuff would go well with the use of DX10
eg. The shadows on actors, decos and projectors, and easy to use environmental audio make everything so much more atmospheric.
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Re: Question concerning Food Fight

Post by Feralidragon »

I have half a page of things I wanted to add to NW3 but I won't anymore (new weapons, tools and whatnot). Therefore right now I am only finishing the things I committed myself to (like the 2 last oversurrections and a few other small things).

@Dr.Flay: As for my other project, yeah, it would greatly benefit from U227 on many levels... however I can't use it since U227 has a fatal flaw: I can't provide my stuff fully for free.
No matter what I do, people would have to still obtain Unreal, which means pay for it in one way or another if we're talking about legality.
One of the objectives of my new project is for people to be legally able to just download it and play, simple as that and free of charge (it's pretty much a new game, with a good degree of similarity with UT itself, to a point that if there was a new UT, what I am going to try to do is what I wanted to see and enjoy).

With UT I can achieve the "free" part, by simply using and focusing in the demo version plus the no-delta patch. That way people with the full version of UT will be able to play, but people who didn't even hear about UT or Unreal in their lives can simply download it, install and play for free and legally.

The UT SDK won't do either because it also has a huge fatal flaw of its own: it highly depends on its own render driver (which means that if that driver doesn't work with you, you don't have any alternatives nor updates to newer versions) and so far it only works for Windows (and I do intend to port my project to Linux if it gains any traction at all).
Considering that UT by itself has tons of updated drivers, even for newer operating systems, building something that excludes them all from the start in trade for a single one, is fatal for any project to survive imo.

What I am going to do is to (try to) use the engine to its fullest latent potential, by actually exploiting the facts that:
- it can be legally obtained for free (demo + nodelta);
- has both updated sound and graphical drivers (from the standard DX7 to the newest OpenGL and DX10 ones);
- has full native coding support (to even integrate some interesting frameworks and libraries) + NPL;
- can be customized in the way it parses code;
- the binary structure of the packages is known and can be manipulated easily;
- there are already edited headers for both Windows and Linux for things to work properly between both;
- it has a series of hidden things in the engine that can be brought to light and exploited for game changing features;
- it has a good anti-cheat (ACE and some other modifications that avoid engine exploits);
- it's extremely lightweight on its own (runs in any low-end system nowadays) and it still kicks some serious ass 15 years later;
- it's very easy and fast to actually prototype something for it and make it work (still easier and faster than any modern platform).

So anything that violates even one of the things above is bound to not be eligible for me to use in this project, and UT as it is right now is almost perfect for what I want to do all things considered, at least to prototype the first version of it and the whole concept behind what I want to do.

But then again. still vaporware and should be treated as such for the time being, I won't commit to do anything until I finish my other stuff and after I actually present any of it to public (I won't make the same mistakes that I did with the nali weapons series, at max if I manage to do it, I will only present it about 1 month before an actual public release, even because there are many things I want to implement and integrate and I don't know the full viability of all of it).
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Re: Question concerning Food Fight

Post by Dr.Flay »

Ah I see what you mean by standalone. Very-standalone with no prerequisites.
Hehe well maybe you can resurrect the use of the old pre-SDK mod. There are many cool features still in that.

It makes sense to use the UT demo as a base, because all the free U-engines are far too limiting for actual free usage.
Oh, the irony !
Medor made a very capable mini UT from this, and after-all UT is what you make it.

But there are many cool newer inventions for U1 that never get used.
Someone made dynamic water brushes, so we can make realistic water, but I have never seen it in use. We also rarely see moving or animated sky-boxes or vegetation.
We now have far more interactive and destroyable stuff than ever, and all sorts of weather and particle effects.
Being standalone also means you can use the "RMusicPlayer" to add the various audio clips you need, in any format.
(We need to get it recompiled with the newer FMOD code to work with the latest audio renderers).

I see your last point as the reason why many of us that should know better are still here !
The speed with which you can slap something together and test makes it hard to leave alone, and several of the added functions in UEd2.1 make things even faster (at least you can still use U227 for some editing)
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Feralidragon
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Re: Question concerning Food Fight

Post by Feralidragon »

I have some ideas for water and a few other things as well, but without needing a custom renderer and simply exploit what the engine can already do in conjunction with already existing render functions (but then again, first I need to do some experiments at native level...).

As for the pre-SDK mod, there's nothing there I can really reuse, to not mention that most of the features there I already implemented myself in my own way in NW3 itself, and although those kind of features will be present, I will actually going to remake most of them and make a whole new architecture (while some other features will be discarded).

So far, the only thing I will really miss from both U227 and UT SDK in my project is the ability to use static meshes (my project would greatly benefit on the usage of them), but there's really nothing I can do about those.
Other than that, every other feature they have I can either do in my own way for my project or I don't need them at all, as I will only add the features which actually make sense and which I am going to use myself in their fullest in the context of the final product, I won't waste time adding features or frameworks left and right to it that nor me nor anyone else will use in the end, even because if those features are not used by the developer right from the start in his own product(s), there's a very high chance no one ever will either.
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