Some comments on the current discussion on RTS.net (
http://www.realtimestrategies.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1266 , my login
there doesn't work anymore, thus I'll answer here. Perhaps someone with
a working RTS.net account can post a link to this mail later):
About Quake 2: The Quake 2 data format for the retail version is the
same as for the demo, you just have to copy it from the CD and the
engine can use it. The RPL movies are in a format we cannot play at the
moment, so to use them we have to implement a video decoder, either in
the engine itself or to convert them to a format the engine can play
(that'll have to be done as well first). Big difference.
Audio tracks: Grabbing the audio tracks is easy and could be done in an
installer (which has to be written as well, for every platform (and
possibly Linux distribution) separately). As a first step we can just
tell people how to rip and use the audio tracks (that was a recurring
question on the forum as well, so it's an ideal FAQ).
Use the game engine to create AVIs: The only advantage that has is
easier postprocessing. The disadvantages are: we still need a video
player in the engine, and the videos will be limited in quality (both by
the engine and video format constraints). If we can get the engine to
produce useful scenes, we can just output those directly, possibly with
some post-processing effects added.
Using mplayer code for OpenGL playback: mplayer will only serve as a
very rough guide for the implementation, we probably can't use much of
their code directly (there's just far too much stuff in mplayer that we
don't need).
Using Vorbis for movie audio: I guess that will not reduce development
time much, as video playback is different from sound effects - there's
not much code to reuse.
And finally about the divergence of the plans before the source release
and now: Well, the people who have actually done any work on the source
were not those who have made those plans. (I may have forgotten or
missed something, if so, please correct me.) Noid, who did the initial
Linux port, Rodzilla, Qamly, Per, Dennis, myself (and probably all
others I haven't mentioned) - all were attracked by Warzone being Open
Source, and haven't heard of RTS.net before December 6, 2004. (I'm not
sure about Troman and Karmazilla, I seem to remember they weren't really
involved with RTS.net as well, but that might be very wrong.)
--
How can you think and hit at the same time?
-- Yogi Berra
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