I am so happy this engine is back!

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technodisco
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I am so happy this engine is back!

Post by technodisco » 2019-07-24 20:09:16

I am quite happy this is back. This is awesome. I remember using Genesis3D in 2006. I wonder if any of you still use it yourself and have any resources to offer to get back into gear with it?

Thank you Orf for starting this again! This is very cool.

Orf
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Re: I am so happy this engine is back!

Post by Orf » 2019-07-29 16:38:47

Welcome back Technodisco!

A lot has changed in the past 20+ years to which I would imagine that you could count the number of people who use Genesis3D on one hand. I run the website and *I* don't even use it! lol

But that's kind of the point. This used to be a very vibrant community and it'd be cool to get back to that state once more. I personally owe my entire career to this engine as starting with it led to my time working at WildTangent and continuing on in the game industry afterwards as a lead tools developer. My goal in all things is to provide the best tools I can to enable others and that's the approach I'm taking here as well.

I'm done fixing the forums, got a new logo done that looks pretty good... and I just finished modernizing the website as a whole and removing dead links and such. Next I need to switch to a new webhost (Bluehost -> A2Hosting) so I can run nodejs on the back end. That will allow me to templatize the website and write the API documentation web app for 3.0 which will serve as the direction for this opensource project. The 3.x license needs to go up (MIT or zlib, Most likely MIT), and of course getting the github repo up and running. Who knew there would be so much to do just building an ecosystem around an opensource project let alone the project itself!

And finally there's the matter of writing the engine itself! That's been stop and go for years so I have pieces of this and that laying around but for the most part it'll be a ground up re-write. So lots of fun to be had in the future.

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Akiko
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Re: I am so happy this engine is back!

Post by Akiko » 2019-09-26 15:35:38

Is there some interest in the guy who "hacked" a lot around in the Genesis3D parts (reverse engineering of Neocron) and who made a rushed Genesis3D 1.6 source Wine (Linux) port (here)?
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Ben
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Re: I am so happy this engine is back!

Post by Ben » 2019-10-01 21:14:23

Akiko wrote: 2019-09-26 15:35:38 Is there some interest in the guy who "hacked" a lot around in the Genesis3D parts (reverse engineering of Neocron) and who made a rushed Genesis3D 1.6 source Wine (Linux) port (here)?
... and what about the guy who is actively working on that game and engine? :D here

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Akiko
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Re: I am so happy this engine is back!

Post by Akiko » 2019-10-02 07:17:46

Ben wrote: 2019-10-01 21:14:23
Akiko wrote: 2019-09-26 15:35:38 Is there some interest in the guy who "hacked" a lot around in the Genesis3D parts (reverse engineering of Neocron) and who made a rushed Genesis3D 1.6 source Wine (Linux) port (here)?
... and what about the guy who is actively working on that game and engine? :D here
I once was part of the NST and the climate was bad. Is there still this lead who was such a big MS and C# fanboy?
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Ben
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Re: I am so happy this engine is back!

Post by Ben » 2019-10-02 19:45:07

Akiko wrote: 2019-10-02 07:17:46
Ben wrote: 2019-10-01 21:14:23
Akiko wrote: 2019-09-26 15:35:38 Is there some interest in the guy who "hacked" a lot around in the Genesis3D parts (reverse engineering of Neocron) and who made a rushed Genesis3D 1.6 source Wine (Linux) port (here)?
... and what about the guy who is actively working on that game and engine? :D here
I once was part of the NST and the climate was bad. Is there still this lead who was such a big MS and C# fanboy?
Thank you for the valueable contribution to that topic.

Neocron's engine "Tekktonik" is indeed based on G3D 1.x and more or less heavily altered. There are two "new" renderer for Dx7 and Dx9 but these new drivers came with a price: The loss of the backward compatibility to the software, glide and ogl renderer sadly ;/
The current engine is called "Pegasus" which is an another iteration of "Tekktonik" / "Genesis3D" with higher colorprecision and texture resolution. A new Dx11 driver with shader support is also in the work but its progressing actually slowly since there are things that enjoy some higher prio.

Some screenshots:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CI30f1cWcAA ... ame=medium
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIv3VRaWoAA ... ame=medium

Dx11 Prototype:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1J_maFXAAA ... ame=medium

I never thought that Genesis3D would have its comeback but I really appreciate this move :D

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Akiko
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Re: I am so happy this engine is back!

Post by Akiko » 2019-10-04 16:48:58

Ben wrote: 2019-10-02 19:45:07 Thank you for the valueable contribution to that topic.
Yeah, you're right actually, ignore my ramblings. This is just pure frustration speaking out of me. I really wanted to help and contribute back then, but got blocked all the time. Is that better now?
Ben wrote: 2019-10-02 19:45:07 Neocron's engine "Tekktonik" is indeed based on G3D 1.x and more or less heavily altered. There are two "new" renderer for Dx7 and Dx9 but these new drivers came with a price: The loss of the backward compatibility to the software, glide and ogl renderer sadly ;/
I started playing and reverse engineering around Neocron Beta 3. So if I write about Neocron I really mean Neocron 1 up to patchlevel 200. I never got used to the new player models in Neocron 2, they just do not matched the rest of the game. Though I really liked the introduction of the Hacknet. Well, Neocron are actually two engines, the Genesis3D fork being the indoor-engine and some highmap rendering engine being the outdoor-engine. Even starting from the first betas OpenGL and Glide never worked, so this is not an issue of the newer renderers.
Ben wrote: 2019-10-02 19:45:07 The current engine is called "Pegasus" which is an another iteration of "Tekktonik" / "Genesis3D" with higher colorprecision and texture resolution. A new Dx11 driver with shader support is also in the work but its progressing actually slowly since there are things that enjoy some higher prio.
Yeah, I also had quite some fun developing other rendering techniques. Baking some texture right into the BSP tree was a weird idea ... 256 color textures .. hehe.

But the really impressive part of Neocron is how it dynamically handles the zones and network connections. I know this feature was broken for a long time, but Neocron is able to move connected players from a crashing zone into a new one, which gets spawned nearly instantly. The network part was quite impressive.
Ben wrote: 2019-10-02 19:45:07 I never thought that Genesis3D would have its comeback but I really appreciate this move :D
That got my by surprise too, so I hope the new cross-platform support brings some nice OpenGL, or even better, Vulkan support.
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Orf
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Re: I am so happy this engine is back!

Post by Orf » 2019-10-04 18:36:56

Some screenshots:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CI30f1cWcAA ... ame=medium
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIv3VRaWoAA ... ame=medium

Dx11 Prototype:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C1J_maFXAAA ... ame=medium

I never thought that Genesis3D would have its comeback but I really appreciate this move :D
I did go hunting for Screenshots when I saw your post; I remember Neocron from back in the day!
That got my by surprise too, so I hope the new cross-platform support brings some nice OpenGL, or even better, Vulkan support
Still in the planning stages but it will be Vulkan based.

The big players like Microsoft and Apple want to wall their garden with platform specific APIs like Direct3D and Metal but Vulkan (and MoltenVK) to lock you in to one ecosystem or the other unless you spend invest more to support multiple APIs. Vulkan solves all that. There's just no point in separate drivers for D3D and OpenGL these days like there was in the old Genesis days as cool as it was. Just write in Vulkan, get cross platform support, move on with life. Link with MoltenVK to convert the engine to Metal and get on Mac and iOS.

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Akiko
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Re: I am so happy this engine is back!

Post by Akiko » 2019-10-05 06:37:51

Orf wrote: 2019-10-04 18:36:56 Vulkan solves all that. There's just no point in separate drivers for D3D and OpenGL these days like there was in the old Genesis days as cool as it was.
This is not entirely true. If you pick Vulkan only you exclude most if not all BSD variants and some of them utilize the Linux 4.4+ DRM subsystem, so you get at least OpenGL 4+. Same is true for Haiku (the BeOS clone) or even AmigaOS 4. And including these targets makes sense, because all of them are based on the same open-source tools. The best option is still OpenGL. Doing Vulkan only can be tricky, too. Getting something done using Vulkan is lucky much more easier now a days. But getting it done right, can be a nightmare. Look at the game X4 : Foundations from Egosoft. This is a big game done Vulkan only from the start. It looks fine, but the performance is bad with some really awful performance spikes in both directions. (hint: in Vulkan with memory management everything falls)
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