cloning DBTS

[shui]

How hard would it be to clone DBTS? It seems to me that we have a nearly complete understanding of every file except the exe, and we do fully understand their modern counterparts. As for the exe, everything inside it has been duplicated and improved upon in open source games except VSIM, which doesn't seem all that complicated to me.
Imagine taking the mouse's usual full range of motion, being a rectangle the size of your screen. Then curve it to form a half sphere. Place Enric inside this half-sphere so that his right shoulder is in the exact center. The model for his arm is already jointed and already has a realistically limited range of movement, so if you cause his sword to always point at the mouse, won't that accurately emulate VSIM mouse control? Joystick should also be easy as it can be based directly on the mouse. For keyboard, just assign each of the keys to a point on this sphere.
Wouldn't that work?

[Hazard]

Yes, it would be possible. I already though about doing this just to see if i'm able to get any useable result. But this is quite a huge project and needs alot of time. more time than i have at hand currently.
And i still have to finish the map editor... It's development is currently (just temporarily) suspended in favor of the Supreme Commander map editor. It's a shame that time is so damn limited.

But this is definately on my list of cool stuff to do as a vacation project. ^^

[shui]

Yeah, I'm rather low on time at the moment myself. Certainly for anything of that scale. And my past programming experience mostly consists very simple stuff, and of changing values in ROMs.
I would like to do this eventually tho, if no one else does first. There's a lot of room for improvement in the game, and an open source clone would be awesome.

[jonne_b]

I'm not entirely sure about this, but I think the source SDK is free to use and release for no-comercial games. (Free to use as long as you own halflife 2, the games u make however can be played by anyone as long as they are non comercial)

So it should make things a bit easier if you don't have to program a new engine to do this, the source engine is as far as I can tell VERY easily tweakable for whatever needs you might have.

So making a remake of die by the sword in source engine could work out Guess models and texturing is what would require some amount of work, the physics engine is already there and just needs some tweaking but it should undoubtly be able to handle dbts-like force physics

[nihilocrat]

Hey, I'm copying this over from my greeting post on the Registration board...

I'm in the process of making a DbtS-inspired game, not really a clone though, except for the controls and dismemberment. Currently it's just barely started and I'm concentrating on getting arena play going, at first with just AI opponents to keep me amused (working on a game that's playable in some way gives me motivation to keep going) but of course later with multiplayer.

If you were wondering, it's not too hard to work out the arm control, it's just a matter of getting it as fluid as VSIM does it, with the bending of joints and such, as well as understanding the idiosyncracies. Right now I'm keeping the control a little ham-handed and silly looking (when you swing you are just sort of waving your sword around, not really swinging) but I figure I'll tack on the improvements later once I get it playable.

Once I get the arena mode completely tacked down (just sword+board for now), I'll expand the varieties of weapons and armor and try to work out proper controls for two-handed weapons, hafted weapons (axes, polearms), and in the far future when I can integrate with a good physics engine, chained weapons like flails. Apart from arena, I have ideas for making single / co-op dungeon crawl play a la Diablo or Nethack, with randomly generated dungeons, but that's quite a ways off.

I'm working on it in Panda3d, a Python-based engine with a focus on rapid development, and using (ripped) models from Mount & Blade. I'm not sure if it would be any easier or harder using a more impressive engine, but performance would probably be better (Python is admittedly slow, even after using the Psyco JIT compiler). I might move it to another engine if I get it beyond the prototype stage.

Anyhow, I'll throw up a page and post a link sometime soon. Right now I just want to work on it myself and release it only when I get to the stage where you can fight AI. I'm not sure if I want to go freeware or open source with it, but if I get distracted and stop working on it for a month or so I'll try to remember to release the source.

Right now I'm not at home but I bet I'll have some time on Monday to make some screenshots and put together a simple page for it. Right now I've got it so you can wave your sword around (not really swing it) and kill any of several stationary enemies who currently only know how to turn and face you at all times. The only critical things I need to finish at the moment are blocking (need to figure out the code for blocking a sword with a sword, or sword with a shield) and making the enemy AI playable. I will probably be able to put together a very simplistic limb hacking mechanism (the appendages will just fall off, no fancy physics) pretty quickly, and after I make these changes I think I'll release a version to the public. "Release early, release often" as Eric Raymond says.

[nihilocrat]

Lookie here! http://nil.cjb.net/svartridder

Once I get 0.0.1 out I think I will post to the Panda3D forums and perhaps the Mount & Blade forums.

[nihilocrat]

'svartridder' is the codename for a game I'm working on in Python with Panda3D. It is meant to closely emulate the realistic, force-based, full-control combat in Die by the Sword. Namely, the weapon-arm of your character is directly controlled by your mouse movment; to execute a horizontal slash, instead of pressing a button and seeing your character play a prerecorded animation, you move your mouse from the right of the screen quickly to the left.

If you were wondering, "svartridder" means "BlackKnight" in Norwegian... not really grammatically correct but I wanted a handy codename, and the dismemberment theme made me think of the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Here's a shot of a guy standing around in his own limbs:


You can download 0.0.0 here:
http://nihilocrat.p3dp.com/

Please give me any feedback about the controls or really anything else. Please remember this is just a techdemo really, and is not meant to be complete in any way.

I am guilty of ripping the models and the slashing-sounds (but not the groans of pain!) from Mount & Blade. If you can point me to any decent-quality placeholder art which is free to use, please do so; I couldn't really find anything decent in a format I could convert to Panda3D eggs on my own. It is also a medieval combat game (with a focus on mounted combat) in a similar vein, but with more traditional controls. Please check it out, it is an excellent game, pimping it will improve my karma

[Hazard]

Great stuff! Looks promising! I'll definately check it out later when i'm back from work.

[Agathul]

Tried it and liked the initial feeling, I'm sure you get the DBTS feel or something better with some fine-tuning. As for the graphics, models etc... I'd like to know more which direction you are going with this, shearing off some ears from elves or just plain gritty medieval realism?

[Fred187]

Anybody still interested in doing something like this? I have some modest (but fast-developing) modelling skills. If we could get a decent enough team together, then we could embark on a full-blown remake/'inspired' project. Anybody about?

[udm]

I'm decent at 3d modelling too. If anyone wants to have a hand at this, I'll be willing to help out too.

[Fred187]

Ok, that's 2. Anyone else?

[Raptor]

Lol, just tried the 0.0.0 and I lol'd. It's pretty impressive. I kinda raged after I cut my own arm off and hten killed myself xD. Pretty osom stuff. Can't wait on a more final product if you do keep working on it.

Also, place here died down quick after the release of the Xtended mod

[MelDoRg]

What's about this funny game guys? )