Returning user

[CGMike]

Hi all,

I first started using RF a while ago... couple years, at least. Probably more. At the time I was really focusing on creating interesting environments with alot of atmosphere and found RF to be perfectly capable of this. I'd even shared a couple screenshots of my results at the time - though I have no idea where they are now.

I don't know why I stopped using it - I think I'd gone on to try out other commercial engines, such as Torque, 3DGS, C4, TV3D and some others. I've wasted alot of money lol... well, learned alot from trying each of those out, so I don't know if it was entirely wasted. To put a time-frame on when I last came around, RF2 was still in early discussion and I think there were 2 or 3 different people working out their own version of it.

In any case...

I decided to come back and see how the RF community was doin', if it's still alive and kickin' and, from what I can see it looks like y'all are still at it. That's great to see! I see some familiar names are still hanging around .

Not only that but it looks like RF has enjoyed a few significant updates along the way. I've seen some normal-mapping and a series of screenshots on the main page, in the upper-right corner that looks to be of some interesting stairway that leads up to an arch of some kind. All I know is it looks pretty high-poly and is something I don't think RF would have handled well back when I was using it (though I could be wrong). What is that shot from, what is it of? I mean, is that whole structure made from BSP brushes or is that a static-mesh dropped into a map? Whatever it is, it looks very cool.

Since I don't remember what it had or what was still coming when I last checked it out, could someone provide me a broad-stroke overview of some of the most significant updates to RF in the past couple years or so? Also, I notice there are still 3 editors - have any of them been given full support as an "official" editor yet, or are they all still pretty equally supported?

Thanks for the time and info!

-Mike

[Juutis]

Welcome back! ( ... though I'm probably not the right person to say that since I wasn't around here back then )

You mean Image of the Week 10 (IOTW010) with the screenshot, right?
I believe that is from the game 'Destruction Of Johnny Folsom' by Tabulanis. He has indeed created some of the best visuals RF has ever seen! If I rememer correctly, he used staticmeshes with lighting baked to the textures. Though I'm not sure about the scene in this particular picture...
The project website: http://www.frogfaith.com/folsom/index.html

[Jay]

The 'official' editor is RFEditPro, the one that came with RF, but you can still use all of them to make your game

Oh and yes, Tabulanis game "Destruction of Johnny Folsom" really has one of the best visuals in RF - There is sooo much atmospere in those screens!
There also seem to be some other great games that are made with RF at the moment.

[scott]

wel updates since a couple of years ago, hmm, rf can now be compiled for free by programmers, multiplayer is half working, a few bug fixes i belive, to be honest i cant think of much, hardware t & l has been restarted, physics never got implemented due to bugs thats about it i think and welcome back

[QuestOfDreams]

Wellcome back!

Here's a list of changes since March 2005, more can be found in the Changelog document included in the RF installer...

February 01/2007 (RF v0.75C)
1) Replaced MFC with STL and WinAPI functions
2) Added VC++ 2005 project files (source code can be compiled with VC++ 6 or VC++ 2005)
3) Bug Fixes: random crashing when loading saved games; driver selection dialog; camera rotation when switching between menu and game; player scale in multiplayer games;
4) Added script commands asin, acos, atan
5) Changed behaviour of (imploding) shockwave particle system (ParticleSystemProxy)
6) Changed LOD calculation of StaticMesh entity

September 20/2006 (RF v0.75B)
1) Fixed memory leaks in: ActorManager, FlipTree entity, script command hash table
2) Fixed linked list in ActorManager

August 10/2006 (RF v0.75A)
1) Bug Fixes: x-rotation in pawn command Rotate; high/low value limits in pawn command AddAttribute; StaticMesh entities not rendering during conversations; actorspray/actorspout base rotation now expected in degrees as specified in the docs; unpredictable behaviour when colliding with planes pointing in negative y-direction;
2) Added usedirectinput option in RealityFactory.ini file to disable the use of DirectInput, detailed logging only if option logging is set to true.
3) Added flipindicator option to HUD elements
4) New script commands SetAttributeValueLimits, RightCopy, NearestPoint, SetFOV, sin, cos, tan; new pawn variables player_animation, player_viewpoint
4) Morphing of alpha channels in EM_Morph entity
6) Updated VideoSetup utility
7) Fixed rendering of actor polys on some NVIDIA graphics cards in D3D7x driver

December 15/2005 (RF v0.75)
1) RF code layout overhaul for better legibility
2) Bug Fixes: 1st person camera flickering; # of weapon slots not matching # of weapon IDs; shots not showing on all walls; multiple LiftBelt entities causing a crash; incorrect force update in LiftBelt entity; inventory initialization; incorrect rotation in pawn commands; memory leaks in FlipTree and Foliage entities; Doors not reversing on collision;
3) Many new script commands (LevelController; high level, low level, conversation)
4) Changed argument list (!!) of script commands SetAttribute, GetAttribute, ModifyAttribute, PositionToPlayer
5) PowerUp option for Attributes
6) Fade out/fade in effect for Teleporter, Teleporter generating callback on collision, UseAngle option for TeleportTargets
7) CheckRange option for FixedCamera entity
8) Hanging option for Foliage
9) Allowing multiple lines in messages
10) Separate starting levels and shadow options for selectable characters
11) Self to type playername (can be inserted automatically into message/conversation texts)
12) Changed geXForm3d_Translate in Genesis3D

March 10/2005 (RF v0.72A)
1) stencil shadow support
2) bug fixes in Genesis3D (actor lighting, ...)
3) changed actor rendering pipeline in Genesis3D

[CGMike]

Hey all..

Thanks for the welcome backs!

And wow.. lots of interesting updates in there. Can't say I understand all of them but some of them seem quite nice. I guess I should have been more specific in my request for major updates... as in exactly what kind I was interested in :-p. My bad.

I was mostly interested in things in terms of rendering and/or content pipelines... ie. is RF on DX9, have things been done to increase poly-counts and such in a level.. Or is most of that going to be saved for RF2? Are any new 3D formats supported etc... For me, two things always turn me away from an engine.. Either it has a poor, or too-limited asset pipeline (ie. only has direct support for Maya, or Softimage - everything else requiring a number of converters that only do part of the job well... Or requires programming knowledge to achieve even the most basic tasks.. such as being able to run around in an environment you just created. From what I remember, I didn't deal with 3D geometry so much outside the actual BSP brushes.. but would like to delve into that more.

Anyone here using Blender3D for their content? Curious how well a terrain mesh made in Blender3D would work in RF...

I'll have to download and see if I can't jump back in.

Thanks again!

[QuestOfDreams]

No, there haven't been any changes to the rendering engine except for the rendering pipeline of actors, which didn't behave properly when actors got to close to the camera. This has been fixed and the possibility for stencil shadows and dot3 bumpmapping were added for actors.
However, I've recently restarted the development of a DirectX9 renderer and hope to complete this task till the end of this year. This is currently my top priority task regarding the development of RF.
Further development will depend on the progress of the RF 2 project.