RF, RF2, and Terra Trooper

Agentarrow · Post by **Agentarrow** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 4:55 am

Well, my team agrees that RF alone will not be able to do all of terra trooper, so we were going to do part of the game in RF and part in the unfinished RF2. However we do have some qs
1) Will RF2 be compatible with RF?
2) will it be able to render larger areas than RF?
3) are the graphics improved?
4) will it require a better computer than RF?
5) Would it be good to do part of a game in each? like smart, or dumb?

Post by **Jay** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 12:07 pm

2.) yes
3.) yes
4.) RF2's rendering is different from RF's rendering as RF2 will use up to the whole capacity of your graphics card, while RF(1) makes very limited use of your graphics card right now. So you cannot say that directly. RF2 will certainly NOT need a better computer for the same rendering quality as RF(1).

About the other two i am not sure.

Post by **paradoxnj** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 1:37 pm

To answer your question about RF2 using RF1 content...

You will be able to convert actors using Milkshape.

To convert levels, you use RFEditPro and export to 3DS. Then extract all textures from your TXL file. Use 3ds2mesh to convert the level to an Ogre mesh. Copy the resulting mesh into the meshes folder, copy the resulting material to the material/scripts folder. Copy all textures to the materials/textures folder. I will have to see how to extract the light data and the entity data. You can also use the .map file then convert to a Quake 3 BSP file and use that in RF2.

I converted rfdemov1 as a test and got this (used my own skybox):

Post by **paradoxnj** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 10:30 pm

I tested the process again just to make sure and it works fine. Here is a shot of rftechv1.

Agentarrow · Post by **Agentarrow** » Sun Oct 14, 2007 7:05 am

could someone like andy shed some light here?

Post by **paradoxnj** » Sun Oct 14, 2007 2:51 pm

Shed some light on what? I thought I was clear in saying that you will be able to use your content. Screenshots show 2 RF1 levels loaded in RF2. What more do you need?

Agentarrow · Post by **Agentarrow** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 4:08 am

guess you're right...

scott · Post by **scott** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 9:03 pm

huh, im confused, anyhow, have you tried reality factory for your game, you say its not powerful enough, in my opinion it is, you got to know the right things though but this will defenetly be the same with RF2, DX9 is hopefuly going to be done soon, this will make RF more powerful for those people who cant b arsed to try that bit harder, i loaded a model of mine, its a 30,000 poly city and RF ran absolutly fine for me, this is just a single model, and because the way RF handls the pollys it cant optomize it like it does with bsp geomerty, my suggestion is make as much as you can and try it in RF as you may be suprised how good it is, RF2 will just make it easier in some areas but wont make your game look any better.

Agentarrow · Post by **Agentarrow** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 9:35 pm

See, the thing is, I cant have a large battlefield like we had originally planned

scott · Post by **scott** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 9:43 pm

size is relative, i was making a demo tot prove it but never got round to finishing it, i know RF can handle big areas, as big as the battlefeild arenas, the main problem with size is the editer not the engine.

you have to make everything for it anyway, basicly get a level dsign, dont just go into it make everything and put it in a big level as you go, it will look poor, plan it out, once you have planed it out, scan he plan in or open it up in photoshop or anything that can make a grid over an image, this will split the level up into sections and what ever is in each section you make as a seperate level in the RF editor, once you have done that merge all your levels into one offseting the position each time so they are next to each other.

Agentarrow · Post by **Agentarrow** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 9:48 pm

interesting, I also remember that if I scale down the textures and the player, I can have a normal room that seems huge. I did this in one level to expirament.

scott · Post by **scott** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 9:50 pm

yea that aswel, unfortunatly i also tried this, i tried to scale my city up and scale the player down but was unsucessfull because milkshape wouldnt make the model big enough and i couldnt scale the player small enough without getting errors as the city is HUGE

Post by **paradoxnj** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 9:52 pm

DX9 is hopefuly going to be done soon, this will make RF more powerful for those people who cant b arsed to try that bit harder

This is not entirely true. While it will make things a bit better, there are other things that need to be done in order to compete with today's engines. For example, hardware transformation and lighting, render to texture, point sprites, shaders, etc... Also, DX9 != More Polys. Genesis changing its rendering style will introduce more polys. Let me tell you...that is no small task. Jet3D is basically the same codebase of G3D and it took over a year to implement a D3D9 driver and another 3 years to change it's rendering functions. We are still not done (although very close). I currently have a team of 3 working on this now, I had a team of 6 when it started.

Scorch · Post by **Scorch** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 11:58 pm

hmm veary interesting... interesting indeed.... lol

Agentarrow · Post by **Agentarrow** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 12:42 am

Scorch! good to see you. You should be on more. Also good to see that you got rid of Andy's avater.
plus, you need to copy this text into your signature http://agentarrow1.googlepages.com/aa_test3.gif then put [img]at%20the%20front%20and[/img] at the end.

that way you're showing off that you're on my team