Anyone interested in client development?

[PixelEngineer]

[Amer]

Pretty awesome! Nice work Pixel.

[rhyotte]

Looking good! Hurry up with a full blow Linux Client!

[PixelEngineer]

Originally Posted by rhyotte

Looking good! Hurry up with a full blow Linux Client!

I will definitely make this client run on Linux. This was pretty much a complete rewrite of the Lantern engine. I decided to work on OSX in the beginning because:

1) I wanted to learn Xcode and the OSX filesystem
2) OSX annoyingly only supports up to GLSL 1.2

Rather that work backwards in compatibility, I just wrote shaders that ran on the least compatible system. Get your stuff together OSX devs.

The next step is models and animation (probably will be done in 1-2 weeks). I will also figure out a compatible way to translate the model animations to a standard format to help those devs that have the Unity project going. Who would have though it would be easier in some respects to write an engine rather than one as capable as Unity

Cheers!

[KLS]

Both Lion and Mountain Lion both support up to OpenGL 3.2 with GLSL 1.5.

It's honestly pretty shitty support as 3.3 has been out for over two years and they don't support any of the 4.x profiles (derp) but not quite as bad as being stuck on 2.1.

[PixelEngineer]

Originally Posted by KLS

Both Lion and Mountain Lion both support up to OpenGL 3.2 with GLSL 1.5.

It's honestly pretty shitty support as 3.3 has been out for over two years and they don't support any of the 4.x profiles (derp) but not quite as bad as being stuck on 2.1.

[KLS]

https://developer.apple.com/graphics...1074_Core.html

Something is messed up with your setup.

[Tabasco]

It would probably be more valuable to make a client that can authenticate and enter a world first. From there you can just use placeholders as you develop your modelling pipeline. At that point you have the real beginnings of a functional client instead of a model viewer.

The work on the various file formats is excellent, but considering that eqemu is probably the most successful open source MMO, a client that doesn't have a bunch of non-free attachment or lawsuit risk would be incredible.
Asset creation is daunting but at the point you have a cube running around inside a box and can see and interact with other cubes, community involvement would probably take over. You could even borrow quite a bit from a place like opengameart.org. Asset creation is hard, but it's a process, and if I can model and rig a character in blender, anyone can.

[PixelEngineer]

Originally Posted by Tabasco

It would probably be more valuable to make a client that can authenticate and enter a world first. From there you can just use placeholders as you develop your modelling pipeline. At that point you have the real beginnings of a functional client instead of a model viewer.

The work on the various file formats is excellent, but considering that eqemu is probably the most successful open source MMO, a client that doesn't have a bunch of non-free attachment or lawsuit risk would be incredible.
Asset creation is daunting but at the point you have a cube running around inside a box and can see and interact with other cubes, community involvement would probably take over. You could even borrow quite a bit from a place like opengameart.org. Asset creation is hard, but it's a process, and if I can model and rig a character in blender, anyone can.

If I am not mistaken, this was the basis for Windcatcher's Simple Client. That project was fantastic but I would really love to support the actual zones of EverQuest and I don't think it would be legally problematic unless copyrighted materials were modified.

Take a look at all of these open source engine recreations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine_recreation

I doubt very many of them have run into legal trouble. That being said, I am really not that far away from the transition between zone viewer to client. I realize how much work will need to get done for it to be a full blown client but it is still a goal will work towards. I can't wait for the day when I can stop working on the graphics side and focus on the actual client game programming.

My posting the link to reddit wasn't the greatest idea (especially on my actual account) but I was proud of what I had and wanted to share. I think people there are hopeful for what this project can really be, as am I. Regardless, I want my contribution to this community to be an open source client that people can use for whatever they want.

Cheers

[Tabasco]

You've got plenty to be proud of, the engine is good work. It's not precisely open source at this point, but that's your call.

We have no way of knowing whether or not SOE will pull a page from Blizzard's playbook, but that's not the point. Eqemu is a server framework that can be devoid of non-free content but it's bound to a non-free, evolving client.
Windcatcher's client was in delphi and never worked without a custom login server as far as I know, so it's a pretty poor example.
I just hate to see a promising project consumed by the hassles of backward compatibility with a client that already does a pretty good job of representing the nostalgia of classic EverQuest.

[PixelEngineer]

Originally Posted by Tabasco

You've got plenty to be proud of, the engine is good work. It's not precisely open source at this point, but that's your call.

We have no way of knowing whether or not SOE will pull a page from Blizzard's playbook, but that's not the point. Eqemu is a server framework that can be devoid of non-free content but it's bound to a non-free, evolving client.
Windcatcher's client was in delphi and never worked without a custom login server as far as I know, so it's a pretty poor example.
I just hate to see a promising project consumed by the hassles of backward compatibility with a client that already does a pretty good job of representing the nostalgia of classic EverQuest.

The client isn't open source because I am ironing out the ugly details in my code. Any programmer of an open source program knows that it is often a daunting process of sending your code out for public scrutiny.

I understand the concerns of backwards compatibility but here's my thoughts:
- I want this project to be compatible with old hardware.
- I want to have this client run as fast as possible.
- I want this client to run on all platforms (including Android and iOS)

and most importantly,

- I want this project to teach me about graphics and game programming.

That's about it. I do appreciate the feedback and criticisms.

Cheers

[PiB]

First poster here, also working on re-creating a EQ client using OpenGL. Seems to be a popular pastime here

PixelEngineer, are you using backface culling? I have tried to turn it on but this removes a lot of faces that should be visible:



When backface culling is disabled:



Looks like the normals and winding order of many faces are wrong in the s3d files. Or maybe there's some flag to invert them that I overlooked? In Blender, the normals of the Pedestal are pointing down instead of up:



I could just leave it disabled but this sometimes causes z-fighting (look at the water in the second image).

[rhyotte]

Cannot wait for the open source linux client!

[PixelEngineer]

The zones were originally written for rendering with DirectX and it differs from OpenGL on the direction of the Z axis. Scaling your model view projection matrix by -1 in the Z direction. Then you need to make the front face wind clockwise and cull the back face. That should do it.

Are you using Blender for viewing the models or are you using it as your graphics engine?

The more projects the merrier. If you are interested in helping, I will hustle and get this github. Regardless, the more information that is out there, the better.

Cheers

[PiB]

I was flipping Z before but not setting the winding order so that's why I was surprised when half of the scene disappeared when I tried to turn on face culling! It seems to work fine now.

I started this project by writing a Python script to load WLD data like zones, zone objects, characters, skeletons etc and import it to Blender as a kind of prototype. When this worked well enough I rewrote the code in C++ and used OpenGL. But I kept the scripts around which can be handy for debugging sometimes.

The more the merrier, I agree! I will upload this code to GitHub too so we can share the code and information.

There are some features you mentioned I haven't got around to do yet (properly supporting transparency, animated textures, minor things like sky box...). How is your work on animations/skeletons going? I am currently trying out different ideas for implementing lighting, it's not as straightforward as I thought it would be.