Van Buren tech demo

Thomas de Aynesworth said:
You're making an engine that can use 3D models from Van Buren, right Lexx?
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No, I am not a programmer. I am one of the workers on FOnline: 2238, but have nothing to do with the engine developement.

But yes, the FOnline engine supports Van Buren models (converted ones). Still, it's only a 2.5d engine and not a 3d one.
 
Elven6 said:
I guess it depends, what happened to a lot of the Black Isle/Interplay stuff after the closure? If they were sold off to pay for the debt, I'd assume those that bought the equipment probably wiped the HDD's down or don't even realize there is data on them.
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A good deal of the graphical assets were purchased by Fergus, mainly those developed by his team before any of the beth deals went down.

Most of the equipment was so old, we couldn't sell it. In fact, many of the drives, when turned off for the first time in a decade, locked into place.

Le Frog did request the web ASP files and the SQL databse for the website about a year after IPLY was locked.

We had a high quality (for 1998) automated tape backup that was never sold. One of the IT guys offered to store the massive machine in his garage (he lived close by), but he passed away last year so I don't know what happened to it.

We moved most of the equipment to one of those storage places, but le frog ran out of many before 2005. I strongly suspect, the IT manager shuttled them down to Le Frog's Hollywood home. He would not have let any working drive with IPLY data on it turn into vapor.


Elven6 said:
I'm kind of curious as to what happened to the Jefferson engine and if it was ever used in any projects after Van Buren.
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I don't believe so. By the time Interplay was locked by the federal marshals, Jefferson was past being State of the Art. I don't recall Fergus buying it, only the graphical assets.
 
I don't think Bethesda would be really against it. They did release the tools for their own games. They even supplied some tutorials for the GECK. They seem pretty supportive of mods and whatnot. If you say that you want it for a fan project, I don't see why they would object.

Recently, some dude even got an approval from Gearbox to remake Duke Nukem 3D on the Unreal engine. I don't think it's so unlikely for Bethesda to agree to release an old and now useless engine to a fan.
 
maximaz said:
I don't think it's so unlikely for Bethesda to agree to release an old and now useless engine to a fan.
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Someone asked them a while back and they said they were against releasing other people's property (as I said above).

I think they just despise the Fallout 1/2 fanbase in general. Or it might have something to do with Interplay owning the right to sell Fallout 1/2, because releasing the source code could help their sales? And from what we've seen Bethesda don't like Interplay that much either.
 
I dont think Bethesda has any grudge against the F1/F2 fanbase in general. They simply dont care in any way about it.

Also Bethesda is not a mod supporter if you ask me. I heard from several modders now that Bethesda never did anything really toward their direction. Like fixing bugs in the engine or something like that. Providing the tools which the developers had already (sorry but thats easy for them) and the one or other describtion ? Fine. But why had Fallout 3 the same issues modders had to deal with which have been already present in Oblivoin ? I am not a professional. Just a forum lurker and I read what modders writte and that was one part they feelt a bit unhappy. And its not like they never tried to make suggestions.

Bethesda can be happy to have such a strong modding comunity as many from the offer fixes that should have been there from the begining.
 
Well, they develop mainly for Xbawgs and there you (officially) can't use mods anyway, so why should they care.
 
I think contacting Fergus could be productive, he seems to be fairly decent person...but what assets that Obsidian do own (just the textures from Fallout 1 if I recall correctly) are probably only of any use for mods based on the Fallout 1/2 engine...and if thats the case then don't bother. People can build there own assets - models + textures. It's the scripting/programming that will be the key, get that right and the rest could be pulled from the Van Buren tech demo.

Of course the strength, and weakness of the first engine is that the assets are so modular - it might be tedious to actually build an environment, but you can mix a lot of variety into the location. The environments in VB seem to be individually modeled in 3d, then textured, lit, etc.

The main problem with the original Fallout engine is the limits to the actual amount of artworks the game can handle - 4096 individual pieces, modders have also discovered that there are limits for the amount of dialogues the game can handle...

The best bet is to use a free engine and recode the game with the assets from the Tech Demo, but it wont happen because the in general people aren't willing to put the time and energy (potentially 1000s of hours) into a project like this - you really need a team of dedicated crazies. To be honest I would be happy taking the VB assets (see below) and putting them into the original engine...and play the game as it was meant to be played - turn based + isometric. :)

testjunktownshacks.png
 
Many people are interested, but it will never happen. And even if it happens, it will need years until it most likely will be canned anyway.
 
I already have the framework of a good team, we're going to try to make it as close to the original teams plans as possible, which is why I'm trying to gain access to the original engine, for my team. Even if we can't gain access to it we'll work round it to bring F3/VB to the people, and I think we all deserve to have a chance to get our hands on a finished version of F3/VB, even if it is just completed by a ragtag group such as the one I am gathering.
 
Imagine if we got hold of that.... We could found a new game developer "No Mutants Allowed" I can see the dev-intro now: A mutant comes on screen, a spotlight gets shone on it, he gets chased off and as the light flashes over the screen, No Mutants Allowed appears... and that's all I got...
 
Yeah uhh this thread is so old the download links don't work anymore but I thought I'd at least try it.
On start up I get a Fatal Error message saying "Cannot Find Requested Mode".
What does that mean? Does it mean screen size? How do I fix?
 
Soggy-Mutant said:
Yeah uhh this thread is so old the download links don't work anymore but I thought I'd at least try it.
On start up I get a Fatal Error message saying "Cannot Find Requested Mode".
What does that mean? Does it mean screen size? How do I fix?
Click to expand...
Yo never mind I fixed it
 
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