The Third Reich: Classic

[Reno]

Initially, I\'d hoped to get this announced sooner, and get some content posted with it, but a few remaining bugs stopped me from getting it together in a timely manner.
Having said that, I\'d like to let everyone know about TTR: Classic.

What is it?
Simply put, it\'s going to be a remastered version of the original TTR. Most of the old content will be directly ported into Torque, and anything absolutely requiring polish will get some TLC to bring everything up to bar. Think in similar terms of HL1 being updated to HL: Source.

In specific terms, many problems that plagued the original TTR due to engine limitations, such as collisions will be properly resolved. The maps will be worked over and tweaked so they all carry a fairly similar level of quality and detailing, and elements that were slated to be included, such as bug fixes and minor gameplay tweaks will be integrated.

Once it becomes more solid, I\'ll follow with a changelog/update list indicating differences between the original and Classic.

I\'d also like to let you all know that TTR Arena will be directly integrated into the game and expanded.

Why\'s this being done?
The new TTR game, that I\'ve been chugging on has been a bit of amorphous creature. Fixes, features, and additions being made to a broad spectrum of areas, from the engine to gameplay, levels to art. Given what the project was going to be, it\'s taking a fair bit of time to assemble, all the more so given the fact that other than occasional contributions, it\'s been a solo job. Its progressing, but it\'s still a ways out yet.

Given it\'s unstructured nature, I decided that it would be a good opportunity to take the existing work, and paring down to match the original TTR gameplay, and get a working rendition of the original, which comparitively, is a smaller product. It makes for a good point of consolidation, a more solid foundation, and a good way to keep things in scope of how TTR was, and will be, even as it expands and updates.
Quickly, this expanded to the point where if I was going to produce TTR99, but in the Torque engine, it\'d make sense to properly migrate it, and give it to you guys.
This gives you something to play, and can more directly contribute to the development of TTR going forward.

As things get closer, I\'ll do a suggestions pass at any minor grievances and bugs that people are aware of, and like to see tweaked/fixed, but feel free to busy up the Ideas and Suggestions board in the meantime.

Feel free to comment, and let me know what you think. Any suggestions for tweaks or improvements on Classic itself should be done in the Ideas and Suggestions section.

Thanks,

-Reno

[Smithcraft]

Sounds awesome Reno!

Will it be cross platform, or Windows only?

I\'ll try to think of stuff to tweak or grumble about.

SC

[LivingTarget]

Wow it\'s a blast from the past! I didn\'t actually consider that you might still be working on this.

How much of it is portable over easily? Are you recreating it or are you just exporting and importing?

I might still have the ut2k4 build floating around, not sure if there\'s anything salvagable from there. Maybe some artwork.

Even releasing just one map might be a benificial goal. Just trying to get one solid map (I vote das boot lol cus I loved that map) and a minimal amount of content and we\'d be happily playing it.

[Reno]

Most of the art is going to be ttr99 build-era. I have a fair bit of assets that were intended for the old 2.0 build, and I\'m looking through that to see what is applicable or not, but for the most part, it\'ll be intentionally close to ttr99.

For the maps themselves, I\'m still trying to decide how close to replicate them. I could do basically a straight port, having about the same geometry for the buildings and stuff, with obvious mandatory updates for terrain and foliage; or I could take the opportunity to actually up the detail a little bit. The issue is, the weapons and players would be ttr99 assets still, so making the enviornments more directly related to the ttr2k4 builds would kinda make a weird diffusion to the art style.

The maps I was shooting for for the first pass was going to be Brindisi, Das Boot, St Lo and Market Garden, as those seemed to be the most favorited. I\'m about half-done with recreating brindisi with 99\'s level of detail(with minor improvements like smoothed archways and the like).

For the weapons and players, the models and textures will be fairly close to straight-ports, but animations are going to be probably 70% or more overhauled/entirely new.
Part of it is because of how the animations are structured is very different from unreal99, the other part is taking the opportunity to smooth out the animations and make them look a little nicer.
Players will be full 3d bodies, first or third person. So you can at any time look down and see your character\'s body.
Weapons will like-wise be the full first-person level of detail(i\'m taking the First-person view models and rigging them up as the weapon model for first and third .

SC: Initially, it will be Windows only, partially because the Mac builds of T3D are lagging behind(they\'re in need of dedicated mac devs to get it up to speed)
Once a new version of the mac build is provided, Classic will see a Mac release as well.

[Smithcraft]

Is Market Garden going to be the same one from the beta release?

As for cross platform, I\'m cross platform also these days, but I know some that are not.

SC

[AN GOF.]

Hell yeah as you ppl on the other side of the pond say

[Reno]

It\'s a GOF!

SC: Ehh, similar, but polished. That was back long ago when I was still rather pretty terrible at the map-making side. I\'ve gotten a little better since then

[Smithcraft]

Excellent!

I\'m not sure I can think of things that really annoy me about TTR that aren\'t related to the crappy OS X UT99 app.

SC

[Big-Al]

I am in this excellent thread

[tomcat ha]

holy shit old people suddenly everywhere.

good to hear an update