Our ReVolt Pub

Posted: **25 Jan 2015, 21:01**

Phantom @ Jan 23 2015, 02:25 AM wrote: Would you allow them (or any other company) to monetize it someday with the agreement of receiving the proper credits as developers? Or is it your desire to keep RV out of the market?

Not that I want to give an answer again when I'm not asked (at least it keeps the discussion going

) but why does this question even matter in the current situation?

WGI won't give away their rights to the game in the forseeable future so unfortunately we'll be stuck with them for probably quite some time anyway.

And even once the rights switch owner, I'd say that at least half of the answer to this question depends on who that owner is (or rather how open minded he is regarding talking to the community/devs and finding a common ground).

Either way, I don't think its in anybody's interest that this game doesn't get any newcomers (for obvious reasons) but lets see what their response is

Posted: **26 Jan 2015, 00:29**

Why does this question even matter in the current situation?

It's in everybody's interest to know the point of view of the developers, and it is in everybody's interest to know if they don't want Re-Volt in the market. It is a key question for the future of this game. And yes it does matter to me in order to know if I should keep waiting for Re-Volt to be available via a major distributor or not.

Unlike you I tend to be an optimistic person, so I still have hope about this possibility and obviusly I would like this to happen at some point. With the great potential that this game has, our community wouldn't be dying right now if Re-Volt and especially Re-Volt 1.2 were better known and more popular.

It's not a problem of Re-Volt being an old game, it's a problem of Re-Volt being so unpopular and the fact that the players need to dive into these fansites to know the existence of the 1.2 patch. Re-Volt has the potential, it is a wonderful game, it is addictive, it is beautiful, I guarantee that new players love after trying it but not many people know it. The lack of players is our problem. We need more and bringing commercial position to this game will reactivate everything. I hope the developers understand this and agree with this.

If this game stops getting newcomers, this game dies for me. End of the road. New comers are the only reason that keep me tied to this community and my main source of motivation to play this game.

Everything I do related to this game is focused on them. Every single day I spend some time helping new players to play online, I love spending time with the new generations and I'd do anything to get more players to this game.

For us online players it's a key matter, if we don't have enough players we can't race, it's simple. And it's hard to get new ones because other games are tons of times more popular but we do our best to get new people. And yes, we get them and we wouldn't need to get them if this game had commercial influx. Because if you ask who promotes the game and the 1.2 patch nowadays it's us, the players. All the downloads for the 1.2 are not made alone, it's because every player does his best to invite friends and promote the Patch, which is unknown by almost everybody outside in the real world.

We can live without Re-Volt going back to the market if that's their choice but Imagine the possibilities if all this had the promotion it deserves. I still have the hope that one day things are going to change and Re-Volt will be commercial again or at least free but distributed properly.

And even once the rights switch owner, I'd say that at least half of the answer to this question depends on who that owner is (or rather how open minded he is regarding talking to the community/devs and finding a common ground).

You can't live under the excuse that everything depends on the company. You have to put your bit too if you're interested. But if they aren't.... well, that's what I'd like to know.

Posted: **26 Jan 2015, 00:52**

Phantom @ Jan 25 2015, 07:59 PM wrote: How can you say that it's in nobody's interest if this game gets any newcomers or not?

I think you misread what I said, namely the exact opposite of that statement (and for the exact reasons that you stated)

You can't live under the excuse that everything depends on the company. You have to put your bit too if you're interested. But if you aren't.... well, that's what I'd like to know.

I never said that everything depends on the company, just half of it (since this is requires two parties to become a reality).
And as a result of that I was merely questioning whether it makes sense to do this discussion now, when the future of the rights to the game is still completely unknown (for all we know, WGI could cling on them for the next ten years or so).

Other than that I agree with everything you said

Posted: **26 Jan 2015, 00:53**

@Phantom: Maybe you have misunderstood what Kenny wrote?

EDIT: Ok, Kenny beat me to it..

Posted: **26 Jan 2015, 02:34**

@Kenny: Ah, just noticed it, my fault sorry. Fixed that part.

I'm still waiting for an answer from Huki or Jig.

Posted: **26 Jan 2015, 04:18**

in the mean time we can do what jig is doing and help him in the project or so I think

Posted: **31 Jan 2015, 09:04**

Phantom @ Jan 23 2015, 02:25 AM wrote:That still doesn't answer my question so I'll make it more clear now for Huki and Jigebren.

Would you allow them (or any other company) to monetize it someday with the agreement of receiving the proper credits as developers? Or is it your desire to keep RV out of the market?

...if your idea is making this an "out-of-market" game with very few players because you don't like big communities (like a few people here think...) or because you don't like companies, an answer to this could make things a lot more clear about the future of RV.

It seems like you don't want to to talk about this, which makes me thing option 2 is the answer.

In fact I don't really understand why such questions occur, about staying "out-of-market", hating companies or big-community, etc. I presume that in one way or another they all are a direct consequence of the GOG issue, but I just don't remember us having ever made statements that can make you believe we even have a point of view about those questions...

The big-community argument is a point that has probably been fabricated by some haters on the GOG forum in a fit of rage. About staying "out-of-market" or hating companies, I think we've said already that trying to have Re-Volt published on GOG was originally our idea, and obviously our intention. Unless you don't call GOG a "company" you can see how void this point is.

And you're right, we actually don't want to start endless discussions about this, but you're wrong since there's no connection between this and making option 2 the answer. If we made any statement it will be over analysed, judged, deformed, and one day or another it will backfire, or if we simply change our mind we'll be accused not to meet our commitments. I'm answering here and now just to to avoid letting people fantasize about what they believe we think. But I think you should have understood by this time that we have no reason and no interest to make any public statement of this kind. It doesn't mean we have "secret plans" we don't want to talk about, it's just that any statement we make is also a loss of freedom for any future decision we may have to take eventually.

Posted: **31 Jan 2015, 19:18**

I know you haven't made statements about staying out of the market or disliking companies but your silence about everything that was happening with gog and wego put put doubts in some of us, and the fact that some haters have expressed their preference for small communities and dislike for big communities in several occasions didn't help either. But yes, you're not far from the truth, in one way or another they all are a direct consequence of the GOG issue, so it was just an idea that came to my mind to think that you may prefer to eternally postpone the re-release of Re-Volt commercially even if a new opportunity involving some company may appear again.
I forgot to say in my previous post that I agree with ThugsRook that we both won and lost with what happend at the end with GOG, more lost than won and what we need is a fresh influx of players. I hope there's a second chance for Re-Volt on GOG someday, next time with your deserved credits as the real developers.

Since you gave me no actual answer now, we'll know what it is when the time comes.

Posted: **01 Feb 2015, 01:44**

One last word. I wonder what you think occurred after the GOG issue... that the involved company(ies) have finally asked us to make a real deal, and that we have refused their proposal because we wanted to postpone the commercial re-release of Re-Volt or whatever? If it's the case you'd better forget about this idea. We've always been pushing toward a GOG release, and if this plan failed the way we all know, it's only the fault of the ones who mismanaged it, not ours as we were not even involved (except from the fact that our idea and the product of our work have been used). And as far as I can remember, when it was still time to repair the damage there have been no actual effort or proposition except from our side. Now, making another decent release is definitely not our decision but the IP owner's, so it's not as if the ball were really in our court.

Posted: **02 Feb 2015, 17:58**

Since this appears to be moving away from windows-specific roots (or at least away from DirectX), does this mean the eventual possibility of using a more accessible format for textures such as PNG?

I've just spent the past three or four hours fumbling around man pages, imagemagick and search engines trying to find something that can create 32-bit bitmaps that current 1.2 will actually load (unsuccessfully, may I add

)
Naturally for reverse compatibility it would still need to read bmps, but might we see some modernization as well and/or support for multiple formats?

Posted: **02 Feb 2015, 19:39**

I presume that Paint.Net and GIMP should have an ability to save 32-bit BMPs.

Posted: **02 Feb 2015, 20:28**

Sure why not.. DirectX 1.2 should be able to support DDS textures

Posted: **02 Feb 2015, 20:37**

Paint.NET needs a non-built-in dll to save 32 bits bmp files. I tried two (one saving in RGBX and other in ARGB) and none of them worked for RV stuff.

Anyway, RV would really appreciate png compatibility.

Posted: **02 Feb 2015, 20:54**

}!{enR @ Feb 2 2015, 06:09 AM wrote: I presume that Paint.Net and GIMP should have an ability to save 32-bit BMPs.

As said above Paint.Net doesn't have the option ootb. And while Gimp does have the option to export 32-bit ARGB, the output file (as far as I can tell without digging into a hex editor) doesn't have some windows-specific header that the game apparently needs.

Posted: **02 Feb 2015, 22:29**

32bit textures are useless except for transparencies.

converting the game to PNG has no point.

Posted: **02 Feb 2015, 22:38**

ThugsRook @ Feb 2 2015, 06:59 PM wrote:converting the game to PNG has no point.

except PNG takes much less hard disk space than BMP, especially large resolution ones or which has similar/lower color gradient.

Though, I will admit that PNG takes longer to load than BMP, due to compression. But that's no problem for current generation hardware. Heck, it is quite common texture format used in smartphone games.
Since Re-Volt has low resolution textures, there won't be any problems regarding texture loading times.

Posted: **02 Feb 2015, 23:22**

BMP is the worst. Microsoft is fat heh

JPG is best but with quality loss, PNG is best!!

Posted: **03 Feb 2015, 01:44**

VaiDuX461 @ Feb 2 2015, 06:08 PM wrote: I will admit that PNG takes longer to load than BMP

Likely not always true...

If you have a slow hdd and a fast cpu I presume PNG can even load faster (just imagine a web page with BMP, it will load slower than a page with PNG, because in some cases access time becomes more determinant than decoding time).

Anyway adding PNG was not straightforward with DX7, but with the GL build this is something planned, obviously.

Posted: **03 Feb 2015, 01:52**

jigebren @ Feb 2 2015, 05:14 PM wrote: Anyway adding PNG was not straightforward with DX7, but with the GL build this is something planned, obviously.

And DDS? (its own format)

Posted: **03 Feb 2015, 12:11**

Gotolei @ Feb 2 2015, 08:24 PM wrote:
}!{enR @ Feb 2 2015, 06:09 AM wrote: I presume that Paint.Net and GIMP should have an ability to save 32-bit BMPs.
As said above Paint.Net doesn't have the option ootb. And while Gimp does have the option to export 32-bit ARGB, the output file (as far as I can tell without digging into a hex editor) doesn't have some windows-specific header that the game apparently needs.

Well, that's strange, because the BMP format is very simple...

jigebren @ Feb 3 2015, 01:14 AM wrote:
VaiDuX461 @ Feb 2 2015, 06:08 PM wrote: I will admit that PNG takes longer to load than BMP
Likely not always true... If you have a slow hdd and a fast cpu I presume PNG can even load faster.

Even more, it's likely to be always not true, because in most cases HDD is the slowest PC part!

Abc @ Feb 3 2015, 01:22 AM wrote:And DDS? (its own format)

Why DDS?? They are harder to create and view...

Posted: **03 Feb 2015, 14:00**

*shrug* for some reason codes are not working!!!!! Sorry!

}!{enR @ Feb 3 2015, 03:41 AM wrote:
Gotolei @ Feb 2 2015, 08:24 PM wrote:
}!{enR @ Feb 2 2015, 06:09 AM wrote: I presume that Paint.Net and GIMP should have an ability to save 32-bit BMPs.
As said above Paint.Net doesn't have the option ootb. And while Gimp does have the option to export 32-bit ARGB, the output file (as far as I can tell without digging into a hex editor) doesn't have some windows-specific header that the game apparently needs.
Well, that's strange, because the BMP format is very simple...

It's damn heavy!!!!

}!{enR @ Feb 3 2015, 03:41 AM wrote:
Abc @ Feb 3 2015, 01:22 AM wrote:And DDS? (its own format)
Why DDS?? They are harder to create and view...

It's not if you have DirectX SDK -.-

Posted: **03 Feb 2015, 14:21**

Abc @ Feb 3 2015, 01:30 PM wrote:It's damn heavy!!!!

Well, I have to admit that BMP format is not well documented, but as I remember writing BMP parser was not so hard for me...
I mean, if someone wrote an implementation of JPEG with its Discrete Fourier transform, it's strange to have some problems with BMP...

Abc @ Feb 3 2015, 01:30 PM wrote:It's not if you have DirectX SDK -.-

1. Re-Volt is now going to be rewritten in OGL, why using DDS?
2. Track/car creation process is not so simple by itself. Do you want to make it even harder? With DDS there will be a need for a few more tools to create stuff...

Posted: **03 Feb 2015, 18:49**

Abc @ Feb 3 2015, 09:30 AM wrote:*shrug* for some reason codes are not working!!!!! Sorry!

Fixed, and }!{enR's post too. Several useless QUOTE tags, and you have to have as much opening QUOTE than closing /QUOTE tags otherwise something is obviously going wrong.

Posted: **20 Feb 2015, 22:34**

Thanks Jig,

I mean, if someone wrote an implementation of JPEG with its Discrete Fourier transform, it's strange to have some problems with BMP...

So do you have to be good at math to become a Revolt dev? is Jig recruiting dev for the 1.2?

Posted: **21 Feb 2015, 09:10**

So this is still a ongoing thing! Amazing!

Cant wait to see where this will go. I mainly want OGL to use shader wrappers and that stuff but, im sure it will have lots of ohter improvements.

Posted: **21 Feb 2015, 11:25**

revolting @ 20 Feb 2015, 10:04 PM wrote:
I mean, if someone wrote an implementation of JPEG with its Discrete Fourier transform, it's strange to have some problems with BMP...
So do you have to be good at math to become a Revolt dev? is Jig recruiting dev for the 1.2?

No, you shouldn't, and I am not so good at math, but I'll be happy to help to improve Re-Volt as it'll be possible and I'll have some free time...

Posted: **22 Feb 2015, 18:13**

Another quick teaser:
RVGL is already built to run natively on Linux!

Say hello to "No more Wine Edition" (click on it for a larger version)...

Posted: **22 Feb 2015, 20:31**

Huki @ 22 Feb 2015, 12:43 PM wrote: Say hello to "No more Wine Edition" (click on it for a larger version)...

I guess you can say, Linux users...

...can stop whining.

Posted: **22 Feb 2015, 20:55**

nero @ 22 Feb 2015, 04:01 PM wrote:I guess you can say, Linux users...

...can stop whining.

If all users could do the same...

Posted: **22 Feb 2015, 23:41**

Huki @ 22 Feb 2015, 04:43 AM wrote: RVGL is already built to run natively on Linux!
Say hello to "No more Wine Edition"

I see v-sync is already working as well

Posted: **22 Feb 2015, 23:51**

Great news

I assume this is still a 32bit build? And what are the current external dependencies for a successful compilation?

I was also wondering what your plans are/were for the code style compared to the original code. Is it still mostly C oriented or did you switch to a more C++-like code for RVGL?

Posted: **23 Feb 2015, 03:07**

Kenny @ 22 Feb 2015, 07:21 PM wrote: I assume this is still a 32bit build?

In fact except maybe for the timer I don't think there would be the slightest advantage to switch to 64 bits. As far as I know there's no such thing as 64 bits computation in Re-Volt so...

For the rest I'll rather let Huki answer.

Posted: **23 Feb 2015, 03:38**

jigebren @ 22 Feb 2015, 10:37 PM wrote: In fact except maybe for the timer I don't think there would be the slightest advantage to switch to 64 bits.

I'm not interested in a 64bit build because of a possible performance improvement (which probably would be truly next to nothing) but rather because unlike in Windows, there is not necessarily an out-of-the-box support for 32bit applications in 64bit Linux.

Also it would make the game even more prepared for the future than it is now with the removal of the Windows/DirectX dependencies (demand for 64bit support will surely last longer than 32bit) but I guess since its still a very long way until 32bit suffers the same fate as 16bit applications/systems that would be just a neat side effect.

Posted: **23 Feb 2015, 05:18**

Damn, amazing.

Cant wait to see how well it will go, hope it has a betatesting applying session soon.
I will love to test it. (Or incase there isnt, play it when its released).

Posted: **23 Feb 2015, 05:29**

wow, awesome good news guys! I can't wait to try it on debian 7

Posted: **25 Feb 2015, 22:30**

nero @ 22 Feb 2015, 08:31 PM wrote:I guess you can say, Linux users...

...can stop whining.

Kenny wrote:I assume this is still a 32bit build? And what are the current external dependencies for a successful compilation?

Yes, it's still 32-bit. And yes, it means 64-bit Linux users will for now have to make sure 32-bit support is enabled. Urne has already run it successfully under 64-bit Arch Linux, so that's a good sign. I hope to provide some useful info to aid testers when announcing the first build.

As for the dependencies, rvgl links directly to the following libs (dumped from readelf):

Code: Select all

Shared library&#58; &#91;libSDL2-2.0.so.0&#93;
Shared library&#58; &#91;libGL.so.1&#93;
Shared library&#58; &#91;libGLEW.so.1.10&#93;
Shared library&#58; &#91;libopenal.so.1&#93;
Shared library&#58; &#91;libalure.so.1&#93;

And the usual c / c++ runtimes:

Code: Select all

Shared library&#58; &#91;libstdc++.so.6&#93;
Shared library&#58; &#91;libm.so.6&#93;
Shared library&#58; &#91;libgcc_s.so.1&#93;
Shared library&#58; &#91;libc.so.6&#93;

For now it will be up to users to get the necessary libs from their package manager. On my 32-bit Linux Mint only 3 libs were required to be installed manually: sdl2, glew and alure.

Kenny wrote:I was also wondering what your plans are/were for the code style compared to the original code. Is it still mostly C oriented or did you switch to a more C++-like code for RVGL?

It's still C oriented and I have continued the same style as the original code. Considering OpenGL, ALSoft and SDL are all C APIs, using C code for RVGL was a natural choice. In fact we don't even include any C++ headers (iostream, etc). If it makes sense we can still encapsulate functions within a struct to form a unit, as I plan to do for the menu code. Maybe something similar can be done for the car and other objects too...
Initially I considered making further use of C++ (strings, iterators, maps, etc) but I've really rejected the idea now. When I started looking for a cross-platform random number generator, the obvious choice was <random> added in C++11, but it was just not fast enough. These objects are so complex underneath, sometimes it's ridiculous.

I'm currently using a Mersenne Twister RNG written in simple C and it's just about 100 lines long..

Posted: **01 Mar 2015, 10:19**

do you think we'll ever be able to play rvgl on windows xp? I'm becoming a fan of it and this developments are nerve-racking

Posted: **01 Mar 2015, 22:47**

There should be no problem, I think. OGL works everywhere.

Posted: **02 Mar 2015, 20:56**

Well, do you guys think that with RVGL, people could port the PC version to Android?
I would love to have controller and custom content support.

Posted: **02 Mar 2015, 21:17**

http://z3.invisionfree.com/Our_ReVolt_P ... topic=2029

I posted a little schpiel about RV on Android at the above link. tl;dr: Yes, it's possible, but AFAIK no one has taken up the challenge, since the code isn't open to the public (yet?).

Posted: **12 Mar 2015, 22:31**

This is what re-volt should have been and how it should work: CGW Demo is the perfect example, picture is race results done by me today.
AI was quite a challenge and it did flip almost instantly when i shot a rocket unlike 1.0.
I believe that this is the most "realistic" acclaim build in terms of gameplay. (even if its a demo still counts)
I'm also one of these people who want "Target Cam" in the actual game. (i know its little "cheaty" but its fancy

)

ps: wasn't sure where to post, sorry if mistaken.

Posted: **13 Mar 2015, 12:08**

Well, then why don't you guys like the new AI made by Huki? It's a way more challenging.

Actually if you like this "demo" AI, then it could be ported when RVGL go open-source, even without actual sources of this demo... (or if devs will want to bother about it)

EDIT: Is that AI stronger then the new AI by Huki? If it is, it can make a big troubles beating a championship.

Posted: **13 Mar 2015, 18:17**

}!{enR @ 13 Mar 2015, 03:38 AM wrote: Well, then why don't you guys like the new AI made by Huki? It's a way more challenging.

Actually if you like this "demo" AI, then it could be ported when RVGL go open-source, even without actual sources of this demo... (or if devs will want to bother about it)

EDIT: Is that AI stronger then the new AI by Huki? If it is, it can make a big troubles beating a championship.

Try it yourself: CGW Demo and PCTeam demo: also watch rolling demo. and DEV itself.
Get ready to fix your DirectPlay or run it in a "sandboxed" enviorment

Posted: **13 Mar 2015, 23:08**

}!{enR @ 13 Mar 2015, 12:08 PM wrote: EDIT: Is that AI stronger then the new AI by Huki? If it is, it can make a big troubles beating a championship.

I wouldn't call the AI in 1.2a "new AI". What we did is fix several bugs that made the AI get stuck at certain places without moving (even when there are no obstacles). See for example CW's post here (though the glitches were in recovery code and not related to trackzones).

We also significantly improved the recovery along with the above bug fix (I even added a reverse manoeuvre in narrow sections

). But that's about it. There was an attempt to improve under/oversteer but we gave up as it was not worth it to break backward compatibility.

Posted: **15 Mar 2015, 20:54**

Huki @ 13 Mar 2015, 10:38 PM wrote:We also significantly improved the recovery along with the above bug fix (I even added a reverse manoeuvre in narrow sections ).

I saw that, it was really cool!!

Also I don't really think of it as of "new" AI, but it just behaved differently. Bots are somehow shoot more precisely, especially with water balloons. That's what I felt...

Posted: **16 Mar 2015, 03:59**

It's not a new AI. It's just a new difficulty mode good for pro players and bad for beginners.

Posted: **03 May 2015, 08:35**

nero @ 22 Feb 2015, 04:01 PM wrote:
Huki @ 22 Feb 2015, 12:43 PM wrote: Say hello to "No more Wine Edition" (click on it for a larger version)...
I guess you can say, Linux users...

...can stop whining.

I've never whined. At all. In fact I've simply been biding my time and waiting for the Linux release because I use Windows.

So why worry about Linux? some may say. it's a freedom of choice thing. Some people don't want to support Microsoft. Others might not even have the money for a Microsoft Os that is current. Others still don't want to be on a monetary treadmill where they have to pay the supreme overlords a certain amount of money to keep current every five years for an OS to just do mail, chat and the occasional game. It's an option I am glad exists, because I can run a open system from a USB stick and do quite well with it.

Development of Re-Volt on Linux as RVGL can also mean Re-Volt on Mac OS X in the future, which can mean eventually people can port unofficial binaries for Android and iOS if the code is left open for unaffiliated third parties to make builds of the game which can run on those devices. The option of ARM opens up immediately once DirectX is left behind, which makes gaming on such a thing as the Raspberry Pi also a viable option because there's no need for Wine emulation, so it's a more streamline process from install to game.

Where RVGL can go after it turns gold is anybody's guess once more development options open up. And what I've seen recently are very nice proof-of-concept builds that I can only hope get more love and attention than the present alpha builds, especially if it means that finally, we can have a solid platform to triage and resolve all of the bugs that already exist with the game. Once the game's code becomes more finalized, graphical oddities can become better resolved, and people with the time and commitment (like ThugsRook did, before he up and quit the whole thing) can finally put out a polished game, and that can become part of the core release if we're going to ship with the same assets as the retail game.

Speaking of that, despite what I had said earlier I don't think we should do that. The current distribution model now; Having the retail game, to patch in an open-source copy is the best way to go with this to avoid any legal issues with WGI. What I do believe should be done is if a map exists where user-made enhancements exist, the game should fetch those, patch those in first-run and have an updated map. Think how crazy that can be; Git integration! That'll be bonkers. So yeah, there could be a Git repo hosted by Huki and Jig to commit fixes that the community can get involved in, where RVGL downloads those files as maps are ran. That would be awesome. Re-Volt Zone could be totally restructured to be a Git-powered website and have a Git repo that functions similarly so people can search maps in-game, download and install them. That would blow my mind.

Our ReVolt Pub

Future of v1.2