MM 6/7/8 Total Remake

[tolich]

Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!

[Nomad]

More architecture:

[MMXAlamar]

Wow, those buildings are really coming along! They have a certain polish that the graphics in MM9 never had.

Those buildings remind me of some of the ones in and around Drangheim.

[Nomad]

Just found in quests.txt:

96 Built Castle to Level 3 (good)NO LONGER USED(Riki) Bryan 0
97 Built Castle to Level 3 (evil)NO LONGER USED(Riki) Bryan 0
98 Built Castle to Level 2 (rescued dwarf guy) Bryan 0

So, originally castle was intended to appear differently, according to the side chosen.

[tolich]

1) Archibald and Gavin Magnus send gifts when you have chosen one of sides.
2) Ninja quest needs access both to basement and to the first floor (hint about tomb place and hint about encryption).
3) No Light Path quest needs access neither to the dungeon nor to the library.
But Stantlie's quest, of course.

[DarthVadre]

I really like the direction to put in new models and such, but I really think you should work on getting a functional version of the engine before you go crazy. you have resources already it'll just slow things down to create new models

[koval321]

This is best M&M project, awesome

I can design castle and other architecture, but just drawn sketch, dont have experience in 3D gfx to actualy made them. Tell me if you need some idea for new maps.

[unknownone]

Hello to all here, I have lurked in these forums for a long time and now I've decided to contribute a bit.
First of all I would like to thank you Nomad and your team for your good work, I hope you can finish it! You are doing such a great job. I'd love to see a new MM game in the style of 6-8.
I've studied a little of C programming, even wrote something small, so I doubt I can help with the coding. But if you need a hand I can try at least to see if can be of any help.
Eventually I can be of more use in another area: if you need I can help you with the website, I've seen that you have a presentation of your project here:

http://www.mmgames.ru/index.php?option= ... 88&lang=en

and I have some webdesign knowledge, I know xhtml 1.1, css and a little of wordpress.
Because I love Might and Magic I'm willing to use some of my spare time to help out.

[unknownone]

By the way, I have found a bit of information that can be interesting, at least from the historical perspective. This was the Might and Magic 6 announcement from 3DO:

http://web.archive.org/web/199710091355 ... /info.html

The Mandate of Heaven introduces two variations of its own real time high color engine technology: The "Labyrinth" and "Horizon" true 3-D smooth scrolling engines. Players will brave the depths of the deepest dungeons when they enter the realm of the Labyrinth. Stunningly beautiful castles, caves and warrens immerse players through point light sourcing, and true 3-D rendered sprites portraying a realistic environment in an indoor setting. Outside offers 360 degrees of freedom with the Horizon engine, allowing players to explore the countryside with omni-directional movement, including vertical (flight!).

So "Labyrinth" and "Horizon" were the original names of MM6-8 engines.

[tolich]

So "Labyrinth" and "Horizon" were the original names of MM6-8 engines.

huh? well, what of that?

[GreatEmerald]

Indeed, that has been known since, well, the announcement of MM6

[Nomad]

In spite of recent events, I began to lack too much time. And since major part of coding work was on my shoulders, I find that futher decompilation part would last for way too long. Not having too much help on this, I have decided to migrate to some already completed game engine.

Currently browsing available stuff, and even negotiating with WoX 2 guys to work together usin theirs engine.

You propositions and opinions are also welcome. An engine has to be free, open-source, clean and cool coded in C/C++.

Thank you.

unknownone
Hello, and thank you for your support.
Though we do not need a site at the moment, I will keep your offer in mind for later events.

[default8p]

I suggest ogre engine. It's open source, fast, easy to use and written in C++

http://www.ogre3d.org/

I've used it before to render MM6 control center

[kevin]

Ogre seems good to me, it's multiplatform, has a good documentation and some tools (not what you would get with Unreal Engine though).
It was also was used in some commercial games.

It could be a good thing to start from this project (if the author accepts to release the source code)
http://sites.google.com/site/angelddeat ... Map-Viewer

[Xography]

I second OGRE 3D.
It is the best Open Source C++ 3D Engine by far. Being not a "Game Engine" it lacks audio and input support tho - but there are a many addons/plugins (OIS / OgreAL for instance) to add support for almost anything a game needs.

Ogre seems good to me, it's multiplatform, has a good documentation and some tools (not what you would get with Unreal Engine though).

What UDK's good toolchain offers doesn't pay off in the end due to the draconic restrictions for the "free" license; you only get a VM to "program" in awfully slow UnrealScript (no C++ SDK or native bindings) and a bloated asset pipeline. You're better off with quickly creating some small tools tailored for your specific needs from scratch, really.

It could be a good thing to start from this project (if the author accepts to release the source code)
http://sites.google.com/site/angelddeat ... Map-Viewer

Speaking of which: it seems that AngelDeath, GrayFace aka sergroj and some other guy are collaborating in a project which aims to revive the old MM8-Leveleditor: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mm8leveleditor/
It's written in Java, looks like the third attempt of AD for a level editor, but this one is open source at last. I don't really get why one would apparently refactor a 5-6 year old Java codebase. Whereas I can see the direction it takes, the approach itself simply appears rather odd to me. Building a 3D Game Editor on top of Eclipse/SWT just doesn't seem right.

On a general note, I've been observing all those projects trying to (re)create something like MM6-8 for several years now. Every one of them seems to end up in being a failure due to lack of time, experience or wrong/nonexistant goals - or is more or less "illegal". Code is intellecutal property, reverse engineering binaries is strictly spoken not allowed, but i doubt anyone in the current copyright holders legal department really cares about it anymore.
I'm missing a clear direction in the other projects, recreating the original game mechanics should be the first and foremost goal in my eyes - fancy stuff comes later. I was close to start off myself from scratch, but meh, simply adding another one to the list of "attempts" wouldn't really gain approval from the community, I guess.

So @Nomad:
If you're planning to move on to built upon an existing 3D Engine and require a bit help on the coding or management part, feel free to drop me a PM for more information. I'm fairly proficient in C/C++ (been toying around with it for around 10 years now) and software engineering / project management in general. My spare time is pretty limited as well, but i'm willing to invest some of it into a project with at least some prospect of success.

[unknownone]

I'm sorry Nomad that you and your teammates are lacking time and I understand that everyone wants faster results, but you got pretty far in your work. Maybe 50%? You got further in one year than many teams in 5! What important things were left to do?
Maybe it's better to reach slowly your goal of remaking the old engine, because I don't think that everyone here wants just pretty graphics. And I agree with what Xorography said. Maybe he can help you...
Still you are free to make your choices, you have the full right to do it.
When you'll need a hand for a website feel free to contact me.

[GreatEmerald]

What UDK's good toolchain offers doesn't pay off in the end due to the draconic restrictions for the "free" license; you only get a VM to "program" in awfully slow UnrealScript (no C++ SDK or native bindings) and a bloated asset pipeline. You're better off with quickly creating some small tools tailored for your specific needs from scratch, really.

No, you do get to use C++ bindings. They added that option in one of the earlier UDK builds:
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DLLBind.html

But yes, UDK is quite a bit too heavy for a project like this. Unreal Engine 1 would be more suited for this task, but unfortunately the UE1Runtime was never released, and the engine is not going open source any time soon.

[mkienenb]

Speaking of which: it seems that AngelDeath, GrayFace aka sergroj and some other guy are collaborating in a project which aims to revive the old MM8-Leveleditor: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mm8leveleditor/
It's written in Java, looks like the third attempt of AD for a level editor, but this one is open source at last. I don't really get why one would apparently refactor a 5-6 year old Java codebase. Whereas I can see the direction it takes, the approach itself simply appears rather odd to me. Building a 3D Game Editor on top of Eclipse/SWT just doesn't seem right.

Since I'm "some other guy" I'll make brief comments on this. If you want to discuss it further, start a new thread and send me an email or pm about the thread as I don't check the forums all that often.

I'm not familiar with what you mean by "AD", but both this new level editor and the old one have always been open source. At seven years old, it's probably been open source longer that most everything else out there dealing with modding.

The only thing I refactored from my original editor was the code for reading and writing the various file formats. Considering how unbelievably complicated those formats are, and that a lot of what's in them is still undecoded, why would I want to rewrite it when it already worked?

As for building a game engine on top of Eclipse RPC/SWT, that appeared to be the best choice for me if I wanted to continue to write this in java. Eclipse RCP is designed to be an "editor-building" environment, and I do all of my day-job work in Eclipse, so I'm very familiar with it. I didn't have to rewrite 3d support from scratch since there's an eclipse plugin for the jME engine, which is very solid, and which I was also familiar with. If there's one thing that java does poorly, it is providing a decent API and library for 2D GUI design. SWT is the best of a bad set of choices, in my experience. While I have been greatly appreciative of AngelDeath and Sergey's and BigDaddyJim's significant contributions, the reality is that I have done, and continue to do, the bulk of the programming work. I'm open to better approaches if you have any, although the reality is that the current Eclipse RCP environment has worked out wonderfully so far, despite my amateur knowledge of how to use it properly.

[Xography]

Since I'm "some other guy" I'll make brief comments on this. If you want to discuss it further, start a new thread and send me an email or pm about the thread as I don't check the forums all that often.

Whoops, sorry then. Until now I was only aware of AngelDeath's (=AD) Map Viewers http://sites.google.com/site/angelddeath/Home and since he is listed as a project admin there I assumed that he initiated that project as well. Should've taken a look at the repository/commits before starting to rant, I guess. I'll drop you line, depending on how things develop.

[mkienenb]

Since I'm "some other guy" I'll make brief comments on this. If you want to discuss it further, start a new thread and send me an email or pm about the thread as I don't check the forums all that often.

Whoops, sorry then. Until now I was only aware of AngelDeath's (=AD) Map Viewers http://sites.google.com/site/angelddeath/Home and since he is listed as a project admin there I assumed that he initiated that project as well. Should've taken a look at the repository/commits before starting to rant, I guess. I'll drop you line, depending on how things develop.

For what it's worth, AngelDeath was extremely kind and rewrote my first pass of the 3d outdoor map viewer despite it requiring that he use a different language (java), a different editor (Eclipse), and a different 3D engine (jME). He probably saved me several weeks of work at least. It definitely wasn't his first choice of environment