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A Grand Theft Auto III Re-Implementation

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Re: A Grand Theft Auto III Re-Implementation

#71

Post by hulitu »

globular-toast wrote: post #66

Did it really look that bad? There wasn't even a shadow underneath the character? I always find it a bit sad when I see pictures of old games I used to play. My memory of them seems to automatically "upgrade" how they look to modern standards. Then when I see them it's shocking and disappointing to see how wrong my memory is. I'd rather leave it as a memory.

LCD's are crap when it comes to colors. The new HDR monitors seem to be better, but playing old DOS and Windows games on an (non HDR) monitor is a pain.

I am very courious how many colors from those 16 milion of 24 bits are LCDs able to reproduce. My LCD seems to be able sometimg less than 16 bits (65535).

Re: A Grand Theft Auto III Re-Implementation

#72

Post by DrOctagon »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #51
LAC-Tech wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very sad to see. OpenMW is a very similar project for a game of the same vintage - Morrowind. Still in active development (last commit 1 hour ago as of writing). To think Bethesda would be fine with openMW, but rockstar had to shut down openRW.

Openmw is a clean room implementation. Bethesda could throw a legal fit regardless but it would be indefensible for them to do so.

What does clean room mean in this context? Never decompiling the target?

Re: A Grand Theft Auto III Re-Implementation

#73

Post by qwerty456127 »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #27

I'm surprised there are no open source GTA 2 clones (either straight-up or just similar games of that style). The total topdown PoV with rotating sprites seems like it would be ideal for low/zero budget enthusiast projects.

Yeah GTA2 was one of the most fun games I've ever played. Sadly it isn't even available on GOG, let alone open source...

Re: A Grand Theft Auto III Re-Implementation

#74

Post by justsomehnguy »

MBCook wrote: post #46
moosedev wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the GTA 3 family of GTA games did, yes. They were PlayStation 2 games first, and RenderWare was relatively common for PS2 games. Source: worked in game dev using RenderWare on PS2 back then

Since you were in the industry, was RW the first big 3rd party engine? I know it’s common now, and seems to have really taken off in the Wii/PS3/360 era. My understanding is it wasn’t in the PSX generation (at least early?).

> RW the first big 3rd party engine

RW is RenderWare, it's not a game engine.

> really taken off in the Wii/PS3/360 era

No? RW have/had the immense success as an engine used in more than a dozen commercial games (compared to idTech1/2/3), but it's usage explodes in 2001, with 18 titles, compared with 4 in 2000.

> PSX generation

Too early.

https://en.everybodywiki.com/List_of_RenderWare_games

Re: A Grand Theft Auto III Re-Implementation

#75

Post by qwerty456127 »

eternauta3k wrote: post #64
MiddleEndian wrote: post #27

I'm surprised there are no open source GTA 2 clones (either straight-up or just similar games of that style). The total topdown PoV with rotating sprites seems like it would be ideal for low/zero budget enthusiast projects.

There was "Greedy Car Thieves" but I can't seem to find a working official website, probably dead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxAMVhLNVX0

The trailer looks super cool. Kind of like a cross between the actual GTA2 and Crimsonland which sounds an awesome mixture. But their website appears dead indeed while all the download links Google can find lead right there :-(

Re: A Grand Theft Auto III Re-Implementation

#76

Post by looping8 »

GartzenDeHaes wrote: post #68

San Andreas in Unity, if anyone is interested. You can't do anything more than walk around, drive, and shoot though. https://github.com/GTA-ASM/SanAndreasUnity

It's strange, even though the graphics of San Andreas definitely don't look good, this somehow looks worse to me. It's like smoothing out the outdated models and making them higher resolution makes them seem worse. Not blaming the developers of this, just surprised that a much stronger engine ends up looking worse somehow, maybe it's just the initial shock?

Re: A Grand Theft Auto III Re-Implementation

#77

Post by bc_programming »

DrOctagon wrote: post #72
kevinmchugh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Openmw is a clean room implementation. Bethesda could throw a legal fit regardless but it would be indefensible for them to do so.

What does clean room mean in this context? Never decompiling the target?

"Clean room" reverse engineering basically has you with two completely separate groups of developers. One group will decompile and analyze the target software, and build a detailed specification of how it works. The second group, with legal, sworn documents that they have never seen even the machine code of the target software - uses those specifications to build the "clone".

Re: A Grand Theft Auto III Re-Implementation

#78

Post by SXX »

DrOctagon wrote: post #72
kevinmchugh wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Openmw is a clean room implementation. Bethesda could throw a legal fit regardless but it would be indefensible for them to do so.

What does clean room mean in this context? Never decompiling the target?

Usually clean room mean those writing the code and people who decompiling are different people. So code is written against specification.

So no it's unlikely to actually be fully clean room project, but written from scratch.

Re: A Grand Theft Auto III Re-Implementation

#79

Post by proxysna »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #75
eternauta3k wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was "Greedy Car Thieves" but I can't seem to find a working official website, probably dead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxAMVhLNVX0

The trailer looks super cool. Kind of like a cross between the actual GTA2 and Crimsonland which sounds an awesome mixture. But their website appears dead indeed while all the download links Google can find lead right there :-(

It is still available as Street Arena on steam.

Re: A Grand Theft Auto III Re-Implementation

#80

Post by hd4 »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #50
hd4 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>when re3 was sued The day reverse-engineering legal protections failed.

re3 is a very dubious legal case. They decompiled the game with debug symbols and then did a (aiui) non-clean room reimplementation of the code, based on the decompilation. It is protected legal activity to decompile a binary and study the source. It is protected legal activity to study some source code, describe it, and have someone who never saw the source reimplement the code described. It is straightforwardly ill…

"It is straightforwardly illegal to decompile source code, recompile it, and the distribute the recompiled binary."

According to what? If the rules are so poorly defined that way then maybe it's not a bad thing to disregard them. Because simply decompiling source code and then recompiling it isn't a simple one-step thing in the way you suggest, not even close.

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