Wouldn't be better a new complete rewritten engine?

[AlexB]

There is more to an engine than just the graphics. Projects of that size need careful planning and constant improvements. It is next to impossible to create such engine without a team. A bunch of pretty pixels in the beginning raises expectations, but don't expect too much as long as you don't have a playable version. And even if you got this, getting minor details right will take much time. And if you invest that, you got something that was meant to be Yuri's Revenge, but the constant revisions will have changed it to something completely different and it's unlikely to be compatible.

There were other projects like FreeCNC and FreeRA, trying to recreate the first games. No 2.5D, no complicated logic because functions like Mind Control, Hijackers, infantry deploying infantry, radiation, magnetrons, Temporal weapons and all that stuff didn't exist. No fancy stuff like per-side EVAs, game modes, 130 trigger types, complicated AImd.ini task forces and teams. They didn't succeed, even if TD looks like a game three fans could program in a garage somewhere today.

It would take multiple years just to get where YR is today already. And most likely YR will be forgotten by the time the engine is released to the public. I'd be very happy if someone proves me wrong.

[Renegade]

I don't think YR will be forgotten, really. Transport Tycoon Deluxe was released 1995, and OpenTTD was first publicly released in 2004.
I'm pretty sure OpenTTD is far more popular and more prominent than TTD was in its later years - simply thanks to the power of free internet distribution and technological "currentness".

I do think OpenYR would find its userbase once it were at an acceptable technical level, especially once it begins to exceed stock YR (e.g. by being cross-platform from the start, supporting TCP/IP, etc.), I just think actually getting there will be the challenge.

As said, there have been multiple such projects, and they all failed to my knowledge. As Alex said, it requires a dedicated team and organization.
It could work with Ares's team and the established organizational structure, especially if more people join over the course of development - but as expressed earlier, it would inevitably be detrimental to Ares and lead to a lack of patches to stock YR - which wouldn't be good for the community.

My own guess is that OpenYR will come when we hit the wall with Ares - when further work is simply not possible without a complete engine source.
But that point is probably years away.

[Black Shadow 750]

Well if you've completely rewritten the prism logic already, who's to say that some if not all the stock code will be made redundant in the future? Yeeaah, I can't see Ares hitting a wall due to engine limitations. Not enough manpower, maybe, but not engine limitations.

[Renegade]

Well, TCP/IP integration is such an issue. I don't think anyone would truly want to replace the entire network core through Ares.
Additional 3D formats would probably be that kind of issue as well.
Or an integrated map editor.
Voice chat.
Fundamental reworkings of the AI.

Basically, anything that goes beyond "simple" data crunching and output.
The more fundamental it is, the worse it is to change through Ares. And once we come to a point where the majority of requests touch the fundamentals, it'll probably be wiser to switch to OpenYR.
Hopefully, we'd be able to reuse some code, but that's not guaranteed.

[~Guest~]

http://www.ppmsite.com/forum/viewtopic.p...345#398345

[Renegade]

We acknowledge your link to...concept art?

No seriously, that's nice and all, but...it's not new. As said, there have been multiple attempts at engines before, and they all got the graphics to load.
Not saying it's not a big deal, and not having done any work like that so far, I'm not going to discount it, but let's be honest here - a playable, moddable replacement for YR needs more than graphics loading, and the loading and display code for all the graphics file types is available in at least two open source projects - Olaf's XCC tools, and Banshee's/PPM's OS tools.
So, as said - while I'm not discounting the achievement, the fact of the matter is that displaying C&C graphics files is mostly a matter of correctly incorporating existing, years-old code.

What that project needs to actually be interesting and promising is to achieve a "playable" state - to have all the fundamentals functionalities to have a battle of multiple unit types.
So far, all I'm seeing is month-long pauses in the thread and graphical work.

If that engine progresses into something promising, we'll certainly try to support it, but as said before: Multiple people and teams have started engines before, and, as far as I know, none of them was ever completed.
So it'll take more than rendered tiles to grab my attention.

[~Guest~]

Vefbl4 is making that engine, you should ask him questions regarding that. I have no part in it.

[Renegade]

Or we could just let this thread die and wait and see if that engine ever develops into anything remotely YR-compatible, while we keep working on Ares.

[XTF]

Second: Red Alert 2 can't be installed on a virtual machine or wine, the

http://xwis.net/downloads/Red_Alert-2-0.0.0.exe

[Blade]

I'd also like to add that I successfully installed RA2 and YR in an XP VMWare 7 VM from the original discs recently.

[XTF]

If that engine progresses into something promising, we'll certainly try to support it, but as said before: Multiple people and teams have started engines before, and, as far as I know, none of them was ever completed.
So it'll take more than rendered tiles to grab my attention.

Stumbled across http://open-ra.org/ some time ago. Looks like a decent project.

[Renegade]

Yeah, I've seen that when PPM unearthed it recently. And, as "predicted", it did grab my attention.
But RA is not RA2, and it's not YR. So while it's a promising project, it won't replace Ares, and even if it ultimately were flexible enough to do that, it suffers from the same problem I mentioned initially: It's in alpha stages now. It'll take years until it's ready. Dropping Ares in favor of helping on that project would leave YR modders out in the cold for a long time.

[~Guest~]

Dropping Ares in favor of helping on that project would leave YR modders out in the cold for a long time.

I don't wish for you to drop it either! I was merely pointing it out as something interesting IMO since we we're discussing game engines.

[~Guest~]

Yeah, I've seen that when PPM unearthed it recently. And, as "predicted", it did grab my attention.
But RA is not RA2, and it's not YR. So while it's a promising project, it won't replace Ares, and even if it ultimately were flexible enough to do that, it suffers from the same problem I mentioned initially: It's in alpha stages now. It'll take years until it's ready. Dropping Ares in favor of helping on that project would leave YR modders out in the cold for a long time.

While RA is neither RA2 nor YR, at least as I understand it, YR uses basically the same engine as RA. The only new things are more abilities (relatively easy) and the new Voxels (which is slightly harder, but nothing for GL).

[Renegade]

Maybe you should re-assess your understanding.