Dear FreeSoftwareGameDevs
Remeber Unreal from 1997, and UnrealTournament from 1999? I used to make maps for those games. There were 100s of maps, maybe 1000. Now-a-days I code C, QC, and do 3d/music/texture/map work for ChaosEsqueAnthology. Just like you guys work on your fun projects. So 10, 15 years ago I asked Darkplaces Devs to add Wolfenstine:EnemyTerritory map support to Darkplaces engine: since the format was not too different than Quake3 format which was allready supported. They laughed at me and never did it in all the 10... I think more like 15 years. So a few years ago (1 year ago or so), I took a crack at it. It took a month but I got it working. Took a buch of C engine work, and some QC game code work.That got us 600+ maps that can be used in this completely opensource game.
This summer I noticed that minetest/minecraft/bzflag/etc/etc all export to .obj. However the engine can load .obj but only as a model: and wouldn't display bzflag obj at all. It took 2 weeks but obj files can be used directly as maps in this game now: named .obj_from_mc . Directives can be added to the file name to scale etc, and what once was a day long export and compile ordeal from minetest/minecraft is now a 2 min export. Bzflag objects work too now (.obj_from_bz) : there was a disagreement between what an "obj" file was between the engine and bzflag previously. Exports from blender, sketchfab, to obj obj_from_mc work great as maps too now: photogramatory etc.
I suppose this is getting abit long winded here; but the idea is that this project is willing to add new map types to load, new model formats, etc. Something that's not always the case with projects. Also it has good game code: 200 weaps, 30 vehicles, city generation, spells, monsters, etc. So there are good reasons to add to this project. Everything is opensource: media, code, music, models, maps, etc.
So what I'm asking is if you could help me, us, if there is an us. We want .unr format to beable to be loaded. We just need the triangle and face data: the engine already does rendering. Could you help us? We need more contributors. We know how long it would take; and know it's abit beyond us. We need more people.
You all code C. Some of you might code C++.
This engine is in C. More map formats like .unr are desired. Some code has been found (open/free) in C++ that achieves this. Could you help?
Note: .unr (unreal97) map format is desired, please see: https://sourceforge.net/p/chaosesqueanthology/tickets/2/ C++ code has been found that displays the .unr map format (linked above). This engine is in C. Please if you are reading this, consider assisting this project. The engine source code is here: https://sourceforge.net/p/chaosesqueanthology/code-t3d_attempt_engine/ci/master/tree/ The relevant files are: model_brush.c (.h) and model_shared.c (.h). A useful subroutine to look at is in model_brush.c : Mod_OBJ_Load on line 7562 , which loads triangle data and face data from the .obj format. The .unr format has all the triangle and face data baked into the format; no interpolation is needed (unlike .t3d).
Note: This project is open to adding any map format that can be programmed (without using additional external libaries) in C. It has already implemented Wolfenstine:EnemyTerritory map loading, as well as support for use of .obj files as maps themselves (extension: .obj_from_mc , added to maps directory)
