the title says it all. it would have been good to have xbox controller support right along with Oculus Rift Support. I think this needs to be in the next beta after 1005. well also need full custom button support as well.

why xbox controller? why not pc controller its not for consoles but pc, yes xbox cpads can be used with pc if you can get it to work right to start with... last time I tried on my windows 8 pc with xbox cpad it would not work or install so. but yeah good idea to have controller support with reloaded imo

Yeah good idea. Especially if we get 3th person perspective. I know this program called First Person Shooter Creator but it would be a waste of good technology if we only use them for FPS games.

In it's current form, I can't see the advantage of using a joypad. FPS games are far better with keyboard and mouse, it's only console owners who have to suffer a joypad for em. For 3rd person games it would be different, and of course having the option is also nice. If people really want this I am sure it would take no time at all to add in.

the xbox controller is a pc controller and is the best controller to use for most pc games since microsoft driver install as soon you plug it in. I don't know about windows 8 but I have windows 7 and it works great. also if you are using a wireless xbox controller that might be a hard to get it to work on you pc. I stick with wired controllers. I don't plan on walking away from my pc that far anyway lol.

I actually use a PS2 pad with a USB convertor. I'm not that keen on the xbox controller itself. Works no problems, no drivers needed apart from standard windows stuff. All done automatically Theres no reason to support only one controller, when the PC has many more options.

I see lee looking at the most important things Oculus Rift Support instead of performance and having something we can use.



Like how many people are going to use Oculus Rift Support about 2% if that.





These things should be the last thing to add in my eyes.



best s4real

@s4real

I disagree,

it is about extending FPSCR.



Adding Rift was a wise move, it is not only bringing Reloaded ready towards 3d stuff, more important its implementation introduces Reloaded to many more potential users.



See there is always a

Point being that unless you can provide and maintain - more than adequate performance you wont actually maintain many users from any quarter for very long.



Sure you will get a lot of initial interest as with anything new - people will come along check it out and some will continue to endeavour to use it however poor or good it may be for lack of any alternative. Nothing new there and most indie engines have always followed that pattern and still do. I don't see Reloaded being any different - the bells and whistles will and can be seen through by indie developers. Few games will actually get made and distributed as complete however of any standing and that at the end of the day will dictate the long term reputation of the product too.



Performance and quality and stability are all pre-requisites for success and maintaining these have always and always will be critical as they have wide ranging implications in all areas of game making and deployment. i.e. it will make or kill a game dead and so the product that makes it too - sooner or later.



Currently presumably there is some considerable interest in Reloaded and that may increase significantly over time - sustaining that however is another matter altogether and interest itself can disappear as quickly as it appears.



All I know is despite current general interest in Reloaded these Reloaded forums are the quietest, least visited Forums in terms of logged in active users of any game engine forum community I have ever personally come across and those numbers are getting smaller at the moment so it seems to me. Certainly not mushrooming at a terrific rate that I can tell.



Recently I was the only person at these forums active and most times there are not many more at any one time. Never seen a game engine forum with just me on it before - well I may have but those engines are long disappeared. Whilst Checking competitors forums at the same time I was the one and only one here at the other engines forums there were almost 9000 online. The numbers speak for themselves. To draw a lot of users here from competitor engines so they stay here for any length of time, Reloaded has a long way to go yet it seems to me in convincing indie game makers it is a tool they can trust and would wish to invest their faith in to develop their game ideas with and deploy it successfully.



Clearly it has few options for deployment to start with which will severely limit interest amongst many other drawbacks. Rift, steam and so on may help I have no idea to be honest. Performance and the other core factors mentioned will still need to be professional level quality even for that I would presume or it wont make it in those areas either in the long term I would think.



Even then it is at least in the forseeable future at least an engine with many restrictions for indies and end users not least of all its restricted platform and deployment base.



If you are going to do something - best to make sure that whatever it is that it is top notch as an aid to success. That is quality over quantity if that is the only choice.



Long way to go yet I think which is perhaps why active user numbers here are very limited. No doubt the vast majority perhaps are simply waiting on the further development to make any judgements as to if Reloaded will progress to something much better than it currently offers so they can commit to looking further at using it at all in any real development scenario.



Thats fair enough. Even with limited potential for deployment platforms it looks like being some time yet before anyone can say it is mature and stable enough with sufficient development features and potential (and I mean core features) enough for them to make any sort of committment to long term. Currently its not meeting any of those things so potential users wait silently and patiently I guess. Many will clearly be simply playing with their thumbs and little else. No point in trying to second guess what Reloaded will become as that's for the future. Waiting or playing with what you've got as always is what indies do most of the time.



Nothing much changes. To date Reloaded it seems to me has some potential. Not sure it is powerful enough at the core to get there in the end. It needs some help with that notwithstanding any feature of any kind being added. Along the way placing the core performance, quality and stability in second place will result undoubtedly in that coming back around in full circle to bite back.



How you balance it all I am not sure but ignoring the importance as given pre-requisites inevitably will have major and serious impact. Sure may be long term but such will raise its head sooner or later.



Not many choices anyway really are there. We can all hope for the best and that's about all until you have a product you can achieve what you want with. Either you will be able too or you wont much like has always been the case.



Personally I agree that no feature whatever or which one it is in and off itself no matter how new or old in technology terms will be the saviour of Reloaded in the long term at least. That is not going to happen if the core is not up to it so maintaining the core engines quality throughout and the main core basic well known game making features in this case at the moment as an FPS product at top level quality will be a good investment on which to build further. Building your house on sand principle still holds good and does not go away with any feature added no matter how marketable or otherwise it may be. The biting back scenario inevitably follows on from such sooner or later.



Anyway I know very little. TGC will I am sure continue to do what they think is best for all concerned. Reloaded still has a long way to go and the next Beta will be here soon and then its on to the next I guess. The rest is beyond my foresight I am afraid.

im thinking the same sort of thing, I didn't really see any difference yet on my machine from beta 2-4 performance wise tbh. maybe I should get the same card as lee to get best results?. wonder what that will cost.







yep I know have xbox cpad with wire usb leads just didn't take and hold I guess as they wouldn't work on win 8 not for me anyways and I have 3 cpads all the same so??

Uman i couldn't agree with you more you have hit the nail on the head with a lot of things one being there needs to be more support/devs on the forums it feels like we are talking to our self sometimes.



Ps you can already get the xbox pad working with fps reloaded just use xpadder

yeah they are straying from the main objective and messing about with limited toys. i now think they should leave occulus as of now and concentrate on getting a proper running game world. i mean there is nothing to do but wander shoot very few enemies hit limits of objects get staggering terrain tearing and you dont have water that works or many other things and they are playing with a fad. if it gets popular then add it but i for one am starting to tire of the tedious not a lot going on. and constant so called fixes that dont get fully fixed and then lots of news on the occulus. and steam is a mistake at this stage if you ask me. they are marketing something that is still too young and i am hoping they start to iron out the game world like water and tearing and other things and get it working like an engine with purpose. i mean no dis respect but they need to get a good basis then expand. walk before running is a good one. and the alpha crashes a lot and tears in the terrain and all the little needed fixes would be a good start. i am staying here due to the investment i gave and daily finding a lot of the time is spent on something originally not planned. and also the changes constantly happening and the constant delays are starting to slowly sound a bit over done. i do hope that they start to re prioritise.

I think you may be being a bit harsh here. Rift support is something I am unlikely to use in any near future I can see, and as such does not interest me that much. I have stated this before in Lee's blog. However it is a nice feature and will help Reloaded get a foot in the door with more developers.



Sure the main engine performance is not as good as we would like. Not much has been mentioned of late in Lee's blog about performance work. I think however it has still been worked on. The new cascade release has extra shader options for instance. It was never mentioned, but there is a new high detail shader that was not present before.



It seems many have not experienced any speed boost in the cascade version either, but I can safely say it is a lot better for me. Apart from the quicksand bug, which hopefully will be fixed on the 31st, it is a lot better in general. I can still bog it down when I add more stuff, but it is definitely faster than the last version. It also suffers a lot less from freezing for a second or so on occasion. In fact I haven't seen that once yet.



It is a beta and really we are still in the early stages, patience is needed. It will take a while for one man to craft the engine we are all hoping for. Core work will be done I am sure, and I am confident that it will run on my system fairly flawlessly at some point from the progress so far.



I'm all for a few new features each update rather than basic core work. It makes it more fun for both us and TGC. By getting more people in to work on these plug in elements only adds to Reloaded's arsenal!



One last thing. TGC do read our posts. They may not always answer, but they do take note of what we say. I've seen plenty of stuff on here that has reflected what happens in updates. Any regular reader could spot the trend Performance work is needed, but, as they are doing I suspect, they concentrate talking more about new features and less about the nitty gritty, as that is more sexy. I agree. As long as it's done, we don't really need to know about it. Although I would still find it interesting myself

So what we are saying here is that TGC are pandering to a few users that don't even hang around that long after they get what they request?.....sounds a lot like FPSC Classic to me.



Oculus Rift is only being introduced as a feature to please the very few users around here that want it, that and the fact that Lee himself obviously has the Dev kit, of course the percentage may seem higher as many users don't visit or post here on these forums.



s4real is absolutely correct to question this move, though I suspect his 2% figure is rather high if you take into account actual pledgers/users compared to actual posters around here.The silent majority should have won out in this instance. In fact the majority have been asking for improved performance all along so diversions like this should not be happening.





Don't get me wrong it's a great feature but totally unusable if performance is poor in the first place. Not the best marketing idea to aim at users who will knock it on it's ass when they find how bad performance is.....doesn't make the slightest difference how many Rift developers are attracted by it, it's what they say about it will count.Then you can watch interest dry up like a prune in the desert sun, these developers don't care about the nitty gritty either.



The first and foremost thing should have been done was to update DBP, if it continues as it is without core performance being better, without making tweaks to shaders to try and improve it at this stage, then this engine is doomed.



Good luck running around your laggy levels with your Rift. And good luck keeping those developers attracted by Rift to stay with it, first impressions tend to stick....same goes for any of these so called features, even controllers, when you need a game that's playable in the first place.



May sound harsh but it's the truth.

wow guys I did not expect half of the comments about the rift or using different controllers. I just wanted to point this out to tgc about the lack of adding the xbox controller support because I know that when some gamers or the youtubers play our games they will have a better option on using a controller or keyboard and mouse. for the rift I look at it as the way as adding controller support it's something that can give the gamers that do have it an option to use it when they play our games. also fpsc has xbox controller support and most people I know use xbox controllers on their pc. so is not request for me or the other developers here. I just know when 1005 is release right along with the save exe. demos will be release and the rift option will make it interesting but the lack of no true controller support will be the downside for the demos.for me it makes no different but for the gamers that want to play my games it would nice to give them that option.





I also believe after 1005 is release Lee will resume to the performance I think tgc just want to give us something new to work with and move the engine forward.

This may be so....maybe not,but the problem is with attention on attracting new users instead of creating the basic engine.



I understand why s4real chose to post his thoughts in this thread and the response to it kind of irked me, since attracting new users is hogwash if it's not the best engine. TGC need to be more careful of listening to the majority and less of things that may seem to be a market, after all they make a point of appearing to do so. Not only from a user point of view but also a marketing one.



Again...no point till you can create a playable game. I have serious doubts about standalone games right now not least because of poor presentation of an unfinished product but as a media creator I have serious doubts about selling any work to users around here without asset protection.

I think a greater motive for integrating Rift this soon is to try and generate more support (and perhaps additional funding?) from the Rift community at large, not just the TGC community. The Rift dev forums have over 60,000 registered members and I see Rick has posted about the updates there.

It's not going to be any benefit if Rift users complain about performance is it? In fact it can be difficult to recover from an early bad press.



If Reloaded is slated at the start it will do more harm than good for this 'potential' user base. Or am I completely wrong and the Rift user base will welcome laggy level design software as a Godsend?

imo if tgc wanted to expand their products usability then why choose rift?, not mac or Linux which to me would have a bigger user base to show it to? myself I had never even heard of rift before.

Certainly more users and pledgers are needed for Reloaded and TGC as has always been the case and with any engine Yes - so it can be invested in and developed into a product that can then be used by indie users to create games that continue that onwards successfully.



How you do that is the question and there are some differences of opinion. Again as has always been the case what is best for users is not always whats best for an engine developer perhaps. What has always been the case too is that perhaps the most restrictive issues with indie engines which has prevented them from taking indie game making to a higher level. i.e. more real games made and deployed with indie engines is the lack of a professional quality core engine with those things we concern ourselves with which have always been elusive. Core quality, stability and performance perhaps being the most prominent and the biggest game killer of all when an engine simply will not allow you to add the kind of complexity and quality of content you need to utilise to achieve a reasonably professional end result and complete it for deployment and that the end users can similarly play and enjoy doing so. Not an easy task has that been over the years to get to. That has not changed and will not change as the bar is constantly moved forward outside of these circles so the need and expectation is greater. Yes you need features too but as we know good games can be made without an endless array of features if you can actually make and complete a game and deploy it - and your end users can play it in the first place - and importantly enjoy playing it. No game will be of much use to you stuck on your own machine half finished for whatever reason you cant complete it. Then your game players must be able to play it. Your game endeavours and end game is what your game and the product will be judged upon and so too the product you use to show it off and eventually deploy it. If that is ever possible.



Apart from the obvious valid opinions here stated above from all parties with various thoughts and concerns and all of the pledgers, supporters and development to date plus the info at these forums and off site elsewhere regarding forward planning, development and the aspirations to make Reloaded the best game engine for indie developers currently at this moment when I started writing this there were 2 users online here and 7699 at the Unity forums.



To me that says Reloaded needs some help and therein is my personal concern. Apparently its not very convincing to those outside of these forums at the moment nor perhaps to those within even. Or perhaps we are all just apathetic and are just not very active, I don't know but have like all of us just another opinion.



That may therefore mean to attract more activity and interest that we need more features like Steam, Rift integration, or not and maybe just some basic Core stuff being integrated and shown to be of the quality standard people are looking for.



My personal opinion is as you all know is as Rolfy's and that without a stable Core and the issues mentioned around that what do you have at the base to provide for future building upon for success? That may be incorrect and prove to be so. Certainly not in the past history of indie engines.



From a potential users point of view and external viewers looking at Reloaded I can say that if I was looking at a game engine to work with and checked out Reloaded then simple basic core things I would look for first and even seemingly simple things would be important to me. For example if I saw the terrain was tearing I would think I cant use that engine as that's unacceptable to me in displaying my game endeavours to others and to my game players and the engine is not developed with care and quality. What advanced non core critical features it had I would not be concerned with in the first instance. They would be a bonus for me and nothing more.



If I had what we have now I would expect that to be to a pro or at least quality standard at any standard. Having little more than Terrains and Water I would look to judge upon that not what it does not yet have as in built features yet perhaps to come and I would expect future features to be the same quality. Thus if what is now is not top notch then why would I think any future development would be any different? I would think the future will just be more of the same. Below what I am looking for - that's logical.



i.e. finish what you start doing to a high standard so people can judge what you do on that as thats what they have to do - they cant judge anything on whats promised for the future and why would they it may never happen. Indies have seen it all before especially hardened ones that have been around a long time and to date no one to date has broken the mould and delivered what Reloaded is said to be going to do at this level of engine.



I am not trying to be over critical here. Just trying to help though its all been said before. Not sure why we keep repeating endlessly other that users have an interest and care about the products they like and use and of course making games. Reloaded is great as far as it goes. I just cant make a game with it at the moment but that may change.



I am sure it will all pan out one way or another and TGC are doing the best they can - its not easy is it.



Reloaded will get there or not and there's little we can do about it except wait and comment and do what little we can to help in that way if indeed its of any help at all. Not much I guess.

i am wondering how many game makers have silver surfer effected water ( check out f.4 rise of silver surfer) the engine needs sorting not adding gimmicks. not many have it and it will not be released till the end of the year and maybe later. why add it now when all you will do is put people off. what will they prioritise next maybe more tgc store stuff?



i would of thought a professional game world would be the top priority, able to run smooth, added water that works and ai and more scripts and stable with a no limits items. with adjustable terrain ( no tearing at all )with more than 4 textures to paint with.



why add a save when you will only be limited by the gaps and solid water and jittering and naff frames per sec. plus limits on the items placed it seems. as in put lots of different entities on and watch it crash. followed by basic game play.



i sound moaning i guess i am, it is because i have experienced their migrating habits. and the integrity seems to last for a short while. then they go off on tangents and lose a lot of customers. i have stayed with tgc because they have potential,but then they dont use it! dudes come on lets get back on track. a lot is at stake for you all. a lot. and i am ready to leave it be, ( prob lots of cheers there ) but i am tired of the lack of.

Science Boy,



Come on now. You are talking basic core important things that you need to make a good game there. You don't really expect to get those do you?



Much like many things in the real world common sense bread and butter things that "Really" matter most often get left behind in favour of superficial things that may look good but have no real practical importance at the cutting edge of lifes and an individuals real needs. What you can be convinced you need rather than what you actually need.



Being honest I am not sure Reloaded will be able to deliver on some of the core requirements that need a powerful engine core in place as they are based upon engine efficiency and performance from the bottom up. User may have to accept that at some time and realise it may not be able deliver them.



Advanced AI and so on for example and many, many other features of a level of high quality that users may look to see in an engine for the types and kind of games or other environments, apps and developments they aspire to make and have added. Literally hundreds of things users ask for. How you will do that I have no idea.



Last version I lost 10fps and hope I don't lose that many every version as more things are added even though it typically varies from person to person in general its just not enough to sustain the future of Reloaded it seems to me.



Currently as Rolfy mentioned and has been said many times would be best avoided, Reloaded looks much like a repeat of Classic. Classic with bells on. Not really suitable for a pro type game engine where commercial realities perhaps have to dominate over basic indie game making core engine necessities which have always existed. Perhaps nothing has changed.



At some stage you may have to live with that and rely on making WIPS and some pretty pictures and videos if not a game of some quality despite the many talented users around that may do their utmost to do so if they are persuaded to so attempt it.



All a bit unfair perhaps or not. As it has been said early days in the Reloaded development - or not so early after the amount of time to date perhaps then who knows how long it may yet be before users will find out for certain what Reloaded will eventually become and how it will be able to perform and deliver the end users needs. At the moment as always you can only comment on what is of now and at any stage in development.



A long way to go and a lot of trials and tribulations yet to come.



Indie users are a strange lot - they constantly forever live in "Hope" which has always kept them concentrated and that may not be going to change either any time soon. Their hope and faith can be astounding.



"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".

I think comparing FPSC Reloaded's forum user base to Unity's is a little flawed in it's logic. Unity has been around for years, Reloaded is only just out the door so to speak and is still in beta. Numbers are never going to compete with an existing quality games engine that has been around for so long. At least not until it is fairly finished. Also, many people who will want to use Reloaded would have no clue where to start in Unity. Not all of course, but a good majority in the main. To expect anything close to Unity's user base after just 4 months as a beta is frankly ridiculous. Also because it is a beta, and is still quite basic, many users will have no doubt put it to one side for a month or 2 to see how it progresses. Also, Unity is free to try out. Please anyone who are frustrated with Reloaded at the moment go try it. It is not the easiest package to work on, certainly way more complicated than Reloaded. Learning C# or Java would be good too, else your not going to do much with it. Of course to do anything really good, you will have to buy it, possibly an addon or 2, and then when you have a finished game pay a license to them also. Not cheap and much more cash than Reloaded.



I've tried it a few times, mostly because I was so impressed with it's web player But I found it not to my taste, and I hate both java and c#, in fact any language that insists on having brackets galore! Still, I could knock up a very basic FPS in it I imagine. I can certainly see that if a coder has spent a lot of time getting into Unity, they are not likely to change without a real good reason! Even if Reloaded was fast enough for everyone at this moment, very few Unity devs are going to migrate, it would still need more features and a lot more scripting options to have a cat in hell's chance. In fact comparing Reloaded and Unity is pointless as they are totally different beasts. Oh one last Unity thing, it doesn't have Rift support as yet. So rift users may be limited in what they can use with their headsets at present.



I don't see any harm in the other add ons being worked on. TGC have employed other people to do this, leaving Lee more time to work on the core engine, as most people want. I certainly don't begrudge a day or 2 adding in Rift support, which he can then pass over to another coder to tweak and improve. I am also looking forward to interior options, as for me that is fairly important. There's only so many things you can do with outdoor scenes. Also when they are in you can use the super flat terrain and do an indoor level, which should run a lot better. Fair enough it's a compromise at the moment, but seriously, I don't expect to have anything like a fully working engine till at least September personally. Of course sooner would be better!

I use my XBOX 360 controller for most games on my PC that support it. It was the greatest thing ever to find out that most games on STEAM that were released for XBOX and PC, support the XBOX controller. Makes the games so much more fun to play using the analog and other buttons. Keyboard can be a pain.



I can see a lot of people on here confused about XBOX 360 support. This does not mean using some 3rd party software or code for a joypad, or xpad, cpad or etc etc. I'm talking about this item to the left:











It works with any XBOX360 controller.



Its the Steam standard way to use XBOX controllers since it changed even the interface on the games from saying press E to press X for example.



All we need to do is add the detection code into Reloaded so the engine can then move from keyboard to XBOX360 controls, once the XBOX360 signal has been received.

Personally I have not used any kind of controller for many years and stick with the keyboard. I used to use one long time ago and must admit I liked it and found it better than the keyboard as to me it provides a little more freedom to concentrate on the game itself. I found keyboard controls a little cumbersome by comparison though that's probably because I am not very good at either!



Again options are helpful if they can be incorporated.

I agree, options are the spices of life.

Actually Unity has had native Rift support from day one, it's one of several officially endorsed dev platforms for the Rift (Unreal Engine is another). Most of the Rift demos and upcoming Rift-enabled titles are in fact developed in Unity. However, Rift integration is only available in the Pro version (the dev kit came with an extended Pro trial license for new users).

thank you Teabone for talking about xbox controller on the main topic of this thread. also it would take Lee no time add in the controller since he have done it before with fpsc and fpscx10.

All im going to say is, I love the idea of the Oculus Rift support.



As I can develope on my laptop with a VR display so iam going to order one at only 180 pounds sterling so grab one now as when goes to retail it will cost about 350 quid.



So FPSCR and Oculus Rift is gonna be awsome.



The performance will come, as even the old patched up fpsc got better and Fpscr has only just been born.

its typical of tgc to try and bring in as many customers as possible ($$$) while not bothering to give them a quality experience. smoke and mirrors is the game. disappointing

I think it's a good decision to include Rift support. I have one, and I've been a TGC member (although not forums) since 2004. I was all for Reloaded since the Kickstarter. Rift support was not even a factor, as I didn't even receive it until early December. I'm a hobbyist, and as such I have no illusions of ever making a commercial quality game with any engine, now or in the future. Unity Pro (pricey)is the only version that includes Oculus support; not the free one. UDK is great, although importing one's own assets can be a challenging task. I can do it, but it's hit or miss even though I maintain the same pipeline. While I don't like to think of TGC as a business, they are, plain and simple. This is the time to offer that kind of support, because it will potentially attract more users, less so if they wait too long. Personally, Reloaded behaves pathetically on my laptop (5-25 fps) but great on my desktop (160+ fps, although with this latest beta I suspect it's capped at 60, but as of Alpha Cadence it was 160-200 getting to the river, although I moved like a snail still). I believe performance will improve. Hell, I'm not even expecting a final release for at least another 18 months. Just my two cents. (55-60 cents, really)



Don

Rift and multi-controller support are excellent features and should be available in any modern/descent engine. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. It's just common sense. The issue is not whether, but when. To reuse an old question... do you add an alarm feature to a clock if it doesn't keep time?



How many times do you think that the current "build" feature will have to be rewritten before the core work is finished? Why don't we just write the users manual now too? So what if we have no idea how anything is going to work when/if it's finished. Pandering to the feature seekers may end up providing more exposure and sales and it seems that's why they're doing it. I don't think it's going to pay off in the end. I'm worried about the future of FPSC:R and I think they might be too. If Lee is finding it this difficult to squeak out a couple of FPS then they're probably not in there. It would be one thing if we were even close to acceptable, but we're not. We should all pray for a miracle.



Just a note: If you want to be kind to TGC (now that they've put in a build feature) don't release/post any built levels with AI in them. It might go viral, but it won't help sales.



Brian.

True, however tha base is set to enable

lower end-users to play games made with R.



The problem currently is that the core is not optimized, i see and understand that Lee is testing other games.



Still i doubt that TGC or Lee understand what it means working

with one of those engines that produced the games that Lee is currently testplaying.



I for one can tell from experience what each engine can do or not.



UDK - is seen as a next gen engine even with features that are actually old

stuff like prebaked lightmaps?

It is still a FPS Engine - but how are there other genres being made with it?

Simple - they havent hardcoded that much, for example our camera in R should be

tweakable from the ground up - a user should be able to define where the view is being rendered if not in firstperson, give the user the abbility to manipulate the view from the start marker.



idTech - used to be the mother of fps engines, just recentlly with the game Rage it started to step foot into the terrain world.

Well i played it, hell i played almost all idtech games and i even used idtech 1-4 engines.

What can we learn from idtech is - Skinable Models thru Material files (even idtech 1 was able to do skins for the models and R is lacking this!)





Now i could write about other engines as well but i wont, see

the basic terrain work is actually done! We dont need to expand this further,

lets just get to the guts and fix the stuff that is preventing us - the users from using the engine in a appropriate way.



Sure we can make beauty shots and setup scenes but thats it currently and well its really not about beauty atm.



What i want to say is lets focus on the FPS aspect and on stability of the things we currently have.



Adding controller support wont be a hard task and updating the rift support as well.

(But it is good that we already have rift support, since adding it too late might just have ended up in too much trouble)



See atm we dont even have the shaders setup, i mean what are we missing

is DoF/ Bokeh/ Vignette/ Night-Thermal Vision..

with that being said, what do you think how R will perform with current-next gen shaders when rift is enabled?

See thats my point

I agree unless i start seeing major improvements i will move on. At this stage i feel they have taken it so far and are stuck due to the engine being old and limited its easy to say only time will tell but just how much time

When talk of Relaoded began there was some discussion of language. I remember C++ and DX11 being mentioned and I got excited, but I don't think it was anyone at TGC talking that way. I believe their eyes were always on DBP and DX9 from the beginning, which is why I always had my doubts. They never got FPSC running up-to-speed and left it to start again with Reloaded. What was it that Uman said about insanity?



Brian.

No one is or should be against better, new or more advanced features which will server the product in good stead looking to the future which is what you will have to do when contemplating using Reloaded for your game making. That goes without saying and I have no objection to that - the very opposite being the case. I have no objection to Rift therefore and and glad to see it included and that it will be supported as a tool for the future. Nice it will be when it may be more widely supported and we don't have to sit around with an object half the size of a house on our head and get sick all day long. Hopefully we look forward to the day when we wear it as a pair of spectacles or our standard specs support it too - dual purpose specs in a world full of Virtual Reality. Still we are not quite there yet and neither is Reloaded.



Now to be fair and this has been said before I know :



TGC is a business and game engine users may and often will have different priorties. One needs the other of course so some understanding and meeting of minds is needed for best results.



Prior to Reloaded taking off everyone in the big wide world current TGC users and others outside of the realm in the wider world did have and opportunity to comment on the future of the product. At the TGC forums in the first instance. An then at Kickstarter and to comment and or support it.



The support at Kickstarter well got off to a bad start. Clearly not enough support so not enough faith in it rightly or wrongly.



As to the plan for development well that may have had something to do with it or not and previous and or past technology used and TGC engines existing as judgement for potential supporters may also have had a bearing. Presumably they did.



At that time with limited choices open to TGC when users had a chance to comment as I remember and you can go back if you like and check the relative Reloaded related threads and posts and comments from interested parties.....



The overall concensus was from users (and TGC presumably)



(a) that no one wanted or could afford to wait for maybe, 3, 5, or 10 years so that a new engine could be built looking to the future using technologies of (for) the future.



(b) that current technologies of the past and at the time in general and wide use perhaps in some instances, namely DBPro and DirectX 9 would be sufficiently capable to deliver what was needed into the future (for unspecified amounts of time) and that given TGC experience in developing game engines that they had the expertise to indeed squeeze out of those past/current technologies more than enough power and develop therefrom an engine core/platform suitable to take us forward for what - perhaps the next ten years at least?



Those things partly due to current situations at the time of I guess TGC and users predicaments. Perhaps in the case of TGC - commercial realities and financial and other restraints and in the case of users - cant wait to make a game, for a new engine or the next feature no matter how that could possibly be achieved or considered to be so done. I just want it now approach and I want it good and I want it cheap - which is our first human response. Lets just have a go and see how it all pans out as soon as possible of course and I am sure it will because it must, surely. If I can imagine it it must be possible because I want it to be so.



In reality there were not many choices were there and perhaps only the two - stick with what you have and try and make it a little better in the hope all will be OK now and into the future hoping the technologies will indeed survive or go all out for the unknown and start from a very basic zero, zilch, nothing and start a new engine built upon something completely new as to be tailored to whatever you make it - to be planned and decided by research, deliberation, planning, consultation and so on or otherwise. i.e. What are the needs and objectives for both TGC and Users not now but into the future and how will that be achieved. Do we have, can we build a plan - a very detailed one and how and can we achieve it. We need a plan surely - a credible one knowing of course it may well be influenced along the way perhaps but that will always be the case and adjustments may have to be made albeit towards the perceived and required objectives for the future.



Currently we have arrived at this stage despite ongoing thinking and updating of plans which we don't know of in specific detail perhaps - because of decisions taken before Reloaded's kick off so presumably everyone should be happy having decided back then that the then current plan at that time for the core technologies at least would be sustainable and would deliver the end goals and objectives which to be fair I am not quite sure were or are other than to make it an engine suitable for users into the years ahead in which case all should be fine and dandy, no worries.



At the time Reloaded was being thought of and kicked off I had thought that the bottom line was that 32 bit operating systems and Direct 9X technologies apart from DBPro itself as the core programming language would not support a modern engine into the future though options for TGC to consider a new engine from scratch were limited for obvious reasons as specified above. Ideal to build a new engine from scratch perhaps in theory but not very realistic in reality despite it may be an imperative for success - the option is to run with what you can and hope it all works out. If you cant do whats ideal for a variety of real life reasons, you cant do it and not much option.



There is nothing I see to change my mind as yet. We live in fast paced world and technology moves ever increasingly faster despite our failures to embrace it as fast as it might be so. Computers themselves, computer games and their technologies incorporated, the quality and range of device deployment, web, tablet, multi user interaction and so on moves forward at an unprecedented rate and will get faster until such technologies permiate every minute of our day and encroach on every aspect of our lives even more than they do now. You keep up or you get left behind. People want to play a computer game on an an airplane or on their way home from work, on a tube or bus, or car or in the bath! Just like they want their mobile phone or tablet always in their hand every minute of the day. They cant put them down. Its the age of communication and interaction with others - even if its only interaction with your game characters! so we need some of that!



To be realistic Reloaded was always going to have limitations no matter what technologies it used or would be based upon and much like the performance and fps game play speeds its not the highs that matter. No one cares if you can have 250fps in an empty level - its the lows that matter and if you cannot sustain a reasonable performance no matter what you throw at it then you come to a halt in your game building or game playing experience - that's if you want to enjoy it and not bin it.



As is Reloaded is now what it is and all that can be done is make the most of it. That may be enough - it may not at least in making a Windows platform only fps game is concerned - at this stage at least and getting there would be a first step.



To that end this being an FPS shooter, and putting aside all other considerations then some ensuring that the AI quality of intelligence and behavior at least is up to scratch with future game making expectation would be a good decision. If you want to show others what an fps engine is really capable of and encourage more users to use an FPS engine then there is no better way than to show capable AI behaviour feature inclusion as that's the bottom line. Even a zombie could do with a little more intelligence than swinging arms at you widely when close enough to do that.



Its too late to consider what was or could have been now. Yesterday is gone - you cant go back or change that and who would want to? so what is done from now on is what matters.



Hanging on in there and see what develops is all that can be done.



Hopefully if Reloaded is successful then TGC may I hope have a secret plan on the table as a contingency for something to replace it with later if it falls on hard times.



xplosys,



I just behave that way sometimes out of confusion and frustration!

Yes, I remember this being one of the major points that Lee and FPS users mentioned as a pitfall in trying to "reinvent the wheel" with a new engine, so-to-speak. Of course, at this point there is a high probability that development will still take at least another couple years even with the existing engine. It is basically like developing a new engine from scratch (as Lee himself has said in the past, due to how many major changes including the entire terrain/building system) except they are still using decade-old tech as the horsepower which I'm not convinced will ever be sufficient enough, no matter how many frames per second Lee can still squeeze into it.

They need to go 64bit I think the

I don't know a great deal about building a game engine but 64 Bit would seem to be out of the question to me at least now at this stage. There would seem to be more involved than anything simple in that and everything that would suggest would perhaps need be considered revolving around a 64 Bit engine if any switch were to be fully taken advantage of to its fullest potential.



A long term job commitment I would think unless you have massive resources available or unless you have two engine developments in tandem Reloaded and Reloaded 64 to be considered as and when it was possible to steer time and resources towards it long term.



At the moment Reloaded has a base so its a head start. As was originally considered I doubt anyone could or would want to wait for a what you might call - next gen engine. Many as said just want it all now so they can make a game now having pledged they would not want to wait very long.



TGC and Lee should have some better Idea than we do - at least what I do as I am not knowledgeable to comment about that really at all.



I just look at it logically and from experience of existing 64 bit software I use which is all very good being what you might call reasonable professional software which includes things like Video Editing, Flash and other 3D Modelling Software of various kinds which do require quite a lot of system memory, video memory usage and processing power. They seem to be well very stable, efficient and data handling and fast. I am sure that just because a software is 64 Bit does not mean all software is like that of course it depends upon how well the software is made I guess and there will obviously be bad and good 64 Bit software. Generally speaking the more you pay the better the product but that's not always the case is it.



Logically at least in theory old technology has a limited shelf life but then some things have been around a long time and last 10 or hundreds of years or even century's by and large by design and can't be bettered even today but those things are limited and often often by other fixed things such as gravity and maths and so on that don't change even if our understanding and manipulation of them does.



In game engine and similar technologies we are somewhat at the mercy of outside influences which for example put the downers on X10 and no saying that could not happen again so one has to keep up and move on with what is or will become the norm and keep that moving forward and updating. Not an easy thing to do for TGC.



Sooner or later I have no idea when 64 Bit will also be superceded though that may be quite a long way off to say the least at this time. It will no doubt happen though when the world is ready for it. At the moment Reloaded will be at a static stage of 32 Bit which is going nowhere long term. Bottom line is its a dying technology. Sooner or later your new computer wont even run any 32 Bit software at all. That's inevitable. It will become so outdated it wont even function any longer or without serious issues at best. Certainly I have a lot of older software here - not all that old which simply wont install and run under current computers I use. I would like to use it as some are very good software but cant. The number of these programmes grows with each version of Windows and associated software and new computers coming along.



Not much different to Windows 98 where I still have a machine which is alive but disconnected but no point in it asking it to function with modern software and vice versa, each is not compatible one with another and of a different age of technology and civilisation.



Anyway carry on regardless and lets wait for the next update.

I guess. But it would solve a lot of issues especially memory wise. Maybe have a rv32 and rv64 but I think not. But I do think that the engine needs some serious rethink. And with no compromise. I am just going to wait and see what is planned

Well 64bit is not impossible, why do we need to asume that things cant be done?



Who here has really worked with DB Pro? I guess not many and even the ones that

did cant really say that they know the engine in and out.



Sure the last thing we want to hear again is

"squeezing fps out" thats just nonsense.

I don't think its a question of impossibilities or can't be done but just what one can expect of TGC with particular reference to where the development is now and what options they have. given the engine current state of development and the commercial realities they face of which personally I have no knowledge of so cant really say.



Thus you are correct that assumption which is usually not a good thing is the only option we have. i.e. just trying to use a little common sense in my case.



Whatever its down to TGC. Users pledge and do what they can to test Release versions and provide feedback and anything else they may be able to do to help which they are asked to do partly as there is no other way to test and get feedback on a wide variety of differing end user systems. That's about all we can do and are at the end of the day powerless do actually do anything much more to help.



Development strategy and so on is down to TGC in the final analysis - was initially and is ongoing so. Pledgers pledge and everything else is down to TGC as to decide upon and physically implement what they wish as they see fit.



We can only suggest, comment, request and so on from this end. TGC I guess consider and do what they think is best and is possible under the always present business interest. Due to this its not an open process of well we can do and achieve anything. No 1 priority is business interests short term first then long term - that can be heavy on shaping the development, whats done, how and when, which does not always mean the best possible outcome from a game makers point of view which may be totally different in priority. Though in general ideally of course TGC may indeed aspire to see the same end result just as users i.e. a great game making tool the realities of business may have to take precedence in shaping the end result somewhat off the track of whats aspired to and can be achieved in real world scenario.



Anyway I think this has been gone through so often over so many years it gets tiresome.



Down to TGC so again users will have to wait to see what transpires. Not much option really. Wont have so long to wait now as more clarity on these things will surely be forthcoming as time passes by dictates it will. Sooner or later all will become clear and apparent if not already so. Reloaded either stands still or it will be progressed in one way or another and as it does then the results will be clear to see - sooner or later.

I don't think a 64-bit core would be that difficult for TGC. I would imagine it is a case of updating core libraries to 64 bit versions in Visual Studio. Of course I am not a C++ programmer and so, am guessing.

I think a lot of people are getting too obsessed with the fact DB Pro is being used for a lot of things. We are not going to be limited to what DB Pro can do with this as far as I understand. As and when things are needed to be improved, Lee can go into the DB files and update/rework/rewrite as necessary.

Of course, going to 64-bit may mean a hell of a lot of changes, and I can see why TGC have not done so as yet. Still, there is no reason to think it will always be so, and no real reason to think it has to be started over from scratch! I'm hopeful that it will be introduced at some point. At the moment however, they have their hands full getting performance up before worrying too much about memory limits. Still, the day we can use practically as many assets we want would be a good one! Well worth TGC investigating the options to get this in at some point!

64 bit support would take months (and months and months), and on completion you would see almost no difference visually or performance wise. You would also create a situation where a level you created required more than 2GB of system memory, thus making your game incompatible with 32 bit systems. You would also need to ship two executables (32 and 64) with your standalone game too which would bloat your final distributable. My guess is that (at the moment) you would prefer I spend those six months on other things My belief is that we can solve the current memory issues in other ways and deal with the problems at source, rather than simply grab more memory from the PC. I am sure there are users out there who only have 2GB of system memory, and all the work on a 64 bit DBP compiler and DLL framework would not benefit them in any way.



I also want to state (repeat really) that I did not write the Rift module, and it did not take up any of my time to add to Reloaded. It was a parallel development to support a very cool piece of kit, and got the whole team thinking out of the box on what we firmly believe is going to be an awesome game creator in years to come. It is also very difficult to find modules that can be entirely farmed out for parallel development, so it's not the case that the same coder could have helped with the core modules in their current state. The project did highlight the need internally however to prepare the core engine so that more of it's core components could be contributed to by third party coders. Just to badger the point entirely, I also did not write the Importer or the Construction Kit (which I am sure will also be heralded as monstrous distractions for poor overworked Lee). They are entirely separate modules coded in parallel to the main core engine and have been designed from the beginning to simply 'drop' into the main engine system. If you want clarity on what I am coding each day, you are welcome to visit the daily blog at http://fpscreloaded.blogspot.co.uk/ and if you even smell a hint that I am working on non-core stuff, you are most welcome to come back here and flame the behind off me



And to address the original post, XBOX Controller support is technically already in but has been disabled in the latest source. I have put it down as a priority 'D' which means there are a small avalanche of core A, B and C items to code first. It could be a ten minute addition, but experience tells me it would take an hour to code and test, then plenty of small iterations when it hits the end user, and of course the inevitable back-lash from users who feel controller support was not needed at this stage You might argue that an hour is no time at all, but add that to the other fifty items which all require an hour, and you start to see the whole picture in its scary vastness.

This is true but can you not make it so if you have more memory to give let it have it

okay Lee I will say no more about the xbox controller. thanks.



as for the 64 bit support it would have been great when it comes to memory I feel reload is 64 bit ideal engine being that it has all the easy to make level tools that will most likely use more memory as we progress in the development. but at the end of the day reload is at it's standing of a engine was not meant to take year and year to develop. but the future of 64bit is here now but one half of the gaming world is just not ready for it. none of this does not matter now if Lee say he can solve the memory issue then so be it.



but maybe one day the fpsc reload ideal will rub off on to some other developer that decides to make a 64bit game engine and give all the easy to make level tools like reload. but I can say this might not be the last time someone brings something up about 64bit which is a good things because this means more and more user have a 64bit system.

With the slump in PC sales due to so many people moving to tablets, phones, etc., it seems to me that before long the majority of systems still out there will be 64-bit, owned by people (like myself) who appreciate the raw power of a PC over the cheaper, more portable devices. If they are looking for longevity in this product, I believe that eventually it will have to come, perhaps in FPSC Reloaded New and Improved 64++. In the meantime, if Lee says they can overcome that memory cap by other means, then I believe him and say more power to them!