Open source ALIVE engine
 

Has there been any projects to recreate the ALIVE engine in C++? If not this is something I've been thinking about because writing a level editor for the current games is near impossible :(

But writing a new engine to run custom content is more than possible, and if its open source it could always been maintained to make it future proof if need be :). I was thinking C++/SDL/OpenGL is the way to go, thoughts?

Perhaps, but it would probably end up being a mess when it's full of all the AO/AE stuff. I would like to know how easy it would be to make one though.

I don't think it would be too hard, shouldnt be a mess either since you'd know all the features before hand so nothing would get 'hacked' in

If you do make it C++. Only programming language I'm good at.

It is a great idea! There are many engine reimplementations for games with more complicated code and your knowledge of AO/AE engine is surely big (Thanks for .lvl editor ;) ) The recreation of the engine may also add a lot of features such as level maker, running game on Hi-Resolution with some graphic filters etc.
If you managed to do It I wish you the best of luck ;)

Well it would be cool if some other people make new high resoultion sprites instead of upscaling the old ones, since even with filtering they will look poor in HD

With new-old engine it would be also possible to edit game music/sounds - add some effects, echoes - make it even more atmospheric! :D

Yeah but that would require new sound samples, so you'd need some uber cool sound people on here to come up with that

That would?
There would be no chance to rip it from game, edit, and put into it (maybe in a different way) again? : /

If someone sends the old sprites to me I'll have a go.

There was a tool posted somewhere in the fan section that could really smooth pixel images, it looked really nice and would be great so upscale the old once without to much work :) Anyone know where to find it?

I'm not sure if you mean http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/1...difference.png but just in case you do, it's Perfectum Plugin for Photoshop... and as far i know, unfortunately it's not free (However - there is a demo)

http://www.redfieldplugins.com/filterPerfectum.htm

Thats not changing the resoultion though, its just like 2Xsiaxx or whatever its called which still looks bad when you x4 the resoultion (about what you'd need for HD)

The current sprites are designed for 640x240 resoultion

With Interline even for 640x480 xD
You mean 2xSaI? Yup, it's definetly not for such radical resolution change... but this plugin imo it IS
http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/3064/smoothercopy.png
(Right - Original screenshot upscaled to 1280x960, Left - The same but a little more smoothered) - surely it's much easier to add some more missing details to enhanced sprites/game screens than making it from a scratch in HD :)

It looks better, but it dosent look good its still very blurry and low resoultion, it could be SO much better.If you check the concept screen shots or whatever you'll notice the devlopment version of AO/AE had much much higher resoultion sprites.

Remaking them all would be a meaty challenge, but it could be done in small parts, for example make the 3d levels for rendering but just "block in" the layout with simple black and white boxes or something and then texture/detail it properly later in stages

That one on the left is totally awesome

It could be done by rendering the sprites all again in higher resolution from 3D models.

Yeah thats what I was trying to say, and the same for the backgrounds ;)

Ah oke haha :p So what is there all thats needs to be done? I know for this to work we need every single frame re-rendered in a 3d app, but the backgrounds, do you want like all tileble parts that the user can use to build their own levels in the OsALIVE engine ?

Hmm tiled backgrounds wouldnt really make it possible to re-create the orginal as test content because static images and tiles are completely diffrent :(

However it would have pesudo 2d tile support because there is the static 2d background image, then you have animations placed onto of that, the game sprites and then "bits" of the 2d image again which is what appears on top of the sprites..

Or you could make another app with a tileset to allow creating of tile maps that get saved as big static images I suppose, could have nice features like prebuilt platform sections to copy paste in.

I like this option more :)
I was thinking about SDL and its big possibilities to port games on other systems... but on my PC games based on SDL works slow, and AO and AE didn't have much requirements : / So i prefer somebody to make it in C++ :)

I was also wondering about a name for such project. What about "Still A.L.I.V.E."? :)
Or "C.O.R.P. (Complete Oddworld Reimplementation Project)"?

Can I ask, why is the ALIVE engine hard to edit or change? It looks like an simple engine

it's not obviously

The game engine is pretty old, the all sprites/backgrounds are 0.5x shorter vertically than ingame, as Paul previously said there are no tiles/tiles support here, the whole recreating-engine is a hard thing, and we need somebody who actually CAN and WANTS to do that :P Paul's never said he's gonna do it, but IMO he's the only guy here who is able to do it well :)

Reading machine code for anything is never easy...

plz just make sure of one thing when u do that (yep , i know will do it) , REMOVE THE ****ED UP BULL**** SHORT MUSIC THAT PLAYS DURING THE DAMN ****ING SECRET AREAS!!!!!!

lol rage?! :p What annoys you about the music? Anyway, thats probably one of the last things to be put into the engine... :)

I think he means the VERY, VERY LOUD sound which the AE gives when you find secret level :P The AO's one was a lot better than that

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy7rJ...eature=related 0:30

If you have headphones with volume set on medium (just to hear game normally) it may blow your ears :/

yeah , i don't why ajellyn put it in her mmosg when u enter the train , it also used to scare me when i was young and it still brings back old memories like that big scare sad looking skull in necrum.

I put it in the MMOSG. It's awesome, you're just a pussy.

even if u put a rob zombie shouting "DRAGULA!!!" would be more awesome , i really hate that thing dude and i am not a pussy , this is just an exception.
so remove it or i am gonna drink ya mug , putting party boy theme from jackass would be better than that thing and as u can see , everybody hates it.
it's to freakin' happy for it's own good.