Torment for iPad, smartphones, and Nokia

[Wyrmlord]

http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/106...oes-open-source-and-cross-platform-sorta.html

Plus, modders can finally make the fan-made Torment 2.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

in before hipsters

On a serious note, why didn't you post that here, sea? I see you in the comments.

 

[Grunker]

GemRB has existed for a very long time

 

[Hobo Elf]

BioWare's Infinity Engine is the greatest RPG engine ever created.

Yeah, no.

 

[Revenant]

GemRB is mostly pointless, since all the Infinity Engine games run perfectly in Wine. Porting the Infinity Engine to other architectures than x86 is also meaningless, because you can't seriously play the IE games without mouse (that is, on portable devices to which porting is considered).

 

[Gragt]

I noticed that anytime someone states something remotely controversial — which often isn't controversial at all but is worded to appear that way — and adds "There, I said it.", they're likely wrong.

 

[mondblut]

Wake me up when the same happens to TOEE.

 

[Shiki]

GemRB is mostly pointless, since all the Infinity Engine games run perfectly in Wine. Porting the Infinity Engine to other architectures than x86 is also meaningless, because you can't seriously play the IE games without mouse (that is, on portable devices to which porting is considered).

You lack the ability to see past your own nose. ARM devices will become very popular in a not so distant future, through Windows 8. Lots of hardware manufacturers are waiting for W8 before releasing and marketing low power ARM laptops and desktops and you'll be able to use a mouse with those.

http://liliputing.com/2012/02/windows-8-for-arm-x86-to-launch-at-the-same-time.html
That means if you pick up a Windows 8 tablet with an ARM-based chip, you’ll be able to plug in a keyboard and mouse and treat it like a desktop or laptop computer.

GemRB is modular enough to be easily ported to pretty much anything, it's even been ported on irrelevant, obscure OSes like Syllable so you can bet that it'll work on Windows 8 ARM as soon as it's released.
For all of those who do not have a need for big raw power, ARM laptops will fucking DESTROY the x86 laptops. You can already see the potential in tablets, they feature up to 10 hours of battery life which is a big deal for mobile devices. Which probably means 16 hours on a 14" laptop with a bigger battery. The one thing that is needed is for software to be ported to the platform and Microsoft has the power to steer the market toward that direction by releasing Windows 8 simultaneously on x86 and arm.

ARM will probably also eat at Intel low end offerings like the Atom. As long as the most essential software gets ported to WOA, low end desktop computers (nettops) will also switch to ARM and ditch intel.

GemRB is a nice project that is making good progress (it has come a long way since the early years) and I have great hopes for it to be fully playable by the time ARM reaches critical mass.

 

[Revenant]

If this you tell about ARM-based devices taking over the x86 laptops is true, then you are likely right. Anyway, I kind of doubt that GemRB will ever be truly complete compared to the original Infinity Engine (open-source clones always tend to be one step behind their proprietary counterparts).

 

[SCO]

It's not pointless. Is scummvm pointless?

In fact, i already requested and had implemented a simple tweak (no pause for spells autopause if not in combat). Even TobEx has it's limits; GemRB is likely to become the best platform soon.

The best thing is that, like scummvm it at least has a "core" team of 3-5 disciplined developers - that's what is needed, not platitudes about "open source".

 

[SCO]

Wake me up when the same happens to TOEE.

https://gitorious.org/eviltemple

Get to work developer.

 

[Shiki]

If this you tell about ARM-based devices taking over the x86 laptops is true, then you are likely right. Anyway, I kind of doubt that GemRB will ever be truly complete compared to the original Infinity Engine (open-source clones always tend to be one step behind their proprietary counterparts).

Software like OpenOffice is always a step behind because once they reach feature parity with Office, Office gets a new release with new features. That isn't the case of dead software like the Infinity Engine. The IE is dead, it has stopped evolving/changing since the release of IWD2. Eventually, not only will GemRB be complete, but it will probably have more features (for modders or people using the engine to make a new game). As long as the developers do not abandon their project mid-way GemRB is bound to reach feature completion since it can take its time to clone a piece of software that has a finite set of features.

What you said about never being complete and always behind is only true when you're following a moving target. Like the open source project ReactOS that is trying to create an open version of windows, compatible with windows drivers. It's following a moving target, so that project will never be complete, even if they did actually reach feature parity with, say, Windows 2000 or XP, we'll probably be using Windows 9 or 10 by that time.

 

[Revenant]

Yeah, yeah, you're right. I only wonder WHEN actually will GemRB be complete, is it going to be a few years or a few decades?

 

[Elzair]

Yeah, yeah, you're right. I only wonder WHEN actually will GemRB be complete, is it going to be a few years or a few decades?

This. I remember first hearing about the project back in 2004. How long has it taken it to get where it is? Just how complicated is the Infinity Engine anyway?

 

[SCO]

http://www.ohloh.net/p/gemrb

147,045 lines of code

Mature, well-established codebase

The first lines of source code were added to GemRB in 2003. This is a relatively long time for an open source project to stay active, and can be a very good sign.
A long source control history like this one shows that the project has enough merit to hold contributors's interest for a long time. It might indicate a mature and relatively bug-free code base, and can be a sign of an organized, dedicated development team.
Note: The source code for GemRB might actually be older than the source control history can reveal. Many projects begin by duplicating a large amount of source code from an existing, older project. You can usually tell whether this is the case by looking for a rapid rise in the amount of code early in the project's history.
Large, active development team

Over the past twelve months, 13 developers contributed new code to GemRB.
This is a relatively large team, putting this project among the top 10% of all project teams on Ohloh.
For this measurement, Ohloh considered only recent changes to the code. Over the entire history of the project, 29 developers have contributed.
Few source code comments

GemRB is written mostly in C++.
Across all C++ projects on Ohloh, 22% of all source code lines are comments. For GemRB, this figure is only 15%.
This lack of comments puts GemRB among the lowest one-third of all C++ projects on Ohloh.
A high number of comments might indicate that the code is well-documented and organized, and could be a sign of a helpful and disciplined development team.

 

[ghostdog]

Yeah GemRB is great stuff, not only for its multi-platform capabilities but also because even though many older games (including IE games) still run okay-ish in modern platforms, compatibility problems constantly arise.

 

[Shiki]

Yeah, yeah, you're right. I only wonder WHEN actually will GemRB be complete, is it going to be a few years or a few decades?

It is nearly feature complete as far as the support of Baldur's Gate go and most of the dev now will probably be about bug fixes and polishing the experience. (I don't think they'll try to implement IWD2 and 3rd ed before then)
http://www.gemrb.org/wiki/doku.php?id=todo
So how about you try it yourself and learn some before judging a really good piece of work with your blatant prejudice toward anything that is open source.

For what amounts to a hobby project (not something the dev were paid for) I'd say it is progressing quite fast.

 

[Revenant]

Let's check your link to see how "nearly complete" it is:

Major todos

• iwd2: 3ed combat, spellbooks, leveling
• pst floating text, avatars, levelup
• keyboard shortcuts (work only from gamecontrol), windowing sanity
• opengl renderer, empty-frame-free animation system
• config saving, proper timing (timestop partiality)
• improve animation id selection: order animation ids, allow for interval (select the row with the highest equal or less ID).
  Add a game flag for this: GF_EXTENDED_ANIM_ID
• implement action/trigger ids override/merging (similar to projectile ids). (partially done)
• and much more (see also the TODO file and the SF tracker)

So, to begin with, there is no floating text in PS:T, no keyboard shortcuts, no hardware acceleration, no config saving, and these are only MAJOR todos. There are plenty of other things to be done (listed below in your link), and, at last but not least, there can be gods know how many bugs in this "nearly complete" rewrite of the engine. Thank you, I'll take my chances with Wine anytime.

The problem is not with free software itself, but with Linux zealots who defend shitty free software projects by praising them as being superior or on par with their proprietary counterparts, when they in fact are utter crap.

 

[SCO]

Oh, you're Bryce. Of course.

 

[Father Walker]

Would be cool if they manage to finish the project and add some modding tools/features.

Btw, they should convert it to turn-based. It would incline the IE engine so much

 

[SCO]

If they get enough people working on it, i'm sure there would be eventually be a benign "scope creep".

By benign, i mean "ToEE". Scummvm followed a similar trajectory once they stopped having much to do with the scumm engine, turning to SCI recently (and others).

 

[sea]

GemRB is one of those things I'd love to see develop - smoother and faster gameplay, more stable than the Infinity Engine, fewer bugs, better mod compatibility and support, native support for high resolutions and UIs, etc. - but as it stands there is no reason to run it on Windows or Linux right now. It's kinda slow and clunky, glitchy, doesn't work for all games, and generally is just not a superior experience to the original engine. I think it's really cool what they're trying to do but I think it's premature at best to say that GemRB is ready to be used by anyone other than the most enthusiastic.

in before hipsters

On a serious note, why didn't you post that here, sea? I see you in the comments.

I only post a thread when I deem you dredges worthy. YOU ARE NOT WORTHY

 

[SCO]

It actually loads areas (saves?) faster than wine, i compiled it recently.

 

[zerotol]

Although i find it great that they have succeeded in porting the games on those platforms, i wonder what the purpose is.

Watching the videos shows that it is frankly unplayable on a phone control wise.

So nice in theory, worthless for practical use (on the examples in this op).

 

[ghostdog]

GemRB is still on development. As time passes all these games become less and less compatible with modern machines, so this isn't just for smartphones or macs or linux, but also for windows. This will be a great tool for the near future even if now it seems just for "look guyz i have torment in my iphonz".