Site Issues April 22, 2011

Edit – the site is back online faster then I expected. When I posted this I expected extended down-time.

This post is not directly related to DarkXL but rather to the new XL Engine site. Since it is currently offline, I’m posting this on the blogs and old forums so people know what’s going on.

The new XL Engine site is down temporarily and will probably be down all of today and maybe even tomorrow. This is only a temporary issue that I’m attempting to get solved right now. Please be patient, the site will be back up as soon as possible.

Thanks for your patience.

XL-Project Move and DaggerXL Version 0.20 Update April 17, 2011

As previously discussed, I’ve moved to a centralized XL Engine site and blog. So from now on I will be linking posts from the new blog from here, until everything is moved over.

Read XL-Project Move and DaggerXL Version 0.20 Update.

DarkXL, OutlawsXL and BloodXL Moving April 15, 2011

These projects will soon be merged together, with DaggerXL, as the XL Engine. While the merge itself hasn’t begun yet (see the previous post for a time table), I have begun to consolidate the communities and sites that are dealing with these projects. The DarkXL freeforums site has been closed down – forums for all these projects will now be here: xlengine.com/forums. The new site, xlengine.com will now host a new blog that will cover all the projects and the site will host news and downloads when it’s setup. I will be setting things up in the next week, after which point I’ll remove downloads from these blogs. This will also be the last blog post made specifically for this blog, though I will still put up posts here with links to the new blog so returning visitors aren’t left behind. To that end the blogs will remain operational for a while yet.

DF-21 will remain as the source for Dark Forces discussion and files. However DarkXL discussions will be moving over to the new forums like every other project. So please visit the new forums to get acquainted with them and register if you like. The site/blog isn’t fully setup yet, but as I said that will be happening within the next week.

The good news is that the new site is a properly hosted site, meaning that I have more control and things can be centralized (site, blog, forum and file hosting all on that site). This also means that things like a wiki or other features can be added later.

Beta Update, Project Merger and the Future of DXL April 13, 2011

Beta Update

I plan on finishing the Beta release once version 0.20 of DaggerXL is released later this week. However with the Beta comes another big change as you’ll read below:

Project Merger

I’ve been thinking about this, off and on, for a while now. But with the DarkXL Beta coming up this is basically my “last” good chance to get this done if it’s going to be done at all. I plan on merging the DaggerXL and DarkXL projects into one engine, the XL Engine. But the engine rendering and many other aspects are different, you may say – and it’s true. But there is a lot of code that can and should be shared between the projects. For example, much of the software renderer and hardware driver abstraction layers. The in-game console. The sound system. The midi playback system. The window/OS management and input systems, the scripting system. UI scripting ability, AI scripting, and so on. As I start supporting different OS’s and rendering APIs, this will save a lot of duplicate work. I’ve been considering, way down the road – post DaggerXL beta if it happens – adding ArenaXL as a project supported by DaggerXL. With the shared code base, I can use a lot of the same code that DarkXL will use for it’s sector rendering, for example.

There are other benefits: releases that work on technology now benefit all projects, no need to “port” from one to the other. As I brushed upon before, when I add support for other platforms – I add support for all the projects. When I make releases, it will be easy to make improvements for multiple games simultaneously. Some tools and mod support can be shared across projects (for example adding the DaggerXL high resolution texture replacers support to DarkXL). And finally I can merge the communities under a single engine/site/forum so that I can be active on all the projects and not just one at a time.

So what happens to all the different sites and forums that currently exist?
DF-21 will remain a resource for Dark Forces related files and forums. However I plan on setting up a new forum, for the XL Engine, and migrate all the projects to that forum. The newer DarkXL  forums will remain open for a while, but once I get things moving I will probably focus on posting over at the XL Engine Forums and the DarkXL forums will be shut down. For the time being, I’ll keep the blogs around but I’ll probably start putting together an XL Engine blog and mirror posts across the others. As support for more games is added in the future, this will be a more scalable solution as well.

Does this change future plans for DarkXL, modding support or other DarkXL specific plans?
No. Full modding support is still planned, though many of the tools may be shared with DaggerXL modding.

Isn’t DarkXL a sector engine and DaggerXL a true 3D polygon engine? Aren’t these incompatible?
It is true that they are different but both can exist in the same engine. DarkXL actually supports rendering models already, they are used in Dark Forces for things like bridges, Tie Fighters, The Moldy Crow and so on. The way the level geometry is rendered is indeed much different, but the engine will be able to support both sector and “free-form” polygonal geometry. This has potential implications for modding, though those will be explored later. Things like scene traversal and level geometry rendering are different, but this won’t be the first engine to support multiple methods of scene traversal and rendering. A lot of the surrounding code will still be shared, so the savings offset the cost.

So here is my plan:
1) Release version 0.20 of DaggerXL.
2) Finish the DarkXL Beta.
3) Merge DaggerXL and DarkXL under the new XL Engine, where DaggerXL and DarkXL are two games supported by the engine.
4+) Continue to work on the projects as I have been, but with everything together it’ll much easier for me to keep everything going rather then letting one or another stagnate.

The order of 2 and 3 may change. My gut instinct is to get the merge done before the Beta but completing the Beta first gets a long overdue build out sooner…, but that is beyond the scope of this topic.

Finally, I have to ask the community: Are you guys willing to do this? To move to new forums, to intermingle with Daggerfall, Outlaws and Blood fans? Of course each game gets it’s own sub-forum so it’s not complete anarchy, but you get the idea. I know it’s sudden for you guys, but it’s been on my mind for a while now. Ultimately I think this change would be an improvement for all the projects – DarkXL included – but I would appreciate it if you guys let me know what you think.