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Mar 28, 2024, 4:19 PM

Some dude is trying to make a OpenGL-based engine replacement for NFS3

This is a discussion for the topic Some dude is trying to make a OpenGL-based engine replacement for NFS3 on the board General NFS.

Author Topic: Some dude is trying to make a OpenGL-based engine replacement for NFS3  (Read 13865 times)

18 Replies on Some dude is trying to make a OpenGL-based engine replacement for NFS3
on: Mar 11, 2018, 2:56 PM
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« Last Edit: Mar 17, 2018, 4:02 PM by AJ_Lethal »

Reply #1
on: Mar 11, 2018, 4:30 PM
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    I keep trying so far... Hmm 😶‍🌫️ ☮️ 😎
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Is he really, thats cool ) I need a better look at this, from a Pc. Wasn't able see any his pics.
Nice post news AJ I'm thinking if he's  ever able to Achieve this,huge Goal.
I think it's  much for one guy editor, to do without having,you know major Burn Out,from it. ::)
Happens, tho I know from my projects at times... so.. )

It be real neat,seeing the Joined tracks, just need to make the flags passable an all where they, join together is all
But, it be a great thing to see happen! Ever... anyway hoping he has more break through's in this Huge project for sure.  8) .
« Last Edit: Mar 12, 2018, 6:09 PM by WiLL »
Let's have a better day...?

Reply #2
on: Mar 11, 2018, 5:50 PM
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Surely a project you can keep an eye out for.

But at this moment it is "only" an OpenGL viewer for 3D assets of the game, which also isn't finished yet. No physics, no AI, no animation, nothing playable.
This will be an incredible HUGE task to complete the mentioned points...

Quote from: 8BitsInAByte (mod author)
I have little to no experience with OpenGL or game engine design, so am using this project as a bit of a learning experience. As such, right now I'm not looking for contributors to work with, but that will change as the code stabilises and actually gains some semblance of structure :D. The first major stall will be on replicating the physics accurately, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Very ambitious! Cry For Speed project failed on this (so far) - and they had a tried and tested physics engine (Cryengine) at their hands.
Of course it would be cool to have a Open-Source version of NFS3/NFS4 with the possibility to use all the mods available for the originals.
So thanks for bringing this up AJ  :)

Reply #3
on: Mar 13, 2018, 3:34 PM
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Hey guys, I'm active on this forum too! In fact, was checking out your project WiLL on getting coloured lights into NFSHS and the recent thread on modifying Ghost files; any hex offsets are a godsend for this project! AJ, good to see you here as well.

MADMAN, don't worry, I'm not crazy and rolling the Physics from scratch, but using the open source Bullet physics library. Getting a car driving on the NFS3 assets is a short hop away, but getting them to drive right is a whole 'nother story. The Cry for Speed project was pretty rad, but in many ways I felt that the cart was put before the horse. From what I saw, music playlists were being built at a time when only Hometown had been modelled, with some car model assets thrown in and tied to a prebuilt car Physics model. To get to this point right now with original assets in Unity is doable. Any idea what happened to the project? As luck would have it, I stumbled onto this website http://www.acth.vissim.com/fed_421.html containing a reverse-engineering of sorts for the Physics. Correlating this back to the carp.txt will be an immense challenge, you're right.

For now, a short project update for you:

- Graphics are nearing a 100% pixel perfect match on the original game, down to the fog and car reflection maps. The animation data and models are loaded too, but using them right now isn't a priority. JimDiabolo has provided me with source for the latest modified versions of T3ED, and through that, Lasse's (Nappe1) shadow raytracer. This is integrated into the engine currently, and allows for some 'time of day' changes - not real time though. Later, a real time shadow map solution will be employed to provide this feature.

- I've just finished up some major work on refactoring the maths to support 'Billboarding', the effect whereby a polygon always faces the camera. This is used around the track for the fake lights. These lights in the original game only had the ability to update the car lighting, in 2018 GPU power is a little ways on from the 90's, so we can now dynamically affect the track lighting - this will make night time races a lot prettier. This is the first of the graphics upgrades that are planned, but I don't want to take away from the original games aesthetic by adding too much; think renovation over revolution. Here's a pic of the unbillboarded lightsrc's in-engine:
 

- Denis's FSHtool source code is being integrated so that texture asset load will happen automatically after you point the engine to the game resource directory.

- The original game logic responsible for drawing the Skybox and actual light shafts are being reverse engineered. The skybox is a little tough, but everything I need seems to be stored in the .hrz files. I think the original game used fixed function gouraud shading built into the GPU hardware, but nGlide is exposing this as a Pixel Shader 2.0 vertex shader with some special blending, so it's doable.

- AI 'VRoad' data is in, and I've been doing some reading on basic AI to utilise it. Jeff Harris of OpenNFS1 and OpenC1 fame has a blog post up that gave me some inspiration for a base to work from, the idea being that the track is made of 'nodes' and paths between them. To paraphrase, with this data they can look ahead to know when to accelerate and brake to make it successfully around a corner. AI can go nowhere without physics though, so I'm putting a hold on this work for now. Emulating the sine-waveyness of them will be fun I'm sure  =D

- Music! We will have no need for custom playlists, the open source project 'VGMStreamer' can already read the .MUS files in game, but I've found another website that has file format descriptions of the .MUS and .MAP files. When time permits, I will be hooking the VGMStreamer libraries into the project, or writing my own player and referencing the .MAP files so that the music plays dynamically just as in the original. The music was the heart and soul of the original, this is an essential feature. Not essential enough to trump Physics though, so it's going on the backburner.

In terms of time scales and burnout, I am doing this when time permits after work during my University 'year in industry'. On return for my masters thesis, I will be working on machine-learning derived AI for car simulation, and the intention is to bring it up inside OpenNFS3. This places a unique constraint on the project, in that auxiliary features (i.e everything outside of Physics and AI) must be done heading into September 2018 so that I can focus on the AI models. I'll keep you guys up to date when I can, and be putting as much work in as I can. Like AJ said, following me on Twitter is a great way to stay in the loop.

Finally, it's lovely to still see an old school NFS scene around. NFS and the community modding scene got me interested in computers, setting me on the road to being able to develop a project like this. This is as a way of returning to my roots and a love-letter to the original. Hopefully with time we can bring the scene back to the old days by injecting some life with this project.

Peace out
- Amrik.

Reply #4
on: Mar 14, 2018, 5:40 AM
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    I keep trying so far... Hmm 😶‍🌫️ ☮️ 😎
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Hi D.Panda bud, I wish you all the Luck on this, great Project here really!... it be great I was guessing,  most times, about changing them lights colors on the track, that long ago. I forget how do it now. Gee lol.
#'s I guess alright have a great day man  8)
Let's have a better day...?

Reply #5
on: Mar 15, 2018, 10:48 AM
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Nice to see you around here, man. And those are great news, especially the track lighting.

Reply #6
on: Mar 15, 2018, 4:11 PM
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Hey Amrik,
thanks for dropping by here and keeping us informed.
Really curious to see progress of your project. I definitely will be on twitter #OpenNFS3

Regarding the physics, for the handling i wouldn't mind a little overhaul, maybe more towards the PSX versions.
I appreciate the accuracy you intend though and NFS3 still is an arcade racer of course.

The Cry For Speed project is currently on hold - and probably dead. I think last response of a dev was in early 2017 on their vk.com page.
https://vk.com/cryforspeed

Quote from: Seryoga Egelsky
When it becomes possible to continue the work - we will announce!

The moddb page is deleted and the domain cryforspeed.com is not registered anymore. So, not much hope on that side...

Reply #7
on: Mar 17, 2018, 6:01 PM
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    I keep trying so far... Hmm 😶‍🌫️ ☮️ 😎
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Is pretty Interesting, bud...thanks an Big bummer about that website news.
Let's have a better day...?

Reply #8
on: Mar 21, 2018, 4:47 PM
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« Last Edit: Mar 21, 2018, 8:41 PM by AJ_Lethal »

Reply #9
on: Mar 21, 2018, 8:34 PM
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    I keep trying so far... Hmm 😶‍🌫️ ☮️ 😎
On your post it says,it won't  load the Plug in, for me so it's a link then?...
Is it good news of sorts Bud cya 8)
Let's have a better day...?

Reply #10
on: Mar 27, 2018, 10:42 PM
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It probably won't go far, but interesting to see.

Reply #11
on: Aug 31, 2018, 3:59 PM
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An Alpha Version of OpenNFS has been released. So far it can run (some) geometry and textures of NFS2, NFS2SE, NFS3, NFS3 PS1 and NFS4. The static lighting and geometry looks good so far. Of course texturing is not perfect yet and there is still a lot on the to-do-list... physics, render-engine, sound, animations, collisions, artificial intelligence, damage ... just to name a few. Every single point is a huge task in its own.
But still impressive to see an engine/application reading everything from the original default game files of all those NFS games. The potential is huge, but i really don't know how one guy can ever handle this project.



OpenNFS V0.2 Release

NOTE: This release isn't really for you guys to report bugs, at this point I'm aware of most big issues. Only bugs related to not being able to even load OpenNFS are valuable to me right now.

OpenNFS High Spec - For everyone with a desktop Nvidia/AMD card past 8800GTX, AMD 4870:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=10OSwY9XqkopDZBYDePNmNRymuGld7JLs
OpenNFS Med Spec -If High Spec crashes on load, but you still rock a decent card:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pduCA_nGMRzme41OTbA1skjl5Q0Oaipr
OpenNFS Potato Spec - Intel HD Graphics:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fPTKTnJXssBE6na3teocIKAgDqtf29sa

Extract your NFS 3 folder into "/resources/NFS_3", and any other NFS's into their folders too.
NFS3 is essential.
Delete the folders of any Need for Speeds that you don't wish to extract into the appropriate folder, else OpenNFS will complain that they are empty
Expected structure "/resources/NFS_3/gamedata/..."
That's all guys, fire up bin/OpenNFS.exe

There is a README for any bugs and features (attached at this post)
It is version 0.2, and buggy as all hell!

Keep it up, Amrik.

Reply #12
on: Sep 03, 2018, 11:52 AM
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So,  what you're saying we can finally run secret tracks on NFS on PC?  Sounds too good to be true.

Reply #13
on: Sep 03, 2018, 12:19 PM
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So,  what you're saying we can finally run secret tracks on NFS on PC?  Sounds too good to be true.
Yes, NFS3 PS1 tracks can be loaded, including the secret tracks and the cut TR02B (Empire City alternate route)

Reply #14
on: Sep 03, 2018, 2:14 PM
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If this is ever done, I'm down for this. Just sounds too good though. I don't expect it to be finished though.

 


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