Ion Maiden to officially launch in Q2 2019, new screenshots and another unannounced FPS is teased

The way I read it, the discussion was about using old technology for retro games. The "high" specs of Ion Maiden were just used as an example for the global discussion.

If you ask me, retro games can perfectly be made with new technology. Retro is about imitating or being inspired by the past.

Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoI agree.
Games with retro graphics must work on retro machines with retro operative systems.

Like.. watching retro movies on retro-VHS recorders? :) What the hell is a retro operative system anyway? :D

Retro means the game seems old, but actually isn't.

Hell, even the EDuke32 engine of Ion Maiden is a newer modified Build engine.

Faalhaas, I guess my confusion stems from the first post mentioning Vulkan mentioning it in a Quake engine context:

Quoting: GuestQuake engine has linux support so no biggie. oh, if they use VKquake they can take advantage of vulkan.

Quoting: Guestbut the engine pieces that load textures is actually covered by their BUILD license.

You mean this?
loadpics: Invalid art file version in tiles000.art

Quoting: GuestI was able to reverse engineer the changes pretty quick.

Does that mean you are going to share us how to get maiden.grp running with Eduke32? ;)


Last edited by Faalhaas on 23 October 2018 at 8:12 pm UTC

I would ask actually that you not publish that information regarding the art however simple it is. Too late now I guess.

These things (obfuscation) were not done maliciously, but to prevent the entire game from having all of its art casually stolen before the full game releases.

Tools and moddability will appear after the game is completed.

For reference even before the preview released we had instances of individuals ripping art from screenshots. This led to a big rules change in some communities.


Last edited by Mblackwell on 24 October 2018 at 2:36 am UTC

Quoting: Mblackwellto prevent the entire game from having all of its art casually stolen before the full game releases.

My intention was just to get it running on EDuke32, but Mblackwell just peaked my interest for hacking art. ;)

Quoting: FaalhaasThe way I read it, the discussion was about using old technology for retro games. The "high" specs of Ion Maiden were just used as an example for the global discussion.

If you ask me, retro games can perfectly be made with new technology. Retro is about imitating or being inspired by the past.

Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoI agree.
Games with retro graphics must work on retro machines with retro operative systems.

Like.. watching retro movies on retro-VHS recorders? :) What the hell is a retro operative system anyway? :D

Retro means the game seems old, but actually isn't.

Retro Operative systems: DOS, for example...

Well... I would like to use a record player with vacuum tubes for to listening 50's music, because that is the right way to do it.. (but, sadly, I don't have one) :(
And I would like to have a celluloid projector for vintage movies and series, but they are unreachable for my wallet.

And yes, If you make a movie that is a tribute to the 80's, a collector's edition in VHS is not a bad idea.

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: MblackwellI would ask actually that you not publish that information regarding the art however simple it is. Too late now I guess.

These things (obfuscation) were not done maliciously, but to prevent the entire game from having all of its art casually stolen before the full game releases.

Tools and moddability will appear after the game is completed.

For reference even before the preview released we had instances of individuals ripping art from screenshots. This led to a big rules change in some commumities.

I hope you intend to allow for that version of the artwork to load in the Eduke32 public release once the final game is released. The ability to modify and change the games built on the BUILD engine were one of it's most successful assets.

To make things clear, after the last interaction on the IRC channel from the main developers, the experience was less than professional. I personally don't have any need or intention to rip art assets, however, I do want the ability to run newer eduke32 code. I will be watching this game closely and if the team does not act in good faith, I will release the information more publicly than in a comment section and with full source code changes. You can also scramble the header format and I have the ability to figure that out as well. We can play the cat and mouse game or be friendly and everyone wins.

The next update is using the latest eduke32.

Quoting: Faalhaas

Quoting: Mblackwellto prevent the entire game from having all of its art casually stolen before the full game releases.

My intention was just to get it running on EDuke32, but Mblackwell just peaked my interest for hacking art. ;)

Tools for reading .art files have existed for years, but if you wanted to make Linux versions of old Windows apps like DukeRes that would be fantastic actually. :D

Quoting: GuestThe interesting thing about Ion Maiden, is that while it uses Eduke32 as the basis, they intentionally made the texture format incompatible with the Eduke32 release. This is questionable due to the license, since it is derivative of GPL works, but the engine pieces that load textures is actually covered by their BUILD license. I'm not a lawyer but I don't think that the licenses are even compatible due to being linked.

When 3D Realms published the sources to Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior under the GNU GPLv2, they did so with a linking exception for the BUILD Engine. EDuke32 and Ion Maiden are in full compliance with these terms.

Quoting: GuestStill, I doubt they will officially ever make Ion Maiden supported in the stock Eduke32 release.

Quoting: GuestI hope you intend to allow for that version of the artwork to load in the Eduke32 public release once the final game is released. The ability to modify and change the games built on the BUILD engine were one of it's most successful assets.

Yes, we do plan to allow the user to drop a newer EDuke32 binary into the game and run with updated code. However, this will only be true with the release of the full version, not the preview campaign.

Quoting: GuestI attempted to get more information a while back on their Freenode IRC channel, and was met with outright hostility.

Quoting: GuestTo make things clear, after the last interaction on the IRC channel from the main developers, the experience was less than professional. I personally don't have any need or intention to rip art assets, however, I do want the ability to run newer eduke32 code. I will be watching this game closely and if the team does not act in good faith, I will release the information more publicly than in a comment section and with full source code changes. You can also scramble the header format and I have the ability to figure that out as well. We can play the cat and mouse game or be friendly and everyone wins.

I hope everyone in this thread recognizes the incredible amount of disrespect it takes to approach a developer with an ultimatum like this. Our interactions in the EDuke32 IRC channel were neither hostile nor unprofessional: https://pastebin.com/XRNJy1E9

mos6510, please quit misrepresenting our studio with malicious half-truths.

I'll admit to not reading the posts about that, but yeah, please don't make ultimatums to developers that they must allow you to hack away at their assets before the game is fully released (and not even after). This sort of behaviour gives the larger GNU/Linux community a bad reputation, hence why I'm posting this to say to the developers: not everyone is like that, and please just bring us a great game. Post-release modding always appreciated as well, when the time is right, and I hope that nothing discourages that.