Dungeon Master Forum

I'll agree that it is better to be positive. I plan to complete my RTC graphics supplement, so hopefully I can do my small part to support this fine program.

Maybe donations would help?

I think it`s the only way. If 10 people would pay about 20 £ each, I think he would at least release bug-free version. Interested people should first announce here and then pay.

I would definitely contribute up to $50.

i'll buy Grimrock.

Yeah, I'll buy Grimrock too. RTC is dead. RIP.

I don't understand why people call this "dead". the program seems to be in working order to me.

What exactly are you pople waiting for GG to add?

"Dead" as in no longer being updated.

It's nearly 4 years since the last update, I highly doubt we'll see any more. Sure, the game works and you can build stuff with it, but it has bugs and design flaws that make using some of the features impossible.

There was a v.0.50 which fixes a few bugs, but it was never released. To see outstanding issues, check out the RTC bugs / suggestions forums.

I've been wondering if the source code was finally released for this engine, mainly because I wanted to remove these annoying startup animations, and did a quick Google search which took me to this thread. All I have to say is this:

Maybe GG doesn't want to release the source because then it would become apparent that the "one tenth of a second gain" response presented in this thread is a lie. All these hardware updates and still RTC "has to load everything in the background or you would get a black screen not knowing how long you had left".

Tell that to the authors of Doom source ports, because these ports also need to display the initials of the programmers and the title screen and all kind of other stupid animations each time you want to test a map that you develop.
Oh wait, they don't... In fact they support various command line parameters that allow you to go immediately into the game with almost no delay.

PS:
Please disregard the fact that this is my first post. I've actually been lurking around for a few years now.

I recognise your name from luring or elsewhere. The source code was not going ot be released because there were GG libraries used commerical applications, and also because it was his personal project. Accusing him of lying about how he did somethign seems harsh and unlikely to get someone to agree to somethign they've stated they won't do. You can rail against how it is set up all you want, but I'm not sure what you're going to accomplish other than be offputting.

beowuuf wrote:I recognise your name from luring or elsewhere.

No wonder. We already have a user "Zalewa_PL"!

Of course I agree with you, BW, that accusing George Gilbert (or basically anyone else) of lying is rather too strong and such words shouldn't be used here; on the other hand, ZalewaPL is apparently from Poland and English is not his or her native language so he / she might have mis-translated or mis-expressed his / her opinion. I think - I mean I hope.

So - welcome, ZalewaPL and I hope we'll have an opportunity to get to know you better and you'll be able to explain your opinions better (and using more appropriate language).

Apologies for any harsh tone.

For what it's worth, if you monitor file system activity, RTC is doing absolutely nothing with the file system during the loading animations.
Not accusing anyone of anything. Just sayin'.

Oh dear, lets' not even go there.... Better to get everyone to switch to DSB anyway

Zalewa_PL? Dammit, I totally forgot about that account. So I have 3 on these forums now.

Let me elaborate on why I used word "lie" here:
It's either this or poor resource loading routines which are very slow. So he is/has been either a bad programmer or a liar who simply wanted an excuse to force people to read his initials every time they start the game. I've done game programming myself and even if RTC was loading all its data (about 16MB) into memory at startup it shouldn't take more than 0.5 to 2 seconds on modern machines, and that is when graphics conversion and scaling is taken into account, if RTC does any of these things.
EA and Ubisoft did the same thing in some of their games. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (EA) has unskippable startup videos and so does Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 (Ubisoft), unless you know how to disable them by 'haxx0ring' configuration files or replacing the credits vid files with ones of zero length. And once you do this these games go straight to the main menu, almost no delays.

This makes me wonder... maybe a skilled cracker would be able to remove or speed up these animations by modifying the binary code in the RTC.exe file. (I'm not sure if that would be legal, though.)

I'm surprised that so many custom dungeons have been built for RTC when you consider how horrible it is to test them during development process. I once tried to create something myself and I wanted to learn how all the things in the RTC editor work but I just couldn't put up with how much time was wasted on watching these animations every time I wanted to try something out.

Still, when all of this is taken into account, RTC has some good dungeons - Sophia's "Dark Portal" being my favorite.

Jorumund built the start of a a RTC -> DSB conversion tool. Your time might be more positively spent helping this tool, or developing things on DSB, than anything else.

I agree that testing RTC dungeons was a complete pain in the ass, I don't know how much time I must have wasted waiting for it to load.

From personal experience, I agree that RTC possibly has inefficient asset management. It's definitely slow at loading graphics, and you could run out of video memory on even a small amount of custom graphics, to the point where some images simply would not render. DMute, the earlier dungeon editor created by the same author, also had similar memory issues, possibly suggesting a memory leak of some kind?

Anyway, I stopped using RTC, so for me, it's a redundant discussion. As Beowuuf states, you're probably better off switching to DSB. It's more powerful, more flexible, currently supported, and loads instantly.

it is sad to see such comments. GG's only intent was to build an engine for fun and to allow others to enjoy the age old DM.
i am not sure why people are complaining about the load up speed. if you have a older system, it sure does take a while, but since i upgraded my system, it takes a few seconds to load so i am puzzled. a large dungeon takes a bit longer, turn off virus programs GREATLY speeds up load time. it is no longer a pain, is quite fast! yeah... can't count how many times i loaded it. too bad there is no more updates and Gambit is right, let's not go there, this forum is still healing from 2006s altercations. i sure hope Sophia builds an editor that rocks this world.

Chaos_Shaman, the forum "healed" long ago, it's only you who keep perpetuating this nonsense. Please stop it.

Is there any way to translate the RTC dungeon file format for use with others, or would this require source code?

I am personally disappointed that RTC is no longer in development and cannot be shared, but feel that the negative comments towards the author will only serve to alienate.

There's a windows file management exploit that makes It possible to get a TXT file from an RTC file, however if it uses custom sounds & graphics then it would be very broken if you tried to open it back into the editor. Nothing stopping you from then trying to use the resulting TXT file in Joramuns RTC->DSB converter..... It might fail if there are esoteric RTC mechanics, but I would imagine a good bulk of of the dungeon would get copied over..... not sure about custom items though.

Gambit37 wrote:Chaos_Shaman, the forum "healed" long ago, it's only you who keep perpetuating this nonsense. Please stop it.

it was YOU who i agreed with Gambit, stop being a ahole... you are consistantly being an #$%, it's you who mentioned it first, not me, so straighten out your childish act.
i can be a friend or just as much as an ahole, you decide. i do not find you friendly at all, your nose is so high in th air that it probably can touch the moon. you wanna be like that, it's up to you. this is my last time i'll speak friendly words, hope you take the right path, i drive a tank

Please consider this an admin request to stop. If you have a problem with someone, stop speaking to them, do NOT start an escalating discussion in a thread with them.

I don't care who started it or who is perceived to have started it, this is me stopping it.



Thread closed.