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Old 14-03-24, 15:55   #1
Paolone
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Default News about TRNG Tools

Hi volks,
there are some news about trng stuff.
In spite I have a bit given up with TRNG since 2017, later, there have been the "news" of covid pandemy and in Italy they locked down us for a long time.
So, locked at home, I came back to work on trng tools, creating many new features, a new plugin (Drones, since I have really that hobby in my real life) and also I improved a lot Wad Merger program, giving the chance to build new moveables (with joints) from scratch other that the Animation Reviser feature that allows to perform operations on part of animations, like copy all animation of legs (of Lara) letting, on top parts, another your custom animation.
Anyway coming back to my path... when lockdown ended, curiously I've almost forgotten that my job on trng.
Now I get available all that job and also I'll share all sources of my trng tools, from tomb_nextgeneration.dll, to NG_Center and many others, like the trng_fixer used to improve Wad Merger program.

It's too long the list, I suggest you to visit my website:

http://www.trlevelmanager.eu/ng.htm

You can download last trng tools: NG_Center pack 6, the new WadMerger NG, the plugin drone (there is also a playable demo, other all source files).
Then, if you are a programmer, you could download source of all my trng tools, from tomb_nextGeneration source to Tr Level manager. Some of them are in C++ language (Microsfot Visual C 6.0) and other ones in Visual Basic 6.0.

About what it's going to happen in level editor world, I copy and paste here some my thoughts that you can find also in page to download tools' source:

My Hope
--------
I hope that there will be a chance to keep alive at least one trng feature in future engines: the plugin feature.
Since, giving the chance to any programmer, to add easily new features, preserving the compatibility with the engine, for me it remains a good idea.
The fear, at the opposite, it's that will born a lot of different egines and formats,with very litle chances for an independet programmer to add his features in this messed up LE world.

Do a good action: adopt an Engine
---------------------------------
Among different scenarios for the future of tomb raider level editor world, I want to hope that there was also the chance that some programmer (or a pool of programmers) decided to develope new trng versions: fixing bugs and adding new features, preserving the trng standards.

Basically it is possible, since, having all trng sources, you could produce new updates of NG_Center and Tomb_NextGeneration.dll tools, working on original tools' sources.
I support and encourage you to back trng legacy and move on this way, keeping alive these tools.

Surely the ngle.exe (ex winroomedit) program, it is the less realiable program, by the way, I've not yet been able to do work it decently under Windows 11 (but I performed only few attempts).
My idea is that the best solution it could be a tomb_nextgeneration.dll moved on by different programmers working togheter and, at same time, a new level editor that was able to produce trng compatible files and comunicate flawlessy with tomb_nextgenneration library.

That is only an hope of mine, anyway, it will be you to decide.

We'll see ... let's hope.
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Old 14-03-24, 16:13   #2
Raider99
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Wow, this is impressive!

First of all, I wanted to say thank you for all the effort put into creating and maintaining TRNG for years. It really helped keep TRLE community alive and you should be very happy and proud of your legacy.

I am sure with community effort this will be kept alive, expanded upon and combined/made compatible with a lot of the new tools we got over the past few years.
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Old 14-03-24, 16:30   #3
Krystian
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Hello Paolone! Nice to see you again

I want to express gratitude for everything you've done with TRNG all these years. You helped keep TRLE building alive by providing new features to the builder community and your influence and legacy cannot be understated.
As I got involved in the level building community back in 2010, TRNG was already available to builders. I discovered that I enjoyed working with TRNG scripts a lot, exploring all the possibilities in provides. In a way, it helped me find my passion for programming, which I do nowadays.

I have released a few plugins already and I'm in the process of developing another one. You can be assured that there are people which remain interested in plugin development and providing new features. I personally think that there is still mileage left in TRNG and it still has things to offer to the TRLE world. Indeed, it's hard to say what the future holds for level building tools and engines, but I'm sure the legacy of TRNG will survive in one way or another, either directly or spiritually.
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Old 14-03-24, 16:46   #4
Victor909A
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I'm not sure about the future of TRNG, as we have Tomb Editor and Tomb Engine now, but I think the source codes being available we can finally make our new tools compatible with it. Like you said, ngle.exe is very unusable on Windows 11, but now we can finally implement plugin trigger compatibility on Tomb Editor and this, maybe, will help TRNG to live. The time will tell.

Anyway, even with this uncertainty, I also want to thank you for your work. I remember being excited when TRNG got released in January 2008. I immediately downloaded it to finally experience creating levels with functional boats. The new script commands, all new features, everything was amazing! As a programmer, I understand that developing great and inovative software can be a hard work, and you made it! You will not be forgotten.
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Old 14-03-24, 17:11   #5
Kubsy
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Wow huge,

Thank you Paolone for the work you have done over these decades
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Old 14-03-24, 17:41   #6
AkyV
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Hello, Paolone!

It's so nice to see you again after working together so much in tests before, helping me a lot to write my plugins etc.!
Your job is something amazing, and I am pretty sure that whatever happens with it, good programmers will make a miracle with it! However, it is your child, and it remains that forever.

----------------

Side note:
Would you please restore these tutorial projects on your websites? Because they have been missing for a very long time:

http://www.trlevelmanager.eu/downloa...n_obj_demo.zip
http://www.trlevelmanager.eu/downloa..._staticmip.zip
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Old 14-03-24, 18:38   #7
MarlenaCrystal
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Hey Paolone!
So nice to hear from you. Your legacy will last as long as people will work with TRLE in general - I don't think it will be less useful just because we have things like TEN.

I see it like this - we will have even more opportunities to develop things on our own, if we have the big foundation you will give us. So thank you for everything you did! <3
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Old 14-03-24, 19:04   #8
Saracen
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Default Tomb4Plus

Hello Paolone, thanks for releasing the source code to your patching system. The information provided here will be significant in allowing the TRNG-style scripting system to be preserved accurately long-term.

The person who contacted you to prompt this release might have mentioned that I was working on my own reimplementation of level editor runtime. I haven't publicly announced it yet outside of a single Twitter and Mastodon post since its still early, but I think this release might be a good opportunity to acknowledge its existence:

https://github.com/SaracenOne/Tomb4Plus/

It's a fork of the reimplementation of the Last Revelation engine Troye and ChocolateFan worked on, and already has a moderate amount of direct support for TRNG scripting features. The goal of the project is essentially to provide a drop-in binary replacement for existing custom levels. It replaces things like the renderer, windowing, and input systems with modern cross-platform APIs, which will allow the engine to have high compatibility on modern versions of Windows, but also non-Windows systems like Linux, MacOS and Android. I'm currently in the process of rewriting the renderer to use OpenGL and Vulkan via the BGFX library, and already have it building as a native 64-bit app. With the release of the official remasters, I'm also looking to retroactively include support for features which might be considered expected now such as an uncapped interpolated framerate and the alternative 'modern' camera-relative control scheme.

As with the original Tomb4 source port, the project is open source and GPL-licensed, so anyone is free to contribute, but I can't promise how much I can dedicate to organizing contributors in a coordinated fashion. This is largely just my solo hobby side-project. It might be better off if other community members who are interested take over, but I believe strongly that starting with a brand new (but backwards compatible) engine would be the most sensible direction for continuing TRNG support into the future.

As for developing the engine for the purpose of *new* levels, I can't say exactly what the best course of action would be. I feel like the TEN project has a clearer direction in regards to a more ground-up modernization of the original Tomb Raider codebase. I do plan on doing my own equivalent of the TRNG plugin system, but with the Lua scripting language to both make plugins that are cross-platform compatible and also to severely mitigate the difficulty curve involved in TRNG plugin development. That said, *my* personal goals are currently to simply write the most backwards compatible engine I can. I don't intend to change anything about the existing scripting format, just to include new user-centric quality of life improvements. Think of it as being similar to a source port like GZDoom, which is capable of running decades-worth of custom content in a variety of different formats. It even has some support for TREP levels with FURR-scripted bytecode, but I'll save discussion of how I pulled that off for a later date.

It already has a pretty decent amount of compatibility with TRNG custom levels already. I've attached some screenshots of it running Klona's Witches Tea Party level set to give a rough idea of how far along it is (with proper MSAA support finally!). As it stands right now, I'm mostly only claiming compatibility with vanilla TRLE levels and some early TREP levels, but the work on supporting TRNG functionality is very much underway and should progress a lot faster now thanks to this release.
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Last edited by Saracen; 14-03-24 at 19:20. Reason: Typo
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Old 14-03-24, 20:31   #9
Paolone
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
Hello Paolone, thanks for releasing the source code to your patching system. The information provided here will be significant in allowing the TRNG-style scripting system to be preserved accurately long-term.

The person who contacted you to prompt this release might have mentioned that I was working on my own reimplementation of level editor runtime. I haven't publicly announced it yet outside of a single Twitter and Mastodon post since its still early, but I think this release might be a good opportunity to acknowledge its existence:

https://github.com/SaracenOne/Tomb4Plus/
Hi Saracen, everything is very interesting but I'll need some time to get .. everything.
I've been far by level editor for some year and now I hear some names for first time.
Unfortunately I have a very short free time now, anwyay in the future I could get back to do some new object or feature but I thought to do that with a simple plugin, rather to take bak massive sources of trng or new stsandard di different engines.
For this reason I hope that plugin remain active, in some manner with this or other engine.
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Old 14-03-24, 20:36   #10
Paolone
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AkyV View Post
Hello, Paolone!

It's so nice to see you again after working together so much in tests before, helping me a lot to write my plugins etc.!
Your job is something amazing, and I am pretty sure that whatever happens with it, good programmers will make a miracle with it! However, it is your child, and it remains that forever.
Sure I hope that, likely I'll see some old trng feature working in other engines and it's good also that for me.

Quote:
Originally Posted by AkyV View Post
Side note:
Would you please restore these tutorial projects on your websites? Because they have been missing for a very long time:

http://www.trlevelmanager.eu/downloa...n_obj_demo.zip
http://www.trlevelmanager.eu/downloa..._staticmip.zip
LOL, I can' believe, own like in old good times.
I remember when it was own you to signal me bugs and issues.
Anyway ok, I didn't know those project were vanished, now I look for them and I'll restore them.

BTW, I want to thank you for all your job for trng and also in this last version there were my best thanks to you because I used the description you did for all TRNG triggers that I embedded in Set Trigger type window now.
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