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Kaiser

Programming Project - TurokEX

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Warning: Incoming wall of text because I am in a rambling mood today.

I've found programming as a hobby to be much more satisfying than creating custom levels for the community and as a result, SVStrife was my first real serious programming project. Doom64EX was my second and somewhat successful programming project which I still continue to update. From the experience I've gained from D64, I've begun a new project called TurokEX.

Nintendo 64 had a LOT of very memorable FPS games and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is one of them. Very much like Doom64EX I intend on reverse engineering the game and make it into a open source engine that's playable on multiple OS systems with additional features and enhancements. Though not everything will be reverse engineered, simply because of the lack of time. What I am going to disassemble is how the game's data is stored and how some stuff is initialized and everything else will be my own doing.

I've been working on TurokEX for a year now, with the majority of that time spent researching on the data format. TurokEX was officially started a week ago and I hope to have a prototype done sometime next year. One of the major focus of TurokEX is to improve the game as well as give users the ability to play the game on modern machines and non-windows systems. This also includes network/co-op modes (though like with Doom64EX I will run into the challenge of supporting co-op for a game that was designed for single player).

Once TurokEX is done, then I can perhaps branch off into Turok2EX and even GoldeneyeEX since both of their engines share very similar traits despite both being different.

This is not going to be a simple project. With Doom64EX I already had access to the Doom source code and the disassembly was very predictable. With Turok it's completely different. I have no reference to go by and I am basically combing through every part of the disassembly one by one. Though I've managed to uncover a lot of information already.

Anyways I am making a lot of progress on it and I am also currently seeking contributers or even someone who can provide feedback or be an adviser on how things are implemented since I am still inexperienced with many things (such as the network system).

The source code (in it's current state) is available for viewing if anyone is curious.

Source Code
Very old prototype (test project)

No forum or website is set up yet but I will plan on doing that once the game becomes more complete/playable.

With that said, I will still be active in the Doom community. After all, I still have that Hexen project that I need to finish (someday).

Edit: Screenshots because some people are lazy at clicking links













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This sounds awesome. Turok 1 and 2 where 2 of my favourite N64 games. I want to play them again, but have long lost my N64 and the games are hard to play with an emulator.

Good luck. This will be a project I'll be following.

Edit: Just saw the screenshots, looks great. How will you be handling the fog?

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Good question. I hated how the fog was so aggressively used in Turok. Unfortunately cutting down the fog will allow you to see a lot of geometry that wasn't meant to be seen when looking up.

I might resort to using fog coordinates which I can apply to every vertex. That way I can expand the Z-depth of the fog but maintain the same Y-depth of the fog when looking up (if that makes sense).

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chopkinsca said:

the games are hard to play with an emulator

Not really. Unless you mean setting up the controls on your gamepad in the best way possible to match the N64's weird controller layout, which I can empathise with.

Anyway, I approve of this project. The original Turok was pretty superb in it's day.

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Technician said:

Would the Windows port be of any use? It's pretty lackluster, but it does exist. In fact, it just a lazily done N64 port.


As of now, TurokEX will only be able to convert data from the PC version. There will be no plans to support the N64 version.

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Maes said:

lol @ "laser eye" tyrannosaur.

If you think about it, is it really any sillier than a half-mechanical demon?

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Kaiser said:

As of now, TurokEX will only be able to convert data from the PC version. There will be no plans to support the N64 version.

Oh OK. I downloaded the PC port about a month or so ago and was disappointed at how lazy it was. I couldn't configure any display settings, so I pretty much deleted it in a fit of rage. I don't think I could even configure the keys.

I hate having to break-out the N64 every time I want to play this game, so this port will kick ass.

DoomUK said:

If you think about it, is it really any sillier than a half-mechanical demon?

It is once you find out that dinosaur is actually a robot.

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DoomUK said:

Not really. Unless you mean setting up the controls on your gamepad in the best way possible to match the N64's weird controller layout, which I can empathise with.


I don't have a controller. I couldn't find any good settings for the mouse to aim with. The game has lookspring that makes it kind of awkward. The only thing I hate about Turok are the fucking jumping puzzles.

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I wish you well on this project, it seems very interesting. :) Turok was a good game back in the day, in fact my only real gripe with it was the excessive fog. So a version of the game with less fog (at least in some directions) will be quite nice.

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Seems pretty cool, but I'm curious why a user would want to use this over the official PC version, aside from the longer view distance and modern NT support rather than being designed for the outdated 9x versions of Windows.

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Damn, you are my hero! I read about this on the Doom64ex forums awhile back, never thought you took it seriously. If you finish it, would Turok 2 be harder to do? It uses the same engine, right? Wish you the best of luck, please dont give up on this!

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Sodaholic said:

Seems pretty cool, but I'm curious why a user would want to use this over the official PC version, aside from the longer view distance and modern NT support rather than being designed for the outdated 9x versions of Windows.


Beyond just being designed for 9x, does the original PC release even work at all in XP/Vista/7? Getting the game to run on a modern system with the EX project is reason enough to use it over the 9x release. And what about the other enhancements Kaiser will include? Proper widescreen support/high resolutions, effects and other tweaks will likely make their way into this project eventually. Once again, you have managed to surprise me by asking a question when its answer seems readily apparent to anyone that spent a moment considering the answer, instead of just asking as soon as it popped into your mind.

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