Penumbra and HPL2

[KavazovAngel]

Guys, have you given any thoughts about open sourcing the HLP2 engine so that Penumbra may be ported to that one?

[Sexbad]

That's farfetched.

It doesn't need HPL2. At least, not until no one is buying it and allowing it to be used for free wouldn't matter.

An Unbirth mod for HPL2, however. If I recall it was never actually finished so there's a lot of creative leeway too.

[Setlec]

if i may say so, HPL2 just has just gone gold/stable/wathever and it's the engine for Amnesia, so i don't think it will be open sourced anytime soon.

[eliasfrost]

True, HPL1 started like.. Five years ago? and it got released as open source just earlier this year. Maybe we'll see HPL2 open sourced in 2015? xD

[KavazovAngel]

Okay, who wants to team up and convince few indie developers (including FG) to do another million dollar humble bundle thing?

[Argoon]

Guys, have you given any thoughts about open sourcing the HLP2 engine so that Penumbra may be ported to that one?

Why do you need HPL2 source when you have HPL1 source? You can just take the HPL1 engine and update it with anything you want. The only reason i see for you guys to ask for the HPL2 source is the dev tools but with the HPL 1 source you can make ANY 3d app a dev tool if you want, just like the DarkMod guys did with doom3 (they made their on dev tools) and they didn't have access to the engine source code.

But a better example are this guys OverDose, they toke the old Quake 2 engine source and updated it to be better them even the doom3 engine.

for example here is a Quake 2 image:


And a overdose image:


Thats the Quake 2 engine!

So you can take the HPL1 engine source and make it even better them HPL2 if you want.

[Hannibal]

So you can take the HPL1 engine source and make it even better them HPL2 if you want.

Clearly, the developers of HPL thought it was faster/easier to achieve the HPL2 featureset by writing HPL2 from scratch rather than to update the HPL1 engine. Usually when we discuss engines, we're discussing what they can do for us out-of-the-box, now what they could possibly potentially do if everything were re-written or severely modified. Well, except for the special case of engines that do not release the source code.

[Urkle]

Actually there are many pieces that were not rewritten in HPL2. Largely is was the rendering pipeline as HPL2 uses FBOs to do rendering where, as HPL1 did not.

So it was not a complete rewrite from scratch.

[Hannibal]

Actually there are many pieces that were not rewritten in HPL2. Largely is was the rendering pipeline as HPL2 uses FBOs to do rendering where, as HPL1 did not.

So it was not a rewrite from scratch.

Interesting! Do you have any links/references that discuss the changes in HPL2 in more detail... curious...

[hollowleviathan]

I registered because I wanted to suggest just this, although I managed to find the search button before repeating what others have said.

If for no other reason, the vastly improved turning-valves-engine of HPL2 would be much appreciated in the Penumbra series, while the new visual filters would not be unappreciated. I understand the game is much beloved, not least by me, but it would make a great game just a bit better.

One option is to do like VALVe did when they ported HL1 to Source, and use porting Penumbra as a ready testing stage for the new HPL3 engine. I realize there's more danger to porting Penumbra than Half Life, however, because it relies heavily on a carefully crafted atmosphere.

I also understand the foolishness of suggesting Frictional devote time to this when they've got just enough capital to develop their next game, it's not as easy as just copying the map files over for the new engine. If the mention on Zero Punctuation or inclusion in Humble Indie Bundle 2 (crossed fingers) gets them a comfortable buffer, it could be a thank you to the fans: Penumbra ported to HPL2 (or even HPL3).