Introduction
"Yanks Tanks Banks Krauts Gooooold!"
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is a free and open source multiplayer first-person shooter set during World War II and heavily focused on teamwork. More than a decade after its release, after spending countless hours of escorting tanks and trucks, stealing gold and radar parts and transmitting confidential documents, there comes a project which aims to relaunch and dust off a game which consistently refused to go down.
ET: Legacy is based on the source code of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory which was released in 2010 under the GPLv3 license. The main goal of this project is to fix bugs, remove old dependencies and make it playable on all major operating systems while still remaining compatible with the ET 2.60b version and as many of its mods as possible.
During the development of ET:L there haven't been too many public announcements except for the various beta releases. This was due to the nature of it still being under active, heavy development. Clearing the long awaited 2.71 release milestone in last December 2014, ET:L acquired a first stable state, while still remaining subject to continuous improvement and active development. With more frequent releases planned in the near future, the team decided it was time to grant you, the community, more detailed insights on the development.
Many requests on this forum for ET2, a reboot of W:ET with same gameplay but modern graphics, have simply been answered by pointing to ET:L. We are happy and proud of that fact and decided we should start with giving closer insights on what is actually going on behind the curtains and what is being done to get those "modern graphics" to our beloved game.
Taking into consideration that this game defied the idea of going down for nearly 12 years now, we decided the graphics were the wrong end of saving effort. The gameplay already puts the majority of modern shooters in their place, which means the long-awaited graphic update would give ET a serious chance of once again climbing the ladder in the TOP 100 FPS. Upwards!
Requirements:
The standard ET texture resolution was 256x256 pixels. Since we established that the graphics were the wrong end of saving efforts, we decided to lift the standard up to 2048x2048 pixels. Setting the guidelines for the resolution however was just the beginning. W:ET, but also its predecessor RtCW, always had a unique atmosphere which we wouldn't dare to destroy. This leaves the new textures with the requirements of proportional resolution to 2048x2048 pixels while generally maintaining the atmosphere, style and color-scheme from the standard textures.
Progress:
Just in time with getting the game to a stable stage, the texture folder has been fully recreated once. Right now the textures remain in beta-stage and are subject to continuous improvement, which is why they aren't and won't be included in the upcoming releases. Having the textures themselves ready is simply the beginning. In order to completely face-lift a twelve-year-old game, there is also the need of a more powerful engine and updated OpenGL 3.2 renderer, both of which are currently under development and may be subject to a future dev log.
Appeal:
Below you will find promotional screenshots of the current development stage for our graphics update, which right now solely includes textures. In order to boost the development we are looking for support, especially talented 2D/3D-Artists, Level-Designers and Coders.
ET: Legacy development is a collaborative effort done in an open, transparent and friendly manner. Anyone is welcome to join our efforts and contribute to improving this project! If you think you can contribute in any way, please don't hesitate to contact us on #etlegacy.
