New TDUF platform, aiming for efficiency, ease of use and development.
TDUF(orever) is an initiative started back in 2014, 2 years after ATARI decided to shut down TDU1 public servers, making the very first MOOR (massively online open-road racing) game to remain offline... forever.
but!
Thanks to involvement of some TDU fans and tons of hard work, a community server was made, thanks to reverse engineering. Online free-ride was back from the ashes!
In order to celebrate this reborn, the least we could do is to offer a tribute to this awesome game - by pushing modding even further and providing next-gen tools. TDUF initiative was there.
Since then, dedicated modders were smart and kind enough to build the biggest addons ever made for the game: community car packs, TDUCP, TDU Platinum... pushing it way beyond the limits.
Now, current TDUF toolset has become old enough and begin to suffer from its flaws and weaknesses. That's why it's time to move on to a new architecture; we'll call it TDUF.next.
- unify all TDU modding knowledge under a same codebase: currently we tend to make c#, java, ... programs coexist with lack of consistency and interoperability issues to tackle. Thus making us losing our time with technical considerations instead of reverse engineering and game modding research.
- support both TDU1 and TDU2: the latter being often hated from first-hour fans due to its unpolished aspect in every domain (notably physics and handling), it would be interesting to lean on it again to make it better. Besides, its game engine is an evolution of TDU1's, sharing similarities with its elder brother. Today, TDU2 servers have been shut down in their turn, a small community is working on fixing it. Let's hope TDUF.next will also be useful for them.
- write and share reverse-engineering documentation: will help newcomers, modders, developers and players to act their role now and in the future.
- my own personal goal: just to be honnest, it's not really for the money, but because I always loved this game. Working on a new architecture will make me experiment other coding languages and thus making up my skills. Kind of joining conveniency and pleasure!
doc: support documentationRE: reverse engineering TDU files
tools: misc tooling demonstrating above RE findingskaitai-parser: simple parser scripts using Kaitai Struct defs.
For this, head to repository WIKI.
Whoever you are (player, modder, developer), WIKI will be of any help, and community as well.
More details will be shared later. In the meantime, feel free to create issues on GitHub. I'll do my best to answer.
Enough talking, time to make it last... forever!