The Antisocial Gamer

Resurrection:  The Quest: Digital Archaeology To mod T-34 vs Tiger (TvT) correctly, I had to reconstruct a 2007-era development environment from the ground up. I built a dedicated Windows XP Virtual Machine to host a specific stack of software: Maya 5 for modeling and Photoshop 5 for texturing (both sourced via the Internet Archive). This setup allowed me to finally utilize the original, proprietary G5 Tools and Shader Creator exactly as the developers intended. The Discovery: What the Manual Doesn’t Tell You The original G5 manual found in the tools folder is incomplete. It implies that after export, the object will "just appear" in the editor. Through days of trial and error, I’ve identified the "Four Handshakes" required to actually implement a custom asset: The Texture Handshake: The G5 exporter does not generate DDS textures. These must be created manually in Photoshop 5 and then converted to the game's .tex . Model in Maya5 The Model Handshake: ...

  Five Things T-34 vs. Tiger Got Right and Why They Still Matter Old video games are often treated as sealed artifacts. Their code is compiled, their assets locked behind proprietary formats, and the tools used to create them long gone. Approaching a mid-2000s title today usually means fighting undocumented binaries and opaque data structures. T-34 vs. Tiger is often assumed to be one of those games. It isn’t. I’ve known for years that it was built differently. I was part of the MMP mod team, and I’ve modified the game myself. What has changed since then isn’t the underlying design, but our ability to document it cleanly and explain why it works as well as it does. Looking through the game’s files today doesn’t reveal hidden cleverness so much as it confirms an engineering philosophy that was already evident at the time: use standard formats, keep data readable, and don’t over-engineer problems that don’t need it. This article isn’t about rediscovery. It’s about explaining w...