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Hosted Projects - Standalone => Fate of the Galaxy => Topic started by: OverDhill on December 29, 2016, 06:24:23 am

Title: Could this be the year?
Post by: OverDhill on December 29, 2016, 06:24:23 am
Could this be the year we see FOTG released?  I guess we can hope.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: zookeeper on December 29, 2016, 06:45:51 am
It could be!
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: niffiwan on December 29, 2016, 07:10:02 am
certainly possible!
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: chief1983 on December 29, 2016, 07:28:03 am
I hope so!
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: FrikgFeek on December 29, 2016, 09:15:50 am
You mean 2017? Maybeeee.
If you mean 2016 then yeah, fat chance of that considering it'll be over in 2 days.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: CountBuggula on December 29, 2016, 06:42:28 pm
Not complaining, but...

(https://i.imgflip.com/1gsbut.jpg) (https://imgflip.com/i/1gsbut)


I would have really loved to.  We had high hopes early in the year, but circumstances proved otherwise.  I can't go into all the reasons why it didn't happen, but not all of them were in our hands.  I can say that we've picked up momentum again towards the end of this year and I have very high hopes of some sort of public release in 2017.  Stay tuned, and check our open positions board for ways you can help make that a reality.

Speaking of, I need to update the job board, but we don't have any currently active modelers/texture artists to do some mostly minor fixes and tweaks that are needed before final release.  If you or someone you know can assist, please contact us.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: Tnadz on February 07, 2017, 07:33:55 pm
I'm very excited that you guys have reached campaign testing.  Very cool to see this project coming along.  Very fine work.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: CountBuggula on February 08, 2017, 12:50:08 pm
I'm very excited that you guys have reached campaign testing.  Very cool to see this project coming along.  Very fine work.

Thanks, the encouragement goes a long way with a project like this.  I can say that we're at a feature complete but unpolished state right now.  Everything (except multiplayer, which is out of our hands) pretty much works and is at least playable in its current form.  We've got relatively few minor issues we need to take care of before we launch a closed beta, which I very much hope will happen within the next few months.  The closed beta will be focused on making sure there aren't any leftover problems with the campaign missions, as well as taking a serious look at ship balancing.  Other than that, there's just a few rough edges here and there that we need to polish out before an official public launch.

So could that all happen this year?  Potentially.  But keep in mind that this all depends on a bunch of enthusiasts doing the work in their spare time, and we all have other jobs, families, lives, etc that do a very good job of disrupting our best laid plans.  As always with this sort of project it will be done When It's Done(tm).  Meanwhile, we'll try to keep sharing as much of our progress as we're able, and definitely value the comments, suggestions, and contributions from forum members who are not officially part of the team.  So stick around, enjoy the ride, and maybe even try and find a way you can contribute to the project.

I'm also happy to state that we don't plan on disappearing after our first release - we have a number of goals and ideas for the future that we'll continue to work on, including new missions, campaigns, and ships.  We'll also need community feedback for further balance efforts in the hopes that multiplayer will eventually be a possibility.  The SCP also continues to give us new features and opportunities to play with, and we look forward to continuing to improve the experience of FotG through game engine enhancements.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: Dain on February 08, 2017, 03:50:34 pm
I think I've said this before, but I think the scope for post-release 3rd party campaigns is pretty good. A Star Wars flight sim in a modern engine with easy to use mission design tools and a fairly sizable number of ships.. there's a lot of potential to tell a whole bunch of stories in the SW universe and the tools to do it. I was mainly thinking about this in comparison to Diaspora, which is utterly fantastic but limited by its universe. All your stories pretty much have to be "and THIS Battlestar also survived.." which I feel has limited the number of campaigns for it (Though one was just released, so what do I know!)

So hopefully upon release there is a wave of enthusiasm if the word gets out there (though I appreciate that this is a balancing act with lawyers.. but there are a few free fanmade standalone SW games on ModDB so perhaps it's best not to worry TOO much) it certainly seems like a good time to be a Star Wars fan at the moment..
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: Rolf on February 09, 2017, 08:27:08 am
I think I've said this before, but I think the scope for post-release 3rd party campaigns is pretty good. A Star Wars flight sim in a modern engine with easy to use mission design tools and a fairly sizable number of ships.. there's a lot of potential to tell a whole bunch of stories in the SW universe and the tools to do it. I was mainly thinking about this in comparison to Diaspora, which is utterly fantastic but limited by its universe. All your stories pretty much have to be "and THIS Battlestar also survived.." which I feel has limited the number of campaigns for it (Though one was just released, so what do I know!)

So hopefully upon release there is a wave of enthusiasm if the word gets out there (though I appreciate that this is a balancing act with lawyers.. but there are a few free fanmade standalone SW games on ModDB so perhaps it's best not to worry TOO much) it certainly seems like a good time to be a Star Wars fan at the moment..

This is partly why an early public release might be a good idea, evn if it is rather unpolished. I remember watching a video by totalbiscuit where he discussed why the MERP (Middle-Earth Role-playing) mod for Skyrim got CnD'd but Third Age Total War didn't. The obvious reason he gave was that Third Age was already out, and that this made any kind of CnD entirely pointless. Hundreds, if not thousands of people had already downloaded the mod and would easily be able to put up versions for download all over the web, and third parties would continue to work on it.

Keeping these kind of mods in closed development for so long increases the risk of a MERP scenario.

Another reason totalbiscuit suggested for what happened to MERP was that Warner Brothers might have had their own Lord of the Rings RPG in the works (Shadow of Mordor, it could be argued, was this) and they were concerned MERP might have drawn attention and enthusiasm away from that product. So this mod might be in trouble if Disney decides they want to make some Star Wars space sim.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: CountBuggula on February 09, 2017, 11:07:03 am
... So this mod might be in trouble if Disney decides they want to make some Star Wars space sim.

Fortunately, the chances of that actually happening are so minuscule to not even consider.  Even if they did, it would be more along the lines of Ace Combat as opposed to DCS.

Either way, we've gone to pretty great lengths to avoid many of the pitfalls that attract lawyers and CnD letters.  That said, if you want to discuss the legal side and your worries about it, there's a thread for that (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=92340.0).  Let's not clutter up the thread here with baseless concerns.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: Dain on February 09, 2017, 11:16:19 am
Yeah, I can't see EA doing a space sim ever again..

Though if I was in control I'd just take a bunch of the assets from the new Battlefront, stick a small team on it and release a PC only space sim.. but I suppose the Star Was license is too valuable for them to try experiments like that. And they're probably worried it would suck some audience away from the next Big Thing they release, presumably this Xmas..

So FOTG is the only hope we have for a new SW flight sim.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: OverDhill on June 28, 2017, 02:51:54 am
Actually there is another SW space combat game being worked on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKjkD6_PS7M
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: CountBuggula on June 28, 2017, 11:22:22 am
Actually there is another SW space combat game being worked on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKjkD6_PS7M

Yep, we're very aware of the XWVM project and salute their efforts.  I've personally been fairly active in communication with their team and where possible have collaborated on efforts with them where our goals align.  That said, their vision is very different from ours - XWVM is a faithful re-implementation of the Totally Games X-Wing series (currently just the original X-Wing), going as far as using the original mission files.  Having been a huge fan of those games when I was growing up, I'm definitely looking forward to trying it and reliving some of those campaigns with a modern engine.

Fate of the Galaxy intends to more closely match the space battles depicted in the movies of Star Wars Episodes IV-VI, ignoring much of what has been established in the EU (or Legacy canon) and previous games.  We have a friendly relationship between the projects and there is definitely room for both of us to exist side by side, and we wish them luck in their development.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: TopAce on June 28, 2017, 12:02:53 pm
Holy cow, their video has 39k views. There's a 2016 December video of theirs with 223k views. Paint me green.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: CountBuggula on June 28, 2017, 03:28:04 pm
Holy cow, their video has 39k views. There's a 2016 December video of theirs with 223k views. Paint me green.

I've been wanting to put together a FotG trailer video for years but have been stymied by the fact that FSO doesn't have a mission recorder, making the whole process WAY more difficult.  I'm not nearly as good at cinematography when I have to think about it as I'm flying.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: wookieejedi on June 28, 2017, 03:56:31 pm
Do you have Windows? I actually have found the new updated, Windows game recorder to be quite convenient and useful.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: FrikgFeek on June 28, 2017, 03:59:43 pm
I don't think capturing footage is the issue here. It's getting that footage in the first place. Since FSO doesn't have a mission instant replay or record option you have to capture everything on-the-fly or design and FRED a cinematic trailer.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: CountBuggula on June 28, 2017, 04:36:03 pm
I don't think capturing footage is the issue here. It's getting that footage in the first place. Since FSO doesn't have a mission instant replay or record option you have to capture everything on-the-fly or design and FRED a cinematic trailer.

Exactly.  To really get proper footage, I have to fly with a non-standard external view and HUD turned off and manipulate the camera controls all while trying to fly the craft.  It's much easier in games that have a mission recorder where you can do the flying first, then go back and get shots from various other ships, cameras and angles.  That's the part you record into FRAPS or whatever capture tool you're using, which you can then stitch together into a proper trailer.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: wookieejedi on June 28, 2017, 04:40:58 pm
Silly me, that makes much more sense. I have spent too long in only FRED/lua script land.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: TopAce on June 28, 2017, 05:42:57 pm
Frankly, I would be content with a 2017 re-enactment of this mission: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_x3whCGQ-s&t=2s so people could see how far we have gotten.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: FrikgFeek on June 28, 2017, 05:54:55 pm
Well, you could go for a different style of trailer I guess. Gameplay trailers are 'in' these days anyway, so capturing gameplay footage and then cutting in some non-action beauty shots wouldn't be too bad. You could also use the screencam script to capture some flyovers of capship combat that doesn't involve the player or let the AI control the player craft while you control the camera. Setting the player to use AI and giving it a highly competent AI class shouldn't be too much work.

Obviously, it's not my place to tell you how to make a trailer for your mod but it's a possibility.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: Vidmaster on June 29, 2017, 02:02:53 pm
A few beauty shots, some small flashes of actual gameplay, some larger fleet shots, some more gameplay, end trailer. Attention spans are short today.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: OverDhill on January 08, 2018, 12:14:07 am
Well here it is 2018.  I am not sure there is any hope this will ever be released. Too bad wookieejedi stopped development on his Star Wars: The Original Trilogy Mod as it was coming along nicely and in a very timely manner. It showed so much promise.

Not trying to be negative but many of us have been watching for this total conversion for a number of years.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: niffiwan on January 08, 2018, 10:45:57 pm
I don't intend to let FotG die unreleased ;) 

I've mentioned this a few times on Discord, but 2017 was absolutely nuts for me at work and was very busy for others in the team.

As far as progress goes, there's 31 issues logged in our mantis that we want fixed before public release, 10 of those we want fixed before a beta release. (So far, more will probably appear of course!) There's a mixture of playtesting & fixing campaigns, merging code to FSO, scripting fixes, model updates & fixes (e.g. debris, lods, missing maps), making some of the in game cutscenes more exciting, updating HUD shield icons, etc. There's too many skillsets required for a single person to complete this alone, but hopefully the team can get some time this year to make some good progress.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: niffiwan on January 10, 2018, 06:30:55 pm
Per TopAces comment (6 months ago!) here's a (similar) mission rerecorded with how the gameplay currently looks.

Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: wookieejedi on January 10, 2018, 08:43:43 pm
Well here it is 2018.  I am not sure there is any hope this will ever be released. Too bad wookieejedi stopped development on his Star Wars: The Original Trilogy Mod as it was coming along nicely and in a very timely manner. It showed so much promise.

Not trying to be negative but many of us have been watching for this total conversion for a number of years.

As niffiwan stated, I too don't intend to let FotG die unreleased. I appreciate the comments on the OT mod, though in all honesty that mod had gone about as far as I could take it alone (there were many issues below the hood regarding models and scp code I could not do alone). Similarly, the OT mod have very few large ships, severely limiting mission diversity. As niffiwan mentioned the code fixes that will be incorporated into FotG will be vital for long term stability and game-play fidelity. Overall FotG is quite larger, more stable and comprehensive then anything I could have done with the OT mod. With that being said, I will do my best to accomplish all the goals I have within FotG to ensure we can share what we are working on with the community sooner rather then later  :) 
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: OverDhill on January 10, 2018, 09:17:43 pm
Thanks for the update
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: Dain on January 11, 2018, 11:51:27 am
Per TopAces comment (6 months ago!) here's a (similar) mission rerecorded with how the gameplay currently looks.



I feel this should get a bit more attention outside the FOTG board!

I like how fast the combat feels. Been playing XWA a fair bit again recently and combat feels fairly sluggish compared to the movies, especially if you're recharging your weapons at a high rate.

I don't know if this an accurate observation but it seemed like the TIEs were flying fairly close to the rebel cruisers with not too much in the way of ill effects. This is another thing that I feel the X-wing games differ from the movies in. In the films, fighters fly really close to the surface of capital ships all the time, but in the X-wing games this is almost certainly a recipe for near immediate destruction. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that in the films capital ships spend most of their time slugging it out with other capital ships rather than swatting down fighters.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: wookieejedi on January 11, 2018, 01:55:49 pm
Per TopAces comment (6 months ago!) here's a (similar) mission rerecorded with how the gameplay currently looks.



I feel this should get a bit more attention outside the FOTG board!

I like how fast the combat feels. Been playing XWA a fair bit again recently and combat feels fairly sluggish compared to the movies, especially if you're recharging your weapons at a high rate.

I don't know if this an accurate observation but it seemed like the TIEs were flying fairly close to the rebel cruisers with not too much in the way of ill effects. This is another thing that I feel the X-wing games differ from the movies in. In the films, fighters fly really close to the surface of capital ships all the time, but in the X-wing games this is almost certainly a recipe for near immediate destruction. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that in the films capital ships spend most of their time slugging it out with other capital ships rather than swatting down fighters.

The goal is to match the movies as best as possible, not make a copy of any previous X-wing, etc. Similarly, fighters can get away with strafing near large ships if they are quick and maneuver enough, again similar to the movies. Taking out a capital ship in a fighter isn't a valid option, but a fighter can still play a vital role in assisting to take down a larger ship.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: wesp5 on January 23, 2018, 07:09:12 am
There's too many skillsets required for a single person to complete this alone, but hopefully the team can get some time this year to make some good progress.

Which is why I recommend to release an open beta as soon as possible! Not only will it raise attention for the project, it will also very probably give you dozends of playtesters to find stuff you would never see yourself unless you were playing missions over and over again. Also I was just watching the video linked here and I was wondering what those ugly capital ships were. Are these standins for the blockade runner? Because I can't remember ever seing them and they don't look too good...
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: CountBuggula on January 23, 2018, 10:00:46 am
There's too many skillsets required for a single person to complete this alone, but hopefully the team can get some time this year to make some good progress.

Which is why I recommend to release an open beta as soon as possible! Not only will it raise attention for the project, it will also very probably give you dozends of playtesters to find stuff you would never see yourself unless you were playing missions over and over again. Also I was just watching the video linked here and I was wondering what those ugly capital ships were. Are these standins for the blockade runner? Because I can't remember ever seing them and they don't look too good...

Carrack-class light cruiser (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Carrack-class_light_cruiser/Legends).  Honestly, I was never a fan of the ship myself, but given the source material, I feel like we've done a decent job turning it into something passable.  It's appeared in many previous Star Wars games and EU books, but never made an appearance in the movies, which is probably why you don't recognize it.  Here's our page on it (http://fateofthegalaxy.net/CarrackLight).  For reference, this is our Blockade Runner:
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: chief1983 on January 23, 2018, 10:54:29 am
Also we still have some work to do on the lighting settings and possibly texture adjustments to work with the new PBR code, as our assets haven't been adjusted for it yet.  Hopefully they'll look decent without it with the new GGX lighting model and some settings tweaks, but none of that was in the video you watched.  The ships themselves though, yeah, the Carrack isn't the prettiest design.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: CountBuggula on January 23, 2018, 11:23:03 am
Also we still have some work to do on the lighting settings and possibly texture adjustments to work with the new PBR code, as our assets haven't been adjusted for it yet.  Hopefully they'll look decent without it with the new GGX lighting model and some settings tweaks, but none of that was in the video you watched.  The ships themselves though, yeah, the Carrack isn't the prettiest design.

While the Carrack was first mentioned in an EU novel, there wasn't much of a physical description that went along with it.  The first actual depiction of the ship was in TIE Fighter, and was limited by the rudimentary 3d graphics capabilities of 1994 PC hardware.  I'm quite sure that's the reason for its bland, uninspired design.

One of the things we've really tried to do with FotG is re-imagine many of the EU/Legacy ships to better fit the look and feel of the ships seen in the original trilogy.  Some of our best examples are the Z-95 and E-Wing:
and XQ2 space station:
which looked like this in its first appearance in TIE Fighter:
(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/C1cTAJencNY/hqdefault.jpg)(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/7/78/Avenger_demo.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20070831020621)

So if you or anyone else see something that looks bad to you and would like to take a stab at re-imagining an EU ship like the Carrack, we're always open for community submissions.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: Nightmare on January 23, 2018, 12:24:54 pm
How long is making the assets PBR-ready going to take? Can you give any estimates yet?
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: chief1983 on January 23, 2018, 01:31:50 pm
As I said, we haven't had a chance to do much testing since the GGX lighting changes and some other fixes went in, as I just updated our internal builds that we use this morning.  So we won't know if the assets even need updating until we start using the new builds and try some experiments with the lighting settings to see if we can get it to look like we want.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: zookeeper on January 23, 2018, 04:10:11 pm
The vastly most likely option is that we don't use the PBR capabilities as such, but simply keep using the old-style assets and, if necessary, tweak the lighting values accordingly to produce the kind of look we want. We're not going for a strictly photorealistic aesthetic anyway, so the old-style assets are still perfectly good, we might only need to make sure the shaders treat them right.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: Tnadz on February 28, 2018, 04:26:11 pm
I wish I had chops enough to even help grind through some of that coding stuff.  I feel bad not being able to help more on a project that's got so much love.  Keep on, gents.
Title: Re: Could this be the year?
Post by: wookieejedi on March 03, 2018, 02:22:55 pm
I wish I had chops enough to even help grind through some of that coding stuff.  I feel bad not being able to help more on a project that's got so much love.  Keep on, gents.

Thanks we appreciate the positive encouragement!