Hard Light Productions Forums
Archived Boards => The Archive => Blackwater Operations => Topic started by: Cooked Salmon on December 17, 2005, 04:50:09 pm
-
I was wondering whether or not progress on BWO was affected negatively by the numerous forum shutdowns of the past month? Has there been a major delay, or is work still progressing slowly? I always get worried by forum shutdowns, because projects can come to a halt for quite some time because of them.
So, is BWO still in the green?
-
I was wondering whether or not progress on BWO was affected negatively by the numerous forum shutdowns of the past month? Has there been a major delay, or is work still progressing slowly? I always get worried by forum shutdowns, because projects can come to a halt for quite some time because of them.
So, is BWO still in the green?
Mmm...only affected during the actual downtimes. We're still beta testing. We go one mission at time and go through it and discuss it. Ace and BlackDove are primarily the people doing this...along with some of our other testers as well. Any time away from the forums hasn't really negatively affected anything as playtesting continued.
Its a big campaign...its taken some time to get a good team together but I think we'll be able to put this one to the public sometime this coming year. We're honestly getting there.
-
How many missions is it anyways?
-
You will be informed on a need to know basis, pilot.
-
IIRC, there's something like 60 missions in total, with each branch ending at about 40 missions.
-
I haven't counted in a while...something like that. When we're completely finalized on everything and just working through the final details we will have a bit of a PR drive. When we're reasonably certain on a timetable for release then the'll be some big updates to the website, big updates on the forums, and some serious sets of screen shots and information released in anticipation of that release.
But we're holding off on most of that till we really get close to being done.
-
I don't have a working computer currently so things slowed down. When I get it repaired, they should pick up again. When this "Beta" testing (which we should really be calling Alpha) ends, a second pass needs to be done, which will be quicker since that will be true QA beta, but it'll still take some time. There are things that need to be done parellel anyway, so that'll be another hold up depending on how long it takes. The release doesn't really depend on the testing solely.
Anyway, when we reach milestones, we'll make sure to report them to the public.
-
Its a big campaign...its taken some time to get a good team together
Like 6 or 7 years? :p
-
...pretty much.
-
I'm a bizarre kind of guy. I like the suspense of waiting for this campaign which is likely to be better than advertised. I'm actually looking forward more to participating in the voiceover recording than playing the campaign, and I'm looking forward, VERY MUCH to playing the campaign.
The very concept of having to make a decision of which side you're on is something you don't get the opportunity to play out. If you turn on the side you've been on, you blow up a lot of your comrades, but then when the mission ends, you're discharged/executed/something. Maybe I'll turn coat, maybe I won't.
I hope I get a chance to reprise Admiral Ahmose and perhaps Commander Syme from the demo (are we going to be able to use mp3s instead of wav files?).
-
I have the instructions around somewhere on the site - not in hard copy anymore, it burned. They are all ready and we have it defined, it's just that we aren't ready to start doing it yet.
I think it'll be mp3 this time around, WAV = inferior these days.
-
You mean "OGG", not "mp3", right?
-
...probably right - we'll only probably request samples in mp3.
-
.oggs and .mp3s are compressed file formats.
For requested samples, uncompressed .wavs are preferred. The final release will use the best compression to quality format that the SCP allows, which will likely be .ogg.
-
im just happy that in the end they decided that they would have voice overs :p
-
im just happy that in the end they decided that they would have voice overs :p
ALOT and I mean ALOT of people have asked for it. The trouble is that they will take ALOT of work and time and will add to the download size considerably. The mission files themselves are nothing but the artwork and model/texture resources are fairly significant. The audio makes the rest of those guys pale in comparison. But MP3/OGG compression support makes life easier now than years ago when the project started.
But the resources and talents are there and I believe the interest is still present so we'll do what we can and try and voice everything thats important. My feel is to do just everything thats in missions...briefings you can read yourself but misisons are critical. But I think we'll probably team vote on that a final time before going ahead with whatever plan is going to take place.
-
I would even think of not voicing messages in missions that almost never occure, like destruction-messages of ships that only get destroyed in 0.00001 % of cases.
-
Cutting corners like that isn't an idea we're fond of.
You'll get the "Oh the humanity, the GTC Orff has been destroyed!" type messages and all... ;)
-
couldn't we just get a voice less version first so we could play the darn thing without waiting till century for the voice acting to get done? :D
-
Why would you want that, mister Thor? If the team has made the choice -- in my opinion the correct one -- of having the campaign voice acted, then the campaign should only be released with voice acting.
(Off the record, I completely agree with Hellraiser on the topic of voice acting. Unless a campaign is VA'd, I won't play it. I cannot sadly play BWO anyways, since SCP doesn't execute on my system. That said, kudos to the BWO crew.)
- Selectah
-
just cause I'm the paranoid type and actually wanna play it before the apocalypse comes. Seriously though, I'm all for voice acting and would love to play it with it, but I think its purely an extra when it comes to a user mod. I seem to recall talking about voice acting in BWO years ago. I'm not one to stand in the way of the designers desires to make their project the way they want. So I'll wait, lurking in the background like the usual, waiting for them to complete this epic. Hope it goes smoothly
-
I doubt voice acting will be that much of an obstacle once we get it started, but I can say for sure that after playing this near-finished (in terms of script and missions) campaign, voices are not really a feature, they're more of a necessity.
It would be sub-par to release it without voices.
-
It would be sub-par to release it without voices.
Amen to that.
-
Aside from Voices which will take a while, I'd say...
Music (few more tracks missing)
HTL and fixed versions of some (and by "some", I mean, quite a few of them) models. The major ones have been worked on and are being worked on currently so that's good news.
Cutscenes (though these will most likely be optional - depending on how fast the other stuff goes... it would really be good if we could get someone to do them proper though, it would... complete the picture)
Ace is finishing up the Skyboxes I think and we're almost done with the complete rebuild of the missions (that was one behemoth job both for Ace and myself, kv pitched in a lot as well), just a few left, waiting for me to get my computer operational again. (maybe I should put a PayPal "donate for BD's new computer so BWO will be released faster" fund hah).
That's more or less it. The rest are kinks and assembly. There is really no time estimate. It all depends on when it's all finished. If everyone dropped their lives and commited to BWO solely (everyone we need), we could be done in three weeks. But since that's not realistic, I think it'll be a while. People have lives and other things to do.
-
Well atleast bwo is released before MT ;) but can't wait to see finished bwo it's going to be great:)
-
it only needs to be as good as Derelict to be excellent :p
-
Considering the fact that we don't have any bugs that prevent progress through the campaign, and we have a ton more plot-heavy dialog, we're already doing better than it ;)
Of course it helps that half of the missions were designed by IceFire and the people behind Derelict.
-
But both of them vanished into the ultimate void...
-
But both of them vanished into the ultimate void...
Icefire - wanished? I don't think so...
It's true about Agatheron and Dark though AFAIK, though there's still a 'hardcore' to build on.
-
Kellan also dissapeared.
Ace and IceFire are the only VW staff remnants, though I'm really no spring chicken either - I've been around as long as they have. Just never a part of the creative community.
-
But both of them vanished into the ultimate void...
Icefire - wanished? I don't think so...
It's true about Agatheron and Dark though AFAIK, though there's still a 'hardcore' to build on.
I was talking about Agatheron and Kellan. Except for Ace and Icefire all VW staff is gone. Remora, Orange, Zarathud, Xanadu, Chucker, Wedge, Dark, Dynamo, Wildwolf etc.
Hm, Xanadu may have vanished before VW, I'm not sure... and Zarathud once popped in at an old HLP discussion, I think.
-
Actually I know where OrNage ;) still is. He just doesn't have much to do with us now anymore that VW was closed.
-
you guys are scaring me, yur making it sound like you might drop it...
-
Just noticed this...
mp3 this time around, WAV = inferior
Are you guys for real?
- Selectah
-
Read Ace's post below that.
-
what makes ogg better then mp3?
-
what makes ogg better then mp3?
Ogg sounds like food, and I havn't eaten since yesterday mid-morning, so it sounds ALOT better to me.
I'd just like to note that for about a two year period the only reason I'd visit HLP was to see if this was done yet so If it ever does get finished it'd be kind of like losing an old friend...
-
what makes ogg better then mp3?
http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/
-
Read Ace's post below that.
You mean "OGG", not "mp3", right?
Excuse me, what does this has to do with the astonishing 'WAV = inferior' ?
- Selectah
-
Well, if one must really use WAV, one might as well use FLAC. But I guess SCP doesn't support FLAC.
-
I'm going to repeat this one more time:
.wav files are uncompressed and will be used for the recording and editing of the music and voice files. As for the final release we will be using .ogg due to its being the best mix of file size to audio quality supported by the SCP.
Asking people to submit their VO work in .ogg or .mp3 would be about as stupid as editing game textures in .jpg format.
-
what makes ogg better then mp3?
OGG is an open source project. Mp3 is licensed by the consortium that came up with them in the first place. SCP supports OGG as there is no royalty fee involved and SCP itself is an open source project.
-
what makes ogg better then mp3?
OGG is an open source project. Mp3 is licensed by the consortium that came up with them in the first place. SCP supports OGG as there is no royalty fee involved and SCP itself is an open source project.
thank you, someone with a clear answer :D without me having to go to any other sites and read a crap load...