Hard Light Productions Forums
Archived Boards => The Archive => Blackwater Operations => Topic started by: Arthur_the_great on July 20, 2011, 03:49:10 pm
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There hasn't been any activety here for over a month!
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There hasn't been any activity here that you can see. There might be fifty gnomes making missions on the internal forum and you couldn't tell.
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Why gnomes ? Snails do the job just as well. And they're much tastier.
But yeah, just what he said. BWO might be one of the oldest WIP mod, not seeing any progress doesn't imply that there is no progress made. Wait and see, as they say.
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There hasn't been any activity here that you can see. There might be fifty gnomes making missions on the internal forum and you couldn't tell.
IIRC they need models, not missions.
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you most make an update
EDIT: by which I mean that, yes, it's been a very long development cycle, but I fully expect it will be worth the wait. The bar for what constitutes a good campaign has been raised at least a couple times while BWO has been in development, and I'm sure their people are working hard to make sure that their campaign lives up to the community's contemporary standards before they release it. I'm more than willing to wait for that. Especially since I can now play Duke Nukem Forever while I wait.
Unless, of course, I'm completely wrong and you guys already have an awesome, perfectly releasable campaign that you've been sitting on for a decade because you're waiting to HTL a couple ships that are already implemented and perfectly 100% functional in-game.
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We're still here :)
Lack of showed progress (although we are secret sobs) is mainly my fault: most of the new members we got last year went AWOL pretty fast. And I couldn't get anything done due to having had a really really crap year... so yeah
But we're not dead... far from it. At least now we can't be compared to Duke Nukem Forever... 12 years in the making for a poor game. BWO will take 20 more years to make it really worth the wait :P
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Unless, of course, I'm completely wrong and you guys already have an awesome, perfectly releasable campaign that you've been sitting on for a decade because you're waiting to HTL a couple ships that are already implemented and perfectly 100% functional in-game.
This is actually almost exactly the truth. :nervous: BWO has been FRED-complete since 2006.
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The Duke Nukem Forever parallel may be accurate. They got stuck.
BWO had a really, really unfortunate case of bad timing and got caught out by the high poly wave. They had the talent, and at the time it probably seemed like a great idea to remodel everything and then re-texture. Sadly they underestimated the manpower to achieve it.
Momentum is always key. Secrecy, one of BWO's great strengths actually counts against them here, smothering momentum rather than pushing it forward.
Once you get past the high poly fixation, options open up. Otherwise you'll stay stuck, just like 3D Realms.
3D Realms never did ship Duke Nukem Forever.
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Unless, of course, I'm completely wrong and you guys already have an awesome, perfectly releasable campaign that you've been sitting on for a decade because you're waiting to HTL a couple ships that are already implemented and perfectly 100% functional in-game.
This is actually almost exactly the truth. :nervous: BWO has been FRED-complete since 2006.
:o
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Unless, of course, I'm completely wrong and you guys already have an awesome, perfectly releasable campaign that you've been sitting on for a decade because you're waiting to HTL a couple ships that are already implemented and perfectly 100% functional in-game.
This is actually almost exactly the truth. :nervous: BWO has been FRED-complete since 2006.
:o
Must be tons of ships and other stuff to retexture....
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Must be tons of ships and other stuff to retexture....
Its not tons per se, but its only one person taking care of modeling, mapping and texturing them (me)....
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:o
I had to do a double-take myself. That's five full years!
Its not tons per se, but its only one person taking care of modeling, mapping and texturing them (me)....
Yeah, but... why? Why not release it now and maybe make a "director's cut" later?
I mean, you guys even want to do voice acting, and you haven't even started that. It took ST:R a year and a half to voice act eighteen missions, and that was with one guy working essentially full time on it. How long is it going to take for fifty missions, with one person (not you, Raven) working lackadaisically?
EDIT: I refer you to this thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=70099.0). Everything I said in that first post is as true now as it was then, and now one more year has passed.
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:o
I had to do a double-take myself. That's five full years!
Aye, now all we need to spur on this development cycle is a little bit of constructive criticism from a fan who is highly devoted to fs2, mayhaps even to a freakish extent; to the 88th degree, let us say.
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Because your assertion it's FRED-done is false, Goob, and if you'd paid attention you'd know that. They were and still are waiting on new ships which require insertion into the missions, testing, balancing. If they don't have all their ships in it's not done.
Even if they went as-is, at least a couple of missions were never tested.
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Actually...all the ships we're currently making are basically drop-in replacements for the low poly ones that are already done.
So yes, FRED-side work should be minimal.
I haven't actually looked at the missions yet though, so take that with a grain of salt :P
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Given the legendary status of BWO, I do have to wonder why you guys can't bribe/blackmail/kidnap another modeler from the community and get them to pitch in. I mean, I know everyone has their own projects, but this is BWO here. :p
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Yeah, but... why? Why not release it now and maybe make a "director's cut" later?
I mean, you guys even want to do voice acting, and you haven't even started that. It took ST:R a year and a half to voice act eighteen missions, and that was with one guy working essentially full time on it. How long is it going to take for fifty missions, with one person (not you, Raven) working lackadaisically?
EDIT: I refer you to this thread (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=70099.0). Everything I said in that first post is as true now as it was then, and now one more year has passed.
Well that's a decision it's not up to me to take, for starters. But if it were, I'd make the same decision I made years ago (continuewith the current plan).
And it wasn't a decision taken lightly: we wanted (and still want) the first impression\release to be the best it can be. Period. That's what will set us apart from all the other campaigns.
You made comparisons to other projects in the past (in that topic you just pointed me to). What I have to say about it is that those are unfair comparisons. The projects you mentioned, not only cut corners for a release, but they also have double (or more) of our staff.
Surely we are to blame for some questionable decisions in the past, but I also think the community in general is to blame. Because to be honest, it never showed a hint of real interest in supporting this project.
Remember last year's recruitment drive? You have access to internal. See the results: everyone except Droid and Oddgrim didn't even complete their first task... the very first.
Oddgrim then went lurker in HLP during his second task, which leaves us only with Droid, who I might say has proven to be quite an asset when it comes to convertion.
Yeah... from 9 "new members", only 1 stuck around longer than a month.
Given the legendary status of BWO, I do have to wonder why you guys can't bribe/blackmail/kidnap another modeler from the community and get them to pitch in. I mean, I know everyone has their own projects, but this is BWO here. :p
We've tried that.
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I think I've made it rather transparent that the main problem the project faces is the community talent's involvement. I do not mean this as any kind of condemnation, but the logical conclusion is very simple.
It's not as if I don't understand either. Most of BWO's model designs are pretty much set in stone. This makes any potential creative contributions (creativity being a driving force for doing the actual work) that much less of a factor when the people with talent would consider taking on the job. Unfortunately, the designs we have are very specific and need to remain in place, as opposed to just scrapping them and solving the problem by having new people come in to do whatever they want.
That's just the way it is unfortunately. One way of solving the problem that I've been toying with for a length of time now was to simply offer money out of my own pocket per model, and have someone potentially pick up a meager sum of some $300-$400 provided they choose to take up the work on the whole bunch. It solves the problem technically by providing incentive for the work, but there are other nasty side-effects with the approach, which I'm sure we could debate ad infinitum.
Goober makes a valid point in this thread, the same point he's been making for the past two or four years regarding the voice work, however that part isn't as big of a problem in the grand scheme as the big elephant in the room, which is the technical wrap up.
Putting it bluntly, if you want BWO to be released, the talented members of the community will have to be willing to contribute, otherwise BWO will remain to be what it has been for the longest time now.
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Highly inadvisable dead horse post time.
You made comparisons to other projects in the past (in that topic you just pointed me to). What I have to say about it is that those are unfair comparisons. The projects you mentioned, not only cut corners for a release, but they also have double (or more) of our staff.
I obviously can't see your internal, so I don't know which mods were mentioned. But I seem to recall one released just a little bit under a year ago that, as you say, cut some corners to get out the door. There was no voice-acting. The majority of the missions featured at least one instance of an appallingly unoptimized capital ship that had 20 or so textures and no LODs or debris. Most appallingly corner-cutting of all, the release was chopped in half and the first part released before (afaik) any real work had even started on the second.
NOBODY GAVE A ****. AT ALL. Everybody except Trashie loved it.
If you have similarly good writing and gameplay and take it across fifty missions, BWO will win near-universal recognition as the best mod to ever be released for this game, just as WiH did. This will happen with or without HTL models and voice-acting.
It's not as if I don't understand either. Most of BWO's model designs are pretty much set in stone. This makes any potential creative contributions (creativity being a driving force for doing the actual work) that much less of a factor when the people with talent would consider taking on the job. Unfortunately, the designs we have are very specific and need to remain in place, as opposed to just scrapping them and solving the problem by having new people come in to do whatever they want.
No offense intended here, but I don't think that's the problem. A problem, yes. The problem, no.
The problem is that over the last half-decade, the community has stopped holding its breath and moved on with its life. BWO is no longer universally regarded as the elite of the elite when it comes to campaigns, like it was six or seven years ago. You could give the community's modelers and mappers all the creative control they could possibly ask for, and they'd still much rather devote their time and talent to a publicly active project with a resultantly active following and considerable existing acclaim than to a languishing albatross that has spent the better part of the last decade waiting for the rest of the community to drop what they're doing and ride to the rescue.
Do something to get people excited about this mod again, and that's prone to change. I'm not sure what the best way to go about that is, but publicly announcing that you're all but dead in the water barring a radical expansion of the team is probably a very bad start.
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The problem is that over the last half-decade, the community has stopped holding its breath and moved on with its life. BWO is no longer universally regarded as the elite of the elite when it comes to campaigns, like it was six or seven years ago. You could give the community's modelers and mappers all the creative control they could possibly ask for, and they'd still much rather devote their time and talent to a publicly active project with a resultantly active following and considerable existing acclaim than to a languishing albatross that has spent the better part of the last decade waiting for the rest of the community to drop what they're doing and ride to the rescue.
Do something to get people excited about this mod again, and that's prone to change. I'm not sure what the best way to go about that is, but publicly announcing that you're all but dead in the water barring a radical expansion of the team is probably a very bad start.
That pretty much hits the nail on the head for me... I have every intention of doing what I said I would... but I have so little motivation for this one. It's been a slow progressing mod since forever... I've gone through high-school, college, gotten married, have a baby due any day and this mod STILL is just some board on HLP with a website. (And I next to never look at mod websites...) I haven't the slightest idea what this mod is about.. I know it's part of the CE series.. but most of those campaigns are broken with the latest mediaVPs...
The last thing I want to do is demotivate you guys.. but I think I kidna categorize BWO with MT in my mind... my advice would be to consider some publicity stuff... Get the community to visit the BWO board and start talking about it again..
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Advice from someone who released a mod of some degree of considerable size. if you want to get something done, do it yourself. Don't blame the community.
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No offense intended here, but I don't think that's the problem. A problem, yes. The problem, no.
The problem is that over the last half-decade, the community has stopped holding its breath and moved on with its life. BWO is no longer universally regarded as the elite of the elite when it comes to campaigns, like it was six or seven years ago. You could give the community's modelers and mappers all the creative control they could possibly ask for, and they'd still much rather devote their time and talent to a publicly active project with a resultantly active following and considerable existing acclaim than to a languishing albatross that has spent the better part of the last decade waiting for the rest of the community to drop what they're doing and ride to the rescue.
Do something to get people excited about this mod again, and that's prone to change. I'm not sure what the best way to go about that is, but publicly announcing that you're all but dead in the water barring a radical expansion of the team is probably a very bad start.
A fair point certainly.
That we haven't telegraphed in a consistent manner what the mod is about to the community is certainly a problem. Unfortunately, the problem is also somewhat unique, because we did do just that, but a long time ago. We did have plans to rectify that very issue, unfortunately matters stalled on that front, and I chose not to act but instead wait for the problems to resolve themselves (I won't go into it, but I can acknowledge that I'm aware of the issue). I am hoping that perhaps we would be able to do something about this very issue in the coming few months, though I am reluctant to advertise this fact, because I wouldn't want people to wait for something that may not come.
The problem is as I said, rather unique. There has been much information trickled out over the years, making it in part rather senseless to repeat the process, though it's certainly understandable why that would be necessary, as the prospective talent which might be interested in working on the campaign wouldn't know any of it if they didn't arrive five or ten years ago. The logistics of it are clear, and you are correct. It is a deficiency on my part.
I do admit it is a problem that needs to be remedied, and I do have very specific plans for that in mind. However at the end of the day, if we're talking about actually wrapping this thing up, we're still back to square one. Simply releasing information and marketing what the campaign is about doesn't guarantee anyone would sign on, especially because of the unfortunate fact that the work that remains to be done is raw work. One of the reasons I chose to remain passive regarding the content information flow (and not delivering anything tangible) is because I wouldn't want to give people the false impression that the campaign is progressing, while there is actually no real crew to work on it. In essence, I would be getting people excited, while the project would remain in limbo, and that's just ****ing evil no matter how you flip it. I have found a way around that, to make the release of information right, but again, as I said, problems I can't really go into.
Ultimately, the issue of manpower continues to persist, and it is unfortunately not an easy one to solve. Nobody here is blaming the community, the community did nothing wrong. The community however is going to have to be part of the solution if this thing is ever going to be wrapped up.
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Unfortunately Blackdove, BWO will remain where it is.
The pool of people capable of working on BWO is limited. Of them, the ones willing to work on BWO is approaching zero. Also the mod after a decade is now "stale" and has a history of under-performing.
So you really need to ask why this mod is having trouble attracting the necessary people and retaining them? Most of the original staff have moved on leaving you and Raven more or less as caretakers.
For an answer, look to your public forum. Any burst of internal work by artists is not rewarded by publication on the external.
You need to attract talent, yet anyone who turns up won't be able to show off any work they do. It's a small point, but a vital one. It's not like you are Gearbox software and are paying a full time salary or anything. So what other ways can you pay the artist? Future fame? BWO has been stalled for so long that's an unlikely option.
It's a negative feedback cycle. No posted work gives the impression of no activity. No activity gives the impression of a dead mod. Less chance of attracting new people. Also it de-incentivises the artists. About the only way you can pay them is public promotion of their efforts. Yet by keeping the work hidden they have no reason to produce more work.
Back when I started with BWO I just wanted to help with a few ships. Wasn't expecting a whole fleet. The reason I switched to working on the Valkyrie was to get my work out in public while helping BWO with a ship you didn't have. Unfortunately this had the effect of reinforcing the realization that any further BWO work I did would not see the light of day for a long time. It then became harder to motivate myself to do more. So trust me on this, if you lock down what they can show off, then you aren't going to get continuing work out of them.
A positive cycle is where the artists get something and BWO also wins.
You may consider the voice acting to be a minor issue, but it does have an unintended side effect. Your inability in getting it sorted falls into the negative camp. Effectively telling any newcomer that you lack the passion to drive the mod forward. If a mod head can't lead by example by doing some work and takes several years to not do it...
Here is what any prospective is going to see, (unless progress has been made in the last two years)
(unwrap caps x4 + texture x5) -then- (Voice acting process) = not finished this year.
BWO is a dinosaur. It's glory days have faded. Open source it and it might have a chance, keep the secrecy and you guarantee oblivion. Unless of course you manage to find a hidden reserve of passion. But even that won't help without introducing positive feedback cycles, and that requires you to change. Not the community.
Anyway, this thread will die down in a few days so you'll be able to go back to normal shortly. Most of the audience you are concerned about letting down have moved on and no longer have any interest in FreeSpace or an old mod from when they were younger. You're part of a world that exists among people who were part of VBB? and the early days of HLP. Look around, several waves of modders have been through HLP and for a growing proportion, BWO has always been a stalled mod. To get new staff you are going to need to make big moves without any guarantees that it will pay off. That's a tough position to be in. The easy option, the default option is to sit on BWO until it's relevance fades completely.
Sorry if this seems harsh but with the last recruitment drive you're pretty close to being out of time. Plan around not receiving much help. You no longer have a functioning modding team so you're going to have to get creative as well as shifting where you stand. It won't be easy but good luck.
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I think that BWO should be released (or cleared for beta) as-is. If it has good story, good gameplay and memorable characters, it'll be appreciated even without a few hi-poly models. If it lacks these things, few hi-poly models won't save it. BP: AoA had all it's fighters and an entire new race lo-poly, and yet it was regarded as one of the greatest campaigns ever made practically from the start. This is because story and characters matter much more than models.
Also, you'll most likely become a laughing stock if you'll not release BWO before Duke Nukem: Forever, which has appearantely been revieved and now is nearing release. :)
I can see all these jokes that would appear in such case.
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Also, you'll most likely become a laughing stock if you'll not release BWO before Duke Nukem: Forever, which has appearantely been revieved and now is nearing release.
DNF has been out for a few weeks now, you know.
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Also, you'll most likely become a laughing stock if you'll not release BWO before Duke Nukem: Forever, which has appearantely been revieved and now is nearing release. :)
I can see all these jokes that would appear in such case.
Duke Nukem Forever was released a few months ago, actually (in the US, anyways; not sure what the release schedule is elsewhere). It was mediocre at best, and the fact that it had twelve years worth of built-up expectations to live up to didn't help matters.
Keep that in mind: if BWO spends another five years on models and voice acting, they will need to be the best models and voice acting this community has ever seen, and by a very wide margin. And at that point the missions, unless heavily revamped, will still be the very best that could be made with FRED in the state the program was in ca. 2006.
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but I think I kidna categorize BWO with MT in my mind...
They are not the same thing, trust me. The state of MT is much much worse, and dare I say it is effectively dead. BWO is not.
For an answer, look to your public forum. Any burst of internal work by artists is not rewarded by publication on the external.
You need to attract talent, yet anyone who turns up won't be able to show off any work they do. It's a small point, but a vital one.
You have a good point, but that's not entirely true:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=61539.0 (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=61539.0)
Also, I know that very soon (as soon as I get them done in fact), you will be able to see and play with 2 ships that this community already knows about, but never seen in HTL format. I might not be able to show new stuff everyday, but I'm more than happy of being able to show something once in a while (and I do).
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Also, you'll most likely become a laughing stock if you'll not release BWO before Duke Nukem: Forever, which has appearantely been revieved and now is nearing release.
DNF has been out for a few weeks now, you know.
Ah, right. I must have been at that military camp then. I have to check Steam more often.
Then congratulations. Even DNF got released before BWO did and at this rate, it'll be out even in Poland before you're done.
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but I think I kidna categorize BWO with MT in my mind...
They are not the same thing, trust me. The state of MT is much much worse, and dare I say it is effectively dead. BWO is not.
See what I mean by that is that BWO, like MT, has just lost interest for me. It's been in development for so long that I've just moved on... :doubt:
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The state of MT is much much worse, and dare I say it is effectively dead
Yep it is completely dead, which is shame actually it could been so good.
I hope I'm able to play BWO in few years but it is shame that the HTL stuff has taken so long.
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Don't make me attempt to learn modding skills in some hopeless quixotic attempt to revive dormant projects. I can promise you won't enjoy the results. :p
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MT is dead as a doorknob and TBH, discussion is going on about releasing a modeldump (in fact, this "discussion" consists of Gloriano agreeing with me and me waiting for response from anybody who was on the project from the start).
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That's good at least if the ships can find use in another campaign so the previous work wasn't entirely for nothing.
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Or somebody may pick the project up again, like it happened with 158th (nevermind it's terrible results, there's a chance MT remake would have better FREDing).
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I'd hate to see MT just go the way of a modeldump and abandonment, especially since it's always seemed like there's a whole lot of work story-wise that's already been implemented. There have to be a couple of people around here who would be interested in taking the reins.
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You have a good point, but that's not entirely true:
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=61539.0 (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=61539.0)
Also, I know that very soon (as soon as I get them done in fact), you will be able to see and play with 2 ships that this community already knows about, but never seen in HTL format. I might not be able to show new stuff everyday, but I'm more than happy of being able to show something once in a while (and I do).
I hope it's not lost on you that the thread is from a non BWO forum. There is a BWO thread referencing it but contains no pictures. The last BWO posted WIP image I'm aware of is the ship rear end in the four year old Cheese thread. It's possible I missed some?
That sounds like good news, hopefully one of them is a cap ship to develop expertise in that area.
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From the perspective of someone who joined in February 2010:
When I dusted off my fs2 disks and installed FSO for the first time I found out about HLP and started looking around. I quickly discovered that people were forming teams and making mods. This was encouraging to me and I assumed many of them were active. I was learning FRED at the time and somewhat fanatically eager to lend a hand to some project. I was very interested in campaigns such as NTV, but to my astonishment the most recent posts in these threads were months back. Many of the most recent posts were threads of the "Is it still alive... hello?" variety. Then I went to the websites of these threads and when I saw the date many of these mods were founded, I was disheartened. I decided then and there I would rather work on projects/campaigns by myself on my own terms rather than toss it in some dormant lockbox one day hoping for someone to come back from vacation and help out.
I see BWO as another one of these mods. I read the website, thought the writing was decent, and shrugged it off the day after. I honestly was not expecting this mod to ever be released during my stay here.
I think one of the fatal flaws of campaigns such as these is they perpetually let their ambitions outweigh practicality. You have dreams, big awesome dreams for a mod so big, so well written, so well engineered, and so beautiful that it will blow people away. It's your baby, and if you compromise even one bit to give way to reality it will be a tainted half-work or something similar. Especially after so many years working on and off... it's become too important to simply give up on the dream. It's easy to just give things another week another month or hey what's one more year, but people move on and lives change. I think that's what's happening now.
Water's got a good idea. Release the work as a beta/demo or something similar and let the community chew on it. If you've got something worth the time, people will help out.
Can't help but agree with Spoon too. A single motivated individual working regularly goes very far.
Really consider user made models as well. Good models take months of dedicated work, and there is a lot out there. I'm sure if you stretch it you can find or have found something. Doctor it up in pcs2, give it a retexture, consider your tabling options. You've got a lot to work with.
Bottom line, you can have the best mod in existence, but if you never release it, no one will ever know. Least of all the people who only recently started paying attention to FS modding. It will remain what it was when it was founded: a dream.
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BWO did release a demo, it was quite fun, but certainly not the greatest campaign I played.
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Maybe release another demo, such as the first few missions of the actual campaign. End it on a cliffhanger or a "wham" mission (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WhamEpisode). That'd certainly drum up interest.
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I was going to suggest that, but I didn't want to push too hard. Basically, if you want to reclaim your old reputation, you need to overcome some concerns about what state FREDing was in five years ago when you mostly wrapped up your missions. Prove that you've got a few Forced Entries or He Who Rides the Tigers or Delenda Ests in those fifty missions, and the community's givea****ometer is prone to return to prior levels.
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you've got a few Forced Entries or He Who Rides the Tigers or Delenda Ests in those fifty missions, and the community's givea****ometer is prone to return to prior levels.
There absolutely no need to combare the projects since they are so different Blackwater operations has different kind of missions and some interesting stuff happening etc.
Maybe release another demo, such as the first few missions of the actual campaign. End it on a cliffhanger or a "wham" mission. That'd certainly drum up interest.
That is quite interesting idea TBH.
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IMHO, I'd suggest to release the whole thing with low poly models. New demo is a good idea, but then, it'd most likely also need these HTLs done.
If it's done well enough, nobody will care about a few lo-poly models (5 of them, IIRC). In fact, normal and shine maps can make a lo-poly model look suprisingly modern. If you don't have anybody to normalmap your old ships (assuming it's not already done), I could do that.
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you've got a few Forced Entries or He Who Rides the Tigers or Delenda Ests in those fifty missions, and the community's givea****ometer is prone to return to prior levels.
There absolutely no need to combare the projects since they are so different Blackwater operations has different kind of missions and some interesting stuff happening etc.
Actually those are names of top-notch missions in terms of how players react or keep to memory while playing them, Forced Entry is combat-intense with a major ragefuel ending, He Who Rides the Tiger is the Transcend mission of ST:R, an escort mission that makes your hair stand on the back of your neck, and Delenda Est is the quality BoE since Inferno's Nemesis. He's completely right, BWO will need missions that are memorable - missions with a lasting impact on players, and if there really is 50 missions, then you'll need a few of them.
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ht, BWO will need missions that are memorable - missions with a lasting impact on players, and if there really is 50 missions, then you'll need a few of them.
more like 40 with like maybe 3-4 extra secret missions on play trough it's 30 missions about and there will be some awesome missions.
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if there really is 50 missions, then you'll need a few of them.
I flew most of those missions. They're in there, though they might require some touchup.
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ht, BWO will need missions that are memorable - missions with a lasting impact on players, and if there really is 50 missions, then you'll need a few of them.
more like 40 with like maybe 3-4 extra secret missions on play trough it's 30 missions about and there will be some awesome missions.
Well they're not very sekret now, are they? :p
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Why wouldn't they be secret? I haven't seen what they're about.
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And how to unlock them, that's what understand by "secret missions".
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If it's done well enough, nobody will care about a few lo-poly models (5 of them, IIRC). In fact, normal and shine maps can make a lo-poly model look suprisingly modern. If you don't have anybody to normalmap your old ships (assuming it's not already done), I could do that.
Its much more than 5 new ships.
I might take you up on that offer of normal mapping ships. That always helps to save me time. :P
if there really is 50 missions, then you'll need a few of them.
I flew most of those missions. They're in there, though they might require some touchup.
Some missions will be "touched up" indeed.
Maybe release another demo, such as the first few missions of the actual campaign. End it on a cliffhanger or a "wham" mission. That'd certainly drum up interest.
No comment on that.
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Its much more than 5 new ships.
I might take you up on that offer of normal mapping ships. That always helps to save me time. :P
I'll be happy to help in bringing BWO closer to release, though be advised, I can't UV map ships or create textures from scratch, I need a diffuse map to work off.
I can also create simple glowmaps and shine maps, and since we have holidays in Poland now, I'll be able to work quite fast.
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That sounds pretty great, as that's just the kind of help we need.
Are you sure you have time though? You seem to have a lot on your plate.
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For MT, I'll only be working on packing up a modeldump, CoW seems to be on hold, WoD and Inferno are in "modelling" phase, SAFSO and WCHF move quite slowly (the former is still in "modelling" phase and the latter is undercrewed). That leaves Syrk and BP as projects that need my attention right now. I think I'll be able to handle BWO, I'd really like to see it released.
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Dangit, when I saw the title, I was overcome with a powerful urge to say 'Hey! You scared 'em all away!'
Aaaanyway, good luck to whoever is concerned, and good to hear progress is made.
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Yes progress is being made, even if at a veryyyy slow pace.
Dragon, I might harass you with something in a couple of weeks. :)
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OK.
Keep in mind, it's possible that after two weeks from now, I'd away from computer for two weeks, then the school will start. Don't worry though, I'd still have time for BWO.
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28 days later....a big giant appears in the shape of...
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Please keep unrelated comments to a minimum :)
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WOW!
I did not expect this much of a reaction this is great
water does have a very good idea you wouldn't have to release all of the stuff but at least some of the better models from each artist would provide some inscentive
don't ya think
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So you really need to ask why this mod is having trouble attracting the necessary people and retaining them? Most of the original staff have moved on leaving you and Raven more or less as caretakers.
For an answer, look to your public forum. Any burst of internal work by artists is not rewarded by publication on the external.
You need to attract talent, yet anyone who turns up won't be able to show off any work they do. It's a small point, but a vital one. It's not like you are Gearbox software and are paying a full time salary or anything. So what other ways can you pay the artist? Future fame? BWO has been stalled for so long that's an unlikely option.
This is an older topic but personally I'm not sure how much "showing off artwork" factors into an artist's decision to do a project. Yes it may be true for some people, but some people just want to accomplish a common goal. Some artists also just create stuff for the sake of creating not out of a need for public recognition. Maybe the typical artist does so here, I don't know.
That being said I do hope BWO gets out the door eventually in whatever form the creators choose to release it (and hopefully not one they feel they've been forced into doing). I know a number of other campaigns have had their original visions changed by the influx of new blood, and in my experience they've been lesser campaigns for it (WiH for example (yeah, I'm a heretic. I'm fine with that)).
Also I will admit to being guilty of one of those people who wanted to help but then didn't deliver. Then again, I don't deliver on a lot of my own personal artistic projects so in that regard I would not pin the blame on BWO but would put it solely on my own shoulders. If I ever get the creative urge I may try and lend a hand again. It's much simpler than trying to create a whole total conversion from scratch (as I've dreamt up a number of times).
In any case, BWO staff be true to your original vision! Naysayers be damned. That being said, trying to create buzz to inspire new talent may not be a bad thing either.
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(WiH for example (yeah, I'm a heretic. I'm fine with that)).
Ha, I'm totally fine with this, but believe me, once you play the alpha...
It wasn't a matter of a change of creative direction regarding the original vision (the original vision stayed the same), the alpha was just disappointing and bad and everyone thought so.
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That being said I do hope BWO gets out the door eventually in whatever form the creators choose to release it
All the creators have apparently left.
Unless anyone has heard from Dynamo, Agatheron, Kellan, IceFire, Ace, or BlackDove recently. Raven2001 still counts as senior staff, but he's a voice in the wilderness at this point.
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(WiH for example (yeah, I'm a heretic. I'm fine with that)).
Ha, I'm totally fine with this, but believe me, once you play the alpha...
It wasn't a matter of a change of creative direction regarding the original vision (the original vision stayed the same), the alpha was just disappointing and bad and everyone thought so.
Well I only base that opinion on the fact that I enjoyed AoA whereas I was put off abit by WiH. Though to be fair I probably was a bit heavy handed in my feedback of the discussion thread. That being said I am in the definitive minority on that front, and a tragic story is hard to fairly hard to pull off and even if you do, different stories appeal to different sensibilities. Gears of War 2 for example had a moment which a lot of people either thought was heartbreakening, and cried, or thought was stupid. So obviously one story can appeal to different people.
For me as I said WiH just piled on the tragedy too much far past the point of believability.
That being said it was obviously a lot of work so I try hard to resist raining people's parades these days.
That being said I do hope BWO gets out the door eventually in whatever form the creators choose to release it
All the creators have apparently left.
Unless anyone has heard from Dynamo, Agatheron, Kellan, IceFire, Ace, or BlackDove recently. Raven2001 still counts as senior staff, but he's a voice in the wilderness at this point.
Well either way. I'm a unknown quantity on this board as it is so if anything I'm out of the loop as to what is and what is not going on. Been playing Xbox mostly these days, not so much Freespace or PC in general.
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BlackDove has been on the boards in the past month or two, and IceFire actually just posted today. Not that the latter is active on the project as far as I know, but still.
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Well I only base that opinion on the fact that I enjoyed AoA whereas I was put off abit by WiH. Though to be fair I probably was a bit heavy handed in my feedback of the discussion thread. That being said I am in the definitive minority on that front, and a tragic story is hard to fairly hard to pull off and even if you do, different stories appeal to different sensibilities. Gears of War 2 for example had a moment which a lot of people either thought was heartbreakening, and cried, or thought was stupid. So obviously one story can appeal to different people.
For me as I said WiH just piled on the tragedy too much far past the point of believability.
That being said it was obviously a lot of work so I try hard to resist raining people's parades these days.
These are totally legitimate and valid criticisms. I just don't think you would've enjoyed the WiH alpha any more than the final product, and probably considerably less - it was nowhere near as good as AoA.
But if we can ever find the damn thing that can always be put to the test.
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This is an older topic but personally I'm not sure how much "showing off artwork" factors into an artist's decision to do a project. Yes it may be true for some people, but some people just want to accomplish a common goal. Some artists also just create stuff for the sake of creating not out of a need for public recognition. Maybe the typical artist does so here, I don't know.
For me, it's not worth doing work if there is no expectation that anyone will ever get to see, or use what I work on.
A mod that shows off stuff every so often is still regarded as active and due to that can attract other people and hopefully retain them. Just out of curiosity, what's the last wip or completed image you can find in the BWO forum? Your impression of the mod would be different if you saw the things that have been worked on.
But at the end of the day it's a management problem. When the heavy lifters ran out of gas, inertia kept the mindset going even though the landscape had radically changed around them. Until change happens this mod stays where it is.
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Aren't models the reason for the big delay? With all the many HTL Terran ships out there, has anyone considered just mapping the incomplete ships over to a nice equivalent from the community? Consider that BP has two complete Terran fleets, two more fleets are coming with the new Inferno, more from INFA, more are out in the ED dump, and more made by individual contributors -- ships of every shape, size and capability. It shouldn't be that hard to choose replacement vessels, possibly moving around capship turrets if needed. This might not be the 100% ideal solution, but it should be good enough.
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For me, it's not worth doing work if there is no expectation that anyone will ever get to see, or use what I work on.
A mod that shows off stuff every so often is still regarded as active and due to that can attract other people and hopefully retain them. Just out of curiosity, what's the last wip or completed image you can find in the BWO forum? Your impression of the mod would be different if you saw the things that have been worked on.
But at the end of the day it's a management problem. When the heavy lifters ran out of gas, inertia kept the mindset going even though the landscape had radically changed around them. Until change happens this mod stays where it is.
I'm sorry but there's some sort of logic flaw in there,
"I only work on mods that are going to get finished, so I don't want to help one get finished".
In other words not wanting to do work because you're afraid that your work won't get seen even though by doing that work your helping to accomplish that very goal.
And I'm not sure that showing off stuff will necessarily make people join, if anything I think a bigger contributor is popularity. "This campaign(or IP) is popular, so, I wanna be on the team and have a badge". And yes showing stuff can increase popularity, but when the intent of a campaign is to have some real reveals to the player then showing stuff tends to be a little self-defeating. And in addition it's been like 12 years or however long, well, not that long, but a few years anyway. How much stuff can they show? At some point you run out of content you're willing to do. Every designer I think has limits to what they're willing to reveal because at the end of the day they still want people to experience the campaign for the first time rather than have the whole thing be spoiled.
What it really needs is for one or two people to step up and really start contributing so yeah people can say there's progress being made.
Aren't models the reason for the big delay? With all the many HTL Terran ships out there, has anyone considered just mapping the incomplete ships over to a nice equivalent from the community? Consider that BP has two complete Terran fleets, two more fleets are coming with the new Inferno, more from INFA, more are out in the ED dump, and more made by individual contributors -- ships of every shape, size and capability. It shouldn't be that hard to choose replacement vessels, possibly moving around capship turrets if needed. This might not be the 100% ideal solution, but it should be good enough.
BWO has it's entirely own custom fleet from what I understand for the "terrans".
Considering that the fredding is supposed to be finished, abandoning those ships and replacing them would make the fredding most definitely not finished and thus be a little counterproductive if you ask me. Like if you built 50 missions with Orions, and decided to replace them with a Hecate, custom tables or no things would change right?
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The campaign was done years ago. The models were, to my understanding, finished as well. The team made the (awful) decision to hold off for full voice acting and high-poly models.
Reverse that decision, release the campaign in its low-fi state, upgrade later. That's always been my advice.
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I'm sorry but there's some sort of logic flaw in there,
"I only work on mods that are going to get finished, so I don't want to help one get finished".
In other words not wanting to do work because you're afraid that your work won't get seen even though by doing that work your helping to accomplish that very goal.
In that case, let's dig up Paradigm Shift.
No logical flaw present. The issue is that the addition of any one person is not going to make BWO get finished in a timely fashion.
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Aren't models the reason for the big delay? With all the many HTL Terran ships out there, has anyone considered just mapping the incomplete ships over to a nice equivalent from the community? Consider that BP has two complete Terran fleets, two more fleets are coming with the new Inferno, more from INFA, more are out in the ED dump, and more made by individual contributors -- ships of every shape, size and capability. It shouldn't be that hard to choose replacement vessels, possibly moving around capship turrets if needed. This might not be the 100% ideal solution, but it should be good enough.
BWO has it's entirely own custom fleet from what I understand for the "terrans".
Considering that the fredding is supposed to be finished, abandoning those ships and replacing them would make the fredding most definitely not finished and thus be a little counterproductive if you ask me. Like if you built 50 missions with Orions, and decided to replace them with a Hecate, custom tables or no things would change right?
Not really. Map the models over to ships with similar fire points and / or similar configuration. Change the turrets over in PCS2 to be in similar places. Shouldn't be too bad, or too disruptive to balance.
Now, if it is true that BWO has an entire finished low poly fleet, then by all means it should be released that way. I haven't heard that before, however. IIRC even the low poly models had issues (1 LOD, no debris) etc...
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Not really. Map the models over to ships with similar fire points and / or similar configuration. Change the turrets over in PCS2 to be in similar places. Shouldn't be too bad, or too disruptive to balance.
Got to disagree here, while I like the line of thought in my experience this is usually surprisingly disruptive to mission balance and flow.
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The way I understand it is that the majority of the assets already have HTL models (Though some may already be showing their age). The problem lies in UV mapping, texturing and LOD's, you know the stuff no buddy likes to do. The team has approached me and others about making a push to try to get all that done but I'm busy with Inferno at the moment. Once we push out the first release of the Inferno Upgrade then maybe I'll be in a position to get behind it.
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The way I understand it is that the majority of the assets already have HTL models (Though some may already be showing their age).
Best update them to contemporary standards before release, then.
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That will probably delay everything by another four years though.
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That will probably delay everything by another four years though.
Well, it's important that BWO make the best impression possible.
Assuming it takes four years to bring everything up to 2011 standards, by 2015 they'll be in a good position to start bringing their 2011 models up to 2015 standards.
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I'm sorry but there's some sort of logic flaw in there,
"I only work on mods that are going to get finished, so I don't want to help one get finished".
In other words not wanting to do work because you're afraid that your work won't get seen even though by doing that work your helping to accomplish that very goal.
In that case, let's dig up Paradigm Shift.
No logical flaw present. The issue is that the addition of any one person is not going to make BWO get finished in a timely fashion.
A statement you're basing on what precisely? Spoon got WoD finished and started in a timely fashion, and he's just one man. Blaise Russel got 3-4 campaigns started and finished in a timely fashion, and he's just one man. It's not the number of people require it's the amount of work required and from what I understand, unlike a lot of campaigns the amount of work left on BWO is finite meaning there is an end in sight if people are willing to step up and contribute. This differs from other campaigns which are just getting off the ground and which have yet to nail down what exactly they want to do.
And on top of that, we don't even know how many models are left to HTL from what I know. I know what one of them is, because I was asked to do it, but beyond that . . .
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I'm sorry but there's some sort of logic flaw in there,
"I only work on mods that are going to get finished, so I don't want to help one get finished".
In other words not wanting to do work because you're afraid that your work won't get seen even though by doing that work your helping to accomplish that very goal.
In that case, let's dig up Paradigm Shift.
No logical flaw present. The issue is that the addition of any one person is not going to make BWO get finished in a timely fashion.
A statement you're basing on what precisely? Spoon got WoD finished and started in a timely fashion, and he's just one man. Blaise Russel got 3-4 campaigns started and finished in a timely fashion, and he's just one man. It's not the number of people require it's the amount of work required and from what I understand, unlike a lot of campaigns the amount of work left on BWO is finite meaning there is an end in sight if people are willing to step up and contribute. This differs from other campaigns which are just getting off the ground and which have yet to nail down what exactly they want to do.
And on top of that, we don't even know how many models are left to HTL from what I know. I know what one of them is, because I was asked to do it, but beyond that . . .
Blaise Russel used existing models, with a few retextures. Spoon used models of a detail level practical for a one-man project.
And as far as I can tell, WoD and Blaise Russel's work are generally regarded as being pretty damn good in spite of all this.
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I'm sorry but there's some sort of logic flaw in there,
"I only work on mods that are going to get finished, so I don't want to help one get finished".
In other words not wanting to do work because you're afraid that your work won't get seen even though by doing that work your helping to accomplish that very goal.
The key word was expectation. All mods are worked on in the belief that they'll be released some day.
What it really needs is for one or two people to step up and really start contributing so yeah people can say there's progress being made.
The problem with not revealing completed/wip stuff is that none of that progress is ever visible. In a multi year project the result is a net loss to BWO in terms of community and extra helpers. Do you really want to help a mod that looks multi-year dead or would you prefer to contribute to a mod where you can see others providing time and energy? Perception matters.
Now, if it is true that BWO has an entire finished low poly fleet, then by all means it should be released that way. I haven't heard that before, however. IIRC even the low poly models had issues (1 LOD, no debris) etc...
The high poly cap ships are under 8k excluding turrets. Simple lods are enough for the low poly caps though. (lod1 no turrets)
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Blaise Russel used existing models, with a few retextures. Spoon used models of a detail level practical for a one-man project.
And as far as I can tell, WoD and Blaise Russel's work are generally regarded as being pretty damn good in spite of all this.
Yeah thanks but you're deliberatly skewing my point. We're not talking about how a campaign with low poly models is regarded upon release, we're talking about whether one person can make a difference. In the past one person has made a difference, they've made the whole sum of the experience. So saying one person cannot make a difference to BWO is erraneous because it's not about the number of contributors it's about the depth of those contributions.
The problem with not revealing completed/wip stuff is that none of that progress is ever visible. In a multi year project the result is a net loss to BWO in terms of community and extra helpers. Do you really want to help a mod that looks multi-year dead or would you prefer to contribute to a mod where you can see others providing time and energy? Perception matters.
Different people are motivated by different things. For me it's less about the project's state rather than its subject matter and whether I think it's something worth exploring. A lot of stuff has a lot of work going into it on this board, but for a lot of it I wouldn't be in any way interested in contributing. I mean most of my energies have been directed towards a conversion here or there where it's very very very unlikely that anything will ever come of it simply because of the amount of work involved but for whatever reason I sunk a few hours into it.
That being said, when it comes to projects the only thing I've found that bothers me is an unequal distribution of the work. I won't name names but there are in the community "idea men", people who like to type words, but otherwise not lift fingers. They're the real ones who 'get my goat'. Mods need players not cheerleaders.
Personally I don't really get excited for the release of mods, I visit here only occasionally and sometimes if something is release I go and play it. It's like "oh ****, this came out two months ago, maybe I should play it". Obviously the perspective of someone who visits this site on a daily basis would differ considerably.
Either way the point is that yes, maybe some things would motivate some people to contribute, but they wouldn't motivate all people to contribute. I think some of it is just unbridled unenthusiasm, which, is often not backed up by results. Not speaking of Dragon but some people have like a half dozen badges, and if your work is split six ways then I mean progress is naturally going to be slower on all of those mods as whole. It's like buying stuff, it's fun to acquire stuff, it's fun to get started, but finishing is the real mountain to climb.
And ultimately, it's up to each artist to find their own motivation and if they've rationalized within themselves that the project is not worth their time then no amount of fan service by the developers is going to change that. And this is a bit harsh, and I say it as someone who when given a task for BWO didn't accomplish it myself, but it's one thing to say that "I've done all this work, but still nothign to show for it" and an entirely other thing to say that "I don't think this is going to pan out, so I'm not even going to TRY". Because really, both you and I are I think in the latter category and no amount of 'the developers should do this instead' is going to change that.
Because you know what. At one point, they were driving to finish it. There WAS progress. They were saying "hey, we need people! Who wants to help" and both you and I stepped up and both you and I did nothing. So . . . I think the fault clearly lies with the contributors, not the developers because at that point the developers DID do their jobs and DID get 9 people trying out and only 8 people did nothing so is that the developers fault? I don't think so.
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Look. You all could argue about this until you are blue in the teeth.
The point is this...
Either that until some people either put their money where their mouth is and actually try to help BWO...
Or
That some people take up active leadership and begin some sort of publicity push and/or motivation push..
Nothing is going to happen here. Since neither of those seems to be happening anyway, the cause of the stall seems clear. No one cares enough to try.
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Blaise Russel used existing models, with a few retextures. Spoon used models of a detail level practical for a one-man project.
And as far as I can tell, WoD and Blaise Russel's work are generally regarded as being pretty damn good in spite of all this.
Yeah thanks but you're deliberatly skewing my point. We're not talking about how a campaign with low poly models is regarded upon release, we're talking about whether one person can make a difference. In the past one person has made a difference, they've made the whole sum of the experience. So saying one person cannot make a difference to BWO is erraneous because it's not about the number of contributors it's about the depth of those contributions.
Oh, you're welcome.
You stated that the addition of one person could bring about the completion of a campaign currently stalled on the creation, uvmapping, and texturing of a large number of hi-poly models. You "proved" your point by citing one person who made a campaign with several new low-poly models, and one person who made a number of campaigns with no new models and a couple tilemapped reskins.
I'll concede that the number of ships left to complete may be fewer than I'm making it out to be. However, nobody outside the project has any idea how much work needs to be done because you apparently have to do a couple months of
(http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/kevinbacon_animalhouse.jpg)
to so much as be told how many models exist, and what their status is. Shockingly, not a lot of people seem to feel like taking the plunge.
My point about perception of the Spoon's and Blaise Russel's campaigns was incidental to my point, but thanks for acting as if it somehow undermined it.
Edit:
No one cares enough to try.
:nod:
Fake edit: i suspect that when this campaign goes to voice acting, anyone who wants to audition will have to go through an FBI background check before being mailed their lines in a special envelope that will auto-incinerate ten seconds after the lines have been read.
Real edit: Okay, I'll also concede that one person who models, uvmaps, and textures like it's his job could probably save BWO. However, people want to either do their own thing or be part of an active team. Nobody wants to single-handedly salvage someone else's project while enjoying zilch in terms of creative expression. That is why the fact that nothing is (to the knowledge of the public) getting done strongly discourages people from coming in and getting it done.
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All right this is totally uncalled for, yes the mod has stalled on several occasions and things don't look to be too terribly different now but it is not unredeemable. Oh and for your information one man can inspire others to join in a collective effort should they choose to do so.
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And this is a bit harsh, and I say it as someone who when given a task for BWO didn't accomplish it myself, but it's one thing to say that "I've done all this work, but still nothign to show for it" and an entirely other thing to say that "I don't think this is going to pan out, so I'm not even going to TRY". Because really, both you and I are I think in the latter category and no amount of 'the developers should do this instead' is going to change that.
Because you know what. At one point, they were driving to finish it. There WAS progress. They were saying "hey, we need people! Who wants to help" and both you and I stepped up and both you and I did nothing. So . . . I think the fault clearly lies with the contributors, not the developers because at that point the developers DID do their jobs and DID get 9 people trying out and only 8 people did nothing so is that the developers fault? I don't think so.
Well you may have done nothing and that's ok. Some of the things I completed don't really fit in the screenshot category like unwrapping ships but two others did. Same with FSKing's texturing work. And that's the point, any potential modeler/texturer who looks in the BWO forum won't see any progress over a three to four year period. Their choice between a mod that looks dead and one of the more vibrant mods is rather easy. They vote with their feet.
It's interesting that you think it's the contributors to this project who are at fault. Each mod has to attract people from a limited pool of people and at the end of the day not all mods make it. It's not the communities fault if a mod refuses to adapt. It is however sad to see so much quality work suffering from digital bit-rot.
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Folks, want to let you know that I'm keeping tabs on this topic.
I'm really not going to add into the discussion... Its really irrelevant whose "fault" it is, and to be honest I don't think the "fault" can be pinpointed to one single side (devs or community).
But please carry on :)
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Oh and for your information one man can inspire others to join in a collective effort should they choose to do so.
Thank you for the information. Yeah, it's theoretically possible. However, someone of sufficient reputation and personal charisma to get others to follow him has to take that first step, and that hasn't happened and doesn't seem likely to happen for the reasons that myself and others have discussed.
If you ask people to jump without giving them any idea what they'd be getting themselves into, don't be surprised when they walk away instead.
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However, someone of sufficient reputation and personal charisma to get others to follow him has to take that first step
This. A leader is not someone who says, "Here's what needs to be done; here's how I want you to do it; I'll check up on you later; kthxbai." A leader is someone who says, "Follow me while I do this cool thing. If you'd like to help, do X."
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However, someone of sufficient reputation and personal charisma to get others to follow him has to take that first step
This. A leader is not someone who says, "Here's what needs to be done; here's how I want you to do it; I'll check up on you later; kthxbai." A leader is someone who says, "Follow me while I do this cool thing. If you'd like to help, do X."
I do believe the issue here is the lack of even the former. I think we'd actually get more done if someone could consistently go "Here's what needs to be done; here's how I want you to do it; I'll check up on you later; kthxbai." rather than absolute silence. :P
Thing is it seems like everyone up top is super busy with Real Life.
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Then perhaps it's time for a change in who's up top? Here's some food for though.
- I've noticed with BtA that the level of activity of the team members is directly correspondent to my own level of activity. When I took a BtA break to texture all those Shivan craft for FSU, BtA activity just about died. Now I'm trying to work on BtA at the same time and the activity has increased similarly.
- Scroll is another example. It was basically just sitting there. Occassionally I'd see Goober or Sesq post something but not much.. and not much happened. However, at some point Goober did a lot of work for it and almost immediately the mod activity increased to match.
- Next, FSU. The activity level is almost constant. I'm willing to bet that is because Zacam is always active, thinking and working on FSU related projects.
- There's also TVWP, another mod I was getting involved... but I left because it seemed no one was working, so I didn't feel like working either. An interesting note is that the leader wasn't really doing anything either.
These are just examples from my own experience, but there definitely seems to be a correlation between leadership activity and team progress.
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I do think it might be a good idea for the team to lay out in specific terms how many/which models were still in need of the high-poly/UV/texturing/LOD'ing/whatever treatment, similar to how the FSU and Port teams handle things. If the remaining necessary work is all listed in one place, it might give the members of the community who are talented in those fields the impetus to pick a model or two and contribute a bit. If you can spread the work around instead of having people feel like they have to be a full gung-ho team member to work on it, it might do some good.
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You stated that the addition of one person could bring about the completion of a campaign currently stalled on the creation, uvmapping, and texturing of a large number of hi-poly models. You "proved" your point by citing one person who made a campaign with several new low-poly models, and one person who made a number of campaigns with no new models and a couple tilemapped reskins.
Oh I'm sorry that my example was not specific to the letter, howabout Scooby Doo? A guy who apparently likes to create, UVMap and texture dozens and dozens of Wing Commander models for fun. Are they HTL? I don't know. The point my example was meant to illustrate was that one person can contribute a lot of work. Whether they're fredding, modelling, texturing, or whatever it doesn't matter. That's what I'm saying it's not their skill set that matters it's the amount of work they do that matters. If someone does a lot of work, stuff gets finished doesn't matter what sort of work that is.
I'll concede that the number of ships left to complete may be fewer than I'm making it out to be. However, nobody outside the project has any idea how much work needs to be done because you apparently have to do a couple months of
That's uneccesary and a little childish.
to so much as be told how many models exist, and what their status is. Shockingly, not a lot of people seem to feel like taking the plunge.
How is that relevant? Personally if I were contributing to a campaign, I would like to know the least amount of information possible. You know why? Because I discovered something when making my own campaign, playing a campaign you've made isn't fun. There's no experiencing it for the first time, as a creator you don't really get to enjoy the end result you only get to enjoy the work that goes into it and hope the end result appeals to people. So in that respect, if BWO for example were a campaign I wanted to enjoy but also one I wanted to get finished I'd want to be kept in the dark so I could both help finish it and play with unspoiled eyes.
And if I'm not mistaken, Raven did in fact mention to me about how many models were needed to be finished. And that was before I'd even done anything.
Real edit: Okay, I'll also concede that one person who models, uvmaps, and textures like it's his job could probably save BWO. However, people want to either do their own thing or be part of an active team. Nobody wants to single-handedly salvage someone else's project while enjoying zilch in terms of creative expression. That is why the fact that nothing is (to the knowledge of the public) getting done strongly discourages people from coming in and getting it done.
Some people like mundane work. Some people like creative work. Some people like both. And there is some creative latitude when updating a model, if the HTL fs2 models aren't proof of that I don't know what is. Point is people like different things, just because something doesn't appeal to you doesn't mean it wont appeal to someone else.
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At the end of the day, BWO has failed to generate interest levels sufficient to attract the required modeler(s), UVmapper(s), and texture artist(s) and extract the required amount of work from (him/her/them/it).
I'm offering my take as to why that is. You're explaining why it theoretically shouldn't be that way, even though it is.
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Almost everything that gets done on HLP is the result of one or two very passionate people working hard and a group of others accreting around them and helping out.
BWO needs someone who can get in, get access to everything they need, and go all the way. If a requirement can't be fulfilled by the actions of this one person or the talent they attract -- for example, if the project attracts no UV mapper who can move quickly enough - that requirement should be discarded. If you can't get a ship done, swap it out for a finished public asset.
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I'm going to go back and comment on something Batts said earlier in the thread about how BWO was essentially done xty years ago.
This is more or less true. That's why I tested missions for them. Of all the campaign missions I went through there were a couple towards the end that were never hammered into shape and one where we were unable to decide on what to replace the random destroyer from nowhere with.
I don't think the decision to wait for HTL models was necessarily bad as some of the ships were downright fugly by modern standards, but even as we were hammering the missions into a playable form people were talking about adding further classes to the lineup too and didn't have any idea where to slot them into the existing mission framework. It was simply an article of faith that these ships must be in BWO; nobody, even me, commented on the fact were currently proving the opposite, nobody thought to. (I even naively reinforced this madness by suggesting a place where one would be useful.)
And the modeler for these classes burned out and disappeared from the project and it all sort of stagnated on assets nobody was quite sure what to do with. I quit all the projects I was part of several months later due to burnout, so I have no idea what happened since, but let this serve as a salutary lesson in project management.
BWO really could have been done that many years ago. It was within maybe a month of releasable form and could have held it's head high when compared to the works of Blaise Russel or Derelict. BP was still but a twinkle in Darius' eye (if that much), I don't think we even had Ransom's Transcend to compare it to yet then when BlackDove and Ace effectively called off hammering the missions playable and condemned the project to its current state.
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people were talking about adding further classes to the lineup too and didn't have any idea where to slot them into the existing mission framework. It was simply an article of faith that these ships must be in BWO; nobody, even me, commented on the fact were currently proving the opposite, nobody thought to. (I even naively reinforced this madness by suggesting a place where one would be useful.)
And the modeler for these classes burned out and disappeared from the project and it all sort of stagnated on assets nobody was quite sure what to do with. I quit all the projects I was part of several months later due to burnout, so I have no idea what happened since, but let this serve as a salutary lesson in project management.
Those ships were ultimately cut out.
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Perhaps the thing to do is to establish a release date on which the campaign will be released in its as is state no matter what -- say 31st Jan 2012. Replace only the models which can get an HTL in that time, otherwise keep either the low poly version or choose a substitute from those available in the community. Unused models will be released freely to the community and not jammed into missions. Give a trusted mod not part of BWO access to the BWO SVN who has permission to release whatever is there on that fixed date if for some reason it looks like the team will not be done. This step will safeguard the artists who will know for sure that their work will not be wasted and will absolutely be seen. It will also allow hype to be built appropriately since the "when its done" idea is out the window -- no need for cynicism since the community will know for sure when it will be seeing something. I haven't heard in this thread of anything that is essential to get done that couldn't be done in three months. If the mission quality is as good as it has always been claimed to be, I doubt that there would be a problem getting the rest of the models done post release since the artist is guaranteed to see his work in public the minute it is done.
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I quite agree with that statement!
Out of curiosity, what were those suggested ships? which classes?
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I agree aswell
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Perhaps the thing to do is to establish a release date on which the campaign will be released in its as is state no matter what -- say 31st Jan 2012. Replace only the models which can get an HTL in that time, otherwise keep either the low poly version or choose a substitute from those available in the community. Unused models will be released freely to the community and not jammed into missions. Give a trusted mod not part of BWO access to the BWO SVN who has permission to release whatever is there on that fixed date if for some reason it looks like the team will not be done. This step will safeguard the artists who will know for sure that their work will not be wasted and will absolutely be seen. It will also allow hype to be built appropriately since the "when its done" idea is out the window -- no need for cynicism since the community will know for sure when it will be seeing something. I haven't heard in this thread of anything that is essential to get done that couldn't be done in three months. If the mission quality is as good as it has always been claimed to be, I doubt that there would be a problem getting the rest of the models done post release since the artist is guaranteed to see his work in public the minute it is done.
That would be a practical solution to BWO's problems if anyone were interested in implementing a practical solution to BWO's problems.
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One suggestion: Follow in MT's footsteps and release your assets.
R
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That seems kind of silly when the missions are done, thus BWO could simply release in its current half-HTL'd state.
Why modeldump.
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Yeah, MT took that step because the remnants of the team collectively decided that they weren't going to be able to finish the project themselves. By all accounts, BWO has been in an essentially-finished state for some time now, minus some model upgrades.
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Perhaps the thing to do is to establish a release date on which the campaign will be released in its as is state no matter what -- say 31st Jan 2012.
Well...
The release date I'm setting right now is Summer of 2010. More specifically, June 15th. Providing there are any extenuating circumstances at that time, that can be prolonged through the month of July with the final date resting on the 31st of July. 31st of July, is the final date, and we release whatever it is that we've got by that time. If it's a finished product, fantastic, if it's not, really, if the community feels like they can contribute (and want to) they really should.
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One suggestion: Follow in MT's footsteps and release your assets.
R
Don't listen to this guy. Please. Especially if the campaign itself is 99% done.
That would be a practical solution to BWO's problems if anyone were interested in implementing a practical solution to BWO's problems.
Is it possible for you to put aside your attitude? Like, seriously?
The release date I'm setting right now is Summer of 2010. More specifically, June 15th. Providing there are any extenuating circumstances at that time, that can be prolonged through the month of July with the final date resting on the 31st of July. 31st of July, is the final date, and we release whatever it is that we've got by that time. If it's a finished product, fantastic, if it's not, really, if the community feels like they can contribute (and want to) they really should.
If at first you don't succeed . . . try again.
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One suggestion: Follow in MT's footsteps and release your assets.
R
Don't listen to this guy. Please. Especially if the campaign itself is 99% done.
The assets aren't actually important to the campaign's success - releasing them early won't harm anything.
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One suggestion: Follow in MT's footsteps and release your assets.
R
Don't listen to this guy. Please. Especially if the campaign itself is 99% done.
The assets aren't actually important to the campaign's success - releasing them early won't harm anything.
I disagree.
If a person wants to invest character into a ship, whether it be a ship class or a specific-ship within a class, then giving it a proper introduction within the context of a campaign can go a long way towards a first impression. Having a first impression of a ship being it coming out of subspace, or whatnot, and having your first impression being looking at in PCS2 are . . a little different.
I mean at the core, everyone plays this game in part because they like seeing space ships and watching ships blow each other apart, etcetera. So having a mission where a ship is showcased in a specific way can be a positive thing in my opinion. A opportunity which will be lost entirely in the event of a model dump.
EDIT - As an example, think of the Sathanas. The first time we see it full on, outside of the nebula is in bearbaiting, from what I remember. One of the most pivotal and memorable missions of the entire campaign. Did it appear in the techroom before that? Maybe. But, the point is that bearbeating is really the big reveal in terms of the campaign. And for someone like myself who never looked at the tech room entry until well after that mission, that opening shot is the most memorable impression of the ship because it's showcase that way. If I was shown a bunch of screenshots or whatever of the ship before that, it would not have had that same effect.
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One suggestion: Follow in MT's footsteps and release your assets.
R
Don't listen to this guy. Please. Especially if the campaign itself is 99% done.
The assets aren't actually important to the campaign's success - releasing them early won't harm anything.
I still don't understand why the assets would be released first if they're the thing that's not complete...
It just makes no sense to me logically.
Yeah sure, let's release unfinished/half-finished stuff and keep what's actually been done for several years, and could have been released several years ago unreleased. I don't quite follow.
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If you release incomplete assets, chances are somebody picks the up and finishes them.
Heck, it isn't unlikely you would do that yourself, considering how many models from dumps you converted.
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One suggestion: Follow in MT's footsteps and release your assets.
R
Don't listen to this guy. Please. Especially if the campaign itself is 99% done.
The assets aren't actually important to the campaign's success - releasing them early won't harm anything.
I disagree.
If a person wants to invest character into a ship, whether it be a ship class or a specific-ship within a class, then giving it a proper introduction within the context of a campaign can go a long way towards a first impression. Having a first impression of a ship being it coming out of subspace, or whatnot, and having your first impression being looking at in PCS2 are . . a little different.
I agree with this, but it simply doesn't require the ship never having been seen before by the player. For instance Transcend was able to invest a huge amount of character in the Pegasus and Deimos corvette.
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I think the blackwater operation team should release it now that people still cares a bit and i highly believe that once people see how awesome (and it is awesome) the campaign is they would finish the unfinished htl models and maybe even voice acting
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I think the blackwater operation team should release it now that people still cares a bit and i highly believe that once people see how awesome (and it is awesome) the campaign is they would finish the unfinished htl models and maybe even voice acting
I'm in agreement with this line of thinking. I've always been a fan of the cold element series and BWO was supposed to be the last campaign in that series.
Presuming for a second that all the missions are complete, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't release what they have. It certainly can't hurt and it might generate interest in the project.
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I disagree.
If a person wants to invest character into a ship, whether it be a ship class or a specific-ship within a class, then giving it a proper introduction within the context of a campaign can go a long way towards a first impression. Having a first impression of a ship being it coming out of subspace, or whatnot, and having your first impression being looking at in PCS2 are . . a little different.
I agree with this, but it simply doesn't require the ship never having been seen before by the player. For instance Transcend was able to invest a huge amount of character in the Pegasus and Deimos corvette.
It's not a requirement no, but it is one more thing that can enrich the player's experience and when the surprise and revelation is gone the player's experience is arguably the less for it.
And besides that I don't think a model dump will be a positive thing in any way.
If you release incomplete assets, chances are somebody picks the up and finishes them.
Heck, it isn't unlikely you would do that yourself, considering how many models from dumps you converted.
Is there proof of this sort of thing actually happening? I know there have been more than few model dumps and I know that once in a while someone will pick up a ship and finish it but I seriously doubt that enough work will be done on the BWO models to achieve the same results as doing them internally would be. I mean we don't even have HTL models for the entire cast of FS2 retail ships yet.
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Considering what results doing the models internally had so far, I'd say that BWO might as well give "unassociated" modelers a chance.
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It's not a requirement no, but it is one more thing that can enrich the player's experience and when the surprise and revelation is gone the player's experience is arguably the less for it.
I dunno, campaigns like JAD prove pretty decisively that a well-done mission or gameplay element is a lot more important than one more bunch of polygons that blends in with all the rest we've seen over the past ten years.
I don't think a modeldump is necessary but I do think the campaign should just release as is.
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Agreed that an asset dump would be a bad move. It was the right choice for MT (albeit a disheartening one), but BWO is a complete mod and MT was maybe half way there.
Is there proof of this sort of thing actually happening? I know there have been more than few model dumps and I know that once in a while someone will pick up a ship and finish it
The Karuna, Narayana, and Sanctus have all been re-done or are being re-done post WiH release. Voice acting is being coordinated by someone who is not a member of the BP team. To the best of my knowledge, the BP team has never actively recruited new members--they're simply as open with their development process as they can be without giving away important plot points, and people come to them with anything they think might help. The team then takes the stuff that actually does help.
but I seriously doubt that enough work will be done on the BWO models to achieve the same results as doing them internally would be.
I agree completely that the results of the BWO models being worked on by the community after the mod has been released will be different from the results of keeping the work internal.
I mean we don't even have HTL models for the entire cast of FS2 retail ships yet.
And yet that first view of the low-poly Sathanas in bearbaiting made it
One of the most pivotal and memorable missions of the entire campaign.
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It's not a requirement no, but it is one more thing that can enrich the player's experience and when the surprise and revelation is gone the player's experience is arguably the less for it.
I dunno, campaigns like JAD prove pretty decisively that a well-done mission or gameplay element is a lot more important than one more bunch of polygons that blends in with all the rest we've seen over the past ten years.
Again, it's not about how important something is. It's about whether something has value and whether the campaign as a whole would have less value without that element. So if revealing a ship within the framework of a campaign has value, then saving the reveal until the campaign itself would increase the value of that campaign.
As a parallel example. Take War in Heaven. For the final climatic mission, did you release a screenshot of the opening view prior to the release of the campaign? Or did you save that visual backdrop for players to experience within that framework. And if the composition of a mission has value, then why not would the composition of an individual ship as well? By the way, I really really hope your answer is "no, we did not release teaser screens of the final mission".
Agreed that an asset dump would be a bad move. It was the right choice for MT (albeit a disheartening one), but BWO is a complete mod and MT was maybe half way there.
Is there proof of this sort of thing actually happening? I know there have been more than few model dumps and I know that once in a while someone will pick up a ship and finish it
The Karuna, Narayana, and Sanctus have all been re-done or are being re-done post WiH release. Voice acting is being coordinated by someone who is not a member of the BP team. To the best of my knowledge, the BP team has never actively recruited new members--they're simply as open with their development process as they can be without giving away important plot points, and people come to them with anything they think might help. The team then takes the stuff that actually does help.
We're not talking about post release. The proposition was for BWO to release their assetts in hopes that someone would pick them up and improve upon them so they could be HTL for the release of BWO. Which, is not going to happen. There's more chance of them being updated in a organized, internal matter rather than just releasing them and hoping something comes from it. And frankly I don't know why HTL BP ships are being redone after the mod has already been released. Either the original ship lags the computer, or someone really wants to put their thumb print on a popular product. Which, in my opinion is pretty sadly self-serving. While I have been vocal in some criticisms about WiH, none of those criticisms ever focused on the ships which were by and large fine and dandy.
But yes if BWO were to release the mod as is with retail models and if people after the mod release decided they really liked the campaign and wanted to make the models fancier then that would be cool. Though, as suggested above I hope that anyone who undertakes such an endeavour is doing so for the good of the players and not the good of their own ego.
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And frankly I don't know why HTL BP ships are being redone after the mod has already been released. Either the original ship lags the computer, or someone really wants to put their thumb print on a popular product. Which, in my opinion is pretty sadly self-serving. While I have been vocal in some criticisms about WiH, none of those criticisms ever focused on the ships which were by and large fine and dandy.
No, the ships were horribly broken and we knew it the whole time. They're incredible performance sinks with optimization problems that really dragged down the campaign for a lot of people.
We tried to get them optimized but couldn't do it in a reasonable timeframe - only the Uhlan and Kentauroi got finished before release. If we'd decided to pull a BWO and wait for optimized ships to be finished the campaign still wouldn't be out.
I think this debate is getting lost in roundabout point-by-point rebuttals. There's probably some common ground to be found here - I think most of us favor just releasing the campaign as is, as the team already decided to do once.
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The conversation seems a bit odd given what Rampage actually said, anyway:
One suggestion: Follow in MT's footsteps and release your assets.
R
MT did not model dump, it dumped all its assets, missions included. Thus he seems to be saying the same thing as everyone else.
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Okay, after six pages I hope everyone got their say in.
I'm glad you all still care about the campaign, and I wish I could do the things you're suggesting (and perhaps I will, depending on the circumstances), but there are still a few things that we would like to try before we get to the measures you're suggesting.
I'll lock this now, as I doubt there's much more that can be said on the subject. If you're interested in helping us, please don't hesitate to contact me.