Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: WMCoolmon on May 28, 2007, 07:00:09 pm
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What makes people go back to the retail (non-FSO) builds anymore, if anything?
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Nostalgia.
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Checking to make sure new additions to the code don't interfere with retail behavior.
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Nothing as far as I'm concerned, but I'd imagine that someone who's stuck on an old computer would be stuck in retail as well.
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I made that topic yesterday asking for help getting a retail version working and I said that I specifically wanted retail and not FSO.
I'd say my reason basically goes along with the last two posts... since I'd never played FS2, I wanted to experience what everyone else experienced when it came out. I'm not picky about graphics and I play old games all the time... so I wanted the genuine "old school" experience of playing FS2.
My other reason fr wanting a working copy of FS2 Retail is because I'm a regular member of the community at Speed Demos Archive (http://speeddemosarchive.com) (SDA). SDA hosts hundreds of videos of speed runs for all types of games - where a speedrun is a completion of a game as fast as possible. The forums at SDA are where people get together to talk about, plan, and produce speedruns. Each run usually takes a massive planning, strategy, and practice effort to get a good product, and then runs are verified before being posted to the site alongside the runner's comments. Many fans of games don't understand speedrunning because they don't see the interest in blowing through a game that was meant to be appreciated more slowly and with cutscenes, etc. The point of making a speedrun is to answer the question: "I wonder how fast that game can be beaten." SDA is a very friendly community, and everyone there works together to produce good speedruns. Sorry for the lengthy description, but I just wanted to make it clear what SDA is all about to avoid miscommunication.
The second reason I want a retail version of FS2 is because if a speedrun is done for the game, it will almost certainly need to be done on the retail version. That's what makes SDA fair for speedrunners around the world is by having a verification process, and in general SDA only hosts runs of things that were released retail, rather than internet-community-created mods. That's nothing towards the SCP... that's a blanket rule that also applies to games like Oblivion or Starcraft or other heavily modded games. Often runs done on a different console even are put in different categories if any differences exist.
SDA certainly allows for categories within a given game. Some games might have a default single segment run, a hard mode run, and a segmented 100% run. For FS2, an run of FS2 Open could be done in a seperate category perhaps. If the runner and the verifiers concluded that there were no differences that affect speedrunning, then the FS2 Open run could replace the retail one.
I've done 3 speedruns of Star Fox 64 and 1 for Star Wars Starfighter. There haven't been many space shooter / space sim games on SDA, and I'm trying to encourage more of them. I'm considering FS1 and FS2 for future projects, and there has been some random discussion/requests for them at this point in the SDA forums.
Sorry for being so long-winded, but that's another example of why anyone would mess with retail. Like Turey said... to insure retail behavior hasn't changed with new additions to the code.
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Why I play retail more often than SCP
In a technical sense, there's really no reason why I should. There's little details that seem a bit 'off' that I could (and probably should) submit bug reports for, but it is so much more beautiful, and campaign developers seem to favor SCP over retail. That said, SCP doesn't feel like the game I once loved. There's really no other way to describe it, as I can't quite put my finger on exactly where the SCP experience is so radically different from the retail experience.
Why I FRED in retail instead of SCP
For starters, I build missions for myself before any of you shmucks ( :P ), so my target audience really appreciates the guaranteed compatibility with retail FS2. Moreover, retail FS2 is a static development platform. I know how retail FRED2 works, what its limitations are, and how to work around and within those confines. Hell, part of the fun of campaign design in the days prior to the source code being released was weaseling around the limitations of the engine. Finally, I greatly reduce my temptation to engage in feature creep by sticking to retail FS2, where others will get themselves side-tracked by constantly updating their projects for the latest SCP release.
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For starters, I build missions for myself before any of you shmucks ( Tongue ), so my target audience really appreciates the guaranteed compatibility with retail FS2.
:lol:
I'd siggy quote that if I wasn't morally opposed to quotes in signatures.
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I stopped using retail ever since the initial user-made builds started to come out in 2002. I've only loaded it up at all to test behavior for bug reports since then, and the last time I did that was over a year ago. SCP FTW. :D
There is something to be said for FS1 having its own "feel" that the port can't quite replicate, mainly due to the differences in the interface and some things with the gameplay mechanics, but vanilla FS2 is essentially obsolete as far as I'm concerned.
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psonar if you do do a fs2 speedrun make sure you come back here and tell us................
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I never use retail anymore - hell, when I installed FSO on this laptop I didn't even use my retail CDS (which I still have, with two copies of discs 2 and 3 in fact), I just installed straight FSO.
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psonar if you do do a fs2 speedrun make sure you come back here and tell us................
I'd be an idiot not to...
...most people who start a speedrun do lots of research - which includes checking for other communities that might know way more about the game... thanks to the SCP I won't have to go very far to find all the experts! Rest assured if I ever do the speedrun (or if anyone at SDA does) there will be a thread over here for it as well.
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Bear in mind that FSO and Retail are not incompatible in any way. If you install FSO you can still play retail simply by running the Freespace2.exe/fs2.exe same as you used to.
So you can play in FS2_Open to enjoy the game and then simply go back to FS2 for the actual speed run without any problems.
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i simply dont use retail. ive played that campaign to death. im intrested in the game engine more than anything.
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The only reason to keep retail is to show all my friends what great work this community has done to improve the graphics of this great game!
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I don't think I've played straight-up retail at any point since discovering the SCP a few years ago, other than loading it up every once in a blue moon for a bit of nostalgia. I don't have any qualms about retail's graphics at all; it's just that I've never found a reason to look back after discovering the vast improvements that had been made possible through the project. However, there were a few times during the period of trying to work around a few of those horrifically buggy official builds of a few years back that I almost felt like going back to retail; thank God for the HEAD branch. :p
Now that I think of it, I've played FS1 far more frequently than I've played FS2 retail since I started using the SCP, for the simple reason that there are several campaigns for it I enjoy that have yet to receive the FSPort team's treatment (although that number is quickly dwindling, thankfully). I'd attempt the conversion myself, but it's far less work to just fire up FS1.
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What makes people go back to the retail (non-FSO) builds anymore, if anything?
dial-up :sigh:
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What makes people go back to the retail (non-FSO) builds anymore, if anything?
dial-up :sigh:
You have no friends with high speed?
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Nostalgia.
Mmmmmm.... Nostalgia. ;)
Well you can to an extent achieve that effect by switching off all features and disabling mediavps...