Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Diaspora => Topic started by: colecampbell666 on October 01, 2008, 04:46:39 pm
-
So you've seen the screenshots
<Insert Question Mark Here>
-
www.diaspora-game.com
-
Will the Diaspora codebase be fully integrated within FS2_Open?
-
Yes. After maintaining the complete PITA that was the BtRL build I have no desire to go though that nonsense again. Either we'll use 3.6.10 official for our first release or we'll use the branch belonging to one of our coders (mine or Wanderer's most likely).
Either way all our code will be compatible with FS2_Open and will be folded into the main branch as soon as possible.
-
If you don't mind my asking, what sort of things are you expecting to do (or have done already) with the code?
-
No offence to anyone on the bsg team, but to be honest, i hate you guys. Simply for the virtue of being a "servitor" to the current SF "series" of the moment.
My reasons for this? Simple. Other mods with various backgrounds wont be able to get anything even remotely related to skilled people since everyone will be going for the "shiny new series"...
That and some mods might lose staff due to this mod. Its all fine and dandy, the btrl demo was nicely done and nicely playable. BUT OTHER TEAMS NEED SOMEONE TO DO THINGS TOO.
For example The Apocalypse Project. I have been trying to recruit modellers and in the last 11 months i have managed to get one person onboard and even he probably wont be able to deliver anything. My team has made more progress in the last 11 months than all the teams since the project began, yet... we still dont even have enough material for the demo due to more "popular" projects sucking up anyone who might have been interested or that person is just "too busy"...
Give other teams some staff too. And i have a feeling that HLP will soon be overflown with BSG fanatics and the quality of the whole thing will massively drop. soo... yeah.
In short, ignore what i wrote. Its not like its going to change anything.
-
I expect the reverse actually. FotG did quite well out of hiring BtRL people. Of course we just hired them all back and then nabbed the two project leads to boot. :p
Put me down for one mission :) if you want a sample just give up a design brief. /me is asleep in 2 mins.
A sample in FS2, WCS or TBP is fine with me. I warn you though I only accept the best. :)
-
Don't hate us because we're beautiful.
-
I expect the reverse actually. FotG did quite well out of hiring BtRL people. Of course we just hired them all back and then nabbed the two project leads to boot. :p
I dont. Anyone new who will join here is going to run straight to this forum. I seriously doubt anyone is going to do anything usefull or even notice any other mod.
-
People are going to run to what they're interested in. Can't help that BSG is more popular than Homeworld right now. Give it a little time though.
-
Whining about it on here is hardly going to endear you to prospective newbies either. :p
-
I dont care if its going to endear me or not. I'm not going to suck up to anyone.
I was just posting my semi-little beef with the whole bsg mod thing.
-
No offence to anyone on the bsg team, but to be honest, i hate you guys. Simply for the virtue of being a "servitor" to the current SF "series" of the moment.
My reasons for this? Simple. Other mods with various backgrounds wont be able to get anything even remotely related to skilled people since everyone will be going for the "shiny new series"...
That and some mods might lose staff due to this mod. Its all fine and dandy, the btrl demo was nicely done and nicely playable. BUT OTHER TEAMS NEED SOMEONE TO DO THINGS TOO.
For example The Apocalypse Project. I have been trying to recruit modellers and in the last 11 months i have managed to get one person onboard and even he probably wont be able to deliver anything. My team has made more progress in the last 11 months than all the teams since the project began, yet... we still dont even have enough material for the demo due to more "popular" projects sucking up anyone who might have been interested or that person is just "too busy"...
The Apocalypse Project isn't alone. We have the same problem in Inferno, but I don't want to criticize other development teams. Please note there's more chance for a person to know a common show/game rather than an uncommon one, so the fact that small projects can barely recruit new members is justified. Not everyone is willing to model for Inferno. It sucks, however, when you realize that a mod like INF SCP will be hopefully released in a few years simply because of the lack of modellers.
At least TAP has the support of Homeworld fans. Inferno doesn't even have the support of all FS fans due to INF-hating factions. Our conditions are worse, but I'm still working on INFA. Almost daily, oh yeah! ;)
A few months ago I posted a thread abouts mods here on HLP. I'd really like to see a shared forum all devs can use to share opinions and ask for help.
Ex. You model for INF but you surely know what an Y-Wing looks like. The FotG team asks for modelling help and you volunteer. You help and then return back to, uhm, the HTL Icanus. End of example.
Give other teams some staff too. And i have a feeling that HLP will soon be overflown with BSG fanatics and the quality of the whole thing will massively drop. soo... yeah.
You have a point here. Seriously. The BtRL forum on GW has about 45,000 posts in 2,500 threads and most members are BSG fans attracted by a free game based on their beloved series.
In short, ignore what i wrote. Its not like its going to change anything.
You now know someone who shares some of your thoughts, which is not a bad thing. :yes:
I have great hopes for a shared forum for devs, it'll make everything easier(Diaspora would have benefits too). I wonder if I'll ever see one...
-
No offence to anyone on the bsg team, but to be honest, i hate you guys. Simply for the virtue of being a "servitor" to the current SF "series" of the moment.
My reasons for this? Simple. Other mods with various backgrounds wont be able to get anything even remotely related to skilled people since everyone will be going for the "shiny new series"...
That and some mods might lose staff due to this mod. Its all fine and dandy, the btrl demo was nicely done and nicely playable. BUT OTHER TEAMS NEED SOMEONE TO DO THINGS TOO.
For example The Apocalypse Project. I have been trying to recruit modellers and in the last 11 months i have managed to get one person onboard and even he probably wont be able to deliver anything. My team has made more progress in the last 11 months than all the teams since the project began, yet... we still dont even have enough material for the demo due to more "popular" projects sucking up anyone who might have been interested or that person is just "too busy"...
Give other teams some staff too. And i have a feeling that HLP will soon be overflown with BSG fanatics and the quality of the whole thing will massively drop. soo... yeah.
In short, ignore what i wrote. Its not like its going to change anything.
I'd have to agree.
-
I'd just like to point out that I discovered Freespace through BtRL. Without it I would never be a part of projects like Earth Defense and Teeth of the Tiger. Just goes to show...
-
People will explore the community that the project is hosted on. GW isn't a good example to be honest. There isn't much in the way of activity outside of BtRL and SoL. (No offense intended for any other projects, I know I have another one there too :p) Even their General Chat is very slow.
HLP is much more active and much more enticing for new people to join in. It also puts them closer to FreeSpace resources such as the Installer, new builds and many other released projects.
-
...and I agree with Axem as well. :nod:
IMO Diaspora should encourage its players to get interested on FS. Many references to the SCP and other people's efforts in modding should be ok. :)
-
I dont care if its going to endear me or not. I'm not going to suck up to anyone.
And there you've explained why your mod isn't attracting new members. Simple fact is that you've come onto the newly created Diaspora forum and basically complained about its existence. Now when someone visits us who is a modeller who likes both Homeworld and BSG do you think they'll join both mods? Or do you think they'll say "I'll only join the BSG one cause the guy in charge of the Homeworld mod sounds like a real jerk"
Congratulations on shooting yourself in the foot big time.
...and I agree with Axem as well. :nod:
IMO Diaspora should encourage its players to get interested on FS. Many references to the SCP and other people's efforts in modding should be ok. :)
In case you haven't noticed, I'm the project lead on Diaspora. Can you imagine me NOT pimping FS2 to all the new people? :D
-
I hope there won't be bandwith problems in sites hosting FS stuff :nervous:
-
**** you too karajorma. It would be easier for both of us if you just told me **** you. Since thats what i'm getting from your basic message.
:p
Also for one thing that Mobius told, no we dont have much support from any of the HW fans and iirc, 1-3 persons on the team are actual fans :p
Relicnews forums arent that... welcoming to anyone doing anything with relic made games if its not made in the engines of those games.
-
**** you too karajorma. It would be easier for both of us if you just told me **** you.
You just don't get it do you? I wasn't insulting you, I was telling you how you appear to an outsider reading this thread.
But feel free to go on digging yourself a hole with this. Nothing like a self fulfilling prophecy to make you feel certain you were in the right.
-
Pecenipicek, what about INFA? Snail and Shiv are progressively moving to ED, Dysko and Edivad are busy because of the Uni...and I'm doing most of the current FRED and tabling edits. I'm even creating a few effects.
I'd like to know if the Diaspora interface artists have spare time. I have a 5 minutes job for them. ;)
-
**** you too karajorma. It would be easier for both of us if you just told me **** you. Since thats what i'm getting from your basic message.
You are getting disgusting...
To be honest, I don't see anything I shall pity on you. I see envy and unfunded anger. Do something great, and others will join... This childish ranting you do will alienate from you anyone really talented. Calm down before you hurt yourself beyond repair.
-
[edit] screw this... not worth it...
apologise me if i edit my existing posts and an apology to you. but no warm feelings from me.
[edit#2]let the posts i made stand where they are. Apology to the team and good luck. Laters.
-
Dont join into discussions above you.
And that last post will almost certainly get you monkeyed. Since I've been involved in this discussion I'm not doing it but I doubt any of the other admins will feel that this behaviour was warranted.
-
Well... I was wrong... I do pity you.
Edit: I edited my post as well... I had a sarcastic answer ready (my speciality, ask Kara), but you are right. It is not worth it.
-
Can we please just stop this pointless flamewar? :(
-
I like how people think flaming is okay if they put happy face smiles in their posts.
-
I like how people think flaming is okay if they put happy face smiles in their posts.
Possibly because they enjoy it! It would be a stupid thing to do something you don't have to and you don't even enjoy.
-
I like how people think flaming is okay if they put happy face smiles in their posts.
Possibly because they enjoy it! It would be a stupid thing to do something you don't have to and you don't even enjoy.
I'll do it for an income, but not in my leisure time ;)
-
Flipside, I read you're the music composer...your tracks will follow MaX's style or there will be changes? :)
-
Put me down for one mission :) if you want a sample just give up a design brief. /me is asleep in 2 mins.
A sample in FS2, WCS or TBP is fine with me. I warn you though I only accept the best. :)
Yeah i know :shaking:
-
Flipside, I read you're the music composer...your tracks will follow MaX's style or there will be changes? :)
Well, to be honest, I've deliberately avoided listening to the BtRL music, Max is a great composer, but his style is his own, as mine is my own, I'm trying to keep to the 'feel' of the original miniseries music with my work, but it's inevitable that some of my own personal style will slip in there.
Music production will probably become more prolific as more of the other content is done, since a lot of it will be inspired directly by in-game stuff, much like it's a lot easier to write music for a film when you can watch the film itself and see where the cues are and the 'feel' of the situation.
Edit: Meant to add, I'm no good at all as a sound engineer, so I do know that the guys are shopping around for one, at least last time I checked.
-
MaX's tracks are in perfect BSG style so you could end up doing pretty much the same things.
Can you use BtRL's music soundtrack? :nervous:
-
We're wanting to avoid the use of Beyond the Red Line assets as much as possible (thus the new GUI, new Vipers, etc.). For that matter right now we're using entirely new sound effects from the miniseries and show for our audio placeholders.
-
Why? You made most part of that stuff, why don't you keep it?
-
Because assets not made by a member of this team are not ours to use. It's that simple. Also, assets that are 100% the work of someone on this team are not being remade/replaced, just those that are not.
-
I think it would be good to distance yourself from BTrl as much as possible (as you no doubt pathwise have already undertaken) as to differentiate and provide a far more unique view / take on the Galactica experince via the SCP.
i mean, you don't want people to confuse the two do you. hence new interfae, new etc etc.
-
An idea to speed all projects up, would be to post what needs doing in a thread (modeling, scripting, mission making), then let anyone within the community have a go at compleating it, instead of keeping it a secret. everyone will benefit from this.
i.e.
1a) new purple fighter (cross between Apollo and a F16) please submit concept art. to [email protected]
1b) new purple fighter (Model needed) Download concept art HERE
1c) new purple fighter (Textures needed) Download concept art/Model HERE and HERE
2a) Missions (Missions needed) download brief here. link to thread discussing campaign here
P.S. i remember a time when everyone used to work together and be very friendly here, but lately it seems that there is a lot of negative criticism when people post there ideas, and not enough constructive criticism.
-
Wouldn't work. There are about a dozen different reasons I can think of why too. I'll just go through some of the major ones I can make public.
1) We're not releasing concept art. Last time we tried that on BtRL 3 or 4 different BSG mods nicked it and used it without permission, some of them actually releasing our stuff before we could. I dread to think what would have happened if we'd actually had models or textures publicly available.
2) In addition to having to publish the story, FREDding requires all assets to be released. Given 1, that's out. But on top of that releasing everything we had would basically result in the team spending more time fixing the problems of people who want to play the game rather than work on it. It would be a complete support nightmare with people who have never used FS2_Open trying to play an alpha game using alpha builds. Never going to happen.
3) Look at the FRED Academy as an example of what happens if you try to get casual FREDders to work on a campaign. In the case of the Academy it doesn't matter since the main goal (at least as far as I was concerned) was to teach people to FRED. Any campaigns that were released would be a bonus. With Diaspora, campaigns would not be a bonus and the team would spend more time duplicating work already done, waiting for some casual worker who may or may not have decided not to work on the project any more or chasing after people to get them to give us what they've done so far. Again, it would be a nightmare and would actually result in slower development.
4) With an open project you're going to get an awfully large number of people applying who don't have what it takes to make stuff of the quality the team have so far. But if you're not vetting them in any way the only choice is to ditch the model they just spent 4-5 weeks working on, dump it in the bin and give it to someone else. It's just a huge drain on the communities up and coming talent.
Most of the casual workers a more open development style would get us are currently working on mods which do not need to be of such high quality. If they're fun to play we'll forgive the fact that the models look a bit ****. Yes we could help those people learn but then we'd spend more time teaching then we do modding and the quality of the mod would go down since all the work would end up being done by the amateurs while the professionals spent all their time telling them how to do things they could do much better anyway.
Diaspora, like WCS, SoL and FotG are flagship campaigns that will draw people in from the outside world. They need to look as professional as big name mods like Black Mesa source or Garry's Mod in order to do that. And that goes against the kind of open development plan you're on about.
5) If someone has the skill to actually make us something of the quality we are looking for why not just apply to join the team? We're a friendly bunch (mostly) and we are happy to take people with talent. If you don't even have the commitment to join the team then why should we expect you to have the commitment to deliver content for us?
6) There is one area where an open approach would work and that's the code for the game itself. And that's open. We're not hiding that. It's available for anyone to help us with. Do you see a sudden influx of people working on it? BtRL did manage to pull in a few coders but even with a system where we did say "I need x, y and z coded" we still got poor results. Even though there were no real barriers other than dedication.
So all in all, we've tried it. It didn't work. And we're not stupid enough to try it again. :p
-
At this point I wonder if BtRL is still running...in case of death you should change your policy on BtRL stuff.
-
The right to use assets is not tied to a project, but to the person who made them in the first place.
-
That's right...and most BtRL members passed to Diaspora...
-
Yes, and we are using what we can. I'm not seeing your point.
-
Well, someone said that you're not going to use BtRL soundtracks...is that true?
-
We won't use the BtRL soundtrack because the composer, Max, is still with BtRL.
-
I know, but who created the tables to make his soundtracks work?
-
...what do tables have to do with the creation of the music that they're placing in-game? Any half-wit (hell, maybe even this half-wit) could figure out the music table with enough Wiki reading, but most of us aren't blessed with the creative abilities to compose their own music, much less compose it well.
-
Well, it was just an excuse to keep those soundtracks, which are very good...
-
They are also not the property of the Team. I'm doing my best here, I've got BSc coursework to do, and a load of other stuff as well. Max is a damn good composer, yes, but he ain't the only one out there.
-
And having heard Flipside's stuff I think BtRL were mad not to snap him up when they had the chance to have both him and Max on the team. :D
I'd forgotten he applied when the team broke up but the second I remembered I sent him a PM straight away. :)
-
duke nukem forever take 2
-
Witty. Thanks for the contribution.
-
duke nukem forever take 2
Didn't you get enough of being proved wrong when you called the BtRL demo vapourware a week before it was released? :rolleyes:
Anyway, if the BtRL forum on GW is prepared to put up with your trolling, they can have you. From your first post here you've proved that you're going to act the same as you did over there. So you're banned for 60 days. If the next post from you is more of this nonsense it will be permanent next time.