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Archived Boards => The Apocalypse Project => The Archive => Archived The Apocalypse Project Threads => Topic started by: Petrarch of the VBB on March 19, 2002, 01:01:35 pm

Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on March 19, 2002, 01:01:35 pm
Guys, will you be relesing the demo as one big lump, or as a number of smaller files?  I hope it's the latter as I have but a lowly 56k modem, and would hate having to spend hours, and tons of money, downloading your work.
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: Thorn on March 19, 2002, 01:12:43 pm
Definitely smaller files...
One set with just the core files..
Ships, textures, missions, and sounds...
Another probably with the hi-res artwork, music (if we get that far), voices (again, if we get that far), and effects (the fancy new explosion for instance)
Title: Re: How will you be releasing?
Post by: Pera on March 19, 2002, 02:28:52 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Petrarch of th VBB
Guys, will you be relesing the demo as one big lump, or as a number of smaller files?  I hope it's the latter as I have but a lowly 56k modem, and would hate having to spend hours, and tons of money, downloading your work.


If you think about it, downloading one big file is actually cheaper than downloading many smaller ones. As far as I know, we will be releasing somewhat like this:

1. Demo:
- Some of the ships
- All of the effects and art
- _Maybe_ interface
- A few missions

2. Homeworld campaign
- Original homeworlds campaign
- Rest of the original HW ships
- Rest of the art and interface

3. Cataclysm
- Cataclysm campaign
- Remaining cataclysm ships

This is what I think, of course, USS Alexander will probably know better.
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: Thorn on March 19, 2002, 02:45:11 pm
I'm pretty sure, but we could have a few different files.. one big one for broaband users, and another set of smaller ones, all the necessary files in one, and the extra stuff in smaller ones, so they could download that stuff if they want to, or not...
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: USS Alexander on March 19, 2002, 04:01:54 pm
Well i think releasing it like the TBP guys wil be good, 1 big all in one d/l and a few seperate ones like sounds, music enz enz.

The demo won't feature all like new interface a few weapons enz the main thing will feature all, basicly everything wil be different besides the engine.
Title: Re: Re: How will you be releasing?
Post by: USS Alexander on March 19, 2002, 04:08:51 pm
Ok full list i think :D

Quote
Originally posted by Pera


If you think about it, downloading one big file is actually cheaper than downloading many smaller ones. As far as I know, we will be releasing somewhat like this:

1. Demo:
- Some of the ships
- Some of the effects and art
- _Maybe_ interface
- A few missions
-a bit of sound and music files

2. Homeworld campaign
- Original homeworld campaign
- Rest of the original HW ships
- TAP's new interface
- All effects (HW ones) and art
- All HW music and souds
(Basicly all stuff for homeworld)

3. Cataclysm
- Cataclysm campaign
- Remaining cataclysm ships
- All remaining effects and art since there are a few newer ones.
- All CAT music and souds
- Mayby another new interface
(Basicly all stuff for cataclysm)

And there will be a suprise :drevil:


It can change offcourse
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: ARC_Shrike on March 20, 2002, 01:17:08 am
how about that goat trowing viking ship ? :D
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: StyffyDawgIX on March 20, 2002, 01:27:15 am
o_O

it would be a leet suprise if somehow the two universes (HW and FS2) accidently ran into each other..heh
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: Thorn on March 20, 2002, 10:36:34 am
(http://www.3dap.com/hlp/hosted/tap/renders/thedestroyers1.jpg)
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: 15thRampage on March 20, 2002, 11:22:39 am
it will be a cataclism :lol: good images, now is on my desktop
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: Kazashi on March 21, 2002, 10:48:43 pm
To answer the original question, I'd prefer to have the mod accessible as a few smaller packages rather than one big one. When you're stuck with dialup that only works so well, it's not really feasible to grab a big package all in the one go.

What's that? I hear some people muttering *resume*? That would be all well and good except that many of the sites which host files for download (Fileplanet, 3DDownloads as 2 examples) won't allow resuming after a certain period of time unless you go in and manually change the link you're downloading from. Making the process of downloading big files just that extra bit harder.

That's what I think anyway, it would be nice to see an option to download small packages, even if it is alongside a dirty great big file :)
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: vadar_1 on March 21, 2002, 11:14:05 pm
:yes: Great work Thorn, its still obvious whos going to win thou

Fleet Command: Send out the Ambassador
Ambassador: We are being pulled in command, theres... alot of lights...
*Sound of Beam-Cannon powering up*
Ambassador: o god!!
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: Grug on March 21, 2002, 11:44:12 pm
hehe thats what u think anyways.

what if the BEAST mothership were too jump in and swallow the sathanus ?! ;)

they're may be some interesting... incursions... ;)
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: untouchable on March 22, 2002, 12:30:57 am
Quote
Originally posted by GoDoFeViL

what if the BEAST mothership were too jump in and swallow the sathanus ?! ;)
That would be a thing to see :nod:
We will not be bound! I will kick the @#$% out of you with my BFReds....... It would be a close battle :D
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: Setekh on March 22, 2002, 07:59:47 am
Quote
Originally posted by Thorn
[pic]


I like that background. :)

http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~freespace/art/?gallery=20
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on March 22, 2002, 01:15:11 pm
Talking of ships swallowing other ships...
When I first saw the Bentusi ship I thought it was going to clamp onto my Kushan mother ship and run off with it!
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: elorran on March 23, 2002, 02:21:45 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Thorn
Definitely smaller files...
One set with just the core files..
Ships, textures, missions, and sounds...
Another probably with the hi-res artwork, music (if we get that far), voices (again, if we get that far), and effects (the fancy new explosion for instance)


Small files definately.  Music WILL NOT be a problem, I will see to it even if I have to strangle someone.  But in the end it's not up to me if they are in the finally mod pack.

As a 56k user I can sympathise with those people still on dial ups so for our sake attempts lets pray the larger files are given some thought and compressed down to a reasonable d-load size.

The one thing I am in a muddle about though is the variance between homeworld and freespace music.  Do we keep with the Homeworld one shot track for a mission regardless of 'ambience and battle tracks' or should an attempt be made at possibly altering at least some of homeworld/cataclysm's music into some form of event driven battle music similar to FS2's?

-elorran

PS nice pic there :)
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: WMCoolmon on March 31, 2002, 12:15:35 am
I'd say to make an attempt for enemy and friendly arrival music...other than that, if the music works for both, that's fine :nod:
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: Kamikaze on March 31, 2002, 01:26:14 am
For music - just write up instructions for people to extract music from their HW CDs... doesn't that work?

Unless you're making new music files which would be awesome :nod:
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: Thorn on March 31, 2002, 03:18:00 pm
The HW music isnt dynamic like the FS music, we're going to modify the current HW music to work with FS...
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: elorran on April 06, 2002, 03:54:57 pm
Thorn's right.  HW and HW:C music is singular in how it plays.  It is not like freespace 2's alternating music with ambience, battle tracks and arrival ques.

Also in regards to providing instructions to extracting the HW music, this idea is good but not very usable.  The present tools available do not allow for music extraction and convertion from HW to FS2 with any ease.

I'll go over the basics.

To extract the HW music a program called 'homesong' is typically used (although I have heard rumour of another program, but not personally encoutered it).

Homesong extracts the music files out from the archive file in a numbered format.  The files are not playable on typical music players.  To listen to them you will need winamp and a plug released by relic (homeworld programmers).

Note that more recent versions of winamp do not seem to work with the plug in (winamp versions 2.78 and 2.79).

After extraction and with the correct tools/programs installed the music/sound itself then needs to be converted.  This can be done by eaither good old fashion record and playback method (play the file in winamp and record it in a wave format in another file) or convert it directly through winamp with any one of the many plugins available.

Now comes yet another conversion.  For those people who are not liturate in sound editing and WAVE files, there is more than one type of WAVE file format.  The standard format is PCM.  To my knowledge Freespace 2 will not play standard PCM wave files.  It will only play Microsoft ADPCM format files.  So again, the files must under go a second convertion from PCM to MS ADPDM.

This is beside the facts of editing and alterations to the sound files.

So in short, it is a nice idea but not proctical.

On another topic to do with sound, efforts to edit the HW/HW:C music into some decent event driven battle tracks isn't going to well at the moment.  So anything resembling the usual FS2 battle music isn't likely (unless major editing it undertaken, which is being looked into as thats actually my job).

-elo
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: WMCoolmon on April 06, 2002, 08:10:20 pm
Also, many people would prefer that it be in a nice, ready-to-go package, so that they know it's done right.
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: elorran on April 06, 2002, 08:16:47 pm
True.  Though due to the nature of sound file and all of the extra things that are begin done for Apoc, I still think it a good idea to have at least two separate versions of the project.  One with all of the extras, and a basic version with just the ships themselves and the missions, perhaps an odd graphic or two as well.
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: Thorn on April 06, 2002, 08:47:17 pm
In order to get the HW .aif files to play in the newer versions of Winamp you need to rename the extenstion to .aifr
Apparently Relic didnt copyright the .aif extension, and Mac did.
Nullsoft had to take the .aif part out. (the .aifr plugin for winamp comes with it now, no need to download a separate one)
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: WMCoolmon on April 07, 2002, 12:48:38 am
Quote
Originally posted by elorran
True.  Though due to the nature of sound file and all of the extra things that are begin done for Apoc, I still think it a good idea to have at least two separate versions of the project.  One with all of the extras, and a basic version with just the ships themselves and the missions, perhaps an odd graphic or two as well.

:nod:
Title: How will you be releasing?
Post by: elorran on April 07, 2002, 06:10:27 am
Latest version of winamp and it's still not running the thing properly.

And for the sake of changing the extension I might as well stick with 2.76 that I have installed.  It's works just fine and I don't have to piddle around with file names, saving my life they precious few seconds :D