Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: BlackDove on December 12, 2010, 04:52:39 pm
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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-12-12-retrospective-freespace-2-article
edit: I suppose this was more of a Blue Planet plug?
Maybe it should go there.
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Play Freespace 2 today and you'd be forgiven for laughing incredulously when told that it's over a decade old. Half a decade old, even. Two or three years, perhaps, but the game has been under such heavy cosmetic surgery, under such skill and passion, that this isn't a 10-year-old game anymore. This is the best space sim ever released given the due care and attention it so rightly deserved, to make it an experience that looks as good as it plays. The Freespace 2 Source Code Project is genuinely incredible.
Niiiiice...
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Oh holy crap.
The entirety of page 3 is a Blue Planet review????????
How the hell did THAT happen?
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Holy ****, a third of the article is about Blue Planet.
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There are more eyes on this place than you'd think.
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Also, much of the article is to the credit of the SCP team as well.
Perhaps try get them to read it as well. They deserve the praise.
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Also, much of the article is to the credit of the SCP team as well.
Perhaps try get them to read it as well. They deserve the praise.
I have no doubt they will.
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Brava BP and SCP teams!
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The author certainly sounds very taken. And I can understand him very well ;)
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in italian we say: GRANDI RAGAZZI !!!!!!!!!! :yes:
NON MOLLATE MAI !!!!!!!!! :)
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Erm, what's spectral lighting? He may mean specular?
"The modding scene has been playing catchup ever since, introducing things like normal mapping, and spectral lighting."
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I think that's what he means.
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On a related note, I've once wrote an article about BP (and earlier, about FS) to my school newspaper. :)
As I'm now in a different school, maybe I'll do that again.
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Reminds me, I have a friend who works in my university's student newspaper. I could probably push an article through her on Freespace.
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Reminds me, I have a friend who works in my university's student newspaper. I could probably push an article through her on Freespace.
Publicity can't hurt us.
....can it? :confused:
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Depends on where it's applied. Expanding the community is good, but not if it means tons of immature kiddies start BAWing all over the forums because our freeware isn't up to snuff. One of the online game communities I was part of got completely trashed once they started advertising themselves to those Top 100 game sites and such.
Or, if Interplay or whoever decides to be all dickish and CnD's us for some reason because we garner a lot of attention, that could be bad. That doesn't seem possible though.
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Not gonna happen, we'll lurk into darkness and rebuild our shivanish empire from there.
Then it's just a matter of time.... again. :p
On topic, nice to see FSO get's some outside love :yes:
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Aww, they linked to ModDB instead of here, but then again, that's fair, since we're not the only ones out there.
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Nice! Good job with the review!
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My problem with the article is that is basically displays the game as "FS1,FS2,BP,WiH" and that is all. I have no problem with BP getting coverage (good mod :)), but it is really easily misinterpreted, as I've seen in some comments.
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I agree. At the same time, I'm not sure what to do about it.
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There's nothing to do about it.
It's a subjective article. Someone thought that BP was a good showcase of the state of progression of the mod community for Freespace 2. I'd be hard pressed to argue with that.
The fact it omits other stuff is superfluous. Not every Freespace article has to be about everything that was ever made for Freespace.
It's a good article. It gives mainstream exposure.
That's good enough.
The core of the article, where it represents what Freespace is would be a point of contention if it was done in an egregious manner. But the general representation is pretty well done.
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and lets face it for 6 months to a year or more BP has and still does influence conversation around here. How many improvements to the engine have been at the request or support of the BP team? how many people would be happy if BP was instead FS3 produced by :v: ? also there is still a WiH related piece in the highlights bar 4 months after WiH p1 was released. After AoA and WiH were released the community was buzzing about them more so that I remember any other releases.
Please dont rag on an article for picking up on the vibe of the community. Yes there are worthy projects that could have been mentioned like WoD, FotG, Diaspora, Vassago's Dirge, FS Port, TVWP, BtRL, WCS, TBP but we dont know what limits the writer was under so what would have had to be left out of the article? tbh I am happy with how it panned out and as mentioned by others glad for the exposure
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The main thing here in my opinion, aside from BP getting their plug, is the tireless work of the SCP crew getting just recognition.
They really deserve it.
Kinda wish Digital Foundry would throw an article on FS as well.
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That might end up being pretty brutal. :nervous:
But I agree. No matter what fashionable mod du jour is getting the spotlight, ultimately it comes back to the SCP's hard work. And people don't usually stop with one mod, either; they keep going.
We're in this together as far as I'm concerned.
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We're in this together as far as I'm concerned.
Given the amount of badge crossover around here, often quite literally. :p
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Honestly, I wish people would have more focus though. We'd get so much more done by focusing our efforts on given several projects instead of spreading time and resources thin over a dozen projects, and time to get them done is multiplied by each project.
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Yes, but that would be boring. Which projects deserve to be the chosen few? Who wants to play a campaign they built more than one someone else built, and that they've never seen/played before?
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Maybe those people who are part of several project find it easier to motivate themselfs when they can pick what they'd like to make today instead of being settled with just a single job and thus get more than they otherwise would.
While I have no experience in modding, that's how I'm faring when it comes to painting WH40K minies, with the exception of the occasional figure I really want to make in one go (usually the first of it's kind I ever made). :nod:
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I agree with Fury. Nobody who I have seen who has rapidly picked up multiple project badges has been particularly productive on any one of them, except Axem.
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I have no project badges. Does that mean I'm extra-super productive?
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#DIV/0!
So no.
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I have no project badges. Does that mean I'm extra-super productive?
Hey, look at me. I don't do anything, but you host FSMods. We both have no project badges.
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Yes, but that would be boring. Which projects deserve to be the chosen few? Who wants to play a campaign they built more than one someone else built, and that they've never seen/played before?
It'd be up to the individuals to decide what they'd focus on. The point still remains. The more projects one has joined into, the less productive one is. This is generalization but it is mostly very accurate one. One because team's productivity is low, the longer each project takes to finish.
If a person has joined to two projects, has approximately one hour per day to spend on modding. How much he spends on each project? Less than 30 minutes because he needs to keep tabs on two projects, communicate with two teams, etc. And as we know, human's aren't exactly made for multi-tasking. Now, take the same person and have him join to two more projects, so now he has four projects. You're lucky if he's able to spend 5 minutes per project.
Great, now what? The person has to choose which project to focus on. What happens after a while is that the person starts feeling guilty for giving other projects little focus. So now he's again trying to fiddle between multiple projects, usually with little success. If the person has not discussed the situation with other team members, he's eventually bound to get some pressure on himself from said team to get things done.
Rinse and repeat until you have burned out person who has steadily lost motivation.
Not exactly a success story here, is it? Now, focusing that effort and time on one, maybe two projects at a time is time and effort much better spent. Not only it is more efficient use of one's resources, it also more efficient for one to handle psychically.
So I'm not going to back down from saying it as many times as necessary. Joining multiple projects (or at least more than two) in almost all cases is idiotic.
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Guilty as charged.
Well, I do kinda blame the fact that I join other projects cause the ones I'm already on go dormant...
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The moment I quit two projects I got a full night of quality FREDding in. I hadn't done that in a while, because I kept getting distracted by other things I needed to do to earn those badges.
I saw this happen with the Spectrum of War team, too.
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Well, I do kinda blame the fact that I join other projects cause the ones I'm already on go dormant...
Guess twice what is one of the major reasons this happens? Yeah, you got it right. Lack of focus. Granted, if people would focus their effort on 1-2 projects at any given time, it would still lead to dormant projects.
I'm sure it doesn't feel right or justified when it's your own project at stake here, but think long-term.
If you have a bunch of people focusing on a campaign or mod, it takes time for it to complete. But they will get it done much faster than they would if they had spread their time among multiple projects. Okay, so they just completed their campaign or mod, now what? Well, obviously they'd move on to next one. And that might just as well be your own project.
In the end efficiency is higher and more projects will be completed in shorter time. Of course, for those who are waiting for people to help with their projects it may not mean much. But which projects people join is up to them, obviously the more promising ones would be sort of automatically top priorities, as disheartening as that sounds to many would-be new project founders.
Both methods have their ups and downs. But at least the community would get more things done if there was better focus.
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From my personal experience, Fury is right. But then again, since we are not a professionals, we need to be inspired from a mod to work in it, and not all mods inspire everybody.
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The moment I quit two projects I got a full night of quality FREDding in. I hadn't done that in a while, because I kept getting distracted by other things I needed to do to earn those badges.
I saw this happen with the Spectrum of War team, too.
In my case at least, that was due to non-FS related stuffs entirely. Can't really speak for Dilmah or Snail though.
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It's terrifying, that moment. It restructures everything you thought about the game, everything you thought about the war that you were fighting, and makes you just curl up in a scared little wreck in the back of your cockpit.[/quote]
Gj everyone..someones gotta clean out the cockpit now.
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So I'm not going to back down from saying it as many times as necessary. Joining multiple projects (or at least more than two) in almost all cases is idiotic.
There are a few exceptions but I tend to agree that you should not join another project unless you're making a significant contribution to the one you're working on AND still have some free time left. The realisation that I couldn't work on so many things at one time is why I've scaled back my involvement with anything except Diaspora (including the SCP sadly). Once Diaspora is out I intend to add some projects back in if I have time.
There are exceptions of course. If you have a speciality that means you aren't often needed you might be able to work on several projects.
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Heck, you guys are lucky if you're in your 20s and still have an hour a night left to mod.
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Heck, you guys are lucky if you're in your 20s and still have an hour a night left to mod.
o_O
You make time.
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Heck, you guys are lucky if you're in your 20s and still have an hour a night left to mod.
Meh, imho you are doing something horribly wrong with your life if you can't make time for things you enjoy.
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Meh, imho you are doing something horribly wrong with your life if you can't make time for things you enjoy.
I agree with you on that, which is why I'm pretty happy these days.
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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-12-12-retrospective-freespace-2-article
Well done, its good to see this is still going.
Sad my name isnt in the coder credits though :(
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:welcomesilver:
Why aren't you using the other account, RT? About the article - advertising is always appreciated. One thing, though:
The brilliance comes in how the game treats objectives. They're not win conditions, and they're basically treated as best-case scenarios. You're going to get screwed over out there, in the nothingness of space, and quite often it's not going to be your fault. Given a convoy of five ships, you'll be lucky to make it to your destination with even half intact. Suffering no losses is going to get you a medal, not just the ability to go on to the next level. It's about acceptable losses. So instead of getting frustrated each time you fail to protect a capital ship because it means you have to start again, the blow of that loss is suddenly felt, purely because you can continue. You let that ship down, and it's not coming back.
We all understand what the author was trying to mean, but things don't tend to be like this all the time. If the Aquitaine is lost in any of the missions it appears, the player is forced to replay them for obvious reasons.
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Topics merged.
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:welcomesilver:
Why aren't you using the other account, RT?
What 'RandomTiger'?
Its been a very long time since I've been here.
My account seems to be attached to an email address I don't have anymore.
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You coded the launcher!
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You coded the launcher!
And a host of other things too, though I gather most of them have / are being depreciated like directx etc.
Still I definitely contributed :)
Does anyone make use of the voice control at all?
My cvs login was deleted before I could commit a bunch of fixes and then I drifted away.
When the voice control works its a pretty nice addition to the game.
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Voice control was definitely used for a while, but I think it started causing crashes and got disabled sometime around 3.6.12. I'm sure you'd be welcome back if you wanted to touch it up; the SCP has really improved.
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Voice control was definitely used for a while, but I think it started causing crashes and got disabled sometime around 3.6.12. I'm sure you'd be welcome back if you wanted to touch it up; the SCP has really improved.
Yey, I remembered by password for my original account.
Feel free to delete RandomTiger2 as a user.
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I've used voice control once or twice, and I keep meaning to try it again, since it was a lot of fun. I think I wound up copying most of your original post about how it worked over to the wiki ages ago. :)