Empires on UE4?

Well I can't speak for others but, I honestly intend to do 2 out of the 3 things if presented the opportunity. Now speaking for others... im sure you can find at least 10 others here who would do at least one of those 3.

 

Ballsy how?

If people keep bringing up porting then obviously there are some willing to try.
instead of me spending time making new exploits for other games games. I'm willing to put some time into a port. Even if nothing ever comes from it. Atleast I will learn some things in a new engine.

 

I don't know, maybe it's just how I read your posts. It's sort of you were like "hey we can do this, all it needs is some direction", then the current devs posted and were like, "actually no, it's not so easy", and then you seemed to be like "yeah well, I think we can".

It's not like it's impossible, but unless you have all the players in place...you can't even begin to roll the dice. That's what I learned from the last time, anyway.

 

I don't know what's. Up with the current developers. They seem to think a port would have to be perfect from the start. When empires came to source it was barely playable.
Even up to a few years ago the com would constantly crash or not be able to drop anything. From what I've seen of factions...it's a hell of a lot better the how empires started on source and a lot more stable. Even more stable then some name brand games.

Also like I said it would bring new content. Being able to see your work getting used is kind of a motivator.

 

I've been playing this game for 7 years or so, and although we've had some dodgy patches, I've not seen what you're describing in the way you've phrased it. I've seen comms dc and comms being unable to build, but the former didn't happen a hell of a lot and the latter wasn't really consistent.

I think you're sidestepping all the actual reasons the devs have given to you. They don't have a team that can shoulder that load, do you? You don't even have a server to host and that's the least of anything anywhere. Shaun had a port that he had been working on for months when he joined Cold Trap, and even then, with Silk's map, about 4 decent coders, a backstory, a template, pages and pages of notes and direction from meetings, concept art from Zenarion, we couldn't get any where.

Oh, what brought us down? No medium level modellers or animators. Dies Irae had perhaps the opposite problem, I believe, and in the end one person shouldered much of the problem and made headway. A case could have been made for a merger, but that's two big teams, a lot of different directions and ideas, and just the fact that people didn't want to work together.

So you know what's up with the devs? They don't want to have to start from zero to build a game with Krenzo's vision, when it's hard damn enough to get the community to accept the few improvements they manage to slip in every other patch.

Look at engine and armour balance. Look at the NF and BE. In 2.12 the longest and most widely played version of Empires, the research and factions were badly imbalanced on a scale that makes today seem like a joke. Tanks bankrupted a side like no one's business, and a game for 60 people could be crippled by one newbie with no sense. Rounds used to last 6+ hours while testing sometimes, and that was after a lot of release candidates and a lot of effort. And it was literally the best damn time I've ever had playing any game, ever, bar none.

So you know what? If you can do it, great. I wish you the best of luck and I hope people join you. But with this attitude of the devs are being obtuse, well, you've got that backwards. The devs are actually working towards a future for Empires that has stagnated for a while. They've made big changes recently and the game has been good to play for the first time in quite a while. What you're actually asking is for them to drop this game after it's completed its first phase, and move it to another engine to start it all over again.

Myself, I would rather see phase two.

 

Admittedly, I would like to port to a new engine, but first I'd hold off to see what Source 2 has to offer, and second I'd have to either be out of college or be able to pass it off as a college project. If I was just working a job, hell yeah I'd be willing to work on a port, but my education stands head-and-shoulders above everything else.

 

Except your toupée

 

I think I'd be able to program for Empires or a heir successor.

But I dont want to. See how quickly the "if there are qualified people then it can happen" falls apart? People can't be thought of in a marxist manner as simply being interchangeable parts or work units. Your statidtics of people willing to work have to account for those who want to, not those who can. And the idea that randoms on the internet would actually give money towards something which is likely to not work out is laughable. I probably speak for many when I say I'd rather others donate than donate myself. I'm sure most here would rather pay for gas or some poutine than pay for someone else to pay for gas and eat delivered pizza.

 

The crashing still exist to this day. It's just severely lowed by remove most of the old maps. But mainly I was referring to the first few source releases.

Saying that a group of random people can't do it and that people can't be interchangeable is retarded. Seriously what do you think we have now? Not one of the original developers remain. Yeah krenzo checks the forums but isn't actively developing.

You seem a bit salty. Maybe cuz your group failed. Too much pride I guess to just ask others for help. On average we get about 1 new person every few months that can make some pretty decent models. They are willing to help.

It's not like I said all empiresmod devs should stop what there doing and work on a port.
I made a comment about candles looking at the code for factions. Candles has done some amazing shit so far and I respect his opinion. So even if he could just give some estimates on what it still needs as far as code. Because the past few times factions has been brought up no one knows what state it's at. What works. What still needs work. And who all was part of the development.

You seem to be missing my point of even if a port or getting factions up and running was nothing more the just something the empires community could start up screw around in from time to time and nothing more who cares. Working on something even some what empires related would be better then just sitting around watching empty servers. People doing little side projects like working on factions or another engine would bring new content. So when source 2 comes out or if a port happens there will be things that can be used.

 

"How about you do it yourself.", this is the worst thing that you/anyone can say. I can see the future of Empires is getting darker just for this.

In the end, none of us can actually force, or bug anyone into doing anything. If devs don't want to do it, just don't do it, really.

This game needs major plans or it's the same as leaving it to rot, 250 more minor updates just won't help, no matter how much time will be spent.

 

The major reason Factions got as far as it did was because there was Jephir pushing it forward with sheer determination and single-mindedness, sorta' like a Krenzo-lite. He was also a programmer, so his effort directly translated into real progress for the game and its features.

I'm certain everyone read the thread he posted, but the important part of his post is here, especially the bolded parts:

Or, a bit more to the point about the programming aspect:

The end result is that you can't try and make a game bit-by-bit in terms of code. You need to have people with a large chunk of free time that they can dedicate to coding so they don't lose their momentum on the project. It also needs to be kept in mind that there's no magic bullet solution to developing Empires; another engine might make it easier, but there's no engine that'll make it easy.

 

Yes , im sure alot of guys have a casual 500$ laying around.

 

I do, but I want to see something concrete before I put down anything.

I was always willing to throw empires dev's some cash but I don't really trust anyone besides candles to do anything with it.

And Candles cant finish factions alone, he can't really art and animate.
I was planning on learning to do that kind of stuff and help him, but if I did get decent with the tools I wouldn't have the years of experience like FireW to produce anything good.

Has anyone considered patreon by any chance?
The system is setup so the author gets paid once a month and only once a month.
And they have to deliver content for them to get paid.

It is a more reliable system over kickstarter where people can just run, patreon requires work before running with cash.

 

If money is the only issue. Just get factions some what runnable and you have a huge advantage of 90% of other games on kickstarter. Seriously look at star citizens. $2,134,374

 

They are something completely different, nobody knows who we are and they had years of experience in the industry.
Not to mention each of them have dozens of games under their belt where as we can't even finish one.

Kickstarter wont work because the work load would be too demanding, and we would have all these prying eyes.
Not to mention if we don't make our goal it would be soul crushing and a waste of time.

For patreon we can limit how many people want to support them so they don't get 1000's of emails a day asking where is empires.

 

Yeah they are completely different. Just an example of games raising an insane amount of money. When they are no where near even playable yet.

Another idea is make empires a game mod for gmod when it goes to source 2.
You get a lot more access. Only downsides are gmod updates breaking things and no longer free to play empires.

 

I'm just happy that empires never went to the UDK. Unrealscript is terrible and the underlying codebase is not only inflexible but littered with undocumented bugs that you can only be made aware of by delving into the darkest depths of the official forums, passing the many hundreds of unanswered bug reports, which Epic hasn't set eyes upon since they started development of UE4. I don't know about UE4, they gave me a years free licence with it, but I never got the chance to really test it out.

 

Also out of curiosity, can our current dev team do literally everything to this game without giving fucks to old devs?