The topic of Empires UDK has come up several times lately. I thought I would make a post on what it was. We never actually announced Factions but people got word of it. The team had worked really hard on the project, so I hope I can at least show what we accomplished. At the beginning of 2012, I wanted to port Empires to another engine. Initially I started with Unity. Unity had bad graphics though. I looked around for another engine. In April 2012, I started a port to UDK. ukgamer took part in creating the first map. We implemented basic Empires concepts like the vehicle factory. Marcin and CoffeeBurrito joined the project and helped to implement command view and building placement. Mash then created an amazing number of weapon and vehicle models for us to use. Trickster recruited more team members, and we set up a forum to discuss our ideas for the game. At this point, I changed the goal of the project, from porting Empires directly, to creating a standalone game with mechanics similar to Empires but set in a new universe. I didn't want to have the game limited by the Empires concept, and felt we could go much further with our own unit and map designs. We renamed the project Factions. Word got out about Factions and our team grew in size. AniCator and Space Oddity wrote the music. Angry allowed us to use his vehicle and weapon sounds. Slade and Mayama drafted concept designs. Disposable Hero and Smithy improved our map. kklkit implemented more gameplay features and fixed bugs. Tuxu contributed additional art. And Mash created more great vehicle, building, and weapon models. The game was looking good at this point. What happened? As more and more people joined the team, it took more and more time to manage development and set goals for the project. At the start, I spent most of my time programming. But now, I spent most of my time meeting or discussing with the team. As a result, the pace of development slowed significantly as features took longer to implement. Momentum plays an important role in a project because people will lose interest if nothing is happening. In 2013, I realized I had to reprioritize my life goals so I could go back to university. I stopped working on the project so I could focus on getting my real life in order. Since I'm back in university today, I think I made the right choice, but I still wished I could have finished Factions. Games take a long time to make. You have to dedicate a huge block of your free time even when you could be doing other things. I have a lot of respect for the team since they chose to give their time to this project. Factions may never be completed, but I had fun working on the project, and hope the others did too.
Cool post Jephir, I didn't know how much work went into Factions. Maybe, at some point in the future, Empires will get ported to a new engine successfully, but I doubt that time is anytime soon. This, right here. It seems that a lot of the people that just say we should port Empires to another engine don't fully understand the difficulty of such a project. I myself have noted multiple times that devs just don't have the time that's needed to do something like that; Factions had multiple programmers and still took a substantial amount of time to reach where it had gotten.
i fully understand the scope of the project, my only argument is that if you start now it might be done in 2 years, if you start in 2 years, you are done in 4. and source is really, really old already, and 2 years are an eternity in internet time. but i also fully understand why you wouldnt want.
Delegate the position of organizer or manager next time you start a project or restart Factions, then delegate leaders of each aspect of design and make sure they send a concise update every day or week. This way you have the time to do your work without losing track of the direction of the project. It's possible to be in charge of a project without being at the centre of every decision being made. Just make sure that anyone joining the project knows you have the ultimate veto.
Iraqster. Also porting empires to a new engine wouldn't be enough, we couldn't just use the same old models and textures otherwise it would look shit (especially the nf vehicle models). So nearly everything would have to be redone from scratch and at that point you might as well just say "Might as well make Empires 2 or a spiritual successor." Also a fresh new 'mod' would get maximum press and player attention where as with a straight up port people would just say "I played this 5 years ago already". So people need to stop suggesting porting empires to a new engine as it would be a bad use of time.
As I said already, if this or something similar would be taken up again, I would be really interested in contributing models and textures to it.
Factions would have required a lot more time than I could really commit to do that kind of job adequately. Also, I'm more than happy to openly admit that I'm better at working with something that already exists, rather than something from the ground up. I really just put Jephir in contact with people for Factions, I didn't make any other contributions. What Jephir didn't mention here, is that he basically committed 3+ months solid to getting Empires 2.4 out, which had a lot to do with work also slowing down on Factions.
This kind of hierarchy doesn't work within spare time projects. What incentive is there to do what the manager requests? Also you then have people doing more work on writing summaries than actually doing the stuff.
People don't generally have pride in their job but, in making a game there is much pride to be had. It is a part of you that you are putting in the game for others to see.
I think there's a spectrum of overhead. It's not black and white. I would've done a weekly voice chat with every contributor. Some weeks might be boring, but it's nice to just get a heartbeat on what each person is doing. It's also useful to cause organic talks. For an internet relationship, that tends to mean playing the same games as people. I'm constantly listening to people chat about empires in spec. Sometimes it's bullshit, other times I learn something. So team communication doesn't have to be high maintenance, it just has to exist.
the problem arises when you have a different perception of certain things, you just get held up by useless discussions. it can be working, i have no doubt, but its where its prone to fail. something you wont have in a company/payed job - those making decisions usually contribute very little but tight schedules ... but you get (probably not enough for what you actually do) moneh
Yep, if they didn't skype/video chat as a group weekly if not daily I am not surprised this happened. I'm sad that Jephir gave up. Although I agreed with the change of direction away from an empiresmod port, I felt like the team took a wrong turn. I'm kind of glad that they didn't make it.
Pride? In making a game/models? Uhm... I don't know about you, but I constantly think my stuff isn't good enough...
phfft thats the artist in you. Always striving to improve. Taking what you have done and seeing what others have done and improving yourself and your work.
