Since the Unreal 4 port is now on an indefinite hold (at least from Kylegar's side), I wanted to ask something. I might have stated this before somewhere, but my boyfriend and me had some ideas of our own for making an FPSRTS on Unreal 4. This would not be just a port. The intention would be to change some things in the overall game design and maybe fix some flaws Empires has had from the ground up. I don't want to steal anything here, if somebody from the current dev team (and those that have come before) disagrees with that idea, I will keep it out of this forum. Is anyone interested in helping develop an new FPSRTS on Unreal 4? (No simple port or clone) So basically who would be interested in coding, modeling, mapping or texturing for it?
Don't know, I kinda already had some mapping ideas I wanted to explore for kylegar's empires. Though on the flipside, there probably won't be much stopping me from porting a map to your version considering I don't have much in terms of empires specific mapping ideas, or vice versa. Everything coming from the same engine is nice like that. Still, I'm kinda super busy at work and I keep taking side jobs on weekends, so I'm finding I have less time for this kinda stuff then I thought. Things should slow down by summer I think, so maybe then I can get back on this.
i just learned you can have 8 uv channels per material, this means you can unwrap to different textures and not bake it for a final texture map (or whatever map actually - makes blending detail-textures with normals and shit super easy). awesome shit, imagine the posibilities ... but i have no clue how efficient this is, but theoretically this could be an option to drastically reduce materials, since each material is a draw call and i read we want as little as possible of those ... also vertex painting is awesome (and easy). you can either multiply it over the base texture to tint the color or you can use the individual channels and a lerp node (mask goes into alpha) to blend between different materials. and if you take this even further, if you procedurally manipulate this you can have fucking awesome damage effects with almost no work. also complete_ its unimportant how its called. unless there is enough been done there wont be any project anyway and im quite sure its gonna be easy to use most things created in other engines - even source, which i wont be porting anything to, its just too much work. trust me id really love to create stuff for people mapping, but fucking around with qc files and material creation just isnt worth it. in ue4 (or also unity) you save stuff to the right directory, done ... in source i spend more time messing around in a text editor, rereading ever line multiple times so that i really didnt misspell a path, then in the actual modeling suite.
To be fair, what they might intend to do could be radically different to empires. Like how ns2 is rts/fps but doesn't play at all like empires. Which reminds me, what are your ideas on this game you guys want to do? Huge maps/fights? Ai bots for commanders? Is it in space, the ocean, the fifth dimension? Or is it like empires, tanks and infantry stuff, but more slow or faster paced? There's quite a lot honestly that can be changed or be different, so it might help a bit if you expand on what big things you want to do. Little things are whatever, they change half the time anyway.
i have a question to those having actual experience and not just rough ideas like me. how long do you think will it take to code something like empires in ue4? i mean a more or less feature complete alpha stage.
With someone with as much dedication as Krenzo had when he first made Empires - 6 months (assuming no art blocks).
This is entirely dependent on the person, if somebody chips in 9 to 5 on the project probably half of what deif said. If they spend an hour on it a day, most likely it will take longer.
true that, but assuming deifs answer is about what i had in mind aswell, i take he understood it as i meant it. dedication, but no full-time project either. also if theres more people time decreases (but not in a linear fashion theres communication and perception overhead coming in then) i just struggle to judge the workload.
Oooo I like this idea, well probably because I tried to organize this a year ago. So a little Trieste on this, I think we all know I love Empires, I even love you asswipes but the real reason empires has lasted as long as it has is because of the community not just the game. Empires is fundamentally flawed in how it plays. The Armored Vehicles/Tanks to Infantry balance is atrocious and in reality Empires has no real strategy to it other than organizing your collective group of dipshits to focus more on killing their collective group of dipshits. Thus, I fully support taking Empires into a whole new form even a "Spiritual Succesor" so to speak, and I'd be willing to help this project with my limited capabilities, mapping, leadership, organizational, and even financially but this is no small undertaking however; the result if Empires was refined and made in the potential game it could be would be astounding. Tl;Dr We need a new Empires.
Why not fix the current Empires and improve its foundation? By using all engine updates, we should be able to make this work. I know the tools and such aren't as user-friendly as UE4, but at least the ground work is there. Also, UE4 would require a massive update in hardware, at least for me.
It's because hes getting paid. Squad is a game that is going to be sold on steam. Honestly I don't know why people bother starting empires projects. Always interested in starting them but never finishing them. Raising our hopes and expectations and then just crushing them a few months later. I am not to tell people what to do, but why bother in the first place if you know you can't finish it?
Well, if you just want to dig some experience and you don't have a paid job to help you with that, I think it's okay to work on something like this. I think this is exactly how Krenzo created Empires, just learning things. Like I could use some experience, but I'd just join our current dev team instead of porting Empires onto another engine, porting is just too much work to consider.