New Developments

I didn't want to busy the sticky with this discussion, but what in the world is going on?

From what I understand Krenzo is backing off of development to focus on RL and a future commercial game (doubtlessly involving blimbs). Dizzy and Mootant are now developing the game. Megel and Damian have been eaten by wild wolves.

The rest of the Empires community have very little idea of this act and we're to keep it that way?

This thread is a good place to answer those questions and let people ask other questions of their own without dirtying a different thread.

 

my guess would be exactly what it says in this very recent thread:
http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=5662

 

I would say keep everything quiet until the new managment moves in compleatly... If you tell the unwashed masses of what is going on, you are going to have a riot...

 

I would have understood a thread like this two weeks ago, but all my questions have pretty much been answered. What happened with the old devs, the plans of the "new" devs, where R teh aircraftz and so on.

Also, I haven't found a post by a dev that says we should keep this to ourselves. Is that an issue to discuss about in this thread?

I'm still not going to say anything because in my opinion this community has suffered from the unfounded rumors of the last few months, and the confusion.

I think this mod needs a little more "coordinated" PR and less vague comments and remarks of the "Aircraft will never be implemented and you all suck" type (MOOtant, I'm looking your way)
I'm not blaming MOOtant or anyone, after all they are not professionals, but there was a lot of confusion which in my opinion hurt the mod.

 

Someone else should be given access to the Moddb profile.

Also, Damian was gone before 2.0 was actually released.

 

heh the whole mod could do with some more coordinating IMO.

 

Give me finished aircraft models and we can talk.

 

I think at first you have to ask ES team how to make the aircraft not crash the game when they hit something.

 

And how the hell do you know if this Valve's bug wasn't fixed in OB SDK? Also why the hell are you interested in code that you didn't see once?

 

Aircraft are a long way off either way, so it's better to look at how it works in OB, and see if you can find the cause of it, before asking anybody.
You can always join #hlcoders on gamesurge and ask omega, he builds the SDK for release, and he's fixing the OB code. If anybody knows what's causing it, it's him.

 

My wife is right. I've seen a few posts that lead me to believe that things might change for the better. It seems to me that dizzyone for example has a lot more time available to spend on empires then krenzo had in the past 6 months, and that he is eager to do whatever is necessary to make it popular, without making wild plans of which he knows they will not get finished.

Give it a few weeks, see how it goes and then decide wether to make it public knowledge or not.

btw, i understand we need canditates to help with stuff (as seen in the other topic). Are you guys searching for canditates among the people we know from this forum and trust, or can we go looking for volunteers somewhere else?

 

I'm not sure if it has turned for the better with Krenzo leaving, but I'm glad to have everyone's hopes up, it's a good sign and hopefully it will translate into good cooperation between everyone that is willing to help.

Currently we still have a bit of time to organize the new branch and make decisions on how we are going to approach doing it, I'm using this time to talk to everyone, I have also e-mail Don Megel to see the status on things he has been working on. I think that most important right now is to see which people are willing to help with which part and how we can split the chores to be as productive as possible.

Right now we have Mootant, Reef and RampantAndroid as the coders with acces to the Empiresmod Source, once we are past all the decisions that need to be made, they hopefully will form a great team :D. Maybe Kylegar could be added to this team?

I think that if RampantAndroid works on the globalstats, which he mentioned himself, Coffeeburito and Chahk (and Razorbud, niarbeht?) can be involved into the process.

Solokiller is hopefully up for doing the technical side of the level design work, we will need to see which other mappers are left, or who from this community can contribute to making new maps for new releases, or fix existing ones.

Evan and KT will do PR, I have asked KT for now to take care of playtesting, later on I'm sure theres more PR things that need to be taken care of. Depending on how RampantAndroid will take care of global stats, both KT and Evan as admins of the league, will be responsible for the league part and hopefully its integration of globalstats. Which might also be very useful for playtesting.

For the scripting side we could still use some help, for now mostly to achieve certain goals, like improving tank combat, Caggers has already helped a bit, I have asked Simon to help with scripts for tank combat as well. I myself am also going to work on the scripts.

For balance right now, while some balance issue details are still to be decided over, the decisions right now are being done by me and MOOtant as we both seem to be on the same line about a lot of things, it wouldn't help to have a lot of people decide over this process at this stage. I think Beerdude is still willing to do infantry weapon balance, I will take care of the first stage of vehicle weaponry, after that it will depend on testers how it will evolve as a lot of balancing needs to be done.

For the more refined balance I mentioned above, again with the emphasis on tank combat, we could use a few testers that are willing to keep up a journal or something, pretty much a smaller group of the main group of testers, all coming from different clans that hold their own opinion on things to comment and strengthen balance and gameplay. So yes we will need some people here and I believe a lot of people qualify to do this if they are up for it.

Graphical side is the real issue right now, I will try and do some fixing on the model and animation side, things like improving collision models, improving tank models, making grenadier animations slightly faster if gameplay allows it, stuff like that, still a lot of work left to do.
If Shinzon is interested he could fulfill some of the work needed with textures, if doggetti becomes more responsive, he could work on some of the icons.

Arklansman will work on everything/nothing and unsuccesfully recruit new animators/modellers.

I think I missed a few persons here and there, but yeh we mostly need people doing 2d graphics, but it is of low priority right now.
So a recap of which people we can still use and is realistic to find them: Some prominent testers, people working on scripts, level design, 2d graphics artists.


If you are in the list of people I mentioned, or aren't but willing to help in some way, you can contact me if you're unsure of what to work on right now, we have been working on a gameplay design and soon a timeline as well in which everyone can work with or work together with.

 

I guess I meant this topic as general discussion too.

People attribute PR with Marketing, so I'm thinking Evan can work more towards that and I can work more towards Community relations. That reminds me of a thread I need to make...

 

Any opinion on the translation thing mentioned in the other topic, dizzyone?

 

I don't have time to make any new maps, but I could fix up some existing ones. (That is, if MOOtant doesn't eat me first)

Hopefully I'll be able to make some more sprite effects as well, but I'll need some help from a coder as well. (I might be able to do that myself if I had the code)

 

arklansman: slaughtered is bugged in 2.2 so you should try to get map source from either Hellion or Krenzo. atm we were thinking about removing it if no-one fixes it.

 

Ok; here is the raven MKII Finished "Model" it is even unrawped but it lacks a texture, I have the export, and max files on my hard drive...

Now let's talk...

 

But we need 8 models. Fighter, Bomber, Transport and Anti-Tank. We have 2.

 

We can use the current ones for now; and then add new ones as they are finished, instead of waiting for every single one, or even use the same model with a quick re-texture until we get all of them...

 

So we need BE fighter, NF fighter, BE transport and NF transport. BE transport is done, and one of the fighters is done too. What about NF transport and the remaining fighter/bomber/anti-tank?

Didn't Megel do more? (he posted some screenshots of textured models).

And btw join irc channel for faster communication.