To get a feeling, which way/direction Empires will go, I'd like to ask a general question: What are your plans, maybe for the next 1 or 2 years? This could be important for further contributions...
1) Keep Candles sane until he can port to Source 2. 2) ???? 3) PROFIT! Seriously though, I don't know of any time related plans. There are features in the pipeline if that's what you mean.
I'm not an expert, but I don't think there are any time related plans because the teams resources are so indeterminate (spare time). Even game developers who have a more predictable set of resources (people, hours worked) always mess up. I think there may be a few general plans for the future, like: Continue to improve the quality of the games assets. Porting the GUI into HTML, which is more flexible and easier to work with , so that the GUI's design and functionality can be improved. Several additional features which would aid communication between players and make the interface and gameplay more fluid.
I think we're doing the best we can right now until Source 2 shows up. Once that does, I guess we sit down and discuss where we want to go from there. Despite being on Source "2013", realistically this game engine is over 10 years old now, so we are limited as to how much further we can really take things. Source 2 should be the gamechanger. If it isn't, then we'll need to re-assess our expectations as to future development.
Right now people are fixing whats there and hoping for the future brings. The future plans are not there because the future may not provide a platform for us to evolve on and we may need to make due with what we have or move on to an easier platform to import to. There are no plans. Just fixing the same shit for the past 7 years. The reason that we have not changed to any platforms is because they do not support what we exactly need and every-time somebody tries to port anything either life kicks in or they hit a wall. However in my opinion I wouldn't commit time to anything if I knew I was not going to be able to finish it, im not the type of person to leave anything unfinished so I mostly stop myself before starting anything and figure out if I can do it.
If my admission of graduate school will be accepted, I might see if there's anything I can help you guys next year. (scripts/code..etc) I am EECS too and I am older than Candles, it makes me feel bad that I probably can't code as good as Candles.
I found a negative review on Steam from July, 10th 2012. "Great game; provided me tons of fun several years ago, but the community has continually degraded population-wise. You aren't going to find a game unless it's peak hours. Not only that, but the devs in this game operate on a slower version of Valve-time. The game was released on Steam two years ago, but had been around for many years prior to that. Updates had historically been few and far between, and the steam update was promised to increase the frequency of updates. Over the course of two years, there has only been one update that actually affects core gameplay: they added a shotgun. Every single other update has been some combination of the following: adding maps to a list of "official" maps, changing the model or texture of something, changing sctipts, or changing numbers around in a table (damage values, etc). Features are talked about but rarely, if ever implimented. Aircraft have been "just around the corner" for nearly five years. I haven't checked recently, but I'm willing to bet money that the devs are still talking up a storm about "awesome new features" that will never be implimented (unless, of course, they're comparatively easy changes, like changing a weapon's damage values or adding simple scripts). In five years, if there's even a community left, we'll probably see the same vehicles and same weapons as we see today." If I look at this post, I feel bad thinking about the future of Empires. Well I think there is missing some... passion? Yeah, you spend freetime and some passion, but is this enough? When I think back to my first project (over 10 years ago), we spend so much time for our project. Yes, we do a good job and were successful (no money but a lot of players), but then real life comes and I had to leave the team. You should decide: If you like to make money, you had to spend ALL YOUR F*****G FREETIME FOR EMPIRES. You have no other hobbies, only Empires. That's it! If you do this job halfheartedly, you should leave the project, send your hardcoded work around the world... A game without passion has no future and if I look at 2007 ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjL0arvxyyg ) over 7 years... Does anybody know something about the developement of Day of Defeat? Only 5 years from the idea to Half Life 1 and then Half Life 2 Source. I'm to old for this stuff... I can only spend my 50 USD for maintaining the servers etc. I spend my "best" years (18-23) for these kind of projects but today, I can only think about concepts and do easy stuff like translations.
If we only had developers who could devote all their free time to Empires, we'd have no developers. Also, work was ceased on aircraft 7 years ago.
We're not in this to make money and we neither want to nor are able to release the source code. There's nothing to gain from going open source because it'd still have to be managed, there'd still need to be a centralized place for getting binaries and the game, there'd still need to be proper distribution centers, or the entire thing just falls apart. All it would do is kill the game faster. Most, or all, of us do this because it's fun or because we love Empires. That's it.
Do you not listen? It's been stated countless times this is just a mod, a hobby, a sideproject. The devs aren't trying to make a AAA studio or get this shit in humble. The devs aren't even the same, they change every year or two, so you can't even complain about stuff from then on stuff now. It seems like it's impossible for you to get it in your thick skull that no one here is actually serious to go all the way with this game, especially that it's on an engine that has shown signs of aging in the past year. Your ideas would make sense if the game were to be started anew, bottom up, but at this point there's no money in source empires (especially that it would have to be split up with the 30 or so developers who've done work on this game), and also there's no more freedom with source empires. Our current programmer has university and a job at the same time as coding for this game, and the one before also had uni and a job, and before that as well. There's no such thing as a 100% developer on a project that can't make money, they'd starve to death.
exactly! it runs on my laptop just fine too bad im not a huge nerd that plays video games while on campus
Pretty much, The reason I've been with this game for a DECADE is because I love empires, the community is the most special group of people I've ever met, but in a good kinda way, and it's why I will probably never leave. We beat out naysayers like Eternal Silence, Orion etc. who said our concept couldn't be done, that we were accomplishing the impossible, and we told them to fuck off and did it anyway, it's something I'm still very proud of. He's talking about the engine in general. Source is an upgraded version of GoldSrc (HL1), which is a upgraded version of the Quake I engine. There are still bits of code left over from HL1 and quake. The engine itself is a lot older than people realize. Source 2 is an all new engine from what's been seen from DOTA 2. Weather or not that really means anything in terms of doing stuff that's not doable with source has left to be seen until an SDK is release and from their we will make a decision on what we want to do.
Oh im perfectly aware of that. Its just ever since i pulled a completely unintentional programming pun on Candela, I cannot pass up on making crappy wordplay jokes.
