A Question About You Website/game

FleeBalls

Spaceman
I have been checking out every wing commander mods webstie lately, as I have a very renewed interest in WC game since my recent discovery of the privateer remake, Standoff and Unknown Enemy. WC saga looks like it could be the most ambitious of all the program, and will probably be amazing. Aside from using a diferent, and more impressive-looking engine, WC saga looks to have more missions than other mods. However, going through the forums from CIC, both new and old, I have noticed alot of skepticism regarding this project. Obviously anticipation for any WC mods is very high right now with the release of Standoff ep 2, so it would be a great time for a release. I have looked over your "release date" posts, and through the status section on the website, and it has made me wonder about something....The persons heading this project (I'm not sure exactly who you are, offf the top of my head) seem reluctant to say anything at all at this time about progress or a release date, yet you website says you have something like 15 missions already fully complete! If that's the case, you guys could release your first episode right now and it would be 50% bigger than all of Unknown Enemy. It seems some WC patrons are already starting to think that this project is dead, or at least will never be finished, because there has been so little progess made in the last few months...You guys should definately give your fans something, if half of your game is already complete. Why not, right? I, for one, would be ecstatic to get to play WC saga, even if there are some bugs and its not totally complete...Is there some reason that you don't want to put WC saga into epsiodes...were you waiting to release it all at once? Because I thought I read that you were going to release a prologue, of sorts, and it seems you would have plenty of game to create on with right now. Sorry for my mountain of questions, Im simply asking as an excited fan.
 
Ok that are a lot of questions...well lets see what informations I could give you so far.

WC saga looks to have more missions than other mods.
I wouldn't say that. We are at the moment at about 30 Mission for the main release and about 5-6 for the prologue.

However, going through the forums from CIC, both new and old, I have noticed alot of skepticism regarding this project.
Yes there has been and I think till the final release their will allways be some, but thats understandable. We use, as you said, a different engine and its hard to do a total conversation of that engine to get a good Wing Commander feeling.
The problem of giving the game the right feeling is also one of the points for our delays. Still the momentary version of Saga has a nice feeling to it. Balancing the missions is still a problem cause some testers say its to easy...others its to hard.
We are aiming for a good balance so everyone can play it.

Obviously anticipation for any WC mods is very high right now with the release of Standoff ep 2, so it would be a great time for a release.
We are aware of that, but their are thinks we can't controle that are slowing us down alot.

First...our real working team is down to about 3 persons with some sporadig help from other people and even these people have real lifes that needs attention.
Starman has a lot of work to do after he got promoted. Tolwyn had is final exams a short while ago so that he also had his mind somewhere else. Myself...well I am in the middle of my final exams projects.
Their are other people who are helping us and without them the mod wouldn't be so good, but most of them aren't artists (2d/3d) or modelers so they can't help even if they want to.

Second...we need some coding/programming done so that we can implement some features that we need. Without them we would have quite some problems, but without a coding team on our own we have to wait till the coders we know have time to do the changes.

These are the main reasons for our delays...there are others but these are the importend ones.


Website in generell
The website is so out of date that I wouldn't recomment to belive anything written their ^_^
We are working on a new updated version.

t seems some WC patrons are already starting to think that this project is dead, or at least will never be finished, because there has been so little progess made in the last few months...You guys should definately give your fans something, if half of your game is already complete.

No we aren't dead in any way...just very busy with other things.
The lack of visible progress is because their isn't anything to show...well their is but then you would know the plot before we release the prologue ^_^
About having a half finished game...that isn't completly right. Their where a lot of changes during the last month that force us to rework some of the stuff we thought that was ready.
The overall status of the prologue is about 90% finished.
But as said before we are forced to wait till some codeing is done and the last parts of graphics are finished.

Episode release vs complete release

We had a lot of discussions in the team about this topic. Some are still for an episode base but the common consence was to make one complete release.
The reason on the one side is a technical one..as far as I got it...and the other is that we think that a storyline as we planed it would be more intense if you don't have to wait for the next episode each time. Something that bothered me about Standoff a little was that Ep2 was so short and that I mostl likely will play each time the previews ep again to get into the game again. It is..to me at least... a differance if you have just a few days between continuing the game or some month.
So their are a lots of pro and contro points about releases in episodes and complete...lets just say that we have decided to do it this way and I hope the complete release will be worth that time of waiting.

I hope that I could answere some of your questions. Feel free to ask more I will hopefully be able to answere them....exceptions would be releasedate and storyline...they are still a secret ^_^
 
gevatter Lars said:
exceptions would be releasedate and storyline...they are still a secret ^_^

The release date isnt exactly what I'd call a "secrect". We dont even know! lol

Ed
 
Thanks for taking the time out to answer my questions, Im glad to know the project is still alive and kicking....If you go with the full vs episodic release, it will be a very exciting day when the game is finally "shipped"- good luck guys.
 
Thank you for your support. As the others have said, you can rest assured that there is a great deal of work going into this project, even with our busy lives and lack of new screenshots. We have been doing a lot of spit-and-polish work with the game engine, the in-game fiction, and so forth, and so a lot of it doesn't translate well into screen shots.

But, we realize that fans want to see progress. So, you can expect some updates and new things to look at very soon, and while I cannot give an exact date, we are really not far at all from releasing the Prologue (barring some major real life catstrophe... again! Real life has been tough on our team members lately with everything ranging from moving fiascos, job changes, and-- sadly enough-- personal losses, just to name a few. But we're hanging in there). Also, once we resolve the coding issues that are holding up the Prologue, that will allow us to release the main campaign much more quickly.

Thanks for your continued interest in WC Saga. We are building this mod to make it as enjoyable as possible for the fans. I have been a part of the play-testing team, and in my opinion you will think that the wait has been well worth it. We haven't forgotten you, our encouraging fans. Keep the faith, good things are coming soon!
 
I'm looking forward to this mod - if I'm not distracted playing Duke Nukem Forever then... ;-)

Seriously though, the amount of work that you guys have put into this mod is simply mind-boggling. Probably even more than Standoff (with all due respect)

Well done and keep it up!
 
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