Fan Mod Project

I'll add one thing, related to specifically to the process of developing mods:

Idea people don't develop mods.

You simply can't get anywhere, if all you've got are ideas. You could get somewhere with a fanfic (though even there, it takes more than an idea - you need to have the drive to write the whole thing, as well), but not with a fan project. A fan project requires a dedicated team, and that team needs to be centred about something real. It has been my experience, and I'm sure Tolwyn from Saga would agree as well, that the person in charge of a fan project is always the one working the hardest - he has to, in order to show the rest of the team that their own efforts won't be wasted, that there's somebody there who will do whatever it takes to ultimately complete a mod. That's why Standoff occasionally seems to die for months at a time - if neither I, nor Eder, have any time to keep working, the rest of the team invariably stops whatever they're doing.

So, a person who only has ideas can't get anywhere. You need to have the skills to also contribute directly to some aspect of the project... and the drive to learn new skills if necessary, to work on other aspects. If you can't do anything except generate ideas, who's going to trust your dedication enough to bother contributing to your project?
 
I have to agree with Quarto. A good team and a dedicated teamleader is very importend.
Lucky for us if Tolwyn isn't around Starman keeps things going...the old perfectionist allways finds something to bother about ^_°

A proposal, that was mentioned before I think, that I have is search for an existing team to work with.
There is allready a WC1 remake AFAIK, a Privateer remake, Standoff covers the WC2 timeline very nicely, Saga has most of the WC3 ships and with the last pack, even if its more a "prove of concept" part, some WC4 ships.

That way you could start with a more solid base to work with. Standoff, Flightcommander and Saga all have editors or posibilitys to script your mission.
You could gather first experiances in doing a single mission to get a feeling on how it would be to create an entire storyline...and that is just for the missions.
For an entire storyline you would have to cover much more aspects then just mission.

Start small and work your way up.
 
To EddieB,
I'm not entirely fond of the WC-1 re-make that I've seen so far...

Bandit LOAF,
These are just initial ideas... And the ideas I'm thinking of would include making the game more realistic. The WC-1 and WC-2 era remake ideas (of which I proposed numerous) that I'm thinking up would have the same fighters and capital ships -- just new graphics for them. And to have interactive scenes that look better than cartoons -- 3D character interaction scenes.


Victoria Kent
 
Miracynonyx100 said:
The WC-1 and WC-2 era remake ideas (of which I proposed numerous) that I'm thinking up would have the same fighters and capital ships -- just new graphics for them. And to have interactive scenes that look better than cartoons -- 3D character interaction scenes.
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You're not the first to suggest this and you won't be the last. Take comfort that you're in a lot of company, as that such lofty goals have never come to fruition.
 
Miracynonyx100 said:
To EddieB,
I'm not entirely fond of the WC-1 re-make that I've seen so far...

Bandit LOAF,
These are just initial ideas... And the ideas I'm thinking of would include making the game more realistic. The WC-1 and WC-2 era remake ideas (of which I proposed numerous) that I'm thinking up would have the same fighters and capital ships -- just new graphics for them. And to have interactive scenes that look better than cartoons -- 3D character interaction scenes.


Victoria Kent
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Hello, Vicky. I think maybe one of Bandit LOAF's points is that right now, your ideas are mostly "trees," or worse, "leaves" and you don't have a "forest" yet. The concept you're pushing around right now just sounds like "just like Wing Commander, updated engine, all the missions." If that's your concept, then everything you're talking about here are "leaves" (specific graphics, ship implementation details) before you've got any "trees" (choice of game engine, rendering tools, mission and script editor). In that respect, you're thinking about details without thinking about how you're going to get them done, which just makes them pipe dreams. (Or cloud dreams). You're jumping too many steps - you need to think and plan about the technology of how you're going to achieve this and the manpower you're going to need to work with that technology.

Put another way - right now, all you have is a marketing department. You have no coders, no engineers, no writers, no voice actors... an idea starts with some thought into the game structure, flow, storyboarding, development tools available, budget, etc. - and all the ideas you have here right now are just the flashy words on the back of the box. Marketing habitually makes all kinds of promises that Engineering knows are impossible.

So if you're going to be the idea person, that means you can't just think like the Marketing department. You have to think like the Engineering department. You have to think like Human Resources for a while too, and you have to think like the Finanace Division. Time, money, people, technology - thinking about a feature list is part of the process too, but thinking about it in isolation tells you nothing about how it's actually going to get done. And without that, well - it never gets done. The only time I saw you suggest any particular piece of technology was for the cutscenes. Well, sure - there's a start - but you still need an engine for the game itself. What is it going to play on? And there is the matter of picking the right tool for the job. Do you know how to link a Quake-like engine into a flightsim engine? Will you use two different engines in-game, or will you try to use one engine for everything? If you don't know whether it can be done, or how to do it, then the list of features you have so far is indeed only that - a list of features.

If you're planning on doing a straight WC1-4 remake, then the first step is actually pretty straightforward (if not easy): *pick a game engine,* *learn how to use the scripting language in that game engine*. If you can't program missions, then all the renders and the models you come up with will never appear in a game, right? You can have all the talking head or quake model cutscenes you want, but if you have no flightsim, it's hard to say you're playing Wing Commander.
 
These are just initial ideas... And the ideas I'm thinking of would include making the game more realistic. The WC-1 and WC-2 era remake ideas (of which I proposed numerous) that I'm thinking up would have the same fighters and capital ships -- just new graphics for them. And to have interactive scenes that look better than cartoons -- 3D character interaction scenes.
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Go back and actually read my post.
 
Miracynonyx100 said:
How would people here like hypothetically to have a fan-mod that covered all of WC-1, SM1, SM1.5?, SM-2, The Destruction of the Tiger's Claw, WC-2, SO-1, SO-1, Fleet Action, WC-3, and WC-4? With quality computer generated interactive scenes a'la WC Standoff to provide the closest thing to live-actor scenes in all the WC-games and stuff?
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I don't want the Wing Commander franchise to have a boob job. Excuse me, boob enhancement. I like it just the way it is.


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Edited by ChrisReid
 
Miracynonyx100 said:
What was that WC-1 and WC-4 re-release on GameTap? Also what's GameTap?
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Do you read the CIC? We've had it in the news (and on top of the news with permanent banner links) all year.

Miracynonyx100 said:
Are there any rules of thumb as to what would typically get you a Cease and Desist warning? Additionally, do you have to ask Origin permission before you do any remake?
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You need to seriously research Electronic Arts and Origin before you get yourself into anything.

Miracynonyx100 said:
You might be right... Still, WC-1 and WC-2 with more advanced grapics and game engine would be pretty awesome.
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And as just a WC2-based project, unencumbered by the huge constraints of being a straight remake, Standoff has taken seven years so far (https://www.wcnews.com/news/update/3334 https://www.wcnews.com/news/update/3269) and is still a ways off from being complete. Think about that.
 
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Bob McDob said:
Wow, has it really been that long? I've always remembered Standoff as being the one fan project that's made good time.
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And even more, a bunch of the same team created Unknown Enemy prior to that. UE was a roughly four year project that came out a year or so after Standoff began. Secret Ops itself turns ten next year, and people have been working on modding it for almost the entire time.
 
If you want to get really technical about it, what eventually became Standoff started out as a WC mod for X-Wing Alliance of my own (that is, after my parting ways with the people from the XWA WCTC). I believe my first post ever to the CZ was in April 15th, 2001 - and it was about what eventually became Standoff already.
 
Chris Reid,
I have a job and I don't have all the time in the world. Can someone find me any data about the companies that made WC and how quick they are to sue people?

To Everybody Else,
I was planning on the mod being a non-profit thing. I figured it couldn't be hard to get a bunch of WC Fans, and some 3D graphics and some people together.
 
Eder said:
If you want to get really technical about it, what eventually became Standoff started out as a WC mod for X-Wing Alliance of my own (that is, after my parting ways with the people from the XWA WCTC). I believe my first post ever to the CZ was in April 15th, 2001 - and it was about what eventually became Standoff already.
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Another data point, Flight Commander started as a project for a computer graphics class in 1998. We're almost at the ten year mark, now, and there still a list of about 20 features I'd like to add.
 
Miracynonyx100 said:
Chris Reid,
I have a job and I don't have all the time in the world. Can someone find me any data about the companies that made WC and how quick they are to sue people?

To Everybody Else,
I was planning on the mod being a non-profit thing. I figured it couldn't be hard to get a bunch of WC Fans, and some 3D graphics and some people together.
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Vicky,

It's nice to have grandiose dreams, and WC is fun. No question about it.

But most of us have jobs, and also don't have all the time in the world. There's a lot of information to be had in these forums and it is shared freely and willingly by most of us. But if we don't know something off the top of our heads, we don't have all the time in the world to go about doing leg work for free...

Mods have to be non-profit. If you did them for profit you can bet you'd get a cease-and-desist letter way faster than if you didn't. Can you read code? Learn a scripting language? Do 3D graphics yourself? Can you, as Bob said, read a book on game design?

What we're saying to you, all of us, practically, is to get your feet back on the ground long enough to know the difference between happy daydreams and work. Because modding is work. Making WC in the first place was work! It was business! Chris Roberts and his coworkers were up late at night hacking and patching their code to make playable demos for conferences and conventions. They were being paid to do it. They were doing it FULL TIME. The games you see on the shelf at Fry's are no longer cobbled together in BASIC by teenage kids on Apple IIe's - what used to be a hobby has now become a professional affair. Emphasize, capitalize, underline, bold, and allcaps "PROFESSIONAL."

You have a lot of ideas and a lot of enthusiasm for science fiction. But slow down for a minute - just go back and read some of the news archives on the CIC. Trace back down these forums for threads a year or two back. WC is rich in continuity and full of possible ideas; immerse yourself in the culture a little. Read the jump FAQ. Find a copy of the WC bible. Read fanfics; write one of your own, even if you're not going to show it to anybody. (If you're going to tell a story, get a sense of what it's like to tell a story even without a game to go with it; good writing is harder than most people think!). If you don't know the continuity, you'll find yourself constantly under attack by WingNuts screaming at you to get it right; you don't need that kind of morale kill.

Read Chris Roberts' story. Read up about what it was like for him and the people he worked with trying to get WC1 written, when there was no existing engine for them to work with. Read the Standoff forum and find the threads where Eder, Quarto, PopsiclePete et. al. talk about hacking the various .DLL's for Secret Ops, how they patched new graphics and changed features in an engine that wasn't meant to be so tinkered with. Learn why the Prophecy AI couldn't be improved. Look up Michelle's Fralthi and Gratha renderings - have a look at what tools she used to put her models together. Learn why a 500 poly Gratha model is a big deal. Look up the Flight Commander forum and find a thread where people are talking about mission scripting procedures. If you see code, don't just gloss over it - stare at it for a minute or two. These are the things you're up against - it is through things like these that you'll need to crank your ideas through before they can become a playable mod. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not. Sometimes you'll have to perform some godawful hacks to existing code to get a new feature to work. Pursue these things; ask questions but realize nobody has the time to sit here for hours at a time teaching you how to use everything. Many modders just learn by doing; you'll need to do the same.

I usually try to maintain a pleasant tone of voice on these forums. So pleasant that it pisses off LeHah on sheer principle. But really, listen to me - and all of us - on this one: It's not easy to get a bunch of fans, let alone technically and artistically adept fans, together to work on an extremely time-consuming project for free. Not when we all have jobs that require our attention and bills to pay. People who have those kinds of skills are usually employed by people who're willing to pay for it. You can't just sit yourself up in the director's chair and hope that talent flocks to your side. If it's your baby, you have to be prepared to be every bit as busy, every bit as consumed, as the most busy member of any team you would think about assembling, and you have to be prepared to pick up the slack when life calls and pulls your free talent away from the project. Be willing to do the leg work yourself, and lead by example, because nobody here is going to be your peon. Everyone here is either too smart, too busy, too tired, too occupied, too independent, too arrogant, too curmudgeonly, or too taken to be willing to do that. If you get a good project going, you may be able to find talented help - but never, never presuppose that you can take anybody's time for granted, because as much as we love WC, life calls on all of us and time is a sweet and precious personal resource.
 
Toast,

One of the reasons I specifically said no-profit was because that would INSTANTLY by any definition be a copyright infringement -- that is obvious.

I wasn't asking for all that much help with research... just the copyright stuff that EA or Origin has. The rest of the research I was planning on largely doing solo. I have a sizeable base of material in a manila folder to start with.

I have a scanner and can scan stuff in, and I can set up a photobucket account. But I also plan to create some of my own drawings as well, but I might ask you guys what you think of an idea before I start drawing all sorts of stuff.

Even if it only ends up a daydream... at least some cool art should come out of it right?


Victoria Kent
E-mail: Miracinonyx3@hotmail.com
 
Miracynonyx100 said:
Toast,

One of the reasons I specifically said no-profit was because that would INSTANTLY by any definition be a copyright infringement -- that is obvious.

I wasn't asking for all that much help with research... just the copyright stuff that EA or Origin has. The rest of the research I was planning on largely doing solo. I have a sizeable base of material in a manila folder to start with.

I have a scanner and can scan stuff in, and I can set up a photobucket account. But I also plan to create some of my own drawings as well, but I might ask you guys what you think of an idea before I start drawing all sorts of stuff.

Even if it only ends up a daydream... at least some cool art should come out of it right?


Victoria Kent
E-mail: Miracinonyx3@hotmail.com
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Cool art is good :)
 
Miracynonyx100 said:
Chris Reid,
I have a job and I don't have all the time in the world.
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Everyone who belongs to a major WC fan project works full time, goes to school, has obligations, and then comes home and spends their precious minutes of leisure time catching up on the latest Wing Commander happenings. If you don't, then that suggests you won't have the motivation to keep this going for the years that it will take to see it through.

Miracynonyx100 said:
Can someone find me any data about the companies that made WC and how quick they are to sue people?
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There's no web page full of data like this. Nobody's teasing you by witholding any information. What people know is an amalgamation of news stories, forum discussions and scraps of info collected over many years. There's no one answer. EA continues to actively prosecute illegal distribution of Wing Commander material. They also encourage fans to celebrate the series and promote it in their own ways.

Miracynonyx100 said:
I was planning on the mod being a non-profit thing.
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Obviously.

Miracynonyx100 said:
I figured it couldn't be hard to get a bunch of WC Fans, and some 3D graphics and some people together.
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Ha.
 
Wing Commander CIC Forums Statistics
Threads: 21,026, Posts: 315,186, Members: 5,284, Active Members: 240

It's actually a lot harder than you think. The hardcore of us are really only a few hundred in number and within that those with the ability to work on a project like this are very rare.

If anything start small with a mission or two. See what goes into doing that before planning on remaking a franchise.
 
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