Is the game still in development?

John: I do agree.
Charleig: I think John was referring to adding feature after feature, before the previous features get propperly debugged. I would really like to stop that, and I think spirit does too, since she stopped adding features.

Oh... about planet sizes... just FYI, it was all in the spirit of better adherence to canon. Ship sizes didn't agree with canon, so one guy started fixing them (hopefully, strictly adhering to canon). Once that was done, a carrier was almost as big as a planet. That wasn't right, so planets were increased in size, with all the problems it brought. But... it was a noble attempt at better following canon, which should be looked at with good eyes from people in this comunity, I think.
Now... why don't you recognize that, is an issue. If there's something wrong, perhaps you should tell the one doing the changes before things get out of hand. IIRC, that was FireSkull.
 
@LOAF
I wasn't sure you were using it jovially.

Regarding spiritplumber's obsession with opposing his ban, well, I won't pretend to understand that. There are far better ways to deal with these matters than outright resistance. I just walked away. It just so happened that when I came back to read some unrelated material a few months later, I found myself not only unbanned but also apparently forgiven for my open source ideologies.
 
*raises his hand*

Yes, I am the one to blame for the big planets screw up *chuckles*

They were fine on my machine, so I thought, well "lets release this, and see how it goes". It went bad, and they were changed back already, sort of. In the next release planets will be slightly over double their original size. That stops them from being dwarfed, and is small enough of a size so no one will auto-pilot into them.

The new scales from ships followed canon as much as was possible to. There are very very small diferences, mostly because I didnt want complicated and broken numbers as scales. I actually played WC1 and WC2 ( again ) to watch their cutscenes and find out how bigger those carriers should be near their starfighters. Of course, only this was not enough, so I used the data at wcnews and terran enginers webpage, to see how they would compare to other ships. So, I did my homework.

Right now we are doing the weapons load out of starfighters. Next will be capital ships, as they have a few things wrong with them ( ie: ranger carriers have flak cannons right now ). The way I see it, once we are done not everything will be 100% canon, either for gameplay reasons or because there are things that simply arent mentioned anywhere, but there wont be any situations that will have people go "what the hell..."
 
My 2 cents.

(Being only a ghost on this forum, I may have missed some things. Appologies up front if needed.)


Gemini gold and Privateer remake are not in any competition.
Gemini gold is a 'purist' version of Privateer remake.
The projects in a sense depend on each other, since PR development is tied to the VS engine development, and PGG uses the same engine.

the two differ by a couple graphics, and the ability to buy a few more ships+items in PR. nothing major.

being that (at least by impression) the CIC is a wing-commander-conservative community, so sensibly the PGG project goes over much better here (since it doesn't deviate as much from the original).

while i like the freedom of PR, and don't really dwell too much over buying a drayman, i prefer the purist approach also. I think the 'features' of PR should have been left to WCU.

honestly i think WCU is going a bit overboard because some features are really off-the-wall when put into strictly WC domain.
Nevertheless, it is the only project that is attempting to merge all of WC, and is making progress. that in itself deserves respect. (why complain if you're not lifting a finger to do it yourself)

previous forwarding issues (here to sourceforge that happened for a day earlier on, then possibly was made permanent [forwarding-specifically, not talking about move], i really don't know, wasn't there the entire time) were a matter of development disruption. Spiritslumber, regardless of whatever he may do to annoy people, is an active and very productive developer on WCU. there are less than a dozen very active developers that work around the VS engine (in a WC context), banning one of them was an unacceptable development disruption. no one wanted to face the situation of logging on and finding out they annoyed someone and now they cant communicate, so it was a matter of avoiding speedbumps.

as far as the back/forth arguments go, it's plain to see that both sides are loaded.
the things spiritslumber does to get banned are ignored for other community members, and spiritslumber (probably, I don't know the person) apparently doesn't have good emotional control skills (at least that's the case if he was threatening to hack ...). honestly, it just looks like two unconsolable parties plugging at each other.

[
note about the link : http://www.crius.net/zone/showpost.php?p=287391&postcount=8

I did the same exact thing : (albeit not so many times as to annoy someone)
http://www.crius.net/zone/showthread.php?t=5937

searching for help isn't exactly bad imo. it looks more like an issue of soliciting where the atmosphere is obviously hostile to you, and you're likely to annoy someone you shouldn't be annoying. if i can really guilt spiritslumber with anything, it's with not having the social skills to sense the mood around him and to adjust his behavior appropriately.
]

but it boils down to one discreet issue. wcnews is LOAF's domain. if he wants to be a nazi, racist, call people names, ban indiscriminantly, post goatse pictures, whatever, that's his business. everyone coming here has to understand that you're here in _HIS_ domain. the people that run this site don't have to explain themselves to you. don't ask for fair, when you're not the one paying for the server. showing up here and prancing around like you have the right to assert anything is retarded.

edit : (forgot to mention this)


(quoted from john)"
My time spend on the Privateer Remake project as QA guy and team member - it was a fight about every little decision that would have made the game more like Privateer. I still remember the discussion with Mamiyaotaru about the Radar colors. I wanted them changed to the Wing Commander Privateer standard and he just said why? In the end i think he changed them in the Remake but not for friendly units. I asked him why he doesn't change them from green to blue and the answer was "I like green." And that's a very simple but perfect example what's pretty much the same with all decisions concerning the project.
"

i believe this is a problem of not having leaders or designers. when i was the lead artist in military forces quake 3 it was like pulling teeth to get some people to get in line with the program.
people get attached to what they do, they have their own vision, and they can't always let go of it.
strong structured teams tend to do more work 'for the sake of the project', and you don't have the problems that PR has. the files that set the radar color could have been written by mamiya, and probably he felt personally attacked when his files were criticised. i've had artists throw a fit when i told them to change some minor thing. you could tell they knew it was messed up, but they just refused to back down to (constructive) criticism.

ultimately you really have to take it for the team when you want a good polished item.
PGG, because it's one person's vision (like slackware is to linux), will always look more polished.
the real power of PGG is its homogeny. john, you've done a great job at taking all those details and _making_ them right. personally, i'm impressed with how you took the mess of 'little things' that were awry with PR and tidy'd them all up. new features are cool, but consistency really sucks you into the game universe.

-scheherazade
 
scheherazade said:
My 2 cents.
the two differ by a couple graphics, and the ability to buy a few more ships+items in PR. nothing major.

I've here a pretty long textfile with questions and feature request to hellcat about changes for Gemini Gold since Privateer Remake 1.0 was released, so it's not just graphics and things you can buy; it's A LOT more work you'll see when you dig into the GG sources or feel when you play it ;)

Thanks for the flowers.
 
ya, hellcat tells me you've got quite a feature request list :p.
the game definately 'feels' much improved.
it's not always easy to tell what is from where since the base engine gets an upgrade and everyone inherits it, not just who needed it.
you deserve some flowers :). you've kept your project very professional.

-scheherazade
 
I wasn't sure you were using it jovially.

Well, it's hilarious. It's one of those silly internet things that you thought people would have realize weren't actually threatening 'lo about 1996. I don't like what you're saying, so I'm gonna come beat you up!

The entire concept is funny here, too, because it's not just some skinny teenager in his parents basement -- it's a guy in a dress who I've somehow made so angry as to cause him to lose control over his ability to reason. In my mind, he's also wearing a tiara.

(I think Spiritplumber is the only person who really takes Spiritplumber entirely seriously -- today's e-mail is a long note about how he's going to create accounts with "every IP in the world" to trick us into banning everyone from the forums. A sane person would put half an ounce of thought into whether or not what they're saying makes any sense before they say it.)

Regarding spiritplumber's obsession with opposing his ban, well, I won't pretend to understand that. There are far better ways to deal with these matters than outright resistance. I just walked away. It just so happened that when I came back to read some unrelated material a few months later, I found myself not only unbanned but also apparently forgiven for my open source ideologies.

Well, I'll be the first... or seventh or so... person to admit that I ban people far too quickly for far to little on occasion. On the other hand, I do hope it shines through that bans aren't a big permanent thing here -- they're usually gone in a matter of hours after the involved parties (myself especially) have time to cool down.

Spirit has certainly earned a special category for himself, though.

The new scales from ships followed canon as much as was possible to. There are very very small diferences, mostly because I didnt want complicated and broken numbers as scales. I actually played WC1 and WC2 ( again ) to watch their cutscenes and find out how bigger those carriers should be near their starfighters. Of course, only this was not enough, so I used the data at wcnews and terran enginers webpage, to see how they would compare to other ships. So, I did my homework.

Right now we are doing the weapons load out of starfighters. Next will be capital ships, as they have a few things wrong with them ( ie: ranger carriers have flak cannons right now ). The way I see it, once we are done not everything will be 100% canon, either for gameplay reasons or because there are things that simply arent mentioned anywhere, but there wont be any situations that will have people go "what the hell..."

I think the mistake is that anyone really wants "canon" ship specifications in the first place -- there's certainly no agreement between the games and the manuals as to what is what. Gameplay takes precedence over the 'fictional universe'... *everyone* understands that.

However, on the same token, once you use that as a crutch to explain crazy decisions, people won't put up with it. And that's what we saw happening with the Prviateer Remake and WCU a while back -- claiming that changes were to improve gameplay balance when instead they were just changes for the sake of changing something.

Yes, it's a rush to make all the ships super-fighters that can accept all the possible upgrades... but you're not fooling us if you tell us it's for game balance. We're smart enough to know that a game should have a big lumbering transport and a heavy fighter and a medum fighter and a dreadnaught and that they should all act differently. It feels good to buy Level 7 engines for your Centurion, but we all know it doesn't make for long term playability.

We've all played Privateer - we *know* the original system works.

In terms of specifications, though, you certainly don't have to follow the manuals in a great many areas. A medium fighter doesn't have to have a Y/P/R of whatever Victory Streak says -- but it should still feel like a medium fighter. Whatever plays well is fine - this is what the games do.

Now, when it comes time to do a manual for your project, lie to us -- show some respect to the original source material in this manner. It doesn't matter that your YPR is 60/60/60 to make the game feel good... just don't spend lots of effort pointing out how more 'right' that and everyone is happy. A little respect goes a long way.

On the same token, there are some specifications that *do* need to be set. Give fighters their proper armaments, for instance... everyone can see those in the game. Does it unblanace the Privateer Remake engine? Then cut them down artificially -- make the neutron cannon the Jalkehi mounts less powerful... don't shout at the top of your lungs that the Jalkehi must be changed. If you're worried about balance, make it work behind the scenes.

Heck, a lot of specifications should be entirely meaningless to the game engine -- length, mass, service dates, that kind of thing. They're flavor text, they shouldn't effect how you make the ships look in the game,
 
All very good points Bandit, you too scherazade. i have to agree WCU could use more focus, but, we are getting to it. IMO things look a lot better in our forum now, and the steps to take to develop WCU are pretty much clear.

Weapons loadout was really the lesser of our problems. One of the guys at our forums is doing them, and they are all pretty much just a "check out the manuals" issue, though, coding them is a pain, but thats just cause we have too many ships :p

For me, what was a issue was ship scaling, it still could be. I believe I have the scales of all capital ships right, the only ships I wish I could make bigger are draymans and caernavens, but, they were left at their original sizes.

Changing ship sizes was more a matter of game immersion than anything else. I just couldnt stand looking at carriers and noticing my fighter would just barely fit in its hangar, much less believe a whole squadron of bombers could be launched from it.

In WCU everything is quite bigger than PR now. NC and Perry were made a lot bigger to not be completely dwarfed by cruisers and such ships. Its not that capital ships were made exceptionaly huge either, I played WC3 and 4 and they are just about the size of those games, but since we are going to use stuff thats bigger than paradigms, much bigger actually, we had to change stations and planets too just so the game makes sence.

There are other things we must think about too. When WCU is finished, you will be able to go all the way from Sol to Kilrah, to Vega, Enigma and Avalon. So, even if certain ships, or certain models, would -never- be found in the original privateer, they will be in WCU, because, honestly, WCU doesnt even pretends to be a privateer remake of sorts, it just happens that we are running on a privateer campaign right now. Lots of stuff is still under testing too... like, if you go and download our latest version, you will see there are stormfire guns and leech guns being sold in troy system. Those wont be there in final, for now they are there just so we can test them.

Will it be possible to play some kind of "expanded privateer" on it? Yes :p thats one of the things I am looking forward to ( you guys have no clue how cool it is to jump into a system near the border and see its under heavy kilrathi attack ) but it won't be a remake, its just plain different.

edit: I was reading your post again Bandit, and I really cant picture Spirit e-mailing you over and over because of these forums. Its almost as if we are talking about two entirely different persons. She ( yes, I use "she" ) has always been quite a open minded, calm person to me. I never saw her going into silly arguments ( like I did once with chuck about some capship :p ) or being annoying at our forums.

I don't know, this whole grudge is completely weird to me. I absolutely can't get it. You -two- seen like nice people to me. I am glad I found WCU after the smokes of the flame wars were gone.
 
heh...what, are you desperate to have an 'uber coding girl' that you ignore the fact that its a male? gah...anyway...

The problem with having the whole universe, if you're some civilian guy, you should never be able to go to kilrah, and big battles...something tells me you'd be getting involved and it'd change the outcome of things in a fairly drastic way. while its all cool to have 'the whole universe and the kitchen sink!!!' it leaves way to many problems in the overall scheme of things. when the player can go running around, bump into blair, kill him and thus negate how things are supposed to be, there's a problem. and you can't just make blair the unkillable, folks will expect to be able to do said crazy things. it doesn't work. when you can make huge sweeping changes all by your lonesome in john j. rambo style to the universes contiunity...there's a problem. a big one. you should never be able to do half the things you people keep yelling about. you're on man in a really crappy ship. taking on the entirety of the kilrathi fleet in said crappy ship alone or even having that opportunity is dumb.
 
BradMick said:
heh...what, are you desperate to have an 'uber coding girl' that you ignore the fact that its a male? gah...anyway...

The problem with having the whole universe, if you're some civilian guy, you should never be able to go to kilrah, and big battles...something tells me you'd be getting involved and it'd change the outcome of things in a fairly drastic way. while its all cool to have 'the whole universe and the kitchen sink!!!' it leaves way to many problems in the overall scheme of things. when the player can go running around, bump into blair, kill him and thus negate how things are supposed to be, there's a problem. and you can't just make blair the unkillable, folks will expect to be able to do said crazy things. it doesn't work. when you can make huge sweeping changes all by your lonesome in john j. rambo style to the universes contiunity...there's a problem. a big one. you should never be able to do half the things you people keep yelling about. you're on man in a really crappy ship. taking on the entirety of the kilrathi fleet in said crappy ship alone or even having that opportunity is dumb.


Whats wrong with being able to play in the world of wing commander and changing the coarse of history. your quote on how making sweeping changes all by your lomesom... Have you ever played WC at all as blair all by your lonesome you pretty much win the whole war. If you dont like the idea of the game and have no positive input then fine dont play. I for one would love the chance to try to make a pirate cargo run through huge battles or trade with renegade kilrathi across the border. Get a chance to participate in large scall conflicts make Wing Commander my own universe screw how the story went in Cannon this is making your own story.
 
i've given lots of feedback. not much is positive, because unfortunately at this stage in the game, there's nothing much positive. yeah, as blair you make a lucky run into kilrah, it could just as easily have turned out differently. note how it was all scripted and you didnt have the whole kilrathi fleet hangin out in orbit above you. if you've ever read the novel, it wasn't all that easy. Everyone pretty well buys it out there on the run in.

Anyway, thats the problem. the player shouldn't ever be able to change the history. just run around watching it unfold around them. the universe is as it is. i would probably say that this would fall under the 'i want and so its gonna happen' type thing. but is one of those that shouldn't happen.
 
Why shouldnt you be able to change it thats what the game is about. If the game was about selling chickens it would be about that. This one is about changing the universe so get over it.
 
This is the kind of attitude we are talking about....

Consider the logic of a lone Japanese civilian making his way to the white house in WW2 and blowing the president's head off. It just had no way of happening.

It's your game and you can do what you want but does it make a lot of sense?
 
And i'm not really sure where you get the idea that WCU is all about changing the universe. last i read it was nothing more than an SDK for setting up future mods, and also the platform for which 'privateer 3' would be created. nothing in there about 'go to kilrah in your super dreadnought and keel dem allz goodz!'

but hey, maybe i have a problem reading...
 
Hopefully as WCU and the vegastrike engine improve we'll see some projects based off of WCU. For example, I think the WCU project is the closest thing we have that might eventually lead to a persitant online wing commander game. Assuming of course that the net-code in VS gets finished (the net-code is currently 'working', but still in development), and the project itself shapes up. You could have the servers set up to host a universe that is in a certain time and at a specific location of the wing commander universe!

After a few projects pop up based on WCU, any advancements a project could potentially be applied to WCU and shared with the other WCU projects.

I actually have an idea for a WCU based project. I'll post details sometime sometime and see if anyone else is interested. Lets just say that the idea is unique, relativley simple, and WCU would only play a small part of it... oh, and netcode would need to be there. More on that thought later.
 
Nomad Terror said:
This is the kind of attitude we are talking about....

Consider the logic of a lone Japanese civilian making his way to the white house in WW2 and blowing the president's head off. It just had no way of happening.

It's your game and you can do what you want but does it make a lot of sense?
The problem is that people make statements like BusbyLogic has done without really being associated with WCU, but his statements then get associated with WCU.
 
BradMick said:
And i'm not really sure where you get the idea that WCU is all about changing the universe. last i read it was nothing more than an SDK for setting up future mods, and also the platform for which 'privateer 3' would be created. nothing in there about 'go to kilrah in your super dreadnought and keel dem allz goodz!'

but hey, maybe i have a problem reading...

But there is a lot of this "be able to do everything sentiment" in the WCU forum. I also understood it as a game in the first. There were even discussions about the gamer being able to own a station which allows him to coordinate fleetactivities...

BradMick said:
The problem with having the whole universe, if you're some civilian guy, you should never be able to go to kilrah, and big battles...something tells me you'd be getting involved and it'd change the outcome of things in a fairly drastic way. while its all cool to have 'the whole universe and the kitchen sink!!!' it leaves way to many problems in the overall scheme of things...

I don't see this problem. I mean not all parts of WCU have to be playable in the Privateer way. I mean no civilian can expect to be able to go into kilrathi space and survive... or be able to attack the confeds and survive... And, the gamer simply shouldn't meet Blair. Yet, these things don't mean that the whole kirathi empire shouldn't be in WCU. But nobody should expect that the privateer thing works there. I mean it's a little like in real life. AFAIK (from sorry TV documentaries BTW), there is armed bounty hunting in the states (sorry if i#m wrong there). If anybody would do something like this in germany for example, the guy would be in serious legal difficulties. Other example: There was once the soviet union. But no bounty hunter and not many businessmen of those day thought they could simply go there and do there jobs there as they did at home. The privateer thing might work in gemini because of weak confed an kirathi presence. And maybe it work's in some other sectors but for sure it won't work in the whole universe. And, if the gamer wouldn't expect it to work in the whole Universe we wouldn't have this problem with wcu. I mean, egrmany doesn't vanish form the map because you can't bounty hunt here (at least i hope so;) )...
 
charlieg said:
The problem is that people make statements like BusbyLogic has done without really being associated with WCU, but his statements then get associated with WCU.

I would agree that a misunderstanding like that could spark some unnecessary conflict.
 
oh, i'm not saying Kilrah or the Kilrathi Empire shoudn't be there. Just that the player should never be able to make a crazy one man bombing run all the way there. It'd be killer to live inside the universe, to maybe visit the frontlines, but the only way i'd see the player ever visiting the frontlines is when a battle isn't going on doing a resupply mission to a terran carrier.

now, this may be a controversial thing, but if you were playing as the Kilrathi...then yeah, sure. you can go to kilrah, but you're damn sure not going to be able to go to Earth.
 
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