LeHah
212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
This explains a lot.
Is this project dead?
- Thread starter NamedJughead
- Start date
This explains a lot.
My Advice
To those who responded constructively:
Vega Strike is one of a few options... the Freespace2 engine is also worth looking at (BSG: Beyond the Red Line is especially impressive).
VS has limitations, yes. However it also has a steady developer base, and of late has improved rapidly. The next version of VS will be out within a month.
Using an engine such as VS or FS2, the Pioneer team could have rapidly prototyped the game. They could have assessed how difficult it would be to add the features required for Pioneer to the engine they used for prototyping and attracted more developer interest by releasing game previews. Freeware development is not dissimilar to open source game development - you want to attract talent to your team and it can be hard to do that on just faith and renders.
You could even work on a prototype mod [for another engine] and a new engine in parallel and grow the Pioneer team working on the new engine whilst people marvel at the cool art in the prototype mod.
Also I would recommend a project like Pioneer does go open source with the engine - keep the graphics / media under a closed license if you are concerned with that, but opening up the engine would benefit the project in terms of allowing tech-savvy people to get involved easily. I mean, at the moment, Pioneer is at the mercy of a sole developer. What if he leaves? Who has the code and/or understands it? The project is dead without him. Even with him, the project is vapourware until release (this is true of any unreleased project that has been in the making for a while - not an attempted insult).
There is a lot of potential for Pioneer but IMHO the development model probably hampers the project. I'm not trying to put anyone down here, I'm saying this because I don't want to see Pioneer languish as one of many freeware games started by talented artists who don't make the right programming decisions and as such their beautiful work is lost because the game engine never breaks through.
VS is not perfect, but it has many active contributors, many people who work on it, and is being actively improved. The same is true of FS2.
Using VS or FS2, Pioneer would be an active community project that attracts new talent and can absorb the loss of key contributors. As it stands, believe it or not, this project is hanging onto life by a thread. 1 developer? Closed source? It'll not be released for many years, if ever. I've seen it all before and I have a lot of experience in software development as an observer, contributor, project developer, and project manager i.e. just about every perspective you can imagine. There are patterns in software development and this is following a bad one, one that will fall short of it's aspirations.
Should you cast scorn on the above advice (which given the hostility of this forum, would not surprise me) and continue on your current path, I can only say I hope I am wrong in my predictions and I wish success and good luck to the Pioneer team.
To those who replied unconstructively:
I hope life improves for those of you whose unhappiness cause you to treat others with irrational contempt, and I hope maturity reaches those who believe in the schoolyard mentality that afflicts this place (CIC Zone).
To those who responded constructively:
Vega Strike is one of a few options... the Freespace2 engine is also worth looking at (BSG: Beyond the Red Line is especially impressive).
VS has limitations, yes. However it also has a steady developer base, and of late has improved rapidly. The next version of VS will be out within a month.
Using an engine such as VS or FS2, the Pioneer team could have rapidly prototyped the game. They could have assessed how difficult it would be to add the features required for Pioneer to the engine they used for prototyping and attracted more developer interest by releasing game previews. Freeware development is not dissimilar to open source game development - you want to attract talent to your team and it can be hard to do that on just faith and renders.
You could even work on a prototype mod [for another engine] and a new engine in parallel and grow the Pioneer team working on the new engine whilst people marvel at the cool art in the prototype mod.
Also I would recommend a project like Pioneer does go open source with the engine - keep the graphics / media under a closed license if you are concerned with that, but opening up the engine would benefit the project in terms of allowing tech-savvy people to get involved easily. I mean, at the moment, Pioneer is at the mercy of a sole developer. What if he leaves? Who has the code and/or understands it? The project is dead without him. Even with him, the project is vapourware until release (this is true of any unreleased project that has been in the making for a while - not an attempted insult).
There is a lot of potential for Pioneer but IMHO the development model probably hampers the project. I'm not trying to put anyone down here, I'm saying this because I don't want to see Pioneer languish as one of many freeware games started by talented artists who don't make the right programming decisions and as such their beautiful work is lost because the game engine never breaks through.
VS is not perfect, but it has many active contributors, many people who work on it, and is being actively improved. The same is true of FS2.
Using VS or FS2, Pioneer would be an active community project that attracts new talent and can absorb the loss of key contributors. As it stands, believe it or not, this project is hanging onto life by a thread. 1 developer? Closed source? It'll not be released for many years, if ever. I've seen it all before and I have a lot of experience in software development as an observer, contributor, project developer, and project manager i.e. just about every perspective you can imagine. There are patterns in software development and this is following a bad one, one that will fall short of it's aspirations.
Should you cast scorn on the above advice (which given the hostility of this forum, would not surprise me) and continue on your current path, I can only say I hope I am wrong in my predictions and I wish success and good luck to the Pioneer team.
To those who replied unconstructively:
I hope life improves for those of you whose unhappiness cause you to treat others with irrational contempt, and I hope maturity reaches those who believe in the schoolyard mentality that afflicts this place (CIC Zone).
LeHah
212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
I hope wisdom reaches you at some point soon. You'll then realize that its you who are speaking out of turn. While all are welcome, many here (especially the staff) do not suffer fools gladly.
Dundradal
Frog Blast the Vent Core!
Thanks for the advice. I'll make sure to change my life now.
It's pretty clear that the Pioneer team is devoted to their particular path and I, along with many others, are firmly behind their decision. If you notice we have no criticism for them deciding to take the path they have, but instead have focused on your attempt to swing them into an engine they have said will not fit their means. I'm willing to wait quite a while if I know they are trying to deliver a quality game to Wingnuts.
Stop trying to push these guys in directions you don't want to go. It's amazing that you wonder why so many people are against what you propose. The Pioneer team is doing their thing at their pace and we all respect them for that. You coming in and praising engines they've already disqualified isn't constructive at all. Sure they could be farther along using VS or whatever, but it wouldn't be what they wanted and they would have to change things and therefore Pioneer might suffer.
Let them do what they want and we'll all get to enjoy the results when things are ready.
It's pretty clear that the Pioneer team is devoted to their particular path and I, along with many others, are firmly behind their decision. If you notice we have no criticism for them deciding to take the path they have, but instead have focused on your attempt to swing them into an engine they have said will not fit their means. I'm willing to wait quite a while if I know they are trying to deliver a quality game to Wingnuts.
Stop trying to push these guys in directions you don't want to go. It's amazing that you wonder why so many people are against what you propose. The Pioneer team is doing their thing at their pace and we all respect them for that. You coming in and praising engines they've already disqualified isn't constructive at all. Sure they could be farther along using VS or whatever, but it wouldn't be what they wanted and they would have to change things and therefore Pioneer might suffer.
Let them do what they want and we'll all get to enjoy the results when things are ready.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Look, the people doing Pioneer have already explained all their choices years ago. You ranted about their choices years ago, telling them to use VS and go open source, and again they explained why they don't want to use VS and why they don't want to go open source. Now you come back again to say the same thing again - how exactly do you expect people to react to that?
Eder
Mr. Standoff
I don't think you get the point here - while the Pioneer team was certainly too optimistic in their initial schedule, there is no indication by anyone on the team that they would rather have "rapidly prototyped" or "attracted more developer interest" to anything.
That the VS or FS2 engines are not the best choice for Pioneer should be a given to you and to everyone else... since years ago, when the people who envisioned the game said so. They have this thing planned out. Is it possible that they have no idea what they are doing? Yes, but it's not reasonable that you expect to suggest that and still get a warm welcome from everyone.
While I understand that you probably mean well and speak from some degree of experience, that is what it looked like. You are a guy who walked in on someone else's work and suggested that it was poorly planned, without having any previous knowledge or involvement in it. This is not a commercial game, there is no budget or Christmas release date hanging over anyone's head, and no people jumping ship for better salaries.
Eh, don't be overly dramatic. Your initial "advice" was pretty much "If you had used another engine, you'd have a WHOLE GAME by now!" - something that disregarded whatever reasons the creators of this project had for not going with VS or FS2 in the first place. Have you considered that perhaps they would prefer to see the game become vaporware than release something different from what they want their game to be?
I really think your advice is misguided, because it ignores everything that has characterized this particular project from the start and assumes that the developers' plan is going bonkers (Based on what? Three years without a release, if that? That's not bad for a team of half a dozen people working on a fan game).
Again, you may have meant it in the most constructive way, but your original post was exactly yet another VS/Open Source fan boy walking in on someone else's project, claiming that it would get done faster if it was done your way.
The only other thing I really have to say, since this is clearly going to be a closed issue is...look at B5: I've Found Her, that game took years, and years, and years, and years, and...well, I think you get the point, to develop and release. It's a very slow process building something up from the ground up. I remember playing the very first Vega Strike release, when you had to input some magical code to be able to switch between some wierd ship and a Klingon Vorcha or something. It was neat, but the release many years later of vega strike improved was definately neat too. It's funny how a game that started as a basement project (my assumption based on how I remember it all those years ago) turned into this evil maniacal beast hell bent on conquering everything to bolster its image.
Oh, and yeah. The overly dramatic bits were just rediculous there bud. Because we all don't agree with you we're all juvenile? Come on, give me a break. Take some responsibility for your own garbage and wake up a little, the world really and truly doesn't work that way, and neither should the internet.
Brad
Oh, and yeah. The overly dramatic bits were just rediculous there bud. Because we all don't agree with you we're all juvenile? Come on, give me a break. Take some responsibility for your own garbage and wake up a little, the world really and truly doesn't work that way, and neither should the internet.
Brad
ChrisReid
Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
It's just another engine and mod group. They've tried to start a lot of WC stuff, and the decisions they've made and directions they've gone have been fairly universally jeered. With a few (one?) exceptions, the projects that have spun off from it have been pretty bad. A handful of the people behind it didn't take all this well, and reacted pretty poorly to the response here. Once in a while one of them slips back in and tries to make some silly ripple like this.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
I dunno about everybody else, but I don't really mind the whole Privateer "Remake" thing or anything like that - it's the constant "everybody should switch to Vega Strike" rants that always got to me.
Plasteel Skull
Commodore
Hi guys! Any news concerning the project? 
Joel_VanEenwyk
Spaceman
I'm finally settled into my new job, so I've been coding away last week or so. We're working on a number of test cases to make sure the engine is solid, but we have also switched focus to gameplay for a while, so that we can finally start seeing some results. I could keep working on the engine, but it doesn't lead to playable results, which has been discouraging for us. We hope to have a rough playable demo for ourselves in the next couple weeks. Once we have that, we can focus more on the graphical side of things.
Hope that answers your question!
~Joel
Hope that answers your question!
~Joel
Plasteel Skull
Commodore
agree. Thanks!
Chris Knudsen
Captain
Definitely good news. I need an excuse to buy a new computer and when this game is done, it could be that excuse! 
R
Rabiator
Guest
Vega Strike fans vs. developers
Near the beginning of the thread someone said
"Second, Vega Strike has a long and ugly history of having fanatical idiot fans, who go around telling the rest of the world to switch to their engine, and we've had enough of that a long time ago."
It should be noted that the Vega Strike *developers* have announced a migration to Ogre3D as medium-term goal (they admit it won't be done by the upcoming version 0.5).
In other words, the people who really matter in Vega Strike have sort of admitted that their current engine is not the ultimate solution. Feel free to whack any rabid fanbois with that ;-)
Near the beginning of the thread someone said
"Second, Vega Strike has a long and ugly history of having fanatical idiot fans, who go around telling the rest of the world to switch to their engine, and we've had enough of that a long time ago."
It should be noted that the Vega Strike *developers* have announced a migration to Ogre3D as medium-term goal (they admit it won't be done by the upcoming version 0.5).
In other words, the people who really matter in Vega Strike have sort of admitted that their current engine is not the ultimate solution. Feel free to whack any rabid fanbois with that ;-)
Michelle D
Captain
Woo hoo!
Can't wait till this is finished.
I guess you guys are pretty much done modeling, I saw your other threads... I've been trying to model ships from WC1, but have no idea how to make it useable or put it into a game.
I have Softimage 5.0.
Do you guys need people? or talking heads like the bar guy or people in the bars? I could try and mimic the style of the 2D characters but in 3D.
I use blendshapes/ deformers for facial animation but if the animation is just exported short vids then I guess it won't matter how I rig the characters.
deviant page
Can't wait till this is finished.
I guess you guys are pretty much done modeling, I saw your other threads... I've been trying to model ships from WC1, but have no idea how to make it useable or put it into a game.
I have Softimage 5.0.
Do you guys need people? or talking heads like the bar guy or people in the bars? I could try and mimic the style of the 2D characters but in 3D.
I use blendshapes/ deformers for facial animation but if the animation is just exported short vids then I guess it won't matter how I rig the characters.
deviant page
Well, the dev team is pretty well set as is, however we could use some character concepts though. 3 Views would be good there. The style should be along the lines of Privateer, mixed maybe with some western-esque themes. We were kicking around at one point something kind of along the lines of Firefly as far as the dress goes, but a little less blatantly western. That was the original idea back a couple of months ago anyway.
Brad
Brad
