Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
They especially shouldn't be making it look like *I* closed the thread after ranting about asparagus syndrome.
this game, WC Saga, and the truth
- Thread starter FleeBalls
- Start date
Dyret
Super Carrot!
LOAF doesnt want to censor people because hey hate SAGA... And i think that's a great, but the guy that started it was acting like a complete moron(Ur aLl Stoopid aND ReTArdeD BeCUss U Dont MakE thA Mod fASt enuGH, TherEFOre U MuST hATE uz AlL, yA doMBazsEz I bEt Ur gAMe is IMaGInaRy). I have nothing against FleeBalls, he seems like a devoted fan, but that post was just... bizarre. There's alot of intelligent and just complaints about Saga in this thread, but most of them are also presented in other thread, so unless I've missed something, I think this thread has served I'ts purpose, If it ever had any.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
What the hell are you talking about? The original post is very reasonably stated... and it's grammar and style are fine -- it doesn't have any of the things you're trying to parody here.
Dyret
Super Carrot!
But most of the even remotely intelligent complaints about saga that we see in this thread are presented in several others as well, this one is just embarrasing. I can't see how FleeBalls' post is any better than Saga's own PDF explaination; even though he had one or two good points, the thing as a whole is pretty awful(You obviously hate us all, you havent released anything for a long time, AND YOUR MOD PROBALBY DOESNT EVEN EXIST!).
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
I would agree with those points, Saga is a terrible project trying, apparently in vain, to mod a terrible game. They certainly have no respect for the community - look at how they reply to... well, everything. The initial poster has every right to be frustrated - Saga has been promising great things since 2001. Even so, there's nothing at all wrong with the way he expressed himself... he made a reasonable argument without being crazy.
No amouint of you pretending to misspell words makes it so -- there's nothing at all like that in the thread-starter.
Delance
Victory, you say?
Well, now that the engine has been put into question, FS2 is not that more advanced than Prophecy, and if even it were, both of them are old by now. So wouldn't it make more sense to use the Vision engine for modding, or at least a new engine, like the Nexus one? Perhaps Saga made more sense in 2001, but right know it's getting a little late for using a 1999 engine.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
About as long as a 1997 engine. What's your point, exactly? The Saga team consists of people who had no idea how to mod the Vision engine, but who knew how to mod the FS2 engine... so what engine did you expect them to use? It's a particularly weird question to ask after Saga's been in development for five years already. What's the point of discussing the advantages/disadvantages of the engine they're using when switching to another engine isn't possible without wasting many, many months converting everything to a new engine?Delance said:
I must disagree on some points... the Freespace engine (or, rather, it's recent fan-made iterations) is not so technically awful as to prevent the production of a good mod, or one that looks dated. There are, I admit, some things that do need refining (specular lighting, etc.), but it is not a bad engine, and the open-source project is definitely leaps and bounds ahead of the original FS engine, or (god forbid I mention it) the Vision engine. It's been updated.
Don't get me wrong here, folks... I agree that Freespace and it's sequel were, in fact, horrible. The attempt to make the player feel he/she was a small cog in a big war machine failed, utterly, giving you zero immersion. There was simply no feelings drawn from it. I felt as though I were playing a game. Nothing more. This seems to be the trend, these days... a poorly scripted single-player campaign, written solely to get the player prepared for multiplayer.
This is a bad trend. One which saddens me.
The problem is, the multiplayer wasn't all that good, either. My mind drifts back to my days on PXO, where all that was required to win was to ram an opponent, disrupting his vector and opening up a brief window for me to unleash hell with rocket pods... not challenging. No skill required, at any rate. (not to say I wasn't a decent pilot. not the best, granted, but still, decent.)
To the Saga Team:
I hate to say it, but you guys have reviled yourselves to the CIC community a few too many times. Easiest way to do PR would be to answer a question or two a week, sarcasm-free, 100% professional, nothing too revealing... and not say a dang word otherwise regarding the project. Release a screenshot oh... once a week(or month). Just one. Doesn't even have to be anything fancy, just a gameplay shot of some random mission. Something to keep the tastebuds craving more. I've worked on projects before which were similar... they fell apart, but we did come up with a bit of a PR formula that kept us from looking like ol' Derek Smart to our fans(however few they may have been). Unfortunately, you boys haven't quite hit that sweet spot yet.
I'll even help... I have a question you can answer. What approach are you guys taking with the waypoint system of the Wing Commander Series? What of intersystem jumps? Landing sequences? The Alt+W system just doesn't seem as though it feels right for the WC universe....
Don't get me wrong here, folks... I agree that Freespace and it's sequel were, in fact, horrible. The attempt to make the player feel he/she was a small cog in a big war machine failed, utterly, giving you zero immersion. There was simply no feelings drawn from it. I felt as though I were playing a game. Nothing more. This seems to be the trend, these days... a poorly scripted single-player campaign, written solely to get the player prepared for multiplayer.
This is a bad trend. One which saddens me.
The problem is, the multiplayer wasn't all that good, either. My mind drifts back to my days on PXO, where all that was required to win was to ram an opponent, disrupting his vector and opening up a brief window for me to unleash hell with rocket pods... not challenging. No skill required, at any rate. (not to say I wasn't a decent pilot. not the best, granted, but still, decent.)
To the Saga Team:
I hate to say it, but you guys have reviled yourselves to the CIC community a few too many times. Easiest way to do PR would be to answer a question or two a week, sarcasm-free, 100% professional, nothing too revealing... and not say a dang word otherwise regarding the project. Release a screenshot oh... once a week(or month). Just one. Doesn't even have to be anything fancy, just a gameplay shot of some random mission. Something to keep the tastebuds craving more. I've worked on projects before which were similar... they fell apart, but we did come up with a bit of a PR formula that kept us from looking like ol' Derek Smart to our fans(however few they may have been). Unfortunately, you boys haven't quite hit that sweet spot yet.
I'll even help... I have a question you can answer. What approach are you guys taking with the waypoint system of the Wing Commander Series? What of intersystem jumps? Landing sequences? The Alt+W system just doesn't seem as though it feels right for the WC universe....
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Uh... yes, there was several pages of heated discussion between Saga team members and non-members. You really shouldn't jump into a thread like this without bothering to read it first.PANI said:
Right, but it doesn't make sense - you could just as well argue that Origin shouldn't have released a game using Vision in 1998, because the engine was already outdated... not having to switch to an all-new engine is a huge advantage in itself.Delance said:
Delance
Victory, you say?
Quarto said:
No, because Origin always re-use their engines a couple of years later. They did that with WC2, WC4, WCSO, and, really, even with WC3 (because it was used before on Armada). But we are talking about a 7 year old engine here. That's about the same amount of time that separates WCP from WC1! If Origin were to re-use the 1990 WC1 Engine on a game on 1997, I would say that would be a bad idea.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Well, you do have to consider that seven years from 1990 to 1997 were, in terms of gaming technology, a far longer period than the nine years from 1997 up to now. You can see this easily just by looking at WCP - you'll find that it's aged far, far less than WC1 had by 1997.Delance said:
In any case, none of this is relevant. The point is, if you switch engines mid-project, you end up having to rework massive parts of your project, which adds a given portion of time to the project's timespan. Additionally, the longer a project's timespan is, the longer the amount of time added to it as a consequence of such changes. That's why the big game developers generally try to develop games for computers that are still too expensive for the average user - because by the time the game is finished, it needs to still not be obsolete.
When it comes to mods, though, you don't have the option of choosing an engine that's not gonna be obsolete when you're done. So you choose based on entirely different criteria - ease of use, appropriateness for the mod, et cetera. And you can just imagine how much extra time you'd be adding to a five-year project by switching engines half-way through. So you really can't argue that the advantage the FS2 engine had in 1999 has now disappeared - the engine's advantage is simply the fact that Tolwyn & company know how to mod it.
PopsiclePete
Mission programmer
I intend to mod WC2 in the future, because I love that game. Will delance say I have lost my senses ? 
.
meisdavidp
All your belief cannot absolve your sin.
I thought you needed source codes to make mods? Did Origin somehow manage to slip the WC2 source past me? Then again, I don't know too much about modding. The editor that came with Morrowind made me wet myself in terror.