Standoff Team Completes Final Cutscenes (August 2, 2008)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator

For all those eagerly awaiting the final chapter in the Standoff series, there's a new update from Eder. Work continues at a slow pace, but the team is still committed to finishing this amazing game.
Episode 5 continues to be something of a struggle as far as finding the energy and motivation is concerned. We've been working on Standoff for a long, long time, and... well, we are tired. So, about all we can promise in terms of schedules is that we won't give up altogether. That said, there isn't any real external obstacle that could prevent us from finishing this episode this year. Just ourselves...

Enough whining. What progress is there to report? First up, the game engine cutscenes are all complete now - check the progress page, see how that bit of red turned blue all of a sudden. Fiction remains red, though, so Quarto is still being a lazy jerk. :-P

Missions have also been making progress. Of the ten missions on the losing path, six are now complete - four of them in the past two weeks! Of the remaining four, Pierre has two of them in the finishing stages at the moment. So, that leaves two missions on the losing path that haven't been started. The winning path is much worse off - one mission is well under way, but it also happens to be the only winning path mission to have been started at all. The important thing, though, is that we are making any progress at all.
Starkey also recently found a problem with the Standoff website, so if you visited in the last few weeks and don't run any kind of anti-virus scanner, you should probably run a check. AVG Free is free and works great.

--
Original update published on August 2, 2008
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Cutscenes are definately something I have to look into for for the WCCD Mod. There nicely done in Standoff that's for sure. Keep up the great work guys
 
Maybe as a little motivator here, I'll pass on a story from the Mythic event.

A day or two before we started at EA, LOAF, Frosty and I hit a computer junk store to get some last minute supplies. One of the clerks there was familiar with the CIC and recognized LOAF. We talked about quite a bit there in the shop, but he was particularly excited when we mentioned Standoff at one point. He started rattling off his favorite character names and favorite missions and different things you could do on the different paths. He went on for 5-10 minutes probably. And he was very very anxiously awaiting the final chapter to see how it all would end.
 
Thanks, it's really great to hear there's people waiting out there - we definitely will get Standoff done (relatively) soon :).
 
Great job with Standoff. I hope someone makes a 'Kasey Chang' FAQ with all the intricate alternate details of the game. :p
 
Just my $0.02 of encouragement, but I wanted to thank you guys for all the work you're doing! In my opinion, Standoff is probably one of THE best fan-made games (and I mean "game", not "mod", because you guys have pushed the boundary so much beyond a simple mod) that I have ever seen come out. And I mean anywhere, not just in the Wing Commander world. To me at least, Standoff feels like more of a finished product than some of the actual official Wing Commander games. You've stayed true to the feel of the original games, while adding fun new twists and innovative elements both to the storyline and the gameplay experience, which is what every game developer strives for in a sequel. And you did it all out of love for the game, which really shines through.

I'm really excited for it to finally be complete, and I'm sure many many people here feel the same. So don't feel like your work is underappreciated! I bet that I speak for many of us when I say that we all think you guys are awesome, and THANK YOU FOR STANDOFF.
 
Thank you for your GREAT work. I do not write often, but I check the Standoff progress at least once a week. I'm really awaiting for the final chapter. I really love this game.

THANK YOU!

PS: I hope we get at least at the simulator a mission with a Bengal-class carrier.
 
Rest assured that our Bengal model will make an appearance somewhere else besides just in the ship viewer. :)

I'd tell you "every one of our ships will be used outside of the ship viewer", but I'm not 100% sure on that statement right now. At some point we actually had more different ship types than the limit of different ship types that can be spawned from within mission code in the same campaign, and I'm not sure if we ever worked around that engine limitation (the ships we had chosen to leave out of the actual missions were the Dralthi and Salthi, if I'm not mistaken).
 
Hehe, at the moment, the Dralthi and Salthi aren't even included in the ship viewer... one of these days, we have to decide what to do about them :p.
 
Hello, just dropping by (I'm working on getting a job and I don't have as much free time anymore).

Just wondering - you said several times (in older threads) that the Hakaga mission ended up being too easy... While I think it's pretty difficult, it's indeed not the near-impossible mission it was supposed to be. So, will you make it harder for the final version?

And congratulations on your recent progress! Best wishes from me. I'm sure I will somehow find the time needed to play Episode 5 when it comes out. ;)
 
Well... each of the Hakaga missions is fundamentally different.

The Episode 4 mission was an all-out strike mission. With missions like that, there's a big problem making them difficult - you can make them impossible (literally) to win, but if you just want them to be really hard, you have to give the player a fighting chance... and then the Rapier gets you screwed :p. A mission tough to survive in a Sabre? Easy. A mission tough to survive in a Crossbow. Piece of cake. A mission tough to survive in a Rapier? Errrr... I really don't know how it happened, but it seems that the WC1/2 Rapier was really designed with WCP in mind. I hated it in WC1, I thought it was average at best in WC2, and then in Standoff...

...Err, but getting back to the Hakaga missions. The other missions are, well, different. For example, in one of them you escort Marine shuttles as they go after various capships. You can bet that one's gonna be tough ;).
 
Yes, apologies, I was of course talking about the fact that the Hakaga ended up not being all that hard to destroy in Episode 4. And the Standoff Rapier is truly one of the most powerful WC ships when it comes to dogfights.

I'm sure that the Ep.5 Hakaga mission (the one where you escort the marines) will indeed be a lot tougher. I also assume the player won't get to choose between several ships this time (I'm assure Reismann will have you fly a Rapier, considering that this will be one of the most epic missions ever. Unless you decide to be sadistic and have the player fly a Gladius or something :D).
 
Hehe, at the moment, the Dralthi and Salthi aren't even included in the ship viewer... one of these days, we have to decide what to do about them :p.
Well, I thought they were already in the Ep 4 release... if they're not, then we can have them in the ship viewer for Ep 5, at least, since that doesn't mess with the actual spawnable ship IDs, right? I don't think anyone will miss them in the actual missions, it's not like we don't have enough variety in the stuff you get to shoot down (and I don't think I have given either of them proper debris meshes).

I also assume the player won't get to choose between several ships this time (I'm assure Reismann will have you fly a Rapier, considering that this will be one of the most epic missions ever. Unless you decide to be sadistic and have the player fly a Gladius or something :D).
We generally only give players different ship choices in situations when Bradshaw would actually be able to choose diferent ships without being discharged for crazyness... but that doesn't mean we have run out of chances to piss players off just yet - we could just throw in some random recon mission and put everyone back in Stilettos. :p
 
Well, I thought they were already in the Ep 4 release... if they're not, then we can have them in the ship viewer for Ep 5, at least, since that doesn't mess with the actual spawnable ship IDs, right? I don't think anyone will miss them in the actual missions, it's not like we don't have enough variety in the stuff you get to shoot down (and I don't think I have given either of them proper debris meshes).
Yeah, we can certainly have them in the ship viewer. I need to check again what the issue was with the ship.iff entries - it would be good if we could at least show these ships in the sim (which doesn't require them to be spawnable from the ship.iff list - just as long as they have the right VDU image, we can simply declare them as objects).
 
we could just throw in some random recon mission and put everyone back in Stilettos. :p

That would be interesting, especially since since we're going to fight Vatari. I hope they're going to be tough (though considering the fact that the engine's AI isn't all that good, the Gothri may still end up being the most dangerous due to that annoying rear turret).
 
Okay, something that's been nagging me for the last few days - that last post *was* a joke, right? We *are* going to fight Vatari? Or did you suddenly change your mind or decide that it would contradict FA's plot?
 
I would say to stay tuned to the same bat channel at the same bat time and download it when it comes out although it's nagging me too but I think it's probably best to wait :)
 
Back
Top