Is the game still in development?

klauss said:
I did say I didn't get that offended... just that I'm sure Halman didn't just try to insult me/us... there is no point in coming to a board just to insult people. So, by making him defend his accusations, I was expecting to uncover the real meaning of what he said. Apparently, he has no intention of doing that. That's sad...

Well, I meant WCU. ( I have no idea who you are. :) )

I don't think I was making the kind of accusations that need to be justified. Taking someone elses work and modifying with the idea that you have a better idea of what the artist wanted that he/she did is extremely arrogant. :) I'd be a lot less put out by modifications to models if people didn't try to justify it as a realization of the artists' actual desires.(DaVinci wanted the Mona Lisa to be an anime girl, but due to the technical limitations of the style not having been invented yet, he wasn't able to. We've decided to make that change for him. Offensive sentiment or no?)

And sorry that it took me a whole day to reply to this. I've been busy with stuff that kept me away from the CZ.(Nice to see you made several jabs at me for it though.)
 
sure could have fooled me wooky. the way folks were salivating over that piece (and in keeping in line with what i know about how spirit works, the whole 'beggars can't be choosers' mentality) it is exactly what would have wound up in the game...probably as is. whatever art talent the WCU group has available, they need to all work towards a common goal. create a ship list, gather resources (i.e. claw marks blueprints, sprites from the games) and assign one ship to each person. ensure that it is done to perfection, and then after that, post it up over here or something, or just start posting here so that it can be reviewed by the folks who know the canon details best. gah, i've done all of that actually. i've gone so far as to go over to that forum and point out where things weren't correct on models and all i got in response was (and i paraphrase) 'who the hell do you think you are?'. So, again, it goes back to the whole deal of...the knowledgable folks DO offer help and suggestions on improvement (at first in nice ways) and are ignored. those same folks then up the ante a bit and start throwing around the insults to try and get through the thick skulled 'well i think THIS is better...never mind that its not right!' attitude that (despite what you say) DOES prevail.
 
Halman said:
I don't think I was making the kind of accusations that need to be justified. Taking someone elses work and modifying with the idea that you have a better idea of what the artist wanted that he/she did is extremely arrogant. :) I'd be a lot less put out by modifications to models if people didn't try to justify it as a realization of the artists' actual desires.(DaVinci wanted the Mona Lisa to be an anime girl, but due to the technical limitations of the style not having been invented yet, he wasn't able to. We've decided to make that change for him. Offensive sentiment or no?)
But we didn't grab the artist's work. In games, first comes the concept art. Then, the modeller, and it finally gets ingame. Now... the thing to respect is the concept art, because the modeller's job is to try to fit that concept in an engine with specific limitations. We didn't find any concept art to base our work on, so we made up things. And... the keyword is would as in "would have done"... conditional. He could have wanted that... he also could have wanted something else. I don't see arrogance in that. But your point is clear: you don't think it's respectful. So... what would be?

Halman said:
(Nice to see you made several jabs at me for it though.)
Well... ya... sorry for being so insistent.
 
charlieg said:
(in response to 'has WCU been cancelled')

Btw, why did you say this?

i think you should probably do a better job of reading what the actual thread title was...

"Is the game still in development?"

my response was

"Unfortunately...yes"

the reason being, and i've stated this i'm pretty sure is because i'm not a fan of WCU.
 
BusbyLogic said:
LOAF follow your own policies and end this thread per rules of the forum. Anything more should be discussed in private through email or instant messanger.
Half the active threads on the WCU Sourceforge forums are about what horrible people we are, most of the rest are internet tough guys coming to break LOAF's nose. If we don't have this discussion here, then people will only get one side of the story.
 
klauss said:
But we didn't grab the artist's work. In games, first comes the concept art. Then, the modeller, and it finally gets ingame. Now... the thing to respect is the concept art, because the modeller's job is to try to fit that concept in an engine with specific limitations. We didn't find any concept art to base our work on, so we made up things. And... the keyword is would as in "would have done"... conditional. He could have wanted that... he also could have wanted something else. I don't see arrogance in that. But your point is clear: you don't think it's respectful. So... what would be?


Well, if the only source you have for them is the finished prodect, they should be modeled *exactly* as is. My response to seeing a ship in WCU shouldn't be "What the hell is that thing on it?"

Well... ya... sorry for being so insistent.
You should be! :)
 
KrisV said:
Half the active threads on the WCU Sourceforge forums are about what horrible people we are, most of the rest are internet tough guys coming to break LOAF's nose. If we don't have this discussion here, then people will only get one side of the story.
Yes, we're just vindictive psychotic crius haters.

Or, put into perspective, there are a couple of disgruntled threads usually because somebody got banned and then trashed over here and wanted to air their side of the story, one of which was a bit silly and contained people saying things they didn't really mean.

Ludicrous exaggerations do no good for either side. Can't we just stop reacting immaturely and move beyond this kind of negative attitude which cuts both ways, from both parties.
 
And what to do when, as in WCU, you have to mix stuff from 5 sources (WC1,2,3,4 and Priv), all with different looks (mostly because of this difference in technology)? You can't have a game with 5 sets of styles. That's actually the reason why the title screen looks bad: the ships. It's not Master Wooky's fault... the ships don't fit together. Priv's ships look real nice (Kilrathi fighters, for instance). But right next to it is the concordia carrier, which I must say is one of the best that came out of the old ones (flipping aside).

Obviously, old ships need redoing. With more detail, just to be in style with newer ships.
 
Halman said:
Well, if the only source you have for them is the finished prodect, they should be modeled *exactly* as is. My response to seeing a ship in WCU shouldn't be "What the hell is that thing on it?"
Of course there is the fact that Origin modelled a lot of ships according to the technological constraints of the time, meaning they are under detailed. As to how the details could be added, well, that's always going to be subjective. The general consensus here seems to be "don't add extra detail" but does that make it right?

Good detail shouldn't make you think, "What the hell is that thing on it?" I guess that has to be the goal.
 
klauss said:
And what to do when, as in WCU, you have to mix stuff from 5 sources (WC1,2,3,4 and Priv), all with different looks (mostly because of this difference in technology)? You can't have a game with 5 sets of styles.
That's managable. See how the ships were modeled for Standoff: their look were updated a bit for the newer engine, while keeping their original "soul". You should see the Concordia-class in Standoff: even if WC3/4 visual style was strikingly different from WC1/2, it blends beautifully with the rest of the ships. (too bad I don't have a clear screenshot at hand besides this one :( )
ladylex.jpg
 
See, I don't believe you have to streamline the fighters to all have the same look.
(If nothing else, just pretend that the fighters all apeal to various design asthetics at the time of production within the company producing them :) )

Don't go "Boo, they look like this because of technology. We need to update the look."
 
Oh... now I understand...
...english is just a problematic language. How come you (singular) is the same word as you (plural)? We should all talk spanish... we wouldn't have had that problem.
Sorry... misunderstanding.

Yes, that would explain it. I don't think it's a problem unique to English, though -- doesn't 'vous' mean either a group or a single person in French?

(Actually, how does it work in Spanish? I'm wondering about the etymologically of the southern slang tern 'yall', which would actually seem to solve this problem - which I, who grew up and very rarely interacted with Spanish speakers, never thought of it as a problem.)

Ok... it was a mistake to use that word.
For me, it's much more restrictive than what you think. Not everyone that doesn't agree is a fanatic. Fanatic behavior is disagreeing without a reason. Saying: WC1 didn't have that much detail... and that's it. I mean, it's obvious why WC1 didn't have that much detail... unless the reference is to WC1's concept art, not ingame art. Saying that the ship is supposed to look as it did in WC1 is nonsense... almost never games can recreate the full detail of the concept behind ingame art, and all I was saying is that, if we don't have access to that concept art, we may very well create it ourselves - just keep the spirit of ingame art pieces.
Now... I do think the caernaven is ugly. But, unless you're a texturing wiz, not much can be done with such a poor model.

Well, good example. Now, if you'd posted that to the WCU boards you'd get six replies saying this means you should do whatever you want to these ships (and then maybe one guy who wants to use this as an excuse to bring up why I should be punched in the nose - and incidentally, there are some good reasons to punch me in the nose... but y'all haven't figured them out yet).

If you posted it here we'd at least help you find some sources. We'd tell you there's a high res Hornet in the Kilrathi Saga intro and a high res Dralthi on the Wing Commander I box... we'd scan blueprints and Claw Marks pages... and we'd take a bunch of Wing Commander Academy screengrabs of Scimitars and Salthi. There's a painting of a Salthi on the SNES SM box... and paintings of Ventures and drawings of Rapiers in the old Nintendo Power promotional stuff. Oh, and there's some extra line drawings in an ol CGW. We could also find you the insignae and the flags that appear as little dots in the game sprites... and, of course, the higher resolution side views of the Confed fighters. And if you were rendering the Tiger's Claw... hoo-boy, there's a lot of source pictures we'd be able to dig up. We could find you all the sources that are available, so you could know what needs to be imagined and what already exists. If it were a serious, serious question we'd try and contact the original artists.

Regarding the frigate, I've seen the original Wing Commander IV textures, and they're beautiful. Little rivets and lines and all sorts of tiny ship details they took home from visiting the USS Lexington. Unfortunately, when reduced hundreds and hundreds of percent to the in-game model, it looks like a spotted dotted mess.

The guys responsible for the models have spoke about this - were you asking us instead of discussing it in your private cave, we could quote them. And we could show you screen captures from the high res WCIV movies off the DVD, which give a better idea of what the intent was. We could scan the concept art from the official guides and grab screenshots from the WC3 Behind the Screens CD, so you'd have an idea of what the original intention behind the capital ships was. Heck, the naval buffs among us could probably get you detailed pictures of the same American carrier upon which all the WC4 textures are based, if you were so interested.



That's bad news to chuck... he's the one following that issue. And he's done a lot of work towards that end.
I'll see if I can convice him to check with you or Chris.

Isn't Chuck the guy who angrily left the community forever because we told him Kilrathi wore clothes?

Because, probably not the best continuity editor you could choose.

(Edit: yes, he is. Check our archives for posts by dan_w.)

Yes... forget about those mails. If that happens again, we really have to talk to spirit about that behavior. It's uncool. It's damaging to the project.
As you say, I need to develop a thicker skin. I hardly ever get angry about something... but I do tend to argue strongly about subjects, and it may seem as if I was angry.

That's fair, but it's still going on. Your board doesn't seem as advanced as ours, so I can't link to the specific post... but Spiritplumber's second one in this thread: http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=5724

(The first one, incidentally, was what started this particular stupid argument. You all got so angry because Spirit told you to that you didn't even bother to read the post you were replying to - Brad wasn't saying the game was cancelled, he was saying 'yes' to the question 'is it still being developed?'. Either Spirit is just stupid or he was specifically trying to get you into a fight with us.)

Well since you're just ignoring what I say, I'll rephrase my comments in a vein attempt to be heard.

Whoever taught you that this was an effective rhetorical trick was lying. It doesn't work in practice, everyone sees straight through it every single time.

I agree the image is currently below standard and deserves critique, but there is a distinction between harsh criticism and constructive criticism. Whilst you did put forth a tip (the flipping of the Concordia) it was buried in a tirade on how crap the image was whilst trying to show how crap you think the WCU development process is (the same process that spawned VegaStrike and PR which make up the bulk of PGG, just to give you some context). Perhaps if you were less intent on being so negative, people would not react angrily. After all, surely we all want the same thing, the continuation of WC in the best possible way, right? WCU may be far from perfect, but every iteration will bring it closer to WC and it's very early days yet. Patience and positive critique will get you a lot further than rants and distain.

You should read the rest of this thread: the community isn't changing to adapt to a special fan project. You can either get used to it and not take offense and become great like Standoff and Saga... or you can go back to your private hole and make a shitty game. We're not going to change how we act because it might offend you, but we're happy to use our abilities to help you.

There is a great irony amongst all this conflict. I feel WCU would benefit greatly from the amazing canon insight these boards carry. And that members of the board would relish the game WCU aspires to be. I hope one day that things blow over between the main personalties involved and everybody benefits from a game made by the community for the community, improved by the community.

We're not going to go to your message board and fix your game. With the exception of Spirit, who has legitimately gotten himself banned, you are all welcome to come here for help. As the man said, 'you can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. '

Last thing: I never said I was a pro. Hey, I'm getting paid for writing articles. For me, a computer is a better typewriter where you can also play games... And it's really sorry, to use an amateurs work as proof for bad work or low quality in the WCU project. Because even if this first picture had been my final version, nobody of the guys who decide about it has said that they wanna take it...

You're again making something that has nothing to do with you into a personal attack... which is additionally ironic, as this is a thread about not doing that. You didn't forget to flip the carrier - whoever put it in the game did. You've also touched on two other arguments that just plain don't work in the face of this type of criticism: I'm just an amateur and I'm doing this for free.

Half the active threads on the WCU Sourceforge forums are about what horrible people we are, most of the rest are internet tough guys coming to break LOAF's nose. If we don't have this discussion here, then people will only get one side of the story.

Yup, up until now Spirit has had a pretty cavalier attitude about this - his signature and all - solely on the basis that we're not interested in talking about the subject. And you know, he was right... because look what happens when we do? We're clearly establishing that we're not the evil conspiracy seeking to ban a poor little girl from our message board that he'd like you think we were without discussion.
 
Halman said:
See, I don't believe you have to streamline the fighters to all have the same look.
(If nothing else, just pretend that the fighters all apeal to various design asthetics at the time of production within the company producing them :) )

Don't go "Boo, they look like this because of technology. We need to update the look."

Actually I would think it would be a little from column(sp?)A and a little from B.

Case in point: the rapier II. Ten years after blair got the boot, the rapier is still in service, but looks somewhat different. Without a doubt, that change was largely aesthetic. The manufacturer says, "hey that looks cool :D" But the reason it needed to be updated to a newer model(s) in the first place is because the original model is outdated. The new rapier is bigger, better armed, better shielded(within context, its comes out the same as ten years ago, because weapons have also improved) etc. But while the model was changed in this way, the manufactuerer wasn't going to release something fugly, but rather something sleek and sexy looking. See what I'm saying?
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I don't think it's a problem unique to English, though -- doesn't 'vous' mean either a group or a single person in French?
Yes and no. In French there are two levels of langage you can use to talk to someone:

The "vouvoiement" is a formal way of speaking to an elder, client or important people; in vouvoiement you use "vous" to refer to a single person just as you would for many.

The "tutoiement" is a non-formal way of speaking to an equal, friend, acquintance, etc.; in tutoiement you use "tu" to refer to a single person and "vous" to refer to many.

That's for the off-topic French lesson ! :p
 
@LOAF:

About chuc... yes... that's why I'll try to convince him, instead of merely telling him to check this out. I'm sure he'll have some kind of problem with coming back.

And, although he knows little about continuity, he's been reading everything there is in wcnews' archives about the subject. I mean... it goes as the saying: you can only kill ignorant people by teaching them... (and being ignorant is not insulting... just in case chuck sees this... it's just a state of being).

And... y'all == "ustedes" in spanish. Our words never remain the same after adding gender and quantity (in spanish, "conjugar"). Well, at least I can't think of an example. That's why newspapers around here love taking out the articles (which looks ugly... but saves space). You know. Language usage is very unconsicious.


About the concept art... I thought I was asking. But, since I'm not the one doing modelling work, you're right in that I'm not the one the answer should be directed to. I'll be sure to direct that someone here whenever that someone shows up.

@Halman:

I'm not talking about redesigning the ship. Only extrapolating its full detailed design, and remodelling it. Basic design, shape for instance, should stay the same.
Unless you're opposed to that as well, and the only acceptable form of acceptable beautifying is retexturing it just as standoff did (which, BTW, I see the pattern - yes, it was on my plans as well, but IMO it's not enough... those models still seem outdated for a modern game).

I don't know if this is official, but I'd like to see WCU spawn modern WC games. As in completely modernized, even in looks, while following WC canon as closely as possible. That must be possible.
 
Without a doubt, that change was largely aesthetic. The manufacturer says, "hey that looks cool

See, even here you're assuming instead of knowing - and that's a huge problem when you're trying to attribute actions in order to support your belief to other people.

The reason Wing Commander II reuses no models from Wing Commander I is because the former used an Amiga rendering tool that was completely incompatible (in 1991, anyway) with 3DS. Origin introduced 3DS and trained artists in-house to do ships for Wing 2 (the previous Amiga renderings were contracted out).
 
And, although he knows little about continuity, he's been reading everything there is in wcnews' archives about the subject. I mean... it goes as the saying: you can only kill ignorant people by teaching them... (and being ignorant is not insulting... just in case chuck sees this... it's just a state of being).

I think it goes well beyond ignorance - he literally left in a rage because we told him Kilrathi didn't walk around naked - we cited sources and everything (and were, of course, horrible continuity geeks for having done so), but the fact that we'd dare disagree with him was too much for him to 'bare' (pun intended).
 
Bandit LOAF said:
You've also touched on two other arguments that just plain don't work in the face of this type of criticism: I'm just an amateur and I'm doing this for free.

No, the argument was: I'm just an amateur and I'm doing this for me and if some of you would help me, we might get something we want to use in the game some day. And if nobody likes it, the I'll throw it away and we all can go on with our lifes...;)

I wasn't taking this personal, but I was annyoed tha you used this picture to criticise a thing (the vessels in WCU) which was never declared as being finished. And, as long as nobody said "we want you to do this titlescreen" and as long as nobody said "we'll take it" the picture stay my business alone. All I was saying is, that you can't criticise the WCU guys for me taking their unfinished work and doing stuff with it.

As someone of you said, wcu is still really early in development. hey, the guys have to fight that the game doesn't crash all the time. They don't have the time to worry about single ships or controversial plots. I'm sure as soon as the game is far enough the will deal with those issues because people will demand it. And then they will ask you if they don't know how to deal with a thing. Perhaps you shoudn't take it personal that they are not coming every moment to ask you something and wait until they really need your knowledge.
AFAI, WCU is at the moment at a state where you wonder how to get something to eat. They don't need somebody who tells them how to hold a fork.

I understand that you see yourself as the keeper of truth. But in 0.2.0 WCU was unplayable slow, in 0.2.2 and 0.2.1 the game crashed after evry second jump... time for truth has yet to come...
 
Back
Top