Ue2????

Kevin Caccamo

Kevin Caccamo

Rear Admiral
I just wondered how UE2 was coming along, since I am barely hearing anything about that. How is the UE2 Progress coming along, or is that abandoned?
 
Kevin Caccamo said:
I just wondered how UE2 was coming along, since I am barely hearing anything about that. How is the UE2 Progress coming along, or is that abandoned?
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I think that they're going to work on Standoff until it's done and I don't think that'll be done very soon.
 
I think it would be a shame if UE didn't have a few more missions, I liked it for its renewal of the old ships in 3d graphics, just one thing, could you please put less turrets on the fralthi, my gratha got shredded!
 
From my website:

"Unknown Enemy 2: It may seem a little strange but a sequel to Unknown Enemy has long been discussed. All the old team are still in contact (indeed most of us are involved in the Standoff add-on, even I have found time to do some voice-overs and script one of the missions) and have long been discussing the possibility. Such an undertaking would require a new engine to be developed so it would likely be my largest project to-date."

I can tell you many people would be unwilling to continue to work with the vision engine, unfortunately you need a lot of talented people giving a lot of time to do a decent game engine, the main problem with that is co-ordination. I think the wing commander community has seen a lot of projects which suffer from a lack of co-ordination.
 
Pedro said:
I can tell you many people would be unwilling to continue to work with the vision engine
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And on that point you know I disagree, old friend. I think we've debated this a bunch of times already. We're making more and more fun stuff with Vision for Standoff, and the experience we built I'd like to retro-fit into UE... that and making a few more missions to make it longer.
 
PopsiclePete said:
And on that point you know I disagree, old friend. I think we've debated this a bunch of times already. We're making more and more fun stuff with Vision for Standoff, and the experience we built I'd like to retro-fit into UE... that and making a few more missions to make it longer.
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Oh I agree whats being accomplished is remarkable, and those additions would be very nice for UE indeed, but a future project would not be well advised to be written in the engine, just remember such a project would be atleast 3 years from now until final completion, even if you accept hardcore wing commander fans can overlook graphical shortcomings when compared to modern titles there are likely to be yet more compatability issues introduced with Vista (or whatever the hell its called now).
 
I think the Vision Enigne looks fantastic on Standoff, and it was built to a Wing Commander game.
 
I also think that Standoff made the best out of the Vision engine and from what I hear it seams that it will get even better...multiplayer for example.
I think if the people currently working on the code for the Vision engine make further progress it can still be a good engine even in the future.
As for the development time. Even big companies need mostly two years of development...maybe only one if they use an existing engine but still if the outcome of a fanproject takes 3 years to be done and its still fun to play in the end I don't care for the three years it has taken.

Still if you have an engine that is easy to use (means let fans create games under one year) and is comparable to current engines then let me know.
I think most likely even if a new engine is avaible it takes time to get into it and get things running.
 
gevatter Lars said:
I also think that Standoff made the best out of the Vision engine and from what I hear it seams that it will get even better...multiplayer for example.
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Yeah, HCl already expressed his intention of porting his multiplayer patch to Secret Ops, wich will enable us to use it in UE and Standoff.
gevatter Lars said:
I think if the people currently working on the code for the Vision engine make further progress it can still be a good engine even in the future.
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For Standoff, we are constantly making little new hacks to enable us to do thing we couldn't previously do with the engine. Most of those hacks are invisible to the player or are there but unnoticed; but ther're there and they allow us to make a game that's more and more like we envisioned it at every release. HCl paved the way for all sorts of new patches TanGO and I have made; some radical like the Scoreboard, some visual like the simulator score display that came with Ep3, some are about breaking hardcoded stuff (corvettes ships slots), some are about gameplay (linked guns à la WC2 and removing the ITTS for some ships), and some are plainly invisible, like the new mission scripting commands we made to make our missions behave like we wanted.

Vision is still a great engine to build mods on, providing we have people to work on it.
 
PopsiclePete said:
Yeah, HCl already expressed his intention of porting his multiplayer patch to Secret Ops, wich will enable us to use it in UE and Standoff
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About the Prophecy multiplayer patch does anyone know when it'll be released?
 
Well, i could say i've been "busy with work" lately, but that doesn't even begin to describe the crazy work hours i put in on past month. News is good however, since I did manage to finish the project i was involved with, and with that milestone out of the way i will have a couple of days off that i will be able to divert to MP patch development. Some fault tolerance mechanisms and improvements i had planned to introduce into the network code were actually finished today, and the network packets were optimized enough to allow modem players to participate in 8 player battles (in theory).

When will the first version be released? Well, there will be a testing session this weekend where the latest code will see some action. I will be able to tell more by then, either way.

Mario
 
Pedro said:
Oh I agree whats being accomplished is remarkable, and those additions would be very nice for UE indeed, but a future project would not be well advised to be written in the engine, just remember such a project would be atleast 3 years from now until final completion, even if you accept hardcore wing commander fans can overlook graphical shortcomings
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You're talking about thousands of people who'd absolutely love it if a group of fans created a Standoff-level effort in the original WC1/2 engine. The vision engine will be 9 years old this year, and we're just beginning to tap into some amazing things it can do. There's talented fans who are clearly willing and able to take it to even greater heights, and we'll be here to support them.

Pedro said:
when compared to modern titles there are likely to be yet more compatability issues introduced with Vista.
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This won't be an issue. As we move through time, things are becoming more compatible, not less. We're living in a time when pretty much every single WC game can be played with little effort on a modern computer. It's actually a lot easier to get classic games going today than it was five years ago before XP was introduced. In 2000, none of us seriously imagined that we'd soon be able to play WC4 DVD without the dxr board, play Wing Commander Armada online (hell, play Armada in a non-dos environment period) or be discussing multiplayer components to Secret Ops mods. I'm not worried about losing a single bit of compatibility to the next operating system.
 
ChrisReid said:
You're talking about thousands of people who'd absolutely love it if a group of fans created a Standoff-level effort in the original WC1/2 engine. The vision engine will be 9 years old this year, and we're just beginning to tap into some amazing things it can do. There's talented fans who are clearly willing and able to take it to even greater heights, and we'll be here to support them.
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Thats another issue entirely since the discussion was on UE2 (hell I'm one of those people who considers the WC1 engine to be the best). But unless certain people have changed his mind due to all the wonderful things HCl has done lately they wouldn't continue with another project. There is absolutely room for more projects with the existing engines, but I really don't think UE2 is a the right project for this.
One of the main things I feel UE1 suffered from was trying to force in elements such as jamming into an engine that had no support for them.

The point I was making before is that its only we active hardcore fans who are so happy to use a 10 year old engine. I know the Wing Commander communitys size will never dim, if anything I expect growth, however there are many people with fond memories who do not actively visit any wing commander site. If I were going to work on such a project again I know I would want to cater to the largest possible number of people (if only to turn them into hardcore fans willing to use an old engine).

As for compatability do we not still have to manually select Windows own backwards compatability mode on the standoff exe? We're terribly reliant on HCl for any growth of the engine or compatability (the video speed issue was not a windows compatability issue, but rather an engine issue I am told).
I would certainly find it strange working on a project without the source infront of me.
 
Pedro said:
One of the main things I feel UE1 suffered from was trying to force in elements such as jamming into an engine that had no support for them.
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It's more like UE1 suffered with us trying to jam every game design idea we had, we were binded by the excitement of pioneering. But now looking back I'd say it's also what makes UE fun: it's a big fanboyish ride for those who love WC and wanted a challenge. Come on, admit it, it's the game design, not the engine that makes UE not appealing to non-WC-fans; it was not intended, but it did turn into a fanboyish game. And it fun like that.

Pedro said:
We're terribly reliant on HCl for any growth of the engine or compatability (the video speed issue was not a windows compatability issue, but rather an engine issue I am told).
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True, we're terribly reliant on HCl, but less and less as time goes by. As I said earlier in this thread, HCl laid the foundations for the engine hacking allowing other people to make their own hacks to Vision. TanGO and I are more and more autonomous and most of the lastest Standoff patches were made by us.

Pedro said:
I would certainly find it strange working on a project without the source infront of me.
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Well, on the contrary, it's part of the fun !
 
I will say, whatever the engine, I will be more than happy to work on game/storyline development, and write the music for a UE2--it's a project I've wanted to see happen since we finished the first one.
 
Well ultimately now is the wrong time to make the decision anyway.

First a plot would need to be outlined, followed by desired gameplay elements. Then you examine what you want to accomplish and decide what is needed. Thats the time you decide on an engine I think, but I suppose part of my aversion is the hacking, I've spent years working only with code I know top to bottom, give me an engine which has to be hacked for extra functionallity and I'm lost at sea.
 
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