WC Saga Makes More Talking Heads (April 13, 2011)

[ChrisReid]

While WC Saga conducts its latest round of testing, they have rendered a batch of comm videos to match up with a number of new voice acted lines. This is primarily an issue for communication officers on bases - clips of pilots wearing helmets can be recycled! Check out more examples here.

​

We apologize for the lack of updates lately. We have been working hard on the beta test. ...

Another work item are communications videos. When we came up with all of these capital ship, pilots, and other personas years ago, little did we know that eventually we would have to individually model and render each character to animated video. That is a lot of videos and time!

--
Original update published on April 13, 2011

 

[Unregistered]

"little did we know..."

Yet further insight into how much planning and forethought the "devs" utilise on this team. Is it any wonder this project has been under development far longer than what was probably needed.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I don't agree--you could quote the same bit and say it's great that they've realized they can do more than they had initially thought possible with the mod.

(I'm tired of attacking the Saga guys; they're fans doing a good job, even if some of them get big-headed about it now and again... but I'm even more tired of this kind if discourse. I can separate out one quote from an entirely innocuous article and PROVE SOMETHING TERRIBLE! It's somehow being treated like it's some brilliant bit of construction in internet and politics and so on these days and it's just... not even argument.)

 

[t.c.cgi]

I'm glad an anonymous commenter could show me how the Saga team is evil and after me lucky charms.

 

[Quarto]

Standoff also never intended to have cutscenes with talking characters - not to mention a million other things that got added to the project during development. This is a great thing, as it means we ended up releasing a much better game. And that's exactly what Saga is trying to do - make the best game they can.

Personally, I really, really hope Saga will blow Standoff out of the water - one day, I'd really like to make another WC mod, and I would be very, very disappointed if Standoff was still the benchmark I need to beat.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I'm glad an anonymous commenter could show me how the Saga team is evil and after me lucky charms.

I did check the IP; as best as I can tell it's not a regular user lurking in anonymity... so I guess hurray for regular users for not stooping to that?

 

[Dundradal]

Personally, I really, really hope Saga will blow Standoff out of the water - one day, I'd really like to make another WC mod, and I would be very, very disappointed if Standoff was still the benchmark I need to beat.

Here here on both counts!

(Speaking of Standoff I filed some bugs for you the other day )

 

[Iceblade]

This is really feeling like a new WC AAA project. Even moreso than Standoff.

And not meaning to be negative towards Eder and his work (which was pretty good), but Saga's heads look much better than the ones in Standoff. Though I must admit to liking Eder's ships over Saga's style-wise.

 

[-danr-]

Ok, here's my 2 pence...(yes, pence)...

Saga looks awesome, regularly I see updates at the CIC that make me drool, the graphics, the concept of all those fighters from different WC generations flying and fighting together. For a while, I wanted to come in here and post a rant about how we're always being teased with elaborate, great looking trailers but never seeing anything close to an end product, for a while it seemed like they'd start a new chunk of project without finishing the last one...*BUT*...

I used to hate it when people slated the Standoff team, some people acted like total jerks about how long things were taking, they demanded upgrades, changes and news updates about development, and it used to annoy me because Pete, Q, and all the rest were working on this project free of charge, for the benefit of the community.

And that's just what Saga is doing, nobody's paying these guys, it's up to them how long it takes, I'm just glad that there are still fans out there willing to make free games for us, so as LOAF says, it's time to cut them some slack, they clearly love Wing Commander and if this comes together it will be awesome.

I disagree with Q's hope that this will blow Standoff out of the water, because these are two different projects, and Standoff/Unknown enemy were necessary to give the other wannabe DIY-game producers a kick up the backside and show people just how possible an awesome end product can be with enough time and dedication.

...and look at the end result, Standoff is the best WC mod of all time, some have argued it's as good, if not better than some of the official games, who's to say that Saga won't eventually come good and dazzle us all. I hope the same for Pioneer too, but yes, these are real fans trying to do us a free game, no rush guys. Also, thank you - especially to the Standoff/UE team.

 

[Quarto]

I disagree with Q's hope that this will blow Standoff out of the water, because these are two different projects, and Standoff/Unknown enemy were necessary to give the other wannabe DIY-game producers a kick up the backside and show people just how possible an awesome end product can be with enough time and dedication.

Yes, but that's the point . Standoff did give other modders a kick up the backside, by showing what was possible - now I want Saga to give us a huge kick up the backside, showing us that Standoff was just the tip of the iceberg.

Incidentally, while I've never asked the Saga guys about it, I honestly believe that Standoff is actually the reason Saga's been delayed this long. If you look at their Prologue release, you'll see that the storytelling is basically just like in UE - I mean, they had much better rendered cutscenes, but they had just as few of them, and the story was mostly told in text fiction. Standoff's first episode didn't really go far beyond UE's storytelling either - there was just one talking heads scene at the end of the episode. But when the second episode came out, with half a dozen of these scenes showing that as a matter of fact, a fan project can have talking people all over the place... from that point onwards, a further Saga release with text-based story telling simply ceased to be a possibility.

 

[t.c.cgi]

Plus all those wasted man-hours just playing the Standoff episodes as they came out.