Forged Alliance Forever

Re: Remastering

2017-10-24T10:38:41+02:00

I see your point. yeah.

Statistics: Posted by tatsu — 24 Oct 2017, 10:38

Re: Remastering

2017-10-23T20:44:02+02:00

tatsu wrote:
you guys don't get it using it is just as bad as giving it.

Nobody would need to "use" it. Say i happen to make a binary patch that fixes some stuff in memory during runtime, and release it. Even you would not know if i had access to the source during the creation of the patch-source, and it would be a perfectly valid to assume i had NOT access to the source, because things like this are possible without, although hard. The whole thing is nothing more than modding the binary, and it has nothing to do with having or not having access to the source-code, from a legal standpoint.

And reverse-engineering is basically legal if the guy that reverse engineers is not the same guy who writes/releases the patch, and you don't copy the code you patch (for which there is no reason anyway), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design

Statistics: Posted by Katharsas — 23 Oct 2017, 20:44

Re: Remastering

2017-10-23T00:27:05+02:00

you guys don't get it using it is just as bad as giving it.

Statistics: Posted by tatsu — 23 Oct 2017, 00:27

Re: Remastering

2017-10-22T20:00:00+02:00

If they guy has it then he could stick it in a USB drive, get a cheap laptop from the local landfill, stick some linux distro in it, put the code in the laptop, go to the nearest FREE WIFI zone or a library and just upload it from there.
Or use a seedbox, whatever floats his boat.

Then if someone DL it then, well, it just "fell off the back of a truck"

Statistics: Posted by zeroAPM — 22 Oct 2017, 20:00

Re: Remastering

2017-10-22T18:00:54+02:00

tatsu wrote:
AGAIN (if you read) we already have that. I can concur with the admins and mods around here that it would be foolhardy to get faf shut down. I could not live with that on my conscience. I'm not even kidding.

Source code is just text. Very small datasize, probably a bunch of megabytes. Could even leave out libs, it doesn't need to compile, its more like documentation for the binary. Wouldn't be hard to hand it around or leak it somewhere anonymously. Not that i am saying the source-code guy should do it (which i guess would be encouragement of criminal acts? xD). I mean if source-code guy wouldn't want to risk it, it couldn't be hard to find somebody who would. Dev team can stay out of this, they have enough server-stuff to fix.
But then again, i really think its better if it doesn't happen and we hope for a successfull crowdfunding-campaign or or a bunch of free engine-devs to appear out of thin air...

Statistics: Posted by Katharsas — 22 Oct 2017, 18:00

Re: Remastering

2017-10-18T07:36:35+02:00

way ahead of you.

PA has it's own set of faults. the server-based simulation as opposed to the shared simulation was one of those design choices that looked good on paper but turned out awful.

Not only would you have to invest tons of money to convert that engine but you'd have to invest tons more on servers. also PA's path-finding is godawful in it's own way.

you'd really be getting none of the upgrades that are the entire point here.

Statistics: Posted by tatsu — 18 Oct 2017, 07:36

Re: Remastering

2017-10-17T23:34:01+02:00

I think the most practical way is to ask Uber Entertainment how much it would cost to develop the PA engine until it was moddeable enough to port FA to it. (Flat maps, etc)

Then you kickstarter for that amount, and if successful, you hire Uber to do it.
They have ex-GPG people after all, and might have an attachment to the game.

After that is the long slog for the community to port FA. But they are doing it from the ground up so there's a chance to fix some fundamental issues along the way.

Statistics: Posted by AdmiralZeech — 17 Oct 2017, 23:34

Re: Remastering

2017-10-17T23:21:37+02:00

What engine would be the best? The Oxide one?

If AOTS was much more moddable, it would have been worth taking a look at, but I doubt they'll do much to improve modding support.

Statistics: Posted by Professor — 17 Oct 2017, 23:21

Re: Remastering

2017-10-17T09:44:24+02:00

Brutus5000 wrote:
The spring RTS engine (https://springrts.com/)

That doesn't look very good, honestly

I even looked at some of the game trailers and was not impressed

It kinda looks like just a TA clone creator or something along those lines

I would still be looking at another engine before the monumental task of creating your own, and if both of those fail then maybe spring, but then what is the point.

Statistics: Posted by biass — 17 Oct 2017, 09:44

Re: Remastering

2017-10-17T09:16:30+02:00

The spring RTS engine (https://springrts.com/) has been released as open source 10 years ago (also inspired by Total Anihilation). I think this is the thing that comes the wish for an open source FA the nearest. I am throwing an eye on that project once a year. And surprise surprise they suffer from the same limitations as FA, expect for even worse graphics.

Looks like these topics are simply to difficult to solve if you don't work on it fulltime and with a professional toolchain.

Edit: On the other hand - This map editor is what comes closest to a FAF demo viewer, if more people would be contributing. But as always: lack of dev power. I mean we can't even fix all of our server problems. How are we going to rewrite the entire game

Statistics: Posted by Brutus5000 — 17 Oct 2017, 09:16

Re: Remastering

2017-10-17T09:13:59+02:00

tatsu wrote:
my point is even if FAF has a crud popularity growth rate at least it's inflexible and positive.

Is it positive? Do we care if we get 500 more players playing astro craters and Voodoo Map Sorian AI games? I don't.

Statistics: Posted by FtXCommando — 17 Oct 2017, 09:13

Re: Remastering

2017-10-17T08:24:26+02:00

well the thing is the best players are going to be dwindling in numbers in favor of any title you look at that isn't a "ongoing fad" title such as LOL 2-3 years ago. now the same thing's happening to lol because people are moving on. To get a good frame of reference on this right now is probably PUGB's highest peak in pro players and it will forever be loosing them from now on.
so maybe that metric doesn't really tell us anything meaningfull.
one can reasonably assume that if PUGB does indeed get replaced by the next big fad FAF could easily come to beat its playercount since FAF is of a unique category of games (akin to minecraft and KSP) that after it's initial boom and fall never really seems to be on it's way to dying on the contrary.

We've already beat load's of game's current player count this way. no man's sky bening a great example.
my point is even if FAF has a crud popularity growth rate at least it's inflexible and positive.

@biass that's the spirit! that's what I'm trying to get at. But do recognize that for novice programmers (and alot of those we have won't be the central dev expert core we hire we actually do have the money for and will be novices that are fafers or ppl who believe in the project) building a new engine from scratch will be out of reach.

I know, I know there ARE engines. but if any game can justify needing it's own engine because of particular needs its FAF 2.0. that being said I'd cave to using a pre-existing engine if we're 100% certain we can actually make it work without lag nightmare.

Statistics: Posted by tatsu — 17 Oct 2017, 08:24

Re: Remastering

2017-10-17T07:34:44+02:00

TFW you're so used to playing with the same 40 people your first instinct when seeing a new good player is to find out who's smurf it is.

Kind of difficult to say much about whether the game is dying at the competitive level, really. I mean, we got this graph to go by at least:

It's a graph of games played by those with 2000+ mean made by Washy in the stats thread. You can evidently see that we're at about half the "high-level" monthly games that were present in 2014. However, that conclusion can still be slightly suspect as iirc there was a point where the rating system was changed so that a lot of people lost 300 rating or so. That doesn't necessarily mean that gameplay became shittier but just that to be considered "high level" has become more stringent than it used to be.

I'd still say there has been an overall decrease in the quantity of players considered "high level" as that's just the natural cycle of games. People that invested time will lose interest and move on with life, and you aren't going to get someone to invest the 500 hours required to reach that level of play in 2017 for a 2007 game. All the talk about remastering just seems like an attempt to deny what will happen to any game barring some cult classics.

*Insert "high level gameplay in 2k17" meme*

Statistics: Posted by FtXCommando — 17 Oct 2017, 07:34

Re: Remastering

2017-10-17T07:03:06+02:00

If we ever have both the time, money and skill, why try and salvage this title in lieu of making a new one?
It's a 9 year old game, the techniques and systems behind games have drastically improved, if we have the vision behind the madness then there is no telling what goodness we could actually make instead of trying to operate around this slowly decaying mess. We're an RTS fanbase, we know what we want, unlike producers and marketing companies, and hey we can even use those mistakes (PA, AOTS, etc) to know what to avoid.

Statistics: Posted by biass — 17 Oct 2017, 07:03

Re: Remastering

2017-10-17T06:50:32+02:00

People still play Total Annihilation so why is it always said FaF is dead?

So what if there's only a handful of people left... We have a nice time and it's better than being at work

Maybe by some chance we will have enough left that will be willing to go to the next level. I for one am keeping money aside for "just in case" because in the chance this does get a shot for a higher level I want to invest in it. I can't think of how many hours I've poured into this game...

Statistics: Posted by Morax — 17 Oct 2017, 06:50