Quote:
Originally Posted by Paft
I don't quite understand what is going on here. How are you going to remake TFC on a different Engine? That alone means it isn't going to be TFC. You mean Fortress Forever 2.
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The idea of "remaking TFC" is simply to give us a solid base.
We can put FF as it is now on Steam, and we will. But when we do that, it needs to be more obvious that FF right now is old and newer stuff is being made.
If someone said remake FF on Source 2, where would we start? 2.47? The amount of work that requires is what you might call...many much works. So why put in a whole lot of effort just to get what we have right now on Source 2? 2.47 isn't even the original vision of FF, so how are we even going to find developers to make it? I can promise you very few game developers want to make FF as it is now, but a lot of game developers get excited at the idea of making a classic mode and really just making FF2. But it doesn't need to be called FF2, because FF is forever...we don't need a sequel, just a continuation except without losing the ability to play current and old shit.
Personally, FF has never hit the mark for me. It's come close, but there's so much more I wanted to do, just like everyone else. Like with hunted, cz2, waterpolo. I mean, hunted, wow...hunted was supposed to be an epic multi-map campaign of sorts (sorta like wolfenstein enemy territory and also in hindsight about like L4D). We didn't have the time and resources to accomplish this back in the day, which is why so much of hunted appears obviously unfinished. Look at the tunnel where the civ and bodyguards spawn, that alone was supposed to be a lot more in terms of making the assassination stuff more apparent than basically just having a team of assassins. We wanted to start each round with a bang...literally a bang, as in a failed assassination attempt from various bombs, which is why that car is sideways (and is supposed to be all blown up except our modelers never got around to it) and the tunnel is collapsed. We added a story to hunted, like how Foantaire-Fey is an anagram for Area Fifty-One. Other levels in the campaign would be centered around the Foantaire-Fey facilities, like a machine line cloning civilians. Other levels were going to come after the "escape" through some sort of chase sequences and more locations. Tying everything together and adding depth was was our goal that wasn't ever fully realized, although there are still some hints and whatnot.
We just wanted to experiment with cool game ideas and make cool shit, and that's still what we want to do. It's really not that complicated. But all this maintenance work on FF is for the birds. I want to make awesome new shit, not tweak the sentry so much for no reason.
It's hard to experiment with things when everyone is all bitchy about wanting this feature in or out, and even more difficult to develop when people can't even respect the fact that we create this game for free in our free time and it took about a hundred people to create FF over many years. You'll have to excuse me if sometimes I don't give a shit about people trying to force me to make their version of TF when I haven't even gotten to make my version properly (cz2 and its mode are supposed to be so much more, we just ran out of time). You want a polar bear to pop out the HW's ass when a spy is near? Well learn how to make games and join the dev team, because I'm not making that. Or will I? haha
So with all that said, how do we move FF to a new engine in a timely fashion? Well, number one is don't worry about all the chaotic design that slowed us down the first time around and still slows us down now. Just "remake TFC" aka make a classic mode that's based on TFC as it is right now on Steam, so we don't have to worry about design as much and can just focus on the actual development. Yeah, fix the nail grenade, that's a given. Teleporters? Yes, TFC has teleporters. bhop cap? Yes, TFC has a bhop cap. "But old TFC didn't have a blah blah wah wah wah" who cares when we just focus on recreating what's there right now.
But what about options? Yes, let people disable/tweak teleporters, bhop cap, etc. I want to play a classic mode with and without bhop cap, with and without teleporters, and so forth. And I'm pretty sure everyone else would enjoy that as well, so if you whine about that idea then please just take a step back and learn how to not be such a negative douche.
There's this weird misconception that has existed in the FF community since a decade ago: don't provide options, it'll fragment the community. I have news for everyone who thinks that: FF is one tiny piece of the entire fragmented TF community and then FF itself is fragmented because FF now vs FF in 2007 vs the idea of FF in 2004...a lot of people never even gave FF a chance because of how it didn't suit their needs when it comes to a TF experience. Fragmentation inside fragmentation, fragminception. It's not about avoiding fragmentation, it's about connecting everything together so the fragmentation doesn't hurt anything and in fact it helps grow the community.
Instead of arguing about why your idea is better, you can just make it and put it on workshop, let the people play it and just shut up trying to convince everyone your tickle grenade is the best idea ever and all us devs need to make it asap. That doesn't mean ideas are ignored, before any of you shit bricks.
Anyways, yes we need to remake FF, but I guarantee everyone here that will never happen if we don't start with a proper base that's sort of protected from all the unfocused design and feature creeping.
All we have to do is choose an engine and start working on it. Right now, all we can really do is concept and design. Until we have a decision on the engine, we're kind of in dev limbo regarding the
new new stuff. However, development on current FF can continue as always (as in slow as mole asses, and we all know how slow moles' asses are).
This thread is a good example of how FF development slows down. Instead of focusing on the important things, everyone starts letting their minds run wild with all sorts of scattered ideas. It's fine having all these ideas, except we don't even have a proper base to work those ideas off of.
Currently, the hold up on the engine selection is not knowing anything about Source 2 and the fact that we're not sure we want to ask all the devs to spend $20 per month for who knows how long on Unreal 4. Think about if we had all the FF devs ever still active today paying $20 per month for the engine since 2004. At the most (and reaching a bit) that's about $20,000. Fuck that shit.
So we wait for the engine before we can start developing nextgen FF. And by the way, it would indeed be nextgen, as in beyond xbone and ps4. However, by taking FF to a modern engine, we could put FF on xbone and ps4 and everything, we can go as multiplatform as we want. I love the idea of at least spectating FF on a mobile device. I also love the idea of playing FF on a steam machine in the living room. The question at that point would be which mode would you play? I'd probably mix it up, lil bit o classic, lil bit o FF, lil bit o whatever.