Forgotten Hope 2, The Standalone discussion.

[Zeno]

shame that there seems to be such a hostility coming from the devs regarding this. I was hoping for a more constructive conversation. Have the devs even considered getting in touch with EA about this?

Also @jimi, there reason for low playercounts is not because of few servers, the reason for few servers is because of low playercounts

[Ivancic1941]

shame that there seems to be such a hostility coming from the devs regarding this. I was hoping for a more constructive conversation. Have the devs even considered getting in touch with EA about this?

Also @jimi, there reason for low playercounts is not because of few servers, the reason for few servers is because of low playercounts

Wait did PR get in touch with EA with their standalone? Who will ask,who will take lit on its shoulders? What if they forbidden FH2 using BF2 Engine? What if asking EA for FH2 gets PR in crap because not asking?

[Slayer]

shame that there seems to be such a hostility coming from the devs regarding this.

It may seem so, but it isn't hostility. I can't really speak for them, but I can imagine that it is tiring to hear complaints and stuff like "you guys don't want more players for your mod!" or "you guys are too lazy to make FH2 standalone!" over and over again. Even after the devs have explained their point of view, people are still asking the same questions and posting the same complaints and the same angry stuff.

Even in this very thread people refuse to read the posts made by devs and then continue on their stubborn crusade in which they keep having their tunnelvision and don't listen to any arguments.

[hitm4k3r]

shame that there seems to be such a hostility coming from the devs regarding this. I was hoping for a more constructive conversation. Have the devs even considered getting in touch with EA about this?

Nobody is hostile against going standalone nor this conversation, otherwise we wouldn't have had those discussions in the last couple of months. All that I said was, that they are pointless to an extent and I gave the reasons wich should have been enough of info for our position regarding the standalone discussion.

Ofcourse we got in contact with EA, but no result so far.

So in fact we have no permission to release FH2 as standalone in it's current state.

[Roughbeak]

Yeah, I wasn't really trying to sound hostile, but more highly careful of legal precautions and respect for the law we need to take here. Because it is a serious topic in general and I hope you see that, Zeno.

Plus, what Hitmaker and I said are perfectly honest/true things about the current state here, and that pretty much closes the case for now.


Best regards,
Roughbeak

[Not So Civil Engy]

I think it is important to remember that the FH Mod team is a group of individuals working on something they love; they are not a company.  When you ask them to do something potentially illegal, regardless of what another group has done, you are asking them to personally take on that legal risk.  You are just as much part of this community as the FH Mods, so if you want something more for this game, don't sit around complaining about them not doing it for you... take some initiative and approach the situation yourself, but legally so others may benefit from it without fear of repercussions.

[Jimi Hendrix]

I think it is important to remember that the FH Mod team is a group of individuals working on something they love; they are not a company.  When you ask them to do something potentially illegal, regardless of what another group has done, you are asking them to personally take on that legal risk.  You are just as much part of this community as the FH Mods, so if you want something more for this game, don't sit around complaining about them not doing it for you... take some initiative and approach the situation yourself, but legally so others may benefit from it with of out fear of repercussions.

There would be no lawsuit. The only repercussion would be a court order to discontinue distribution, which would require EA to have lawyers file a complaint. Which they would not. Check PR.

[Airshark79]

This attitude of "oh no what would happen if we did this one horrible thing?!" is definitely so awkward to see, especially in such unison between the devs. FH2 should've jumped on the standalone business right after Project Reality did.

There are four options for FH2 as I see it before it drops to unacceptable numbers during weekdays(<48 at peak)

1. Advertise mod install with battlelog.co(somewhat accessible, I don't really know what it does or how it works)
2. Advertise mod install with PR client( Could take some work, I don't know how much fh2 gets it's content from vanilla bf2 or if it matters)
3. Community installer(something put together by a guy unaffilliated with fh2, so that the devs over here won't get triggered when ea asks to stop this)( the not so good thing about this is that it won't get a big release and will probably get buried under the install link already on the portal, so it won't help much)
4. Standalone. This is the most accessible option to take. One link, one install(something much smaller without vBF2 content) enter a game server and enjoy(or terribly hate)the game.

[Not So Civil Engy]

I see that a few years ago the PR community had a petition out to DICE.  It might be nice to know if they ever received a response.

[AfterDune]

No, EA doesn't respond to petitions like this, especially if they're the size of what we'd be talking about here. DICE doesn't either, but it's not up to them anyway. Petitions or try to reach out is just pointless.

PR just went ahead and did it. And so far it has worked out just fine. I'm quite positive some people from EA/DICE are aware, but they don't really care anyway. Also because the playerbase is tiny compared to the big masses that play the AAA games.

I personally think FH2 should definitely go standalone for the sole reason it's easier to install (yes, it is, because people are lazy!) AND you will reach more players. But, the FH2 devs have their reasons for not going down that road, so further discussion about why we think they should do it anyway is kinda pointless . They have a good point regarding the legal matters, because we all know our ideas of why we think it's fine to go standalone won't ever hold up in court. On the other hand, it'll never come to that - that's what I believe anyway. And if it does: revert to previous settings and use BF2 as a base once again.

So as I said before, it's probably best if someone from the community steps up and creates a standalone installer, because it's not happening any other way.

[Matthew_Baker]

^this is about the best and most comprehensive answer you're gonna get. I also agree that a community updater could be made to include this. We have some really talented community coders. All a matter of if they want to take on the 'legal reprocussions' by themselves.

[Harmonikater]

^this is about the best and most comprehensive answer you're gonna get. I also agree that a community updater could be made to include this. We have some really talented community coders. All a matter of if they want to take on the 'legal reprocussions' by themselves.

While I'm all for the concept of going standalone, this is why I totally understand the current decision.
I would not include BF2, which is legally not mine to give away, in the Community Updater, which carries my name in the code. No one likes to make themselves a target. And not necessarily for EA/Dice, they probably don't care, but e.g. for that special group of lawyers here in Germany who make their money "protecting" copyrighted material "on behalf" of the rights holder.

In the end, official or unofficial, it always boils down to somebody having to shoulder the uncomfortable legal responsibility.

If there is somebody willing to accept that risk who wants to create an unofficial standalone installer, no one is going to stop you. But devs not wanting that burden is nothing that should be held against them.

[LuckyOne]

I guess the best course of action, considering all the legal shenanigans, would be to advertise the mod as an add-on with the Battlelog project installer. They have already accepted the legal responsibility of bundling bf2 and new players looking to get it will probably look there first anyway.

With today's internet deals almost nobody uses anything but flat rate anymore so downloading a few extra GB for bf2 will not really hurt that much. It's just that the mod currently has quite low visibility (plus it hasn't seen any big gameplay changes for a few years, mostly just minor gameplay polishing - although any bigger change could lead to alienation of existing player base instead of an influx of players).

I think the devs need to try and finally integrate Mumble in the game and installer at least, to try and get some PR people playing, as this is the biggest gripe we always hear from PR players coming to check out FH2.

This coupled with another idea I have in mind would appeal to tournament players to play public more often and might even attract people from other WWII game communities (e.g. H&G). But I know that active devs are hard to find today so trying to chase it would probably not be feasible. Maybe the tourney communities could help with that one though...

[GeoPat]

If there is somebody willing to accept that risk who wants to create an unofficial standalone installer, no one is going to stop you. But devs not wanting that burden is nothing that should be held against them.

Well, can somebody make a tutorial on how to do it.  I have a pretty good idea where the files should be after it is installed but I don't know how to edit the installer or executable that starts the game.

On another note, we should advertise FH2 at battlelog.co since that's where all the new players are coming from.  We can at least put up a nice forum post.  There is currently nothing.  If the devs don't have an objection to this, we can get right on it.

Another idea: I wonder if PR would be interested in making FH2 available for their users and for that matter other old but good BF2 mods.  I'm pretty sure the Project Reality\Project Reality BF2 folder has enough BF2 stuff to run FH2 and the others.  I think they would just need to make a .exe with the right file paths, etc.  They could maybe make an installer too or just tell people how to manually install them to their mods folder.  I don't think it would be competition to PR:WW2 since they are totally different.  It would just be an added service to the PR community to make it easy for them to play other BF2 mods.

Edit~ I didn't see Luckyone's post

[Dancho]

Well, it is clear that things are not that eassy. It's kinda mess for me. BUT, what if FH2 change the engine? I want to know what are the best options and how much effort would it cost. It is going to be a whole new game and coding and stuff... but yea, we can talk about it. And please, we don't need opinions like: "FH2 on Frostbite 3 would be awesome".


Sorry for my Eastern Europe English :Д