Author Topic: Pacific Mini-Campaign  (Read 15727 times)

Offline Dago Red

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Re: Pacific Mini-Campaign
« Reply #45 on: 24-02-2015, 07:02:00 »
After all these years, this Pacific pack finally completes the game. The Imperial Japanese army, marines, and navy is great, but even better is the full naval component for FH that's been missing since it was ported over to BF2, the final piece to the puzzle that was the amazing balance between fun, scope, and challenge which made FH 1 the best game any of us ever played. Full stop.

The depth added to the game is actually astounding -- whole new layers of gameplay come to life somewhere between the full inclusion of naval units and the dramatic landscapes that maps in this theater tend to play out on. Everyone I talked to also agrees that some magic happens, bringing you straight back to the fondest memories of FH (and even BF42) and that bit of je ne sais quois many always felt FH2 was often lacking (as great as it is), is suddenly there.

It's lurking in the jungle thickets, palms sweating on the hilt of a katana, or the damp stock of a Springfield. It's diving over a jagged mountain peak, flora strafed full of 20mm holes, adrenaline screaming from Arisaka nades and muzzle-fired smoke bombs. It's puking over the side of a PT boat that's speeding over the waves toward death by torpedo, blue skies reflecting off the barrels of 18 inch guns.

It should be gone over thoroughly by the dev team to make sure spawns are proper, flags are in order, etc, then adjusted for an integrated release, and included as soon as humanly possible in an official capacity. The event on saturday was a brilliant time, I'm just sorry I couldn't stay more than 3 hours.

Offline jan_kurator

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Re: Pacific Mini-Campaign
« Reply #46 on: 24-02-2015, 11:02:29 »
It should be gone over thoroughly by the dev team to make sure spawns are proper, flags are in order, etc, then adjusted for an integrated release, and included as soon as humanly possible in an official capacity. The event on saturday was a brilliant time, I'm just sorry I couldn't stay more than 3 hours.
It has nothing to do with official development and it will NOT be integrated with FH2.

Offline Dago Red

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Re: Pacific Mini-Campaign
« Reply #47 on: 24-02-2015, 18:02:18 »
That seems like a bad attitude to have about it all. Did you play FH1?

Offline Flippy Warbear

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Re: Pacific Mini-Campaign
« Reply #48 on: 24-02-2015, 19:02:03 »
Still waiting for LCT's carrying shermans.  ;)

Offline 0utlaw

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Re: Pacific Mini-Campaign
« Reply #49 on: 24-02-2015, 19:02:03 »
Still waiting for LCT's carrying shermans.  ;)

LCTs can't carry vehicles, but can deploy/spawn.  :)

Offline Flippy Warbear

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Re: Pacific Mini-Campaign
« Reply #50 on: 24-02-2015, 19:02:07 »
It's not the same.

For me the best part of any pacific map in 0.7 that had LCT's in them was bringing the tanks to shore while zero's strafed you and your gunners were firing at them like madmen.

Offline Ts4EVER

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Re: Pacific Mini-Campaign
« Reply #51 on: 24-02-2015, 19:02:34 »
AFAIK that is not possible with BF2 physics.

Offline Ronson

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Re: Pacific Mini-Campaign
« Reply #52 on: 24-02-2015, 19:02:15 »
Blast, missed it. The Pacific was always my favourite theatre in FH1 because that combination of land, sea and air gave battles such a huge, epic feel, especially on maps like the second version of Midway. I think young Dago is spot on about naval combat being the missing piece of the puzzle. It might be slightly buggy in FH2 - it was pretty buggy in FH1 too - but it's also a hell of a lot of fun.

What I did get to play recently was the WaW Kefalonia map from the 762 pack, which captures a lot of that old spirit. When I spawned on a fully-manned Italian torpedo boat I was grinning like it was 2005. We had all guns blazing, fighting off air attacks, drive-by shooting the island and hunting the destroyer... awesome.

It has nothing to do with official development and it will NOT be integrated with FH2.

Doesn't this attitude harm FH2 rather than help it? It makes sense that the devs want to produce a finely polished package where everything is well tested, historically accurate and so on, but I've never understood what harm rolling some of the best custom maps into the installer would do. You slap a big 'BETA' or 'Community Map' label all over them so it's clear they're not 'official content', and then leave it to the servers and the popular vote to decide whether or not to include them in rotation.

Would the small FH2 community really be so appalled to have some of these non-official maps in rotation (some of which are really very good indeed)? People endlessly bitch about and criticise the official maps anyway so it's not like you can please all of the players all of the time as it stands. Especially at this stage of FH2's life it would be good to have the variety and fun these maps offer, without having to have all-or-nothing special events and split up the playing community for an evening. Seems such a shame to have all this great content created and barely used.

Offline Matthew_Baker

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Re: Pacific Mini-Campaign
« Reply #53 on: 24-02-2015, 20:02:35 »
I didn't get to play this but I've downloaded the old version of the maps and had a few runarounds with them. It's REALLY well done for a small team to come up with an army like that and port over all these maps, I think I've said it somewhere before. Good job everyone.

I don't think it would hurt to think about this being worked on officially. Obviously there's a part of the fan base that enjoys this and it would be wrong to ignore them. However, I don't think it will happen for some time. The devs are rightfully focused on the Eastern Front, and after that, polishing/ (slightly) expanding the Eastern Front and after that who knows. Splitting time between working on East Front and polishing up a whole new Pacific Front will only slow things down imo. Maybe this can be thought about after the devs finish their goals in Russia.

I'll have to re-download these new maps and look at them tho. The last release seemed really cool 8)

Offline Ts4EVER

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Re: Pacific Mini-Campaign
« Reply #54 on: 24-02-2015, 21:02:53 »
As fun as it is to watch beta testers speculate like they know what is going on, I think it might be time to bring some truth into this thread.
First of all: It is true, there are no plans at all to include the pacific maps in the launcher. Why?

When a map is released through the launcher, we take responsibility for it, for maintaining it, fixing bugs and making sure it is of good quality. As you may have noticed, we don't even have enough manpower to do this properly for all the official maps.
That being said, we are happy to include any custom map that has a high quality and does not require us to do much work on it. The thing with these pacific maps (at least the ones I have seen) is that while they are better than most custom maps, they are also done in a completely different style from modern FH2 maps. These are BF1942 maps and it shows. They are extremely scaled and unrealistic in their style. Imagine somebody would have made a 1:1 remake of BF1942 Omaha Beach before ours was released. Would you have liked that in the official game? And the pacific maps are all on that level, basically, with the fantasy bunkers and the scaled terrain etc.
Secondly, where do these assets come from? I don't know all the goings on, but afaik many of them were bought from modeling stores. This is fine of course, but FH2 has never included ready made 3d assets like that and is not about to start. There is a certain reputation to lose here.
Thirdly, there is the question of historical accuracy. You may laugh that off, but I am not talking about minor things here, but ships that are completely out of place or Japanese troops running around with smgs that would only warrant pickup kit status by FH2 standards. Again, this is not a question of quality, but of fitting in with the rest of the content and maintenance.
On top of that, including these maps and releasing them through the launcher is not as easy as you might imagine and would probably set back Eastern Front development by at least a month, and that is conservative.
So in conclusion: These will stay as map packs.

Offline Mudzin

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Re: Pacific Mini-Campaign
« Reply #55 on: 24-02-2015, 23:02:58 »
Yeah, I have to agree that FH1 maps were simply better, more epic than FH2 ones...

Anyway, I dont get all this cry why these maps wont be implemented where there is only one active server which keeps this mod alive and where its admins showed that if they want, they can force/encourage players to play custom maps successfully. Obviously there are 2 great tournament communities who are responsible for creating these maps, so they also add sth extra to this mod.

And I think majority of players dont care so much of historical accuracy unless there 's KT in Africa...

Offline Ivancic1941

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Re: Pacific Mini-Campaign
« Reply #56 on: 24-02-2015, 23:02:49 »
First ,nice explation Ts totaly agree.
Second my favourite thing is history acuration.Imagine 5 Stukas enormus number of MP40 or Tompsons..That would be not for lauging ,not for crying..With acuration you can feel like part of history,and I dont think mayority of players are because of fun.They are looking history teamwork. Fun mod is good for 5 months or year but later nothing.
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Offline GeoPat

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Re: Pacific Mini-Campaign
« Reply #57 on: 25-02-2015, 01:02:15 »
There is no reason to have this debate now, IMO.  The devs do need to work on the Eastern Front.  The tournament communities can continue to polish this stuff up and allow the public to enjoy it.  After Eastern Front they can look at including the Pacific and some maps if they want to.  There are more historical and FH1 based maps planned for the near future.  Some are entirely land-based. These blast from the past maps are just to give people a taste for the mod.  Historical weapons/equipment loadouts are just a quick edit of the code, BTW.

Offline Melvin

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Re: Pacific Mini-Campaign
« Reply #58 on: 25-02-2015, 03:02:06 »
Oh, damn.  No debate?!?!

Well, it's nice to see all the kind words about the Pacific map pack.  I like the point about the fun factor.  In our map test Saturday on the WaW server, I was getting all nostalgic about FH1 days of action packed maps and hours and hours of entertaining gameplay.  It helped to have big numbers back then.  Of course, putting out this Pacific content is helping with numbers.  I heard and read very much positive feed back during and after the event on Saturday.

We have a Scrim on the maps this Saturday starting about 1900 UTC.  It is planned for the FHT and/or 762 big servers.  Pubbies are welcome, so check it out.  In fact, if you like it you can keep coming each Saturday.  Either sign-up at WaW or FHT to be officially part of a team or just show up and get on a team for the day.
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Offline Ivancic1941

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Re: Pacific Mini-Campaign
« Reply #59 on: 25-02-2015, 08:02:48 »
Oh, damn.  No debate?!?!

Well, it's nice to see all the kind words about the Pacific map pack.  I like the point about the fun factor.  In our map test Saturday on the WaW server, I was getting all nostalgic about FH1 days of action packed maps and hours and hours of entertaining gameplay.  It helped to have big numbers back then.  Of course, putting out this Pacific content is helping with numbers.  I heard and read very much positive feed back during and after the event on Saturday.

We have a Scrim on the maps this Saturday starting about 1900 UTC.  It is planned for the FHT and/or 762 big servers.  Pubbies are welcome, so check it out.  In fact, if you like it you can keep coming each Saturday.  Either sign-up at WaW or FHT to be officially part of a team or just show up and get on a team for the day.

So is it on WaW server ,FH server or 762#3 server?
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