Author Topic: why is FH2 moving so slow?  (Read 10273 times)

Offline Remdul

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Re: why is FH2 moving so slow?
« Reply #15 on: 04-04-2009, 14:04:08 »
The website IS a bit outdated though. It needs to be updated.

Offline Toddel

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Re: why is FH2 moving so slow?
« Reply #16 on: 04-04-2009, 14:04:00 »
I am sure that our current team from modelers,coders,animators and mappers could make FH1 in 1 year complete.

Compared to FH1 the BF2 Engine is much more complex. Texturing for example. BF42 you have 1 Texture for a house. that means you have to Texture it 1 time. in BF2 you have 4 different Layers on the Static. You have to do 400% more work. for a STATIC.  for a Vehicle is much more work also. In BF42 you have again 1 Texturechannel/Vehicle in BF2 you have 3 Layers sometimes 4. You have to create this all. so again 300-400% more work. Same with mapping. You have to care about a Color terrain Texture in BF42. BF2 you can work with 6 plus the Color for the terrain. you see? the color is the same but you have 6 More Detail textures you have to take care. the Editor is slow is bad coded, unstable and very uncomfortable. placing a cup on table can become a Nightmare.

The inner core of the Devs work every Day for Several hours. We meet every Day in our IRC channel and Discuiss Gameplay or Help each other with Problems many Devs spend up to 10 hours/Day making FH2 happen. Weekdays and on the Weekend more. We have to recruit and teach new Devs. We help Mappers we see a potential. We have to test all the Maps for Gameplay, exploits and look. 

and then you never should forget the Reallife! :D its sucks. You have allways Devs dissapearing for a Time. Work will be delayed or stopped.

Modding life is hard.  i hope you can understand that a bit now.

Funny question? wanna have something to compare? make your portait from letters in Words ;)

Offline Fülke

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Re: why is FH2 moving so slow?
« Reply #17 on: 04-04-2009, 15:04:24 »
Take the time you need to make the Normandy release as good as possible, I'll be there when it's ready :)

Offline Seth_Soldier

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Re: why is FH2 moving so slow?
« Reply #18 on: 04-04-2009, 15:04:18 »
 :D

When i look at the other mods (of the other games too), i must say that FH2 is the most productive mod.
In fact, total conversion are very rare nowadays but even mods are less productive than us.

 ;) dvlpt is really fast now there is a good base set-up.

Offline Meadow

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Re: why is FH2 moving so slow?
« Reply #19 on: 04-04-2009, 16:04:32 »
I'd have to agree, when you look at other total conversions, they're actually advancing at a similar rate.
Insurgency - took years to come out with one release, still chugging along.
NeoTokyo - has been in the works for 4+ years IIRC and still not out (coming out this year apparently, can't wait)
And both of those are on the highly moddable Half Life 2 engine, and there's plenty of other mods that are Total Conversions that are working even slower. In short, as games get more complex, mod teams work slower. Not by choice, but because there's more work to be done. FH2 is an excellent example of not being put off by this and throwing oneself into a great mod.
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Offline Ionizer

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Re: why is FH2 moving so slow?
« Reply #20 on: 04-04-2009, 17:04:54 »
Well, nothing to add to the maelstrom besides this:

A few days ago, one of the devs said that most of the stuff that is going on right now is coding and testing work.  Not exactly something you can take a screeenshot of and post it up on the news page.  But also one of the most important parts of the process.  Be patient, it will be worth the wait.

The forum regulars are just as anxious as you are to play the new release, but we know that the FH2 guys won't release anything until they're happy with it and think it's perfect.  That's what we love about them.
 

Offline Ts4EVER

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Re: why is FH2 moving so slow?
« Reply #21 on: 04-04-2009, 17:04:25 »
A few days ago, one of the devs said that most of the stuff that is going on right now is coding and testing work.  Not exactly something you can take a screeenshot of and post it up on the news page. 

somebody should take a screenshot of some lines of code or whatever and post it. for fun.

Offline Schneider

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Re: why is FH2 moving so slow?
« Reply #22 on: 04-04-2009, 17:04:23 »
I really think that people don't have the FAINTEST idea of how much work goes into massive projects like this.

I think they really don't. Hence I'd say it would be the best to clarify this to them calmly, so they grow an understanding of these things and appreciate it, instead of calling troll upon them with a sledgehammer, pissing them off and giving them a negative connotation concerning our beloved mod.

Offline NoCoolOnesLeft

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Re: why is FH2 moving so slow?
« Reply #23 on: 04-04-2009, 19:04:50 »
But sledgehammers are fun.

Offline 508th PIR Hawkeye

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Re: why is FH2 moving so slow?
« Reply #24 on: 04-04-2009, 19:04:38 »
No matter how long it takes I'll keep supporting you guys! But this community/game needs a boost in player numbers otherwise it will end just like FH 0.7 with only 1 or 2 (half-full) servers...  :-[
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Offline rattovolante

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Re: why is FH2 moving so slow?
« Reply #25 on: 04-04-2009, 19:04:57 »
Quote
That is because it lists all devs that help out with the mod, some  being more active then others and yet others might temporarily be unable to contribute at all.  It would be a lot of work and waste of time to sort them out by activity. Hell it would be impossible and unfair to rank one dev higher then an other simply because he got more sparetime to contribute, worked a bit faster etc. etc.
I know and I understand that, Donutz.

But the only way to know that FH team
a) is understrength
and
b) would welcome any new members (not necessarily uber-skilled, but dedicated)
is to be a forum regular, i.e., a very small minority of the playerbase IMO.

Even casual forum readers won't realize those two points, because it isn't in any sticky and you have to catch the single post out of a thousand that explains the situation, like Lightning's one above.

So, while point a) is rather harmless (at most, some people will show up in the forum asking "how come the mod's development is so slow compared to FH1 if the team is more or less the same size?" - and yes, I know the complexities and problems inherent in BF2's engine), point b) means that FH team is possibly losing a lot of potential contributors, because they just don't know that they could actually contribute to their (favourite) mod.

So, answering to Toddel, what I suggest is first to update the FAQs on the site - or at least, reword them. Right now, I read them as "we have enough modders - contact us only if you're skilled or if you're willing to do boring stuff " - are you sure this is what the team wants to communicate to the guys interested enough in modding to search the site to check if there's any opening?

And add a "how to join us" link (pointing to the same FAQ) on the staff page
Other than that, I wouldn't change the roster of devs in the staff page (as I said, I think misunderstandings on the number of active modders are harmless).

Then, have you considered changing the message of the day (the pic that pops up after you login in BF2, right now there's the MotY one IIRC) to something like "Uncle Teddybear wants YOU"? That would reach almost every player of the mod IMO.

Of course you could then get too many wannabe modders, and a bunch of unskilled guys that will need (and vocally ask for) help and potentially drop out before actually contributing anything to the mod, and thus suffer delays in the next release (you know better than me that  dev time would then be diverted to supporting the newbies, etc. - i.e., development delays).

But if lack of modelers is really hurting the mod development you might consider something like that.
« Last Edit: 04-04-2009, 19:04:42 by rattovolante »
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Offline Dukat

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Re: why is FH2 moving so slow?
« Reply #26 on: 04-04-2009, 20:04:40 »
Blame Dice for making a BF2 that is 10 times harder to mod.
BF1942 was a game full of unfinished and unimplemented ideas pushed to release by EA.
Thus it was easy to tie it up to what FH and all the other mods became.

But BF2 seems to be a finished game. Everything works exactly the way Dice intended, but leaves no space for innovations or possibilities to change. Everything seems to be limited by the engine itself, as nobody seems to have thought ahead when developing the game.

I usually imagine my own sounds with it, like `tjunk, tupdieyupdiedee` aaa enemy spotted, ratatatataboom

Offline Fuchs

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Re: why is FH2 moving so slow?
« Reply #27 on: 04-04-2009, 21:04:50 »
I really think that people don't have the FAINTEST idea of how much work goes into massive projects like this.

I think they really don't. Hence I'd say it would be the best to clarify this to them calmly, so they grow an understanding of these things and appreciate it, instead of calling troll upon them with a sledgehammer, pissing them off and giving them a negative connotation concerning our beloved mod.
Sooo... After they know..
Can we then lynch them?
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Offline GooGeL

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Re: why is FH2 moving so slow?
« Reply #28 on: 04-04-2009, 22:04:38 »
It's worth the wait if you'll play it over the years to come.
You might not pay attention to all the details while in the heat of battle... but if you hold up a minute and tell jerry to bugger off a few so you can look around, they'll give you a rare feeling and a experience that you won't find in any other game or mod.

It would be nice to contribute with materials to the mod but it seems to be a bit too complex for my taste.  :-X :(
So I bugfix Lobo with the jeep.

Offline Kev4000

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Re: why is FH2 moving so slow?
« Reply #29 on: 04-04-2009, 22:04:08 »
Blame Dice for making a BF2 that is 10 times harder to mod.
BF1942 was a game full of unfinished and unimplemented ideas pushed to release by EA.
Thus it was easy to tie it up to what FH and all the other mods became.

But BF2 seems to be a finished game. Everything works exactly the way Dice intended, but leaves no space for innovations or possibilities to change. Everything seems to be limited by the engine itself, as nobody seems to have thought ahead when developing the game.

This is NOT true. BF1942 had more limitations then BF2, but this generally wasn't a problem since it was WW2 to begin with. As can be seen because there's tonnes of features in FH2 that weren't possible in BF1942, such as different ammo types and select-fire weapons. And BF2 is acceptably more time consuming to mod. Its limited by the fact BF2 isn't WW2 to begin with, and that its next-generation.