Forgotten Hope Public Forum
Forgotten Hope 2 => General Discussion => Topic started by: Danger X on 04-04-2009, 18:04:23
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So, how did this great thing called Forgotten hope start?
I am very curious, since there doesn't seem to be any biography anywhere.
Cheers,
Danger
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Forgotten Hope was originally only going to be the opening year(s) of WWII when things for the Allies weren't going all too well. Hence 'Forgotten Hope'.
0.5c released. Horrible mess...but bloody good fun. First round I played was the old (old, old, old old...) Crete. The day I became a convert.
Shortly after (I think) Forgotten Hope merges with a BF1942 mod based on the Pacific Theater, as well as support from Merciless Creations.
0.6 released after many months of waiting. Massive amount of downloads, many servers under heavy load. Totally different game from 0.5.
Between then and 0.7, various updates improving the mod. Deployable flak guns, flying saucers, tractors and Barbie King Tigers. You know. The norm.
Somewhere along the line there was a bit of drama with Merciless Creations demanding models or something baffling...and then a massive content withdrawal.
All the rest is fairly recent news.
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Could u add FH's history untill present for new community members?
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If a couple devs could sit down for a fireplace tale or two on the mod's history, that'd be really nice.
Grandpa, tell us a story!
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Ok Hawkeye, between where cool ones left off until present was....
I think im right, feel free to correct me.
Official FH Mappack... included night levels with an early german night vision sight, reconfigured, more accurately mapped Midway Island, some map that the tankers wouldnt shut up about because there was an IS2 and King Tiger and they could have a "fair" duel (idiots), a neat map featuring an ISU-152 (for some reason the devs made the IS2 about the size of a Sherman, although in real life its as wide and long as a King Tiger!), and some terrible snowy russian map.
That, I BELIEVE, was the last edition to FH42. And now is FH2. No history to FH2 except for a patch, its still in it's infancy. But as for FH42, it's like an old man in a nursing home that nobody visits, like a ghosttown. It's a beautiful mod yet no one plays it anymore...
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You know, for all its flaws, 0.5 sticks out the most in my memory. The practically laser-accurate rifles, all the placeholder models, that Japan vs. Russia map with the Super Mario green textures...
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But as for FH42, it's like an old man in a nursing home that nobody visits, like a ghosttown. It's a beautiful mod yet no one plays it anymore...
thats not entirely true. the Pixel-Fighter server and sometimes The Damned Priest server, which is both in Germany is populated. i was just playing on it maybe 2-3 weeks ago with about 30-35 people on it.
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You know, for all its flaws, 0.5 sticks out the most in my memory. The practically laser-accurate rifles, all the placeholder models, that Japan vs. Russia map with the Super Mario green textures...
Hailar.
I have to agree though. 0.5 was awesome, and I still remember it the most.
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...Somewhere along the line there was a bit of drama with Merciless Creations demanding models or something baffling...and then a massive content withdrawal.....
Ah versions 0.65, 0.66, 0.67, and somewhere there were some "a" and "b" sub-versions too. Those could be called "The Panzer III years". I also remember the Merciless thing. What a pain in the ass. Lawyers and everything. Merciless's attitude always puzzled me, because they barely had anyone using their stuff outside of FH's joint venture. I think they're still technically hanging in there, but they're on life support I think. I hope they are warmed by the knowledge that their content is safe from being seen by anyone.
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and some terrible snowy russian map.
Soletschnogorsk! I loved that map. Too bad no one seemed to grasp the idea how it was to be played. Too complicated for the masses me thinks. :D
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and some terrible snowy russian map.
Soletschnogorsk! I loved that map. Too bad no one seemed to grasp the idea how it was to be played. Too complicated for the masses me thinks. :D
One of the best maps ever made in FH History.
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summer of 2002, when the Battlefield 1942 demo was released, the activity in the main modding website for Bf42 (www.bf42.com, don't search, sadly is gone) was hectic and wonderful. DICE had not plans to add mod support to their game but the modders cracked its format and released modding tools, rexman (http://rex3d.net/bf/index.htm) was the most famous of them, but the Editor 42 and even Battlecraft were created by the modders.
Ok, all the famous Bf42 mods were born in that page, the 3 first mods to be announced were Codename Eagle (a Rexman's mod about the ancesstor of Bf42), Eve of Destruction and Forgotten Hope. In those boards started aswell the famous Desert Combat mod (first called Desert Conflict), with a famous thread, in wich Frank DeLise (if my memory is right he was a programmer at Discreet, the developers of 3d max, later the boss of Trauma Studio and creator of Frontlines game) posted his first pics of Abrams, Humvees and A-10 Thunderbolts in the Alamein map, some guys claimed those screens were fake photoshop pics, it was really funny.
About FH, it was created by our first boss, Senor Ding Dong, a canadian guy, and two other dudes, they recluted some modelers in the boards and the long and awesome travel began. At first the focus of the mod was the first stages of the war, 1939 to 1941, and add other armies like french, polish or italians, and a realistic aproach to the gameplay, not arcade like the original.
Me and other modeler/skinner, Mange, joined a couple months later, and we were guilty of the crime of expand the mod to all the WW2, because we modeled a bunch of american airplanes, haha. Major hartmann joined and becomed the main coder of FH, a master. Very soon Senor Ding Dong stepped out as leader and ArminAce becomed the new leader. We released our first version, 0.5, in 2003 fall.
Some time later we merged with Pacific Shores, four talented guys that were doing a Pacific Campaign mod, zero is still in the team, D_fast was their leader, he, later, created Point of Existance. Rad also joined around that time. And unfortunately we merged with Merciless Creations, and won't talk more about that mistake because I want to keep the cool vibe.
Major Hartmann and ArminAce left, ctz joined and becomed the new main coder, and we released the final version for Bf42, 0.7 and the fan pack 6 (unofficially 0.8, for its undebated quality) and we decided to go on in the new Battlefield game, BF2. Some guys quitted, others joined, like Toddel, Knoffhoff, Mr_Cheese, etc, and you know the rest of the tale, here we are, armed and dangerous.
Now the grandaddy must go, kids, I must polish my Grand Torino.
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Thanks all. I have always been interested in knowing the roots of a project, to know what they stand for, and just because I am a history geek.
Cheers,
Danger
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Thanks Lobo for this wonderfull story :'( , that it may continue for many years... :D
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This has made me feel like something of a relic, and I'm not even 21 yet.
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I remember those days of old where the BF42 mod scene was hectic as ever. When I first bought BF1942 I still had a dial up connection and could only drool at all of these new found "mods" out there to make the game better. Desert Combat was the first to catch my attention, then Forgotten Hope followed soon after. I'm pretty sure I hopped on around 0.6 or so, though I can't remember specifically. My computer was aweful back then and couldn't really handle FH at all, and yet I still played.
You know it's a great game when you put up with 3 fps, horrible lag stuttering, and 10-20 disconnects per map. Long live FH!
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Thanks Lobo, I love bedtime stories. :)
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I know how ya feel cool ones... gave me the shivers thinking all the way back. I went into the archives last night....JEESUS McCHRIST! SCARY!
One of the best maps ever made in FH History.
What the hell are you talking about??? I couldn't see five feet infront of me. Admittedly the T-34's on railroad cars were kinda neat.
Operation Blacknight, BEST FH'42 map IMO. But everyone hates it!
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Hailar was the most balanced map ever made. Ever.
As in, if you were Russian you wouldn't have to worry about anything. You could go away, make a cup of tea, come back, and still win. If you were on the Japanese side, you too could go away, make a cup of tea, come back and still lose. It wouldn't matter if you were there or not. In the grand scheme of things, both teams get a game and a break all in one. I'd say that's pretty balanced.
Behind my unorthodox logic you know I'm right.
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What was the name of that one, really, really foggy map? It had Russia vs. Germany. Then it had like a portside town or something. And then at the back of the map there was like a depot that the Russians had to destroy.
I remember it had sort of a spooky feeling to it, well... I also remember a thick wall of fog.
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Now the grandaddy must go, kids, I must polish my Grand Torino.
lol Lobo
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Omaha Charlie Sector with flametrowers and tank support :D that was my favorite... or Ramelle Neuville with enough zooks to blow the tiger appart. I mostly carried my beloved M1 Garand (I could hit a target from pretty far back then...*no ironsight*) to take out any enemy infantry trying to take cover behind the panzers. ;D And now I'm patiently waiting... ::)
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Good to know the history of FH. I only started playing during 0.7, after the mappack had been released.
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I remember those days of old where the BF42 mod scene was hectic as ever. When I first bought BF1942 I still had a dial up connection and could only drool at all of these new found "mods" out there to make the game better. Desert Combat was the first to catch my attention, then Forgotten Hope followed soon after. I'm pretty sure I hopped on around 0.6 or so, though I can't remember specifically. My computer was aweful back then and couldn't really handle FH at all, and yet I still played.
You know it's a great game when you put up with 3 fps, horrible lag stuttering, and 10-20 disconnects per map. Long live FH!
Don't forget the 10-15 minute map loading times (only to have it crash and you shouting in anger and dispaire since you migth not make it back before the server changed maps).
Good times, absolute self torture... oh the memories.
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Yeah, real long loading times. I remember playing it on my new comp one day and I was disappointed by the fact the maps were loading so fast now I couldn't roll a ciggy and go to the toilet before the loading was finished ;)
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Man, where does the time go. I've been playing since .5, first map, Zeilona Gora (cant spell D: ) first weapon, G43, it was roughy and messy, and I was afraid and scared about leaving XWW2, but it turned out to be a great desicion, and I've never looked back. I've grown up quite literally with FH (and the 130th), from 13 all the way to my current age of 19.
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Oh and Apple, that was the fan map pack, mm, trying to remember the name....Soletschnogorsk was it :P
http://battlefield2.filefront.com/screenshots/File/62701/12
That was fairly recent XD I remember like map pack 3, and some reeeally old fan maps, like the original pavlovs house, which was great, imo
http://battlefield2.filefront.com/file/FH_Battle_of_Pavlov;40446
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I can give a picture of my view on the years of the mod.
When FH was released the mod was rather late compared to others. Desert Combat had been released before and had attracted all the players. Besides this, other mods from Merciless Creations and XWWII were already available. In order to play maps like Bocage from XWWII you had to wait for the map to be hosted, hoping for a bunch of players to jump on as the server was usually rather empty. Often the number of player raised from 4 to 17 within no-time when the map came up. The highest player number could be reached late in the european evening, when the european players were still awake and the players in the U.S. started gaming. With ASE allowing to shift quickly between different mods when browsing, people where lurking during these hours.
As mentioned before, during this time FH was released. The mod was late, but promised to be matured due to the very high version number (0.5b) and the size of the download. In my rememberance the first server to host FH was WolfGaming.net. The evil foods were admining and playing on the server every day. With their superior skill they promised fascinating battles each night. Many of the people that started playing in these days, like Dago Red, formed the later staff at Wolfgaming.net that led the server through the following years. Player numbers rised after 10 PM european time to a climax until 12 PM or 1 AM. If I remember right the first server had 32 or 34 slots.
What made the mod different from others was the hugh amount of customization. While other mods had only exchanged textures and tweaked view distance or damage system, FH had developed a unique damage system, had increased the number of different vehicles per map, had an increased view distance, provided new maps and statics, new vehicles and had tweaked ground combat by changing damage caused by handguns. On top of that new seats had been implemented to tanks to be manned by soldiers seeking for transport.
All these tweaks caused computers of most people to lag. Increased view distance, additional codes for the armory, a bunch of soldiers stacking in a single vehicle. Gladly the moving speed of tanks was reduced, which gave our crappy computers a chance to compensate.
During this time Intel had made a revolutionary step raising the clockspeed to new heights. Without this large jump ahead in processing capabilities the requirements for processing FH properly would not have been fullfilled by the average Home PC in the near upcoming future. But the new Intel P4 processors and the upcoming AMD counterparts were powerfull enough to handle this. This allowed also to raise slot numbers from the intitial 32 slots to 56 slots for FH 0.7. Excessive tests had shown that the server build was never stable enough to provide 64 slots. Wolfgaming.net hosted FH on a windows server that tended to crash when raised to the max. Most likely still today Linux servers prove to be better and more stable for hosting FH.
In my rememberance the weeks and month after the release of 0.5b were a happy time. Within short intervals of probably a single month hotfixes were released that also unlocked content that had come with the large installer of 0.5b. Though rather small, the hotfixes provided awesome tweaking and new content.
The latest of these hotfixes was 0.5e.
By the release of the latest fix a community had been formed whose patience was put to test right away. We were waiting 9 long month for the release of 0.6. Meanwhile the world moved on. Desert Combat lauched releases like fireworks and other mods were not hesitating as well.
This was also the time when a custom mapping community was formed. After about 6 month of waiting for 0.6 a mappack was available, providing 8 new maps. I think none of these maps were bummers. The mappers had just tried to serve the need of the community for new maps and stuff. All of these maps had poor gameplay, but the capability to tease. They were hosted on FH@Wolfgaming.net. For example, we had a map with a panther in it. I think it was the early A model, and it was implemented even without textures as the textures were not contained in 0.5, but the model was. Thus it was used.
These maps proved to be a dump starter after some time. The quality of gameplay was below any grade, thus driving players away in masses. At some point we were not able to fill the servers to the max any longer. Players stayed away. Though small, the community carried on, playing, providing a place to test the game for fresh people under conditions that allowed at least testing with a very limited amount of players.
But our patience was rewarded with the release of 0.6. Though FH was still a construction site, with roadworks in every part of the battlefield. Pacific, eastern Front, Africa, everything was kept together with duct tape. Prior to the realease of 0.6 FH was able to annouce another bummer. The team had decided to co-operate with Merciless Creations. The philosophy of Merciless was an open community that shared all content to provide a single ultimate mod. However, many of the things to come happened in the dark, for the average player not to be seen. However, Merciless Creations had focussed mainly on tweaking textures, sounds and rather easy stuff. Complicated codeworks did not appear to be their métier.
It seems like Merciless had worked on tweaking the pacific scenario, providing reworked maps like Wake and others for the FH team. However, something must have happened and even before the realease of 0.6 the cooperation had ended again. I think an agreement was made that the cooperation had ended, but FH was allowed to use the stuff from merciless for their 0.6 release.
Shortly after the release of 0.6 new trouble arised on the horizon. Though cooperation had ended with an agreement, some guy named Gunslinger had enlisted as a developer both for Merciless Creations and FH. What came to light was that Gunslinger had taken soundfiles from Merciless Creations, offering them to the FH team as his creations. Thus they were used for the pacific scenarios in 0.6. But now Merciless Creations asked for the stuff to be locked, and with the hotfix of 0.61 some pacific maps like wake island were locked again, not to re-appear until 0.65, 0.66 or even 0.7. I don't remember exactly.
The release of 0.6 also raised requirements for hardware. If played on servers above 32 slots, the requirements of physical Memory (RAM) and CPU power raised exponentially if you wanted decent and acceptable framerates. Thus many players had to upgrade their memory from 512MB to at least 640MB, as the game was hungry for hardware. During this time many players upraded to 1024 MB, though prices were almost exorbitant.
However, with the release of 0.6, FH became more famous. I think progress over at Desert Combat ceased at this time and players started to focus on other things. My rememberance of the time between 0.6 and 0.7 is a bit blurry. Well, at least I think that 0.6 was advertised in several gaming mags while the installer was provided on the magazine DVDs. The german gaming TV show Giga-games made a feature about FH, playing the actual version live on TV. Due to the sheer size of the installer you could also order a DVD per mail, provided and produced by the staff of warumdarum for the cost price. If I remember right EA/Dice made an end to this, thus it did not happen for later releases. But the DVD cover might still be around somewhere on the net.
After the release of 0.6 especially other european communities besides Wolfgaming.net hosted successfully servers for FH. Among them were Hslan and FragThe.Net. At this time FH was succcessful enough to provide a large amount of players on both sides of the atlantic to fill servers during the european peaks besides Wolfgaming.net.
But FH devs kept us waiting and waiting for new releases, thus thining out the playerbase after some time after each release. FH is a game that plays best with high player numbers, on full servers. Accordingly the action focussed on the core community servers after some time again, and the server over at Wolfgaming.net was the old bull in the scene providing low pings even for european players. There were more reasons leading to the decline of other servers that would go beyond the scope of this topic, like latency and spawn delays. Just on a sidenote: No server with a spawn delay of 10 seconds ever could keep ground among the community constantly.
During the development of FH years went by, and I can say that I was more than once pissed and frustrated about the intervals between releases. But at that time we did not know what would be coming when we waited 2 years for the release of FH2 0.1. During those two years the community went through ups and downs beyond any believe.
I guess I could write much more, but let me end my review at this point. Everything here is recalled from my memory, thus there might be mistakes. Please correct me if you find mistakes. ;)
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The main inacuracy is the part about Merciless Creations that was way more messy and unbelievable soap opera beyond comedy, but I'll shut up my chatty tongue
And Wake was a custom version done by FH, Merciless Creations just added skins and sounds, no maps or new models
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I think I may have asked this once but no-one replied; do the current dev team still keep in touch with the original team (e.g. people like Senor Dingdong) and if so what do they think of the mod as it is now?
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Some of them are MIA, like Senor Ding Dong. But ArminAce or Hartmann liked what we did so far..and haha, I am also from the original team
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well ive been around since .5 this mod caught my eyes first actually it did so much that i upgraded my computer so i could play it, i went from 256 ram to 512 to 768 to a gig then to 2 gigs then to 2.5 gigs then 3 and now i have 4 gigs,
went from a pathetic ATI 9200 to a X850 pro to a X3870 OC and now i have a ATI 4870,
From a P3 to a P4 to an AMD 3200 to an AMD 3500 to now an intel C2D E7400. i upgraded soley for FH2 and FH's progress.... though i must say my favorite map of all time are between Sector 318 and a Outskirts of berlin.. man i remember driving a BT7 across enemy lines and shooting every round i had into the KT from the rear and destroyed it and he never turned to face me and it was awsome =) i cant wait for the normandy campaign to be released! ... once again i can put my awsome Sherm skills to work killing thoses pesky Tigers X-P
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Please mind your punctuation. I can't make out the beginning of the sentences.