Viae Romam - A Forgotten Hope 2 Update

[Matthew_Baker]

Really? After months of leaving us hanging, you give us a tournament announcement and a single screenshot?

You're right, you should be getting some sort of refund. Devs? He seems like a long time player, surely there's some way for him to get his money back, right?

I'll admit it's a nice looking house but come on these quarterly updates can't be good for the health of the mod. I do hope you are right TS4ever when you say that the drought will be over soon but I'm skeptical at the same time because you said the same thing months ago.

I believe the only alternative to quarterly updates is no update at all, so technically this is better for the health of the mod than the other options. Imo, I'm very glad they decided to show a screenshot, even if it's something 'less interesting' than a vehicle or a map. It shows that the mod is still going, it shows that they are still actively recruiting and accepting developers and it shows that the Eastern front is still being pushed forward. To update the front page with this information, as well as the information of a tournament, shows that this game is actively being played, (where people can play new maps even) and is a great decision. Now casual FHers can see all this information instead of thinking the mod is dead.

As for the tone in your post: I understand the point you're trying to make, many people complain that this mod is losing players and will soon die if the devs don't 'do something about it.' But what exactly do you expect them to do? They've made it very clear that they're short handed and updates won't be nearly as frequent as they used to be. So what exactly is the answer to you rhetorical questions? Do you really think the devs have 'left us hanging?' as if they're putting out less updates for some other reason? What do those questions in your post hope to accomplish? As far as I can tell they're just rude, entitled and ignorant, and can be left out altogether. Don't make the mistake of thinking that the devs don't care about this mod, they spend more time and energy than you know to work on something in their free time.

Obviously you're free to vomit your opinion about your displeasure in this mod's progress, but there are better ways of wording it so as to not insult the people that don't deserve it. (least of all Fred who, believe me, spent quite some time putting that static together) I hope you didn't intend to be this callous with your post but it certainly comes off that way.

Edit: the post is a little vehement, but this is a thread to welcome a new dev and new content, something we haven't seen in a long time. I can't see being anything less than thankful at this news.
 

[Ts4EVER]

It's not a big deal, I would be the first to admit that the marketing at the moment is deeply flawed. But as it looks now, there will be news update this weekend and you will be pretty surprised by it, I can promise you that

[Excavus]

It's not a big deal, I would be the first to admit that the marketing at the moment is deeply flawed. But as it looks now, there will be news update this weekend and you will be pretty surprised by it, I can promise you that

And I will ever so look forward to it, and hold you to your word.

[NTH]

It's not a big deal, I would be the first to admit that the marketing at the moment is deeply flawed. But as it looks now, there will be news update this weekend and you will be pretty surprised by it, I can promise you that

And I will ever so look forward to it, and hold you to your word.

No no no not that easy Excavus. If the news is pretty surprising we expect to see a picture of you in a pink tutu, contact FatJoe for experience reference.
Great looking building Fred, oozes atmosphere.

[PoliticalCorrectness]

Who says that [F|H] are not talking with the Devs?
Who says that [762] are not talking with the Devs?
Not everything is spoken about in public

Be patient. We had a good map pack, when [762] and [F|H] joined hands during and after the
FH2 "Wacht am Rhein" campaign. Nobody says that it must have been the last map pack

Now, there is the awesome new FH2 campaign "Viae Romam" going on (for which we still need Italian soldiers). It features organized battles, every week a new custom map, great team spirit and fun
get togethers on Teamspeak. So there is lots of new things to discover in FH2 at the moment.

Then I wonder why there is no offical map-pack to be downloaded on the official FH-site with all the maps from the [F|H] campaigns. Or at least the best ones.
This could gain new interest in this mod...

But I'm really excited about that (possible) news to come on the Weekend....

[x4fun ODIUM]

Because some things need time. You cannot take maps that someone has put in
hours and hours of his time into creating - and then just publish them as you please.

Firstly you have to ask the map creators and contributors of each community.
Then they DECIDE to GIVE their intellectual property (!) to you - their choice.
Then you test them again. Fix them if necessary. Then you go to the next community.
Knock on the door. Do the same. Then you test if the whole map pack is working.
Then you can think about promoting.

Do you understand now that things do not just pop out of nowhere? Contact me if you
want to help the next map pack to be released quicker. Believe me, I have tons of work
to do and can use help. If not - please don't just post here demanding quick releases.
I gave you an explanation of what we have done. Also - if you read carefully -
of what we are doing now. That should answer your questions.

If you really cannot wait to play new content right now, look at this nice link here:

JOIN the ITALIAN TROOPS!



We need even numbers for big battles!

EDIT:
I was meaning to give a reply to Excavus' post, then I read Matt Baker's post.
So: "What Matt said +1."

[RAnDOOm]

Do not forget to update the Moddb page with the news.

There is still huge ammount of people that visit that site.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/forgotten-hope-2

Just a headsup!

[Lee_87]

They've made it very clear that they're short handed and updates won't be nearly as frequent as they used to be.

While I'm sure many forum members are aware of this fact and I've heard a dev say this once or twice in the forums, how the heck are all of the other people (and gamers who are not forum members) supposed to know that the current FH dev team is understaffed? Neither have they ever posted a new update on the homepage saying that they're having staff issues nor have I ever seen an active "Devs Wanted" call on their website. So seriously, how should the world (and potentially talented modders who would like to contribute to FH) know??

Giving the fact that according to the homepage there are still about 30 active developers listed in the Staff section (though they actually are only a handful now) doesn't really help either to attract new dev members.......How about updating this information once in a while?

[Matthew_Baker]

While I'm sure many forum members are aware of this fact and I've heard a dev say this once or twice in the forums, how the heck are all of the other people (and gamers who are not forum members) supposed to know that the current FH dev team is understaffed? Neither have they ever posted a new update on the homepage saying that they're having staff issues nor have I ever seen an active "Devs Wanted" call on their website. So seriously, how should the world (and potentially talented modders who would like to contribute to FH) know??

I can’t speak for the devs because I don’t know much about internal matters but I think I can speculate on a few things.

For one, they have posted information on the front page before http://forgottenhope.warumdarum.de/news.php?id_news=408 here's one from June 4th, 2012. While it was a long time ago, the devs have made other attempts to get the word out. I can't dig it up, but I've seen posts in the http://www.bfeditor.org/forums/ forums requesting for help as well; that's a website that most battlefield modders who still mess around with this engine know about, so it's def a good place to advertise. On top of that, advertising and posting a new update on the front page takes time, time that's better spent working on new releases imo.

Giving the fact that according to the homepage there are still about 30 active developers listed in the Staff section (though they actually are only a handful now) doesn't really help either to attract new dev members.......How about updating this information once in a while?

I agree this information should be updated, even putting something as small as a button (like the download latest FH version button) on the sidebar saying something like “actively looking for devs, apply here” with a link to the applications page. But then even the applications page isn’t up to date, so it becomes a big task that takes more work to get done properly.

I think the biggest thing that we can’t forget, is that this is an old, old engine. Imo, even if the devs advertised the best they could to every appropriate outlet on the internet, it would only bring in a few more people. I think it has more to do with the fact that the amount of people that want to/ have time to mod for Battlefield 2 is very small. People who develop for a living or are looking to make a career out of game developing have to keep up with new engines and techniques and are rightfully looking for other games to work for. Doing work for battlefield 2 isn't going to boost your portfolio as much as modeling or level designing for a next gen game will. I can't say for certain but I'm sure that back in FH2s heyday it was easy to find modelers, coders, animators, level designers etc who were looking for tasks to boost their portfolio and help them get a job when the latest engine was BF2. So they messed around with FH2, pumped out tasks and moved on in their careers or whatever. I'd venture to say that the devs that have stuck around and continued modding FH2, and the one's that are joining now are doing this more for the love of the mod and genuine interest in game developing and less to help their job. (not to say that the people who did this just for their job didn't care about this mod) I could be wrong but I give them a lot of credit.

Also that's not to say that we can't do our own part in advertising this mod. Unless a dev comes in and objects, I'm sure they wouldn't mind someone posting on another website saying that 'FH2 is still working and actively looking for people to help model, code, animate and map for upcoming releases.'

[Stubbfan]

Guys. It's good that you care for the mod just as we do! We will try to up our game regarding the homepage and other things. There's many thing trailing behind when we focus our small dev force on building the mod. However, these threads have a tendency to drift off topic just about every time now. There's a place for every discussion, but this one doesn't belong here. So please, on topic, or we have to close the thread.

[Erwin]

Who says that [F|H] are not talking with the Devs?
Who says that [762] are not talking with the Devs?
Not everything is spoken about in public

Be patient. We had a good map pack, when [762] and [F|H] joined hands during and after the
FH2 "Wacht am Rhein" campaign. Nobody says that it must have been the last map pack

Now, there is the awesome new FH2 campaign "Viae Romam" going on (for which we still need Italian soldiers). It features organized battles, every week a new custom map, great team spirit and fun
get togethers on Teamspeak. So there is lots of new things to discover in FH2 at the moment.

Then I wonder why there is no offical map-pack to be downloaded on the official FH-site with all the maps from the [F|H] campaigns. Or at least the best ones.
This could gain new interest in this mod...

But I'm really excited about that (possible) news to come on the Weekend....

As the Branch Manager of FH2 on [F|H] I can answer this for you.

As ODIUM said, we put hours and hours of work into Mapping. Of course we would like to give priority to our Tournament. We are still using maps from our Campaigns of 4-5 years when we need them. We change layout, maybe even scenario(Making it a snow map for example)and use it again. We are still making new maps but we don't have the staff to fill 16 Battle weeks. We can't make 16 new maps for a Campaign, we can only make 4 maybe 5 and the rest will have to be filled with our older maps or stock maps.

We are trying to share this as much as we can with the community but we cannot release our entire stock. We will make a new pack after this Campaign with new maps, so there is also that.

[Turkish007]

Do not forget to update the Moddb page with the news.

There is still huge ammount of people that visit that site.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/forgotten-hope-2

Just a headsup!

Agreed, talks of the mod being dead was going on over there, if its updated in ModdB too, that perception will disappear, and that will sure get some more men for the tourney.

[PoliticalCorrectness]

Who says that [F|H] are not talking with the Devs?
Who says that [762] are not talking with the Devs?
Not everything is spoken about in public

Be patient. We had a good map pack, when [762] and [F|H] joined hands during and after the
FH2 "Wacht am Rhein" campaign. Nobody says that it must have been the last map pack

Now, there is the awesome new FH2 campaign "Viae Romam" going on (for which we still need Italian soldiers). It features organized battles, every week a new custom map, great team spirit and fun
get togethers on Teamspeak. So there is lots of new things to discover in FH2 at the moment.

Then I wonder why there is no offical map-pack to be downloaded on the official FH-site with all the maps from the [F|H] campaigns. Or at least the best ones.
This could gain new interest in this mod...

But I'm really excited about that (possible) news to come on the Weekend....

As the Branch Manager of FH2 on [F|H] I can answer this for you.

As ODIUM said, we put hours and hours of work into Mapping. Of course we would like to give priority to our Tournament. We are still using maps from our Campaigns of 4-5 years when we need them. We change layout, maybe even scenario(Making it a snow map for example)and use it again. We are still making new maps but we don't have the staff to fill 16 Battle weeks. We can't make 16 new maps for a Campaign, we can only make 4 maybe 5 and the rest will have to be filled with our older maps or stock maps.

We are trying to share this as much as we can with the community but we cannot release our entire stock. We will make a new pack after this Campaign with new maps, so there is also that.

That sounds great - new maps are always welcome! 
I really appreciate the work that you all put into creating new maps and so on. And the ones released for 762 are on the same page as the offical FH-maps, so, keep up the good work