A GREAT post fred. You EVEN wrote, why Modders are more luckier then Game Developers. I shall keep that in mind... But COULDN'T we take a BIG step, and make jedi's playable before THEY do??? Developers are good, but modders - who makes it from scratch, and EVEN without a concept - are the best. agree? We can make WHATEVER we want and NO one is complaining but I STILL think, that WE should try to mod some levels, before SWBF2 comes out It sounds like waste of money to me, since some of us, ALREADY created some GREAT maps, and worlds... so keep up the good work, guys

C ya

My entertainment equation :

Going to movie $8
Hours of movie entertainment :2
Impact relating to interests and Replay Value : 0

Buying a game : $40
Hours of Entertainment : Way over 100 hours.
Impact relating to interests and Replay Value : unlimited

I have no problem buying a game that provides hours of entertainment as long as the genre and control are too my liking , from there I usually mod the game the way I like

Good point on the linux files though =XSL=Fds[iTa] , I could host games on multiple Oc-48 connections with 20 terrbit backbones , Pentium4 with gigs of ram if the server files would load onto my servers.
I could host 2000 player games if the code would allow .....

Qdin wrote:A GREAT post fred. You EVEN wrote, why Modders are more luckier then Game Developers. I shall keep that in mind... But COULDN'T we take a BIG step, and make jedi's playable before THEY do??? Developers are good, but modders - who makes it from scratch, and EVEN without a concept - are the best. agree? We can make WHATEVER we want and NO one is complaining but I STILL think, that WE should try to mod some levels, before SWBF2 comes out It sounds like waste of money to me, since some of us, ALREADY created some GREAT maps, and worlds... so keep up the good work, guys

C ya

jedies have been made playable check the "killing jedies" thread CGArtist
made a mini mod thats pretty cool even with force powers

I have heard that here missions will be objective based.

It's a nice idea, yes, but don't forget at all the command post game mode: it's fun too.

Better will be if there will be both the modes, with different maps obviously:
Objective oriented missions and command posts missions.

And for example the historical campaign can be done on objective oriented missions, and the galactic conquest on command posts missions.

Another nice idea should be to implement the galactic conquest mode on multiplayer, and leave at server admins the choose of play a random (or admin-defined) map order mode or a galactic conquest mode.

And another suggestion is on the planet ambiented maps:
modify the fly limit for be a lot more higher (so fighter pilots can fly for some seconds in vertical direction) and larger, and do for example a difference of flying height between "flying object":

for example an airspeeder like the bespin one or the snowspeeder can be fast at low altitude, but never can go so up like an Xwing or a TieFighter, that are starfighters.
Or do some air weapon like "special", for example the Ywing and TieBomber's bombs, the only weapon necessary for destroying a specific objective.

Another suggestion for fighters is about the cockpit.

All the swb1 I person fighter's cockpits are too much "closed", is very hard to fly with it because it reduce a lot the visibility.
An usefull command could be the "invisible cockpit", a key that players can use for switch between I person with a visible cockpit and I person without a visible cockpit.
Another improvement could be a functionality implemented in snowspeeders during the cable using vs at-ats:
a sort of "leg-distance sensor" that could incentive the use of the first person instead of the third for snowspeeders.

An usefull first person view is necessary for space battles too.
And for space battles a 3d radar (that calculate altitude and position of 3d fighters in the space near the starfighter) could improve a lot the dogfighting.

For an example take a look at the XWing vs TieFighter one:

An immaginary sphere around the starfighter, divided in 2 semisphere, and each semisphere projected on a circle, with a total of 2 circles: one for front and one for rear sensors.

psych0fred wrote: I am the biggest proponent of giving the game all of the "standard" features of online multiplayer games these days, but if comes down to having the in game server browser redesigned or giving people an in game remote admin the remote admin is less important. It's less important than having people work on an XBox patch and just about everything else because it doesn't prevent people from playing the game.

And who said there will never be a magic patch? I can't say for sure there will be another patch, but I also can't say there won't.

I understand your point of view (or better, not exactly your, but the publisher one) but the code of pc and console versions is not exactly the same...

... and the difference could be on the autodownload function (i forgot to say it in my suggestions, but it could improve a lot the diffusion of mod maps), on a PC designed server browser (the 1.2 pc version server browser in my opinion work very good, and (i speak for my self and my clan) we prefer it at ASE and gamespy arcade one. With some little improvement, like some more details on servers, a preferite/recent server list and better menu fonts it will be like perfect), on thing that u implemented only for PC users (the I person view) or consolle users (gamepads autoaim).

In my opinion on the last 2 months of development you (you refered to developers) have to divide the priorities on:

- things needed only by pc ver

- things needed only by xbox ver

- things needed only by ps2 ver

And develop these with the same importance for each platform.
If you are not strictly related to a date like the old 21th sept a week before or after i don't think is so important for the publisher, if they really want to sell the game and dont burn the game name (like vivendi do some days ago for tribes vengeance...)

psych0fred wrote: but none of them outweigh the simple matter of priorities and the insignificance of the PC market compared to the console market and why things will only get worse for PC gamers as time goes on, especially with the next gen consoles coming out.

But if you really want to heavily HIT the console market, why you make this game for PC market too?

You (or anyone for you) have to decide their priorities:
Want a good console game or a good pc game?

If you want the first, leave the pc project, if you want the second leave the console project.
You can do both too, but if you want to do both in the right way you need more time.

If developers will do a mediation between pc and console priorities this will be only a medium game, forgotten after 6 months.

In both the platforms.

And i don't think that a programmer, after all the fatigue used in a project, like a lot that his work is not appreciate.

I know that programmers are in a situation of "submission" in relations with publisher, but publishers are persons, and these "persons" could understand then a thing is needed and when not, if a programmer try to speak with them.

P.S: Could eh, nothing of sure, but why can't be tryied?

psych0fred wrote:I have always had multiple computers, so having an in game remote admin has never been an issue for me. My server is eiher right next me or the machine I use to remote admin into my server is right next to me, so the remote admin issue has never been a problem. I'm actually surprised there are linux server admins who can't do this and instead need an in game console. My point is you have an alternative to accomplish the same thing an in game console would, take advantage of it if you can. An in game console is useful to a smaller number of people and the things that developers need to develop for the majority will always take precedence.

.....

I am the biggest proponent of giving the game all of the "standard" features of online multiplayer games these days, but if comes down to having the in game server browser redesigned or giving people an in game remote admin the remote admin is less important. It's less important than having people work on an XBox patch and just about everything else because it doesn't prevent people from playing the game.

Hi I am new here but I heard a dev was talking about SWBF.

Firstly I would like to say that no game in 2004 excited me more than SWBF, and I am sad to say no game dissapointed me as much.

From what you have written it sounds like you will not have rcon functionality in SWBF2. Much of the dissapointment with SWBF1 was due to the lack of an rcon feature. I think my clan was the first to put up a SWBF server but the manager was always substandard compared to those available for every other game we have run (BF42, BFV, UT04, Source, etc, etc). The lack of RCON controls really removes the incentive for clans and communities to run servers since it is such a hassle to change maps or kick disruptive players (let alone the lack other features we are used). Most clans use remote servers and few people have two machines running where they can keep one logged into the remote box. Plus a huge percentage run linux servers.

just take a look through the posts on the Server Admin forums of Battlefield.net (Where I am the author of the Dedicated Server FAQ and Server Codes Stickies), you will see endless posts and tirades from frustrated admins.

Remote Admin Tools = Happy Admins = more servers = stronger community
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE I implore you to include rcon commands for SWBF2. I know that this would be the difference between my clan running it and my members buying the game (they are still bitching to me about talking them into buying SWBF1). And I imagine that the same will be true for other clans and gaming communities.

To be honest I dont really understand why this is even debatable....I cant think of a single multiplayer game released in the last couple of years that didnt have RCON controls except SWBF.


NOTE: if you guys have already implemented this in SWBF then thank you and.....nevermind

Im not going to violate my NDA with Pandemic but I can say i love the things coming out in the new code....its amazing . In the past few days Ive been testing out what may be a patch / may be SWbf2 Mp but truly, I am confident that over 80% of the incoming posts about dissapointment with SWBF have/are being addressed.

guru wrote:Im not going to violate my NDA with Pandemic but I can say i love the things coming out in the new code....its amazing . In the past few days Ive been testing out what may be a patch / may be SWbf2 Mp but truly, I am confident that over 80% of the incoming posts about dissapointment with SWBF have/are being addressed.

It's unfair

Here in Europe lot of us offered ourselves for the test and only american people as been choosed!!

And lot of us use the english version, for example ordered from play.com, that is the same of the american one!

Why this discrimination?
For a bad error i used on my italian swb version the 1.1 english patch, and it gone good without any problem. (Now obviously i use the 1.2 in the right language... ).

Why if a big patch like the 1.1 didn't made problems another one could cause some of these?

It's only an excuse for having all the betatesters under U.S. laws, and then risk less with better knowed (by developers) laws?

psych0fred wrote:We will not be eliminating any of the current types of gameplay, that's for sure.

Good news.

Galactic Conquest is incredibly ambitious and I too would like to see it be everything that it can. Not sure how that's going to turn out as we do have a fixed production timeline and we could literally work on Galactic Conquest for years blurring the line where strategy games and and fps's begin. I may try to do that as a full conversion either way.

The actual swb1 galactic conquest in my opinion has a good basic idea, the use of a turn system, but atm it's too simplyfied.

Bonuses are not really effective in battle (if you except kashyyk, that with wookiees bots it's quite unbeatable... go wookiees!! lol).

A nice idea could be that any planet influence the presence of certain vehicle, weapon and units on the maps instead of others.

Or, for example, that if you beat an enemy on a certain map with more of xxx tickets he is penalized for the rest of the campaign, because for example each faction can start with a certain ammount of tickets, that the commanders are free to use in any quantity on each planet.

Or better that the commander has to assign to each planet, at start a certain ammount of tickets, that rappresent troops, and an ammount of them on transport ships, that can use for attacks on planets or for support a attacked planet.

If these ships are much far from the objective, in their movement they use 2 turns, or that arrive after a certain ammount of time in the battle (for example 20 minutes) for supporting as reinforcement the currently attacked troops. Obviously these ships could transport vehicles too.

If the enemy send an attack to a planet with some allied ships orbiting around these ships could intercept the attackers and engage them in a space battle (that in swb2 will be possible).
And this costrict the attacker to use a part of his resources for escort his transport ships.

In simply words, a sort of dinamic campaign, like for example in the DiD F22 simulators.
And for some idea like this i suggest you to take a look to Star Wars Rebellion, a very good strategic game (in my opinion the best SW oriented), that probably for its difficulty never saw the success.

The fly height you meantioned becomes a problem with performance. The higher you fly the easier it is to see the edge of the maps unless you design the sky domee as a complete sphere and do memory intensive blending tricks. Otherwise it just looks like crap. The alternative is no terrain (Bespin 1) or space battles. The flyers can be modded to perform however you like, and balancing flyers and units on a map is hard because you end up having to map the flyers weak or units super strong. Technically all the flyers should be able to hover and just fire, but that would not make for good gameplay for the units flailing on the field. A lot of attention is being paid to balance, and I trust the developers but in the end it's the publisher's call so we'll see how it turns out. The PC was different than the other platforms but if you ask me the PC version should have been made much more difficult. We fixed this at least partially with the patches, but I know how good our AI really is and there is more that could have been done to improve the PC experience by adjusting the maps themselves for the PC.

Wait!
Atm the soldiers AI is not better.
Is better the AI soldier's aim.
They can kill you with 3 pistol headshots from 100 metres, but probably after doing this they simply stop themselves and crouch down like when people go to bathroom... lol

And i have noticed that higher is the difficulty level, more stupid are your allies and more intelligent are your enemy.

However about the balance i have to admit that you developers made a very good work (if we except jettroopers and droidekas... but with the 1.2 patch this problem has been solved too).
I hope to see a good balancement like this in swb2

That's a good idea about the distiguishable flyer classes. I'm not sure how useful it would be in the maps we have but I'll see if it's something we can add for modders.

Are you not hoping too much in modders?
And if you want to hope in them, remember that you (you=developers) have to support the community, and not only with mod tools, but with the things that a console user never will see usefull, like command console in game, linux server files and things like this.

I agree with a lot of what you said about first person. In the end I'd like to address the PC design separately from the console design because they really diverge when it comes to this topic. Consolers play 3rd person, and their controls are limited so on the PC it ends up not being very useful in 1st person when it could easily be just like Xwing vs Tie Fighter. Consolers don't have akeyboard to balance their shield and select targets of varying type. Starfighter did it pretty well, but then on the PC it had the same lame controls for targeting that were on the console. I wanted better controls for that game too.

About controls i have read of a control that allow you to rotate around the Z axis.
I hope it will not be full automatic (predefined xxx degree), but a better idea will be to do similar to XvT old one:

when you pushed the button the control for X axis switched to Z axis, until you release the button.

However this is system was fully surpassed from XWA, with its completely separate third axis control.
Remeber this before choosing how to control this axis.
The better thing will be to allow, for PC users, both the system.
And for console users only one of them.

This comes back to that target the dumb consumer who can only mash buttons problem. Consolers wants Crimson Skies, PC Gamers want Tie Fighter, and there's a big difference. We are revisiting the HUD so we'll see how it turns out. At least some of your issues have been addressed already. I want XWvTF myself, but that I doubt we will ever see again unless it's a mod.

About the cockpit, take a look to XWA, with a 3d designed cockpit but with real controls directly in 2d on the screen.

The server browser in 1.2 did have a few features missing such as favorites which were addressed long ago. Patches have deadlines too, and we constantly develop so if something isn't finished and tested it may be in and disabled until it can be activated after enough testing. Better to not have a feature than one that's buggy and causes more complaints, expecially if it forces you to keep releasing patches.

Another reason for doing a good use of this multiplayer test.
And for opening this to more people (and more countries), for example for focusing each testing team on one aspect of the test.

When it comes to priorities don't forget the Xbox and PS2 take longer and are more demanding because of the Technical Requirements Checklist and process they make you go through. We could spend a month putting in voicemail because it's an Xbox requirement and with a fixed timeline that's going to bump things from the bottom of the list. The reject resubmit process takes forever, assuming they even get back to you in a reasonable amount of time. Wonder why there's no Xbox Jabba's Palace? Not because they devs didn't finish it, that's for sure.

More money? More troubles...

will continue... too long for making only one post... ^^'

And don't forget each game has multiple platforms and languages, each in essence is it's own independent game and needs to be handled separately. So fixing things means multiplying the work at the very end. A bug in the Japanese version can hold up all versions even if they are unaffected.

You can develop a sort of system of queries for all the names of the game, that are directly related to a file containing all the texts.
So, the difference between one language version and another one will be only in this file.

The obvious solution is to release when ready, but publishers have fixed budgets and timelines. That doesn't seem to stop them from changing their mind about what they want and throwing of the schedules though. When you own the property it's easy to pick another publisher when you've had with their constant changes (Mercenaries started out as Strike with EA as a vehicle combat game, ended up as Mercenaries at Lucasarts as a completely different type of game). But Star Wars is not ours so we can only do what we are allowed. That's why they have version 2's and 3's. So the next game can be completely re-engineered and become something even bigger.

SWB3? o_O

mmm....

I have to admit that you created a potentially long live series...

In the end though all developement can end up like DaiKatana if the publisher just keeps feeding the developer money, so those deadlines are a good thing. I do think they should stagger the platforms so the PC can be a much different game designed not so much for a different platform, but for a different type of user. And I'm just talking about vehicle controls!

I onestly hope not only the controls...

These are all the reasons I'm a proponent of developing a new business model to give consumers like us a choice. Big business only targets mass audiences but there is viability in only targeting a small niche and targeting them well. Big brands just don't do that.

I've worked in entertainment software development for almost 12 years now and the first lesson I learned is the battle between business and creativity is ever present in all industries. That's why new business models and people like modders have such an advantage. The only thing they lack is professional experience which ultimately leads to professional quality that allows them to compete. Some people spin off and try to form their own companies but few game developers survive for more than a few projects. Pandemic spun off from Activision in 1996. Pandemic has been around longer than most. It's quite a feat.

I do want to point out though that it is not unprecedented for modders to do good enough work that they end up becoming a professional development team. Serious Sam is an example as is Counterstrike. At the very least you have mod tools to cut your teeth on and put something together that gets you recognized and puts you in a position where you can affect change or even better set the bar that everyone lives up to.

When a modder group became a developer group, isn't it under the same "business laws" of the older developers?

...

Valve is making great strides with this. Steam is innovative and has lots of potential. Dynamic patching is the best way to do it, too. When you don't have to run everything through a third party for testing and approval, whether it be a publisher first or a console manufacturer after that, everything is much quicker and easier. Little fixes can be distributed trivially without being a major production.

Steam can have all the potential of this world, but it created a lot of problems to people without a good connection (like 56k-ers) that wanted to play only HL2.


However i have to admit that this is one of the most interesting threads that i have seen in the last 3 years.

Wow fred! That was truly the best inspiration post Ive ever read

Updates about SWBF2!!!!

-16 new battle recreations
-The maps used wil be more objective based then command points based. ex- escort Leia to escape pods etc.
-Improved AI, verbal commands, points to direction of the battle
-space battles
-Jedi classes for both light and dark sides of the force
-Improved graphics, same engine though (and they do look better, thanks to ILM)

well I wrote this on the locasforums too some time ago. I think the main flawns are 3. They are all related to the design of the game itself. The game was clearly designed for console and IMHO badly ported to PC. Hope this can get thru, and a developer finally reads it.

1) As my clanmate Fds pointed out one of the main problems is no linux dedicated server existance. Most of the game hosting society use linux for free servers. This is why most (all?) the SWB servers are clan servers, fact that radically decreases the number of active servers.

2) The Net support is the most awful thing I saw in the game. And this isn't really good for a game designed to be played in multiplayer. Just for you to know.. we had more than 60 presubscriptions to XSLclan before battlefront was released. They were people playing other games like JA, Counterstrike and all the most famous games. Now after trying the game for 5 days just 8 or 9 of them decided actually to buy it. Ok you will say you sell on consoles anyway.... but I assume that winning several Game Of The Year prizes like KOTOR did wouldn't be really bad for the name of Pandemic

to get deeper to this Net support I noticed 2 main flawns: the FPS Cap and the average latency ingame.
- Ok i'm not one of those people that want to have 200+ fps just to say... hey my VGA does 200+ fps in SWB. A lot of server now run with 30tps and they really less stable than 20tps. In the game which IMHO has one of the best net protocols ever (Q3) the server runs @ 20fps so that it can be stable and not cpu stressing even of running multiple instances of the game and other games too.
- Latency... ok this is the critical point and the most mysterious one. For some strange reason the latency between server and client is greatly increased if compared to other games. I will bring the example of NGI.it which is the simpler for me.
NGI.it (Net Gamers Italia) is the biggest society in italy providing gaming related services. they are connected directly to the italian internet exchange of Milan and their latency with the internet is < 1ms. I play other games on their servers like Enemy Territory, Jedi Outcast, CounterStrike and UT99. My ingame ping to this server is always < 55ms. For some strange reason when I played Battlefront on their server (and all the other people like me) I used to have a ping that went from 130ms up to 170ms. How the hell I'm supposed to use the sniper rifle in such conditions?
After few test i noticed there is a mysterious +50ms on SWB servers if compared to other games one and this numbers increases as your bandwidth decreases. I know people in Milan who have T3 connections (Optical Cables) winth a ping to ngi <5ms. On NGI's SWB server they used to be around 50-55ms. When I host a game I am @ 50ms O_o
Obviously this is really bad if we want to speak of Battlefront as of a game made for competitions. (like CS, Q3, BF1942 and almost all the games designed for PC )

3) Gameplay and interface problems. The interface and design is clearly console oriented.
To solve this I would have really appreciated an ingame console (just like quake engine, unreal engine, source engine) + the most important thing Game Source code (just like quake 3 based games... they give you the source code so you can whatever you want related to gameplay). This was not done for SWB. And this is lame because in gaming competitions almost every game uses a mod, ETPro on ET... OSP on Quake3. This because the modding community can answer faster to the gamers needing than a developer can do.

Sorry for my bad english.. it's really not my language
Good Luck with SWB2's developing

I just wanted to say thanx to Psychofred for all the good info we have posted a link to this forum on Lucas Arts forums PS2 side. Everyone over there is real excited and looking forward to SWBF 2.

Thanx Again!!!

Well im looking forward to SWBF2 but more importand will the modtools be compatible with BF2?
If so we would have the tools right from the beginning correct?
And are our current custommaps BF2 compatible?

Rends

EBGames has added Battlefront 2 to their release list as November 1st, 2005. Interestingly, the game is currently only listed for PS2 and Xbox.

Well I'm just glad to have an insider like psycho giving us a heads up.

I cnould never resist!

I am buying this game


It will be kind of cool that the two can be intertwined in a way.

Sort of like jk2 and jk3.

The two could mix stuff up.

Yes indeed Stellcat.
I want to play a better battlefront.
So even it is stupid that we feel like we have playing a year a beta version. I need to buy this because I just want to play this better version

i can really see that the developers cant really do anything worse, it can only get better
the game is great at the moment (-some minor problems) and i still enjoy it, i got my £30 out of this game and im sure i will with the next one

and i personally think pandemic are stupid for not allowing non us citizens to take in the beta multiplayer test. surely there is a way around that?