Author Topic: And the mask comes off.  (Read 1712364 times)

Cailyn Alaynn

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 604
  • Never give in.
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #940 on: September 04, 2014, 03:13:28 PM »
any thought of putting together a kickstarter, or similar effort, to raise money for this project? seems a rather prodigious amount of work and some additional assistance with tools, people, project management, etc would likely help.

Between MWM, H&V, APR, Valiance, and CoH revival/binary, this group has almost created the game version of marvel's movie universe...
Do you mean a kickstarter for buying the I.P., or for funding Revival?

On Revival's side... I honestly haven't given much thought to stuff like that until very recently. Only with the legitimacy that having a license to use the I.P. would bring would allow me to do stuff like run a Kickstarer. I haven't really needed it up until this point anyways, since it's something I'd been doing solo. Not like I had to pay myself for my work!

As far as the rest goes...from what I understand Valiance Online, and Heroes and Villains have both turned down the offers of inclusion into the CoH-verse.
That would just leave Revival, City of Titans, and Legacy City of Heroes under the banner.
"Let's get dangerous..."
Lead Developer and Master of Mischief - Revival Project.
Revival website: APR.Pc-Logix.com

Harpospoke

  • New Efforts # 4,000!
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 608
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #941 on: September 04, 2014, 03:16:40 PM »
3a.  Without the source code, are we crippled in terms of adding or altering content?  Not necessarily.  The game content was not explicitly "programmed" into the game engine, it resided in database files that its no secret people have been decoding and reverse engineering since the days of Iakona (and me, and Codewalker, and lots of others).  It is possible, if difficult, to add things like power sets to the game without the explicit source code.  It might require some hacks to make work, but nothing outside the wheelhouse of, say, Icon's developers.  When Codewalker threatens to keep nerfing regen in I24, that's not just possible, but way too easy for him.  Without the appropriate dev tools, some things would be a lot harder than others - like say making those damn escort critters actually follow your ass correctly - but nothing's impossible, even without source.  Difficult, possibly prohibitively so in some cases, but anything that only involves data (geography, entity definitions, power definitions, basic mission design) is probably at least somewhat modifiable without source.
That's good to hear.   You never know what can happen if something is possible.  The desire for I24 might be strong enough to make the possible a reality.
Quote
Also, Windows 8 sucks.  Even Microsoft is backpedaling from it faster than a bear with an umbrella at the circus.
My gf certainly hates it with a passion.  She rarely gets angry...but Win 8 does the trick.
Quote
11.  Pherdnut: I spent over six months getting to about 70% awareness of how the animation system worked and how it interacted with the combat engine when the game was still alive, circa 2007ish.  At that time, I probably knew the details as well as anyone.  It almost melted my brain.  Every other question I asked BaB was "Why?  Why?  WHY???"  And he'd just shrug.  The game implementation is like that, only more of your brain leaks out of your ears.  That's why Codewalker is the only player I fear.  He likes it.  That's Cthulhu kinds of wrong.
There must be some difference between this and the "source code", right?    Because my mind is not understanding how CoH had such a messy mess that seems to have been created especially for it....but then it may be being used in other NCSoft games?    I'm not quite understanding the process that would allow for the mess to happen in the first place...I understand even less that the company would then use that mess for other games.   The one benefit to "the mess" in my mind was that it would be useless to NCSoft because it couldn't be used for other games...now I'm hearing the opposite.   Or I think that's what I'm hearing...that can't be right, can it?

Also...this makes me want to team with Codewalker.

FloatingFatMan

  • An Offal
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,178
  • Kheldian's Forever!
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #942 on: September 04, 2014, 03:17:19 PM »
The support is appreciated! Unfortunately, I couldn't even hazard as a guess at a release schedule yet.
I think I can pretty comfortably say it would prolly be before 2020. Yeah... Almost definitely before 2020.

I kinda get the impression that some folks think CoH1.5 won't be too difficult to do, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Whilst it IS in effect, just copying the existing game, it STILL has to be written from scratch! All the assets must be re-created (zone maps, mission maps, objects, textures, animations), the UI written, the power mechanisms design, the mission system done, the chat system, enhancements, inventions, IO's, -everything-.  The only slightly easier thing it's got going for it is that we know the numbers for the powersets.

It's every bit as big a job as the successor projects, and will be MUCH more prone to criticism as it's meant to be replicating CoH.

It's not impossible, but it's absolutely NOT an easy job, by any shake of the imagination. Don't expecting it to launch with Windows 9 (which is the initial impression I got from Nate's post, and I'm sure others thought that too).

Irish_Girl has a HUGE job here, and I wish her all the best for it, but it's not gonna be quick.

ooglymoogly

  • Underling
  • *
  • Posts: 6
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #943 on: September 04, 2014, 03:18:41 PM »
I meant a kickstarter for Revival - the IP bit is obviously well underway. I don't think now would be the appropriate time to launch it given everything you seem to have on your plate, not to mention the IP deal with NCSoft isn't finalized. However, were that to come to fruition, it might help you create a solid entity to concentrate efforts on and around the migration to 1.5. and with the number of people involved here and 'watching' the process you have the start of a solid base of potential funders.

just a thought

FloatingFatMan

  • An Offal
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,178
  • Kheldian's Forever!
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #944 on: September 04, 2014, 03:22:56 PM »
There must be some difference between this and the "source code", right?    Because my mind is not understanding how CoH had such a messy mess that seems to have been created especially for it....but then it may be being used in other NCSoft games?    I'm not quite understanding the process that would allow for the mess to happen in the first place...I understand even less that the company would then use that mess for other games.   The one benefit to "the mess" in my mind was that it would be useless to NCSoft because it couldn't be used for other games...now I'm hearing the opposite.   Or I think that's what I'm hearing...that can't be right, can it?

The main issue with any "code reuse" isn't actually going to be code reuse as such.. It's pretty unlikely any of the game code in CoH lives on in other NCSoft games as it's the only product Cryptic wrote under NCSoft's publishing banner.

What WILL be a problem though, is any code that talks to NCSoft's accounts systems.  This is stuff like the login authentication, store access, content gated behind being a subscriber...  They're not going to want anyone to see that, and they're probably not going to want the bother of digging it out of the CoH codebase to remove it.

Surelle

  • Guest
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #945 on: September 04, 2014, 03:28:08 PM »
I see this a little differently, I see that a LOT of work is going to have to be done to get any of these games working. Anything we can add to the mix means less work for whatever one of these things makes it into production. I do see a possibility that we have 4 failed games and the Original chugging along alone.

However since WE are making things - not NCSoft if one part fails we can hand the work over to a remaining part.

That's the spirit!  My point exactly.  We're all working on a volunteer basis anyway, from APR to CoT.  Worst case scenario and CoT winds up with more UE4 contributions if they like them and can ever make use of them.  We all just want our world back again in whatever form it has to take.  They're probably the most likely to bring a successor project to completion anyway, what with the kickstarter funding they've had. 

It's for this reason, though, that I think MWM should definitely not make any changes at all to the current CoT world or lore (not that they have, I'm sure they haven't) until such time as a doable deal ever becomes signed and sealed.  And if it's too late at that point for MWM to revamp and redo CoT (as Heroes and Villains has said at this point it already is for them) then the IP can still stand strong for i23 CoX, APR/CoX1.5 and a CoX2 (unless APR spins off and adds so much it becomes CoX2).

Ironwolf

  • Stubborn as a
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,503
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #946 on: September 04, 2014, 03:29:54 PM »
I kinda get the impression that some folks think CoH1.5 won't be too difficult to do, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Whilst it IS in effect, just copying the existing game, it STILL has to be written from scratch! All the assets must be re-created (zone maps, mission maps, objects, textures, animations), the UI written, the power mechanisms design, the mission system done, the chat system, enhancements, inventions, IO's, -everything-.  The only slightly easier thing it's got going for it is that we know the numbers for the powersets.

It's every bit as big a job as the successor projects, and will be MUCH more prone to criticism as it's meant to be replicating CoH.

It's not impossible, but it's absolutely NOT an easy job, by any shake of the imagination. Don't expecting it to launch with Windows 9 (which is the initial impression I got from Nate's post, and I'm sure others thought that too).

Irish_Girl has a HUGE job here, and I wish her all the best for it, but it's not gonna be quick.

Yes and no, all of the existing missions and lore are there already written for 1.5 to start. The port over is not easy - but it is easier than creating new worlds completely. The other side of it is to start off you don't need new content - you just need everything back in place under the new engine and with the new graphics so that you can start new development.

I would not expect to see new stuff on opening day - just having all the old stuff back up and running in UR4 would be awesome.

Cailyn Alaynn

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 604
  • Never give in.
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #947 on: September 04, 2014, 03:33:45 PM »
I kinda get the impression that some folks think CoH1.5 won't be too difficult to do, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Whilst it IS in effect, just copying the existing game, it STILL has to be written from scratch! All the assets must be re-created (zone maps, mission maps, objects, textures, animations), the UI written, the power mechanisms design, the mission system done, the chat system, enhancements, inventions, IO's, -everything-.  The only slightly easier thing it's got going for it is that we know the numbers for the powersets.
It's every bit as big a job as the successor projects, and will be MUCH more prone to criticism as it's meant to be replicating CoH.
It's not impossible, but it's absolutely NOT an easy job, by any shake of the imagination. Don't expecting it to launch with Windows 9 (which is the initial impression I got from Nate's post, and I'm sure others thought that too).
Irish_Girl has a HUGE job here, and I wish her all the best for it, but it's not gonna be quick.

Also keeping in mind the fact that a lot of objects from CoH have aged very poorly. My intent is to raise the bar for CoH's graphic fidelity. So a lot of asset's and especially textures have to be re-created from scratch, or quite heavily modified from the original.
Because of the fairly recent Revamp of the zone, Atlas Park has a benefit that most everything in the zone is only a couple years old. So not as much work needs to be done there. Praetoria will also share that silver lining.

As for the time consumption from the coding aspect... This is a huge reason why the agreement is in place between Revival and MWM to build off of City of Titan's code base. So...say...Instead of having to build a character system from the ground up, we'll instead be modifying one to fit Revival's needs. Seems to make more sense than having 2 teams building near identical code from scratch.

It is quite a large job, which is why I'm hoping to recruit some hopefully talented people to work on it with me. Don't expect it to be done quick, or to be in beta next month just because "It's just coh".

Also, I should have FloatingFatMan be my PR whenever I want people to think my work is REALLY hard.
"Let's get dangerous..."
Lead Developer and Master of Mischief - Revival Project.
Revival website: APR.Pc-Logix.com

FloatingFatMan

  • An Offal
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,178
  • Kheldian's Forever!
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #948 on: September 04, 2014, 03:37:38 PM »
Yes and no, all of the existing missions and lore are their already written for 1.5 to start. The prot over is not easy - but it is easier than creating new worlds completely. The other side of it is to start off you don't need new content - you just need everything back in place under the new engine and with the new graphics so that you can start new development.

I would not expect to see new stuff on opening day - just having all the old stuff back up and running in UR4 would be awesome.

Sure, we have the existing content to re-use, but I'd be surprised if it was in any kind of portable form... Also, having the content to plug into the new game is one thing, but first you must write the parts of the game to plug it in to...  This will, of course, be made easier by using UE4's "mission engine" (or whatever they call it for serving maps etc), but it's still not a quick job.

Essentially, we're writing CoH completely from scratch. The story content is only a tiny part of that job.

Cailyn Alaynn

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 604
  • Never give in.
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #949 on: September 04, 2014, 03:38:14 PM »
Yes and no, all of the existing missions and lore are there already written for 1.5 to start. The port over is not easy - but it is easier than creating new worlds completely. The other side of it is to start off you don't need new content - you just need everything back in place under the new engine and with the new graphics so that you can start new development.

I would not expect to see new stuff on opening day - just having all the old stuff back up and running in UR4 would be awesome.

It's a benefit and a curse. On the one hand, it's A LOT of time saved. We're not having to design a new world, and write all the stories. They already exist.

On the other hand... People know what the world is, and how things look. They've got a certain expectation of how things are.
I fully expect the first couple weeks of Revival's beta to be a FLOOD of bug reports that basically read "This sign post is supposed to be 4 further down the road. And the color of the sky isn't quite blue enough."
"Let's get dangerous..."
Lead Developer and Master of Mischief - Revival Project.
Revival website: APR.Pc-Logix.com

MM3squints

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 777
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #950 on: September 04, 2014, 03:40:21 PM »
Also keeping in mind the fact that a lot of objects from CoH have aged very poorly. My intent is to raise the bar for CoH's graphic fidelity. So a lot of asset's and especially textures have to be re-created from scratch, or quite heavily modified from the original.
Because of the fairly recent Revamp of the zone, Atlas Park has a benefit that most everything in the zone is only a couple years old. So not as much work needs to be done there. Praetoria will also share that silver lining.

As for the time consumption from the coding aspect... This is a huge reason why the agreement is in place between Revival and MWM to build off of City of Titan's code base. So...say...Instead of having to build a character system from the ground up, we'll instead be modifying one to fit Revival's needs. Seems to make more sense than having 2 teams building near identical code from scratch.

It is quite a large job, which is why I'm hoping to recruit some hopefully talented people to work on it with me. Don't expect it to be done quick, or to be in beta next month just because "It's just coh".

Also, I should have FloatingFatMan be my PR whenever I want people to think my work is REALLY hard.

I think one of the biggest challenge you may face will be base building. I remember asking why can't we get the stuff in Pocket D into our base (pool table, the Jack Daniel bottles, etc) and WarBase, a veteran basemaker said he asked Matt Miller the same question the response was the code left behind from the old dev team (Jack's) was so integrated with the system, you move one thing, it breaks another. Don't know if you are going to run into that problem or even planned  to do base making yet.

FloatingFatMan

  • An Offal
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 1,178
  • Kheldian's Forever!
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #951 on: September 04, 2014, 03:41:21 PM »
Also, I should have FloatingFatMan be my PR whenever I want people to think my work is REALLY hard.

Heh, I probably see it a bit clearer than many because I'm a programmer by trade, have been for over 20 years.  I don't write games, but I DO write huge, complicated application software.  Right now we're working on porting all our legacy VB6 code over to C#.  This is going to take us at LEAST 2 years, just to get back to the current status quo...  And this is just a sales/invoicing/production system...

Harpospoke

  • New Efforts # 4,000!
  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 608
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #952 on: September 04, 2014, 03:41:39 PM »
I have found this to be true with most any form of production. I've done a little bit of coding, web design, audio production, and video production over the years and I find that very often while using/listening/watching some piece of content I often wonder how it was made, and how I would do it if I had to re-create it.
Must work the same for every industry.   My poor brother is not fond of pizza because he used to work at a pizza place in high school.

And I listen to music differently than most people.   I'll notice a cool hi-hat part or bass line while other people only seem to hear the lead vocal.

Surelle

  • Guest
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #953 on: September 04, 2014, 03:43:22 PM »
On the subject of voice work... I'm not currently planning on adding Voice work to Revival. That's not to say it's never going to happen, ever. But if it did...It would be around like...the 4th or 5th issue at the earliest.

...I'd have to spend at least that long finding the right voices for the characters.

(How's your moving going?  What am I asking-- moving is always a major pain in the butt!  You poor thing, you should take a vacation once you're done....)

And as far as any voiceovers in APR go, I don't know that it'd be worth it in the end.  Do you know how Hellgate:  London's developers Flagship Studios, funded with mega millions and headed by former Blizzard folk, went down in a burning ball of flame?  They tried to do too much and make their game everything to everybody, nothing ever got finished, eventually they had to launch anyway and it all fell apart.

Just think about the work ahead for APR:  Trying to get all the zones, every NPC, every quest, every class and subclass and power set and costume piece and body shape in from Praetoria, the Rogue Isles and Paragon City.....  This took what, over 100 people at many points probably over a decade of full-time work (and probably longer days) to bring CoX to Issue 23?  Granted they were down to 15 people left I think when Cryptic split, but they were a lot larger than anything we've got going here for most of that decade and as Paragon Studios.  I'm not saying it won't ever get done (and I'm not saying it ever will either), but they had a lot more experience than most of us do here, and adding unnecessary extra burdens like voiceovers that may only rapidly become player annoyances down the road anyway seems detrimental.

Oh, and while I am trying to find my place in this potential APR outfit whether it winds up being eventual digital security, or menial, basic, repetitive tasking (copying missions over?) or what have you, I'd just like to ask:  Do we get our assets for Blender transitioning from the torrent download?  Let me dig around and try to find it.  NCSoft so nicely deleted CoX out of my NC Launcher and off my computer without my knowledge or consent right after the shutdown.  Will the Icon download help?  I had that on my PC after the shutdown but just reformatted earlier this week.

Cailyn Alaynn

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 604
  • Never give in.
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #954 on: September 04, 2014, 03:45:04 PM »
Must work the same for every industry.   My poor brother is not fond of pizza because he used to work at a pizza place in high school.

And I listen to music differently than most people.   I'll notice a cool hi-hat part or bass line while other people only seem to hear the lead vocal.

The one exception I've found to this is a friend from high school. He worked at KFC for 3 and a half years...and he still LOVES KFC.
"Let's get dangerous..."
Lead Developer and Master of Mischief - Revival Project.
Revival website: APR.Pc-Logix.com

hopelives

  • Minion
  • **
  • Posts: 48
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #955 on: September 04, 2014, 03:46:53 PM »
THANK YOU ONE AND ALL!!!
     Amen to that.

pinballdave

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 395
  • I am the player formerly known as Psylenz
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #956 on: September 04, 2014, 03:51:20 PM »
It's a benefit and a curse. On the one hand, it's A LOT of time saved. We're not having to design a new world, and write all the stories. They already exist.

On the other hand... People know what the world is, and how things look. They've got a certain expectation of how things are.
I fully expect the first couple weeks of Revival's beta to be a FLOOD of bug reports that basically read "This sign post is supposed to be 4 further down the road. And the color of the sky isn't quite blue enough."

and the sun never DID move east to west or the moon for that matter.

Cailyn Alaynn

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 604
  • Never give in.
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #957 on: September 04, 2014, 03:51:36 PM »
I think one of the biggest challenge you may face will be base building. I remember asking why can't we get the stuff in Pocket D into our base (pool table, the Jack Daniel bottles, etc) and WarBase, a veteran basemaker said he asked Matt Miller the same question the response was the code left behind from the old dev team (Jack's) was so integrated with the system, you move one thing, it breaks another. Don't know if you are going to run into that problem or even planned  to do base making yet.

I loved the base system. I loved seeing what players had built, I loved building myself... It was an amazing addition to CoH.

We're very unlikely to have the same kind of issues that they faced working on the Base system, as we'll be a little more mindful when building it in the first place. Also, I'll flay any programmer that doesn't comment their code.

Bases are a planned feature, one that I'm looking forward to. I can say that I want to drastically increase how much stuff you guys have available to place in bases, and the kinds of things you can do in a base. I also love Base Raiding. So, it's safe to expect to see it.
"Let's get dangerous..."
Lead Developer and Master of Mischief - Revival Project.
Revival website: APR.Pc-Logix.com

Cailyn Alaynn

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 604
  • Never give in.
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #958 on: September 04, 2014, 03:53:14 PM »
Heh, I probably see it a bit clearer than many because I'm a programmer by trade, have been for over 20 years.  I don't write games, but I DO write huge, complicated application software.  Right now we're working on porting all our legacy VB6 code over to C#.  This is going to take us at LEAST 2 years, just to get back to the current status quo...  And this is just a sales/invoicing/production system...

-whistles- That certainly....does not sound like fun. I do not evny you your job, Sir.
"Let's get dangerous..."
Lead Developer and Master of Mischief - Revival Project.
Revival website: APR.Pc-Logix.com

MM3squints

  • Elite Boss
  • *****
  • Posts: 777
Re: And the mask comes off.
« Reply #959 on: September 04, 2014, 03:54:13 PM »
Bases are a planned feature, one that I'm looking forward to. I can say that I want to drastically increase how much stuff you guys have available to place in bases, and the kinds of things you can do in a base. I also love Base Raiding. So, it's safe to expect to see it.

Oh my that makes me happy. I can probably now complete making my "City Base" (could do that before because of the number limitation) with a Buffalo Wild Wings in it too xD