Future Tense Semi-Official Statement

posted on January 29th, 2013, 10:04 pm

Not to cause an argument or "mud sling" but Future Tense has been in production since I started modding Armada. (or maybe it just feels like it!)

They have repeatedly claimed to "do the impossible" but they always refuse to reveal any details, it never gets any closer to release and all we see are screenshots showing very normal ordinary things in a hideously outdated engine.

Frankly, until I see proof they've done half the stuff they claim, I call foul. Modding works in the opposite way to justice; you have to prove you can do something rather than someone else having to prove you haven't.

So I wouldn't get all excited about their claims. Personally, I've seen with my own eyes (as we all have) what the FleetOps team has achieved. It's there, it's real, it's tangible. If they haven't managed some of these "impossible things" which the Future Tense team claims they have done (and several years ago to boot) then frankly I don't see that it's been done. FleetOps has always been on the cutting edge of Armada modding. Future Tense, to me, has always been about razamataz and showmanship and very little real substance.

I think this sentiment is rather widespread, if not always vocalized. While I agree with the gist of your valid argument, I feel that it is also unnecessarily provocative.

I think there are three main questions that need to be addressed:

1) Why hasn't the mod been released?
2) Why the secrecy?
3) Is FT really claiming to have performed miracles?

1) Why hasn't the mod been released?
The hype-building advertisement that has been done over the years, such as what you see on the outdated FT site, has undone much of the credibility for the FT team. In part, as SqureJames has said, because claims need substantiation, but also because of the air of secrecy that enveloped the FT development. I should mention that the team frequently came to a point where we expected a release to be just around the corner. Unfortunately, unexpected events that delayed and stalled development were just as frequent. This pushed back the release indefinitely and left everyone feeling about FT the same way they feel about presentations on perpetual machines and free energy. The intent was always to release before the anticipation turned into criticism.

The delays may be grouped into two categories: major personal life events, (ei, unexpected and prolonged visits to the hospital, critical job and school related issues), and the decision to improve and rework some part of the mod. The first needs no explanation as most of us have biological origins. The second, is that we wanted to release the best mod we could build, without the need for major revisions and patches. As our abilities improved, new possibilities for modding continued to open up. At the same time, the team continued to shrink, such that projects stalled, deadlines passed, and the workload grew.

2) Why the secrecy?
The few people that remained on the team could not simultaneously continue modding and contribute to the community, and so FT continued to disappear from forums and the apparent shroud of secrecy around FT only thickened. Earlier in the project, there was open public testing and the team had resources to interact with the community (albeit, this was before I jointed the team, so perhaps I am mistaken on the details here). Unfortunately, one such public test resulted in the stealing of parts of the mod, which led to the near cancellation of the entire thing. Since then, perhaps excessively so, the mod has been closed off, and new members could join only after making some measurable contribution. This policy made sense at the time, but the overall effect is of course debatable.

In my humble defense, since joining the FT team, I have provided guidance to anyone wishing to know how certain features were implemented. For example, rotating turrets, major GUI modifications, any kind of advanced SOD/texture animation (ei, damage effects and shipyard animations). There is a tutorial in the works on all the advanced modding concepts that FT has made use of, but time is limited, so this too is on hold. Instead of completing the tutorial, I opted for the release of some of the tools that we developed (SOD exporter and some batch ODF creation tools).

Unfortunately, this also means that real FT development has been at a standstill.

3) Is FT really claiming to have performed miracles?
Attempts at gathering enthusiasm around each of the anticipated release dates clearly worked to the teams disadvantage, but the claims were at worst exaggerating, and never purposely misleading. Hype turned into criticism and doubt. I think it is only appropriate to make an attempt to clarify some of the expected features.

There are well known, but underused "features" in the game that FT uses to their full extent. This is no different from how fleetops uses many of the stock commands to give a very rich gaming experience. For example, a large variety of the interesting weapons are based on the uball style weapons. The most advanced of these is probably the riker maneuver, featuring the trail of gray clouds, and a delayed shockwave explosion. Another is a weapon that creates a permanent black hole, along with an initial wave that pulls in surrounding ships. However, there is no magic about any of these.

I suppose each one of these needs a separate post, but this isn't the place for it. I will only add to my earlier comments that the goal here isn't to dazzle people with FT, but to point out that a great lot of work has been done by FT members to create a fun variety of weapons for all ships of all races.

It is really upsetting to me to know that due to the excessively high expectations in regards to the features that FT will display, FT will predictably become the most anticipated disappointment.

Burst fire weapons have existed for a while. Antimatter spreads (aka, best of both worlds fireworks) is mostly on the SOD level, not in coding. MVAM is functional, but not to the level that everyone expects; it is a SOD animation with some carefully timed and placed weapons. By no means is it trivial, but neither is it revolutionary. Infact, it may be dropped from the final release due to MVAM not adding significant value to the Federation side.

The few supposedly impossible features are either that - impossible - or have indeed been discovered and improved on in fleetops. The greatest accomplishments in FT are not in discovery, or even in the implementation of existing features in prize-worthy ways, but merely in the use of available material in the fullest manner.

Here I should add a few things about the other major subject of controversy that is the Borg AI. The AI for the Borg is noticeably different from other races. Indeed, all races feature unique AI behaviour. But for anyone that has had close experience with modding the AI in Armada, you will realize that the possibilities are rather restricted. Yes, the Borg will ignore targets that are less valuable, but to a point. The AI system is based on goals and areas, and as such, the behaviour is seen through overall strategy and fleet movement, not in the way that individual vessels behave. It is unfortunate that this miscommunication was not cleared up much earlier.

With this post, I don't wish to excite commotion, or debate over grievances, but only to open the door to questions and discussion on features that have previously remained hidden.

posted on January 30th, 2013, 12:26 am

As in previous messages and the 'Patch Project thread', I'm always happy to discuss features, porting, and help . I'm usually available on the forum or on instant messenger to chat about feature implementation, as that gives us new ideas to implement our changes to the engine as well, and helps me expand the guide

posted on January 30th, 2013, 3:01 am

I would hardly call my original post provocative, but to each their own. I was merely stating the facts that had occurred with Future Tense since it's inception. I myself was once part of the Future Tense team, and even I was never privy to how things were done.

My main niggle with people keeping things secret is that it sort of flies in the face of the ethos of modding, in my opinion. We're all trying to do our own thing with modding, and we all discover different ways of doing something. Perhaps a breakthrough made by one person is the key to someone else thinking "Ah ha! That's how I can implement my idea" etc. Keeping such information secret to make your mod "exclusive" goes against all that, and it also cheapens said mod really. Instead of publicising gameplay changes, graphics, sound effects etc, a good quality polished product, you basically rely on "We have gimmick X, Y and Z that no-one else has".

To use a film analogy, you have become a Michael Bay film where the trailer is all about "splosions and cool stuff" and the actual film is horribly weak in plot and character development. People won't be downloading your mod because they want to play it; most will download it simply to see how you've done vaunted feature X Y or Z and dissect it. Once people realise how you did X Y and Z, the hype will die down and everyone will be awaiting the next "big thing".

Modding shouldn't be a popularity contest, but by using such "marketing tactics" they sort of become so.

Regarding delays, we all have real life that gets in the way of our creative ambitions. However Future Tense, for me at least, became the Duke Nukem Forever of Armada Mods (and even that game came out before FT, taking the tongue-in-cheek comparison to all new levels of hilarity). Just when the FT Team was about to release something tangible, something actually real, it got scrapped back down to basically starting all over again, or something wasn't right, or any number of excuses, reasons and validations for the delay. And there were how many working on it? I myself have produced two full versions of a Total Conversion, working alone, in that same time, as have countless others (the Omega Mod jumps immediately to mind, as does Art of War by Achilles, and the Borg Invasion series by Major Payne)

There are reasonable, understandable delays. I am not going to drag this down into "my life is worse than your life". There does come a point however where it becomes "fishy" . Seen it happen to many many other mods. They make claims they can't keep to garner interest then eventually have to slink away and quietly say "oh um yeah we couldn't actually do that" and then interests melts away, which inevitably leads to a loss of interest on the part of the mod team, and the mod quietly dies.

Future Tense was originally brought up not by myself in the patch project thread. It was brought up in regards to possible ways of implementing some features in FleetOps. I responded with the facts that Future Tense had not been released, never looked likely to be released, and ergo the teams claims of certain features could not be validated, and due to the secrecy surrounding said features it was impossible to comment on whether implementing them in FleetOps was possible, feasible or otherwise. You can't theorise based on something that is so far in the public domain nothing more than smoke and mirrors

posted on January 31st, 2013, 3:21 am

First Mr.Vulcan, I like to thank you for posting this. It answers a lot of questions and I am glad that I originally just brought up one minor question in my Patch Project thread just involving the Borg and how they would act like the Borg that we've seen in Star Trek The Next Generation, Star Trek Voyager and Star Trek First Contact. Now knowing that it involves a totally different AI for the Borg, it might even be something against my abilities in modding since I have just started attempting to mod the AI files to add my mods additions to the AI for it to actually play them as well.

******

I would hardly call my original post provocative, but to each their own. I was merely stating the facts that had occurred with Future Tense since it's inception. I myself was once part of the Future Tense team, and even I was never privy to how things were done.

My main niggle with people keeping things secret is that it sort of flies in the face of the ethos of modding, in my opinion. We're all trying to do our own thing with modding, and we all discover different ways of doing something. Perhaps a breakthrough made by one person is the key to someone else thinking "Ah ha! That's how I can implement my idea" etc. Keeping such information secret to make your mod "exclusive" goes against all that, and it also cheapens said mod really. Instead of publicising gameplay changes, graphics, sound effects etc, a good quality polished product, you basically rely on "We have gimmick X, Y and Z that no-one else has".

To use a film analogy, you have become a Michael Bay film where the trailer is all about "splosions and cool stuff" and the actual film is horribly weak in plot and character development. People won't be downloading your mod because they want to play it; most will download it simply to see how you've done vaunted feature X Y or Z and dissect it. Once people realise how you did X Y and Z, the hype will die down and everyone will be awaiting the next "big thing".

Modding shouldn't be a popularity contest, but by using such "marketing tactics" they sort of become so.

Regarding delays, we all have real life that gets in the way of our creative ambitions. However Future Tense, for me at least, became the Duke Nukem Forever of Armada Mods (and even that game came out before FT, taking the tongue-in-cheek comparison to all new levels of hilarity). Just when the FT Team was about to release something tangible, something actually real, it got scrapped back down to basically starting all over again, or something wasn't right, or any number of excuses, reasons and validations for the delay. And there were how many working on it? I myself have produced two full versions of a Total Conversion, working alone, in that same time, as have countless others (the Omega Mod jumps immediately to mind, as does Art of War by Achilles, and the Borg Invasion series by Major Payne)

There are reasonable, understandable delays. I am not going to drag this down into "my life is worse than your life". There does come a point however where it becomes "fishy" . Seen it happen to many many other mods. They make claims they can't keep to garner interest then eventually have to slink away and quietly say "oh um yeah we couldn't actually do that" and then interests melts away, which inevitably leads to a loss of interest on the part of the mod team, and the mod quietly dies.

Future Tense was originally brought up not by myself in the patch project thread. It was brought up in regards to possible ways of implementing some features in FleetOps. I responded with the facts that Future Tense had not been released, never looked likely to be released, and ergo the teams claims of certain features could not be validated, and due to the secrecy surrounding said features it was impossible to comment on whether implementing them in FleetOps was possible, feasible or otherwise. You can't theorise based on something that is so far in the public domain nothing more than smoke and mirrors

Ok, now SquireJames, I didn't know that you once upon a time were also working on the Future Tense mod, and I guess what you are talking about here is the reason why you left?

I do agree with you that modding shouldn't be secret that any ideas and coding break throughs should be shared with the community especially since they might be able to help others create new ideas and concepts for their own modding projects. It would be nice to know what those "vaunted feature X Y or Z" are or could even be; but I guess if you aren't just interested in the mod for "its break throughs" but also interested in its game play (possibly "new" campaign) then it can be something very interesting and intriguing to wait for.

Lastly, I know that some mods take time to create and others don't. Especially if you fully know what you are doing then the modding project you've set out to complete can and could take less time. I myself have been working on my mod for a few years now and recently I could have had it completed but then I read about some mods that have gone about dividing the races up in eras based on the different Star Trek series, namely starting with Enterprise. The first one that I heard about was called: "Star Trek Armada II: Birth Of The Federation", that mod is the reason I have an AI question that I have slightly mentioned in my Patch Project thread. The next mod I have read about on a few different Armada II forums involves a "Spanning The Generations Mod", that sounds like it is dead; but I have my own version in the works. That is why I have come to the conclusion that my mod isn't complete.

Now one question SquireJames, what is the "the Omega Mod"? Do you know where I could download it to try it out?

posted on February 3rd, 2013, 7:42 pm

Another question, as I read on Future Tense more, I don't understand how warpfields are created since warp seems to be automatic in both Star Trek Armada I & II.

Also, since Future Tense is an Armada I mod, I don't understand how it's possible to colonize a planet. When I've played Armada I, I couldn't colonize any planets.

Star Trek Armada Future Tense is an Armada I mod right, not an Armada II mod is it?

posted on February 4th, 2013, 12:37 am

Another question, as I read on Future Tense more, I don't understand how warpfields are created since warp seems to be automatic in both Star Trek Armada I & II.

Ummm armada I didnt have warp at all...

posted on February 4th, 2013, 8:00 am

Well then that's something very strange because this page clearly mentions: "Warp"/"Warp Drive"/"Warp Field" and its i the top section on the page.
http://futuretense.armadafleetcommand.com/features.htm

posted on February 4th, 2013, 1:46 pm

It's another one of their "impossible" features. Again, they haven't revealed how they've done it, or even IF they've done it.

posted on February 4th, 2013, 2:22 pm

There are 3 possible "speeds" in Armada 1.

Impulse (slow movement when close to target)
Warp (normal movement, most common type)
Warp + Speedup (via the "plasmaoverdrive" class label)

There is also an apparent maximum speed of 120, which is quite fast, but limits are unfortunate nonetheless.

The stock game entirely neglected the impulse speed as it only really showed itself when giving move commands within 1-2 grid squares from your current position. FT makes slightly better use of this feature.

Now, the details have not been released because we haven't nailed down a pleasing combination of the above "modes". One possibility is as follows:

1 - Impulse speed is used to traverse distances within one screen. That is, within your base, or approximately the distances within the range of your weapons, so ships in combat will remain at impulse.

2 - Warp is used for normal map traversing. This is a medium speed that doesn't make you wait too long to get across the map, but also conserves your special energy.

3 - Warp + speedup is an emergency measure that visibly boosts the ship's speed to get across the map much faster. Conceivably, you can use this to boost the "power" to impulse engines too, to have a speedup there, as well as affect your hitChance and targetting. As this is done via a special weapon, the speedup uses up a good portion of your special energy.

There is a good reason to use the "impulse" mode during combat for some ships. Weapons hitChance and damgeBase have been tailored according to ship classes, weapon types, and ship speed (impulse/warp/stopped).

Altogether, the possibilities offered by these features are great, but simply have not been fine-tuned sufficiently. It is only feasible to implement hitChance and damageBase on a per-ship basis for a large number of ships with some automated tools. So, while the idea existed for some time, large scale implementation has only been possible recently with the development of a batch odf creation VBA script for Excel.

The fact that warp speed is called a "warp bubble" or "warp field" should not be cause for confusion with the way that warp has been implemented in Armada 2. There are no stretching and warp flash effects, but there is a separate graphic effect for the speed-up mode.

Hope this clears things up. Physics in A1 are a lot more restrictive that in A2, so please don't expect awsomeness like the A2 Physics Project; alas such things are not possible in A1.

posted on February 4th, 2013, 2:32 pm

Also, since Future Tense is an Armada I mod, I don't understand how it's possible to colonize a planet. When I've played Armada I, I couldn't colonize any planets.

Planets are not colonized in the same way as it is done in A2. It takes little stretch of the imagination to change planets from "planets" to "starbases". A few tweaks in the system hitPoints, hitChacne and shieldPad commands take care of the shield bubble and explosiveness of the planet.

To go one step further, planets will likely have custom explosion SODs to make explosions look a little more "realistic" , rather than having triangles fly round in everywhich way. We have done a proof of concept, but artwork just isn't there yet.

Whether exploding planets are realistic to start with is up to debate though

The usefulness of planets has been rather limited in both of the stock games, but its is easy to make them more strategically valuable.

posted on February 4th, 2013, 3:13 pm

it will just be a special weapon that temporarily boosts your speed until your special energy has run out, not like warp in Armada II which was stupid anyway

posted on February 4th, 2013, 4:37 pm

The "speed-up" mode is temporary, yes. Warp is still warp and is a separate concept. In A1, there are two "modes" in the physics files; one for impulse, one for warp. Probably similar to combat and normal modes in A2/FleetOps, but not nearly as versatile.

Impulse speed determines your speed when moving short distances (specified by tooCloseForWarp parameter). Warp speed is actually obtained from the ratio of warpSpeed to impulseSpeed. So imp = 20, warp =100 is the same as imp = 2, warp = 10 when travelling at "warp" speed. Not exactly intuitive, but works ok for game purposes.

Speedup is a multiplier for the warpSpeed, altering the warpSpeed/impulseSpeed ratio. Only catch is that warp/imp and warp*speedBoost/imp ratios can not exceed 6. Exceeding this limit causes pathing problems and other glitches. The ratio of 6 is actually pretty fast, so not that big of a deal.

posted on February 5th, 2013, 1:11 am

Well then that's something very strange because this page clearly mentions: "Warp"/"Warp Drive"/"Warp Field" and its i the top section on the page.

It may be a part of their mod, but you implied with your original post that it was part of the original game, which it was not. Thats all i was saying. If the FT team was able to modify it was not the original statement you made.

posted on February 5th, 2013, 1:21 am

I've actually found that with sensible physics files, the warp feature in A2 works quite well. The problem isn't the speed, it's the fact that ships in default A2 turn on a dime and can do so at warp speeds.

In KA2, they can't, and the FleetOps engine also nicely removes the stupid stretching "feature" . I also have maps so large that warp has a purpose.

Quite off-topic but I thought i'd mention it.

posted on February 5th, 2013, 1:30 am

I've actually found that with sensible physics files, the warp feature in A2 works quite well. The problem isn't the speed, it's the fact that ships in default A2 turn on a dime and can do so at warp speeds.

In KA2, they can't, and the FleetOps engine also nicely removes the stupid stretching "feature" . I also have maps so large that warp has a purpose.

Quite off-topic but I thought i'd mention it.

Indeed I too made some maps where I wish there was a warp feature. I agree stock A2 did a less then stellar job of warp in the stock game. I have a couple 50K x 50k maps that would be nice to have warp.