The future of Fleet Operations

posted on March 26th, 2014, 4:08 pm

I concur with shadow. Also the SOD exporter from MS3d is rather limited. I can't export bump maps, specular maps, animated parts etc. It would be nice to go to a new model format whose exporter natively supports such things.

posted on March 26th, 2014, 5:08 pm

As you all work towards NX, one thing I would really like to see is more newsposts. During the first year of 4.0 development, there were about 30 newsposts with a great variety of topics and detail which was fantastic. However over the last year of development, there have been only six.

I understand you all are busy, but I feel it is very important to have updates on the game, and interaction in the forums. Perhaps it may be worthwhile to have a team member who is solely tasked with that?

posted on March 26th, 2014, 5:20 pm

I'll second what Ray320 has said, with the additional comment that while you may think that some of your work is not really news-worthy, we may find it fascinating and want to discuss it.

I know it may seem like a large commitment to communcation, but scheduling a news post once a month--even a fairly short progress report--will keep interest going and quell "Fleet Ops is dead" rumours.

If it's a responsibility the existing team isn't comfortable with doing, then I'm sure you'll find volunteers in the community willing to assist--starting with me.

posted on March 26th, 2014, 5:24 pm

posted on March 26th, 2014, 5:53 pm

Our aim is to keep up newspost quantity and quality - with V4 originally we had intended to do just that, and that was one of my major pushes, but this is not always so easy to do. When we want to keep certain aspects of gameplay suspenseful or all we are working on is debugging or producing new features that the player doesn't directly interact with, this makes it very hard to write a proper newspost that can be exciting to the most amount of people. Especially when gameplay is involved, it is very hard to convey 'cool stuff' without graphics.

While there are sometimes suggestions about 'the project appearing dead' due to lack of newsposts, on the first page, near the bottom, you can see just how long ago the last commit to the engine was. Which was 2 hours ago, for instance.

Newsposts are, unfortunately or fortunately, a responsibility of our team because it requires extensive communication between members - it's just not possible to outsource. I can only say that I will try to keep the community updated with interesting news on a more or less regular basis.

posted on March 26th, 2014, 6:16 pm

I feel that was needed, Zweistein. Describes the situation very well, too.


I have one very strong point I've not yet seen for the new engine:
If owning/having A2 is going to continue being required in, say, five years, the game will be dead. As dead as it gets. A2 is not easily legally available and besides, tech is changing. There will be more people if you can just download and play.

Yea, we know there has been a half-workable V4 for a while now and I think now its clear why enthusiasm and news about it have subsided a bit over the past year. Still, I think something intermediary that doesn't require massive effort would be nice, especially since this is likely going to take a while.

I'd rather have disappointed and outright furious people here rather then pretending everything is nice (so long as noone is a douchebag). We're neither North Korea nor against discussion, right?
This project is a whole different dimension then "just modding a2" and caution is advised. This is still far from done.

posted on March 26th, 2014, 6:41 pm

Would the devs have any issue with releasing V4 in whatever state it's in and let the community have their way with it? I'm sure parts could be adapted here and there or others could finish it off for their mods?

Is there something proprietary about it that stops the devs from releasing it now?

@Zap: I have no problem with people expressing their opinion and talking about their disappointment in an adult respectful manner however, they inevitably turn into a DB and it goes downhill from there.

posted on March 26th, 2014, 7:11 pm

Trying to release a modern game on a 10+ year engine is ridiculous... and anyone who tries to justify it doesn't understand game development. I am very happy by this announcement. This isn't Armada 2... if you want that you still can go play it... this is Fleet Operations and it is it's own game how the devs want it to be.

And I really don't think it will be years before we see the next version just because it's on a new engine now... (A) They already said they made lots of progress on this... (B) They got more team members now to help & (C) lots of what they had done for v4 (models and such) should still be usable with the new engine. So all were really talking about is coding. Shouldn't take that long.

Geez... this is an great announcement. Would it had been better to get v4 out before porting it to a new engine... yes but we don't know the technical issues behind making that happen.

Any free engines are usually 5+ years old at least already, by the time this new project gets finished the new engine they are working with will probably be the same age anyway.

A2 engine has worked fine so far and everyone has liked what they have done with fleet ops using this engine thus far, for a 10 year old engine they have done magic tricks with it and fleet ops.

Source engine it self is 10 years old. You think devs care? it works and it works well.

1. An engine made in the last 5 (an estimate by you, it may not even be that old) years is a lot more flexible than an engine made for a game in 2001... that is over 13 years when you take in development time... So the engine is at-least 15 years old probably. This new engine can be adapted to new technologies, the armada 2 engine can not. Game engines have a life span, sooner or latter every dev gets a new one. The difference is FleetOPs wasn't a new game, it was an extension to a very old game. Unlike other games were the devs start from scratch on a new game and have the option to pick a new engine.

Some people think this project will now take a long time - another 2 -4 year... I don't, I know the devs won't give us a ETA but nothing points to it actually taking that long because there on a new engine now. FleetOps has more support now, then it ever did.

2. A2 engine worked fine? Do you not see the major map lag and crap that happens when playing. Visually it was stunning, but performance wise you could tell it was suffering big time.

3. Source is getting a new engine soon. The Source 2... why? Because the Source engine is old as hell and all the valve games made with it show this... they lack a lot of what new games have today.

posted on March 26th, 2014, 7:16 pm

Our aim is to keep up newspost quantity and quality - with V4 originally we had intended to do just that, and that was one of my major pushes, but this is not always so easy to do. When we want to keep certain aspects of gameplay suspenseful or all we are working on is debugging or producing new features that the player doesn't directly interact with, this makes it very hard to write a proper newspost that can be exciting to the most amount of people. Especially when gameplay is involved, it is very hard to convey 'cool stuff' without graphics.

CCP has long been a gold standard to me when it comes to the breadth and depth of content available in their dev blogs. While it's unrealistic to expect the Fleet Ops team to post as regularly and in as much detail as they do, I think you're doing the community an injustice with the unwillingness to blog about some of the nitty gritty. You don't even need cool graphics to have a good blog. Really.

As for "keeping certain aspects of gameplay suspenseful", it's reasonable if you've got something really groundbreaking up your sleeves, but not if it's out of a desire to have player skill be measured more by what they know than knowing how to use it.

While there are sometimes suggestions about 'the project appearing dead' due to lack of newsposts, on the first page, near the bottom, you can see just how long ago the last commit to the engine was. Which was 2 hours ago, for instance.

Can I suggest a rethink of the design of the front page to be a bit more compact? What you're referring to is information that's flashed up in a ticker which itself is below the immediately visible area on even a 1920 x 1200 monitor. Sure, it's possible to hide the features slideshow, bringing the information up to the main view, but that requires action on a page which I suspect is mostly used to get to news posts and the forums right away. It's not as hidden as, say, the bypass plans that detailed the demolition of Arthur Dent's house, but it's not exactly immediately apparent.

Newsposts are, unfortunately or fortunately, a responsibility of our team because it requires extensive communication between members - it's just not possible to outsource. I can only say that I will try to keep the community updated with interesting news on a more or less regular basis.

We're not asking for a stronger commitment to improved communication just from a need to feed our collective addition to information, but because regular and sustained engagement is also a hallmark of successful projects of this stripe.

And in case it wasn't clear, what I was advocating was specifically the recruitment into the team of a suitable volunteer who can manage communication as their primary task.

posted on March 26th, 2014, 7:25 pm

I understand the team needs to be the ones that do newsposts, that makes sense. I also understand it takes time, especially when gameplay elements are involved as you said.

However, by newsposts I dont necessarily mean feature highlights, as those are certainly difficult to pop out. Just something as simple as:

"The devs are working on blah blah blah, one of this things is the galaxy class. (insert a picture perhaps of it shooting stuff)
What would you (ideas from the community) like to see for the galaxy class"

And then Ray can say, saucer seperation! Boggz can say he thinks he has a cool idea for a special for the galaxy, etc.

Or

With this new engine there is the possibility to do _____ how would this work well _____?

Something to help spark some conversation, engage and interact with the community. I think if "topic starters/idea requests" were mixed in with the current format of newsposts it would be a good way to keep the community involved and maybe help some people feel like they were really contributing.

posted on March 26th, 2014, 7:33 pm

I understand the team needs to be the ones that do newsposts, that makes sense. I also understand it takes time, especially when gameplay elements are involved as you said.

However, by newsposts I dont necessarily mean feature highlights, as those are certainly difficult to pop out. Just something as simple as:

"The devs are working on blah blah blah, one of this things is the galaxy class. (insert a picture perhaps of it shooting stuff)
What would you (ideas from the community) like to see for the galaxy class"

And then Ray can say, saucer seperation! Boggz can say he thinks he has a cool idea for a special for the galaxy, etc.

Or

With this new engine there is the possibility to do _____ how would this work well _____?

Something to help spark some conversation, engage and interact with the community. I think if "topic starters/idea requests" were mixed in with the current format of newsposts it would be a good way to keep the community involved and maybe help some people feel like they were really contributing.

I think something like that may be better for twitter or some kind of quick news feed on the main page? Does FO even have an official twitter account?

posted on March 26th, 2014, 7:40 pm

No, I dont think it has a twitter. I think that sort of thing would be good right here. The devs did ask in the newspost for ideas, what Im talking about is sparking the conversation, in depth conversations about the game would not do well on twitter, you need more than 140 characters to hash out thoughts.

posted on March 26th, 2014, 7:43 pm

Although I'm a bit disappointed that there will be no FO 4.0 it definitely is a step in the right direction.
I really hope that NX will have more modding capabilities than FleetOps does have now.
We also need ->import<- and export for 3dsmax and Blender to allow modeling new ships/modifying existing ones to fit the NX Render right from the start.

Oh and btw... Pics or it didn't happen

posted on March 26th, 2014, 8:22 pm

Would the devs have any issue with releasing V4 in whatever state it's in and let the community have their way with it? I'm sure parts could be adapted here and there or others could finish it off for their mods?

Is there something proprietary about it that stops the devs from releasing it now?

@Zap: I have no problem with people expressing their opinion and talking about their disappointment in an adult respectful manner however, they inevitably turn into a DB and it goes downhill from there.

Indeed, i hope the devs release v4 as it is and let the community play around with it.

No one has expressed any rude opinions only bluntness and disappointment has been expressed although there are always cry babys that cant take such opinions or as zap expressed it be over the top nice and pretend everything is fine but like to criticize people for having the balls to say everything is not nice.

The new engine idea is fine but to toss 3 years of current dev out of the window that everyone has been waiting for and then having some members act as if its fantastic that on top of the 3 years we have all waited we now have another 3 possibility more years to wait to see our beloved fleet ops once more. Yay lets all pretend everything is great yaaaaaaaay because some people don't like honesty yaaay no honest opinions here wooooo

posted on March 26th, 2014, 8:58 pm

Honestly I think everyone is a little bit dissapointed, I certainly am. I really care about this project, Ive been around 8 or so years, since before the 3.0 preview, and I can say I am dissapointed, I was looking forward to the patch, and now its going to take longer.

However this switch to the new engine is a good thing, and something Ive supported since shortly after I joined. This engine is nearly 15 years old. There are many things the devs wanted to do that they could not do with the old engine. The new engine will allow for a greater range of possibilities and it will make it easier to do things than with the armada engine.

Also, you keep mentioning that they are throwing away 3 years of work, maybe it was not make very clear in the article, but that is not the case. They have a separate team working on the engine, while the devs are working to fit the game to that engine, they will be using some of the same stuff from version 4.0. That material is not going to waste.