The future of Fleet Operations
posted on March 26th, 2014, 9:27 pm
While I do think a lot of regulars will probably leave and vanish during the development, I'm pretty confident many will come back after NX is released. Assuming NX gets off the ground and is released in a polished state I have no doubt it will be advertised across various gaming websites and lure in older followers and newcomers.
That being said, I'm in complete support for a new engine for Fleet Ops. My disappointment from the news is purely selfish, my mod used a few 4.0 features from intermediate builds that I'll not be able to implement now. Considering it was only a matter of time before Sigma went to a commercial engine anyway though I feel I'll get over the sting pretty fast.
The engine Armada uses can be traced back to 1997. It was used for Activision's Battlezone and Interstate 76, though parts of it originated in Mech Warrior 2: 31st Century as early as 1995. The Engine's origins are almost 20 years old now. It's pretty ancient.
One for Maya too please... Or just allow the engine to support .FBX models. 3DS, Maya, and MS3D all support it!
That being said, I'm in complete support for a new engine for Fleet Ops. My disappointment from the news is purely selfish, my mod used a few 4.0 features from intermediate builds that I'll not be able to implement now. Considering it was only a matter of time before Sigma went to a commercial engine anyway though I feel I'll get over the sting pretty fast.
Xanto wrote: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.
The engine Armada uses can be traced back to 1997. It was used for Activision's Battlezone and Interstate 76, though parts of it originated in Mech Warrior 2: 31st Century as early as 1995. The Engine's origins are almost 20 years old now. It's pretty ancient.
Ressikan wrote: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.
One for Maya too please... Or just allow the engine to support .FBX models. 3DS, Maya, and MS3D all support it!
posted on March 26th, 2014, 10:12 pm
Optec wrote:
posted on Thu Mar 27, 2014 12:19 am
I just want to clarify some points I got poked a lot in the last few days via IM and mail.
Will NX still be free of charge?
Absolutely. As with any other version of Fleet Operations, there will be no fee, no DLC you have to buy, no services that cost you money etc. Not a single polygon you have to pay for. That being said, you can still support development via donations.
Will there be modding for NX?
Aye. Obviously, we feel a strong link to the modding community. You can expect NX to be much more modable than A2. We want to get in touch with the modding communities soon to collect ideas.
About Majestic's Question on the SOD format: That's not yet decided. The current dev version uses SODs. I'd favor doing our own format, which we probably will, but if so, we will supply a specification and exporters. We plan to maintain the capability to use SODs to carry over your A2 work.
We will probably have a few more "techy" news posts in the future, as well as discussing modding etc. See you in engineering.
Thank you for answering my question Optec. Understandably you might want something other than SOD. Great to hear you'll be releasing exporters for the various programs used to allow us to continue to mod FO. As for the capability to use SODs on the new platform as well I think will make a lot of non-modelers happy as they don't have the programs or skills to re-convert a model to a new format.
I look forward to your future news posts and this is a great move for both your team, the FO Community and the STar Trek gaming community. A new Star Trek game is a welcome change to that disgrace called STO.
posted on Thu Mar 27, 2014 12:19 am
I just want to clarify some points I got poked a lot in the last few days via IM and mail.
Will NX still be free of charge?
Absolutely. As with any other version of Fleet Operations, there will be no fee, no DLC you have to buy, no services that cost you money etc. Not a single polygon you have to pay for. That being said, you can still support development via donations.
Will there be modding for NX?
Aye. Obviously, we feel a strong link to the modding community. You can expect NX to be much more modable than A2. We want to get in touch with the modding communities soon to collect ideas.
About Majestic's Question on the SOD format: That's not yet decided. The current dev version uses SODs. I'd favor doing our own format, which we probably will, but if so, we will supply a specification and exporters. We plan to maintain the capability to use SODs to carry over your A2 work.
We will probably have a few more "techy" news posts in the future, as well as discussing modding etc. See you in engineering.
Thank you for answering my question Optec. Understandably you might want something other than SOD. Great to hear you'll be releasing exporters for the various programs used to allow us to continue to mod FO. As for the capability to use SODs on the new platform as well I think will make a lot of non-modelers happy as they don't have the programs or skills to re-convert a model to a new format.
I look forward to your future news posts and this is a great move for both your team, the FO Community and the STar Trek gaming community. A new Star Trek game is a welcome change to that disgrace called STO.
posted on March 26th, 2014, 10:32 pm
posted on March 27th, 2014, 12:50 pm
Armada Fleet Operations
Our intent was to release A2-FO 4.0 and afterwards concentrate our resources on NX. This didn’t work out the way we wanted. We had to deal with several major bugs during development of 4.0. A lot of time just wen’t into trying to tracing down these bugs. Armada 2’s game engine is old, but that is not all. Remember, we don’t have the source code. All new features that wen’t into the game are hacked into the existing game binary. The deeper we dig into the game’s binary, the harder it gets, the longer it takes. Changing "one line of code" basically translates to several hours and often days. With it debugging gets increasingly hard and time intense.
I don’t know how many hours..days..month of good time our team of testers has invested helping to track down bugs instead of actually evaluating the gameplay. Don’t think that all bugs in the game were issues in our code…A2 still has a set of it’s own bugs. These are often unnoticeable in the stock game since the developers never hit the boundaries of the game like we did with A2-FO. A long list of those is already fixed in Fleet Operations. We are uncertain how many more exist. The last issue we discovered was a very rare multiplayer sync breaking bug in the sod model loader.
At least 50% of our total 4.0 development time just went into trying solve these bugs or find workarounds.
It isn’t like we could just fix those and release A2-FO 4.0. We can’t. These bugs are still there.
Armada Mod Developers
Optec already mentioned we currently use Armada's old SOD models in NX. This is until we've got our own model format up and running in NX. Armada model support will stay for the final release of course. We do probably have the most accurate 3rd party SOD loader in NX right now
Of course it won't be possible to install existing Armada mods on top of NX. However, it is planned that you will be able to recreate most features known from Armada 2 (and 1). The way you create create new mods will also work through definition files, similar to Armada now. These will feature a different format though, which will make it easier to use and understand. Still all just by using a simple text editor. It will all feel similar to the current way of modding Armada. More on that another time...
Our intent was to release A2-FO 4.0 and afterwards concentrate our resources on NX. This didn’t work out the way we wanted. We had to deal with several major bugs during development of 4.0. A lot of time just wen’t into trying to tracing down these bugs. Armada 2’s game engine is old, but that is not all. Remember, we don’t have the source code. All new features that wen’t into the game are hacked into the existing game binary. The deeper we dig into the game’s binary, the harder it gets, the longer it takes. Changing "one line of code" basically translates to several hours and often days. With it debugging gets increasingly hard and time intense.
I don’t know how many hours..days..month of good time our team of testers has invested helping to track down bugs instead of actually evaluating the gameplay. Don’t think that all bugs in the game were issues in our code…A2 still has a set of it’s own bugs. These are often unnoticeable in the stock game since the developers never hit the boundaries of the game like we did with A2-FO. A long list of those is already fixed in Fleet Operations. We are uncertain how many more exist. The last issue we discovered was a very rare multiplayer sync breaking bug in the sod model loader.
At least 50% of our total 4.0 development time just went into trying solve these bugs or find workarounds.
It isn’t like we could just fix those and release A2-FO 4.0. We can’t. These bugs are still there.
Armada Mod Developers
Optec already mentioned we currently use Armada's old SOD models in NX. This is until we've got our own model format up and running in NX. Armada model support will stay for the final release of course. We do probably have the most accurate 3rd party SOD loader in NX right now
Of course it won't be possible to install existing Armada mods on top of NX. However, it is planned that you will be able to recreate most features known from Armada 2 (and 1). The way you create create new mods will also work through definition files, similar to Armada now. These will feature a different format though, which will make it easier to use and understand. Still all just by using a simple text editor. It will all feel similar to the current way of modding Armada. More on that another time...
posted on March 27th, 2014, 1:18 pm
posted on March 27th, 2014, 2:29 pm
Thanks Doca. Makes better sense when you lay it out. Just grasping for any straws we can. So officially nothing pertaining to the current iteration of FO will be released henceforth? Ignoring bug fixes, no models, textures, game play mechanics?
So officially nothing pertaining to the current iteration of FO will be released henceforth? Ignoring bug fixes, no models, textures, game play mechanics?
posted on March 27th, 2014, 3:32 pm
posted on March 27th, 2014, 5:00 pm
posted on March 27th, 2014, 5:06 pm
posted on March 27th, 2014, 11:25 pm
Hey gang! I've an idea. Could we get a post naming the new additions to the FO Team? And maybe a short post from each of them if it isn't too much trouble? Please? Pretty please? Don't make me use Bambi Eyes. You know I'll do it. 
I'd like to know a little about them and what else they've done. I'll bet I'm not the only one, either.
I'd like to know a little about them and what else they've done. I'll bet I'm not the only one, either.
posted on March 27th, 2014, 11:34 pm
thunderfoot006 wrote:Hey gang! I've an idea. Could we get a post naming the new additions to the FO Team? And maybe a short post from each of them if it isn't too much trouble? Please? Pretty please? Don't make me use Bambi Eyes. You know I'll do it.
I'd like to know a little about them and what else they've done. I'll bet I'm not the only one, either.
100% agree with this!
posted on March 28th, 2014, 4:48 pm
posted on March 28th, 2014, 5:36 pm
posted on March 28th, 2014, 7:37 pm
posted on March 29th, 2014, 12:15 am
Congratulations to the team for having found this unexpected opportunity to work with engine devs. Also cheers on having the courage (or audacity, depending on how you look at it 
) to take the leap into something so challenging.
I know that this is super early, but curiosity prevails. Have you thought about the long term goals for the AI, graphics capabilities, physics?
Personally, I found the AI to be the most outdated part of the armada engine. Build lists and strategy aside, unit behaviour is a little dull too. Perhaps a multi-layer agent system for the new engine? Having a AI agent for every ship could give fun stuff like captains that give their own orders, or fleet admirals that can manage an attack group for the player.
Regarding graphics, is the ezengine planning on using one of the existing graphics engines? Or is the team writing everything from scratch?
Best of luck, will definitely be following this closely
) to take the leap into something so challenging. I know that this is super early, but curiosity prevails. Have you thought about the long term goals for the AI, graphics capabilities, physics?
Personally, I found the AI to be the most outdated part of the armada engine. Build lists and strategy aside, unit behaviour is a little dull too. Perhaps a multi-layer agent system for the new engine?
Having a AI agent for every ship could give fun stuff like captains that give their own orders, or fleet admirals that can manage an attack group for the player.Regarding graphics, is the ezengine planning on using one of the existing graphics engines? Or is the team writing everything from scratch?
Best of luck, will definitely be following this closely
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