Adaven wrote:QUOTE (Adaven @ Jul 30 2011, 08:50 PM) Merging with the FS2 engine should give us several of the "wishlist" items that have been floating around for years. Better graphics and the ability to target specific subsystems on ships comes immediately to mind.
Subsystem targeting has been a part of Freespace since FS1, so that's a definitive check.
As for better graphics,
I'll let you judge by yourself
raumvogel wrote:QUOTE (raumvogel @ Jul 30 2011, 09:02 PM) Do they even have a community that still plays? I have yet to find an active website or game download.
Hard Light Productions is indeed the largest active Freespace community. If you want a rough estimate of the number of Freespace players, the latest large mod got around 5000 downloads in a window of 6 months.
Keep in mind that Freespace 2 itself is not a free game, only the engine is. Aside from a few standalone mods, you'll need to buy the original game to play even the user made content with the new engine, as they are nearly all based on retail assets to some degree. FS2 is sold 6$ DRM-free at GoG.com.
However, as, stated here :
Spunkmeyer wrote:QUOTE (Spunkmeyer @ Jul 30 2011, 11:42 PM) It's very single-player oriented right now.
This large pool of players and user-made content is indeed mostly SP-oriented. I'll be frank with you, the number of active multi players is around a handful, me included. The days of Squadwar as they were 10 years ago are long gone, and the games that happen between the few of us that still go multi happen randomly, and are most often decided on IRC with little planning. The Blue Planet Multiplayer project of which I am a member did help a little, as we now have several FREDers working on new multiplayer content with innovative concepts, but I think this merging project could be a good way to help reviving FS multi.
Clay_Pigeon wrote:QUOTE (Clay_Pigeon @ Jul 30 2011, 07:00 PM) I've been toying with this idea for a while. FS2 is a well-supported and mature platform. The challenge is faithfully preserving elements of Allegiance that I feel are important to quality gameplay, such as
1) Alleg physics, including particles. This is what makes dogfighting challenging and interesting.
2) Some analog of our core (.igc) system, which is vital to allowing experienced players to balance and fine-tune game rules
3) I couldn't think of a third thing without saying something stupid like "our signature/scan range" system.
KGJV wrote:QUOTE (KGJV @ Jul 30 2011, 11:09 PM) Like Clay pointed out, "preserving elements of Allegiance that I feel are important to quality gameplay" is key but we immediately notice that we might not all agree on these right away...of the 3 he highlighted, I wouldn't have picked the 1st one for instance.
To be honest, Allegiance physics and craft stats are the easiest part of the modding here. And since they're so easy, we can also have several versions with different stats based on the same gameplay core. FSO supports very well mods based on mods.
Spunkmeyer wrote:QUOTE (Spunkmeyer @ Jul 30 2011, 11:42 PM) Just to give you an idea, it looks like the std there is peer to peer games, 12 players max, and a half-functioning standalone server. The lobby is geared towards these peer to peer games.
If I understand correctly the whole multiplayer design is similar to playing through a co-op map and a lot of Alleg concepts need to be coded from scratch.
That is true. As far as I know, the FS network code has been left vastly untouched since retail, mainly because of the lack of players. As it is, it is indeed mostly p2p-based (although standalones have been recently tested and work flawlessly so far), hosts have to manually forward ports, you can't join ingame (although such a feature has been worked on but never finalised) and you are indeed limited to 12 players per game. This has two reasons, the lack of players is one (coders tend to spend time on features that will be the most exploited), and the lack of coders with a solid network coding knowledge is the second.
Spunkmeyer wrote:QUOTE (Spunkmeyer @ Jul 30 2011, 11:42 PM) The other alternative may be to submit bunch of patches to the SCP team and wait for them to be approved.
That's the best way to proceed. As far as I know, as long as patches are solid, decently tested and documented, the SCP team is fairly open to adding them to trunk. The SCP regularly builds and distribute "nightly" builds from the latest trunk for any player to test and report any issue or other feedback, which enable them to have small features easily added, tested and stabilized into trunk.
SCP knows that our network code is old and weak, and they'd be more than happy to have people improving it.
Spunkmeyer wrote:QUOTE (Spunkmeyer @ Jul 30 2011, 11:42 PM) But.. in the development end it looks far better organized and active than us. The non-multiplayer parts of the engine are more capable. Don't know if the source is any easier to work with, downloading now.
There I'll be honest with you again, although FSO now works on C++, the retail source code was in C. Which means that, aside from parts that have been entirely revamped, most of the code is spaghetti code with no object-oriented approach. Documentation is scarce, but thankfully we still have many talented and active coders with an extended knowledge of the engine that can point you in the right direction if you want to dive into it.
