Fall 09? shirley you jest
fwd-Random
Join Date: 2002-12-30 Member: 11618Members
Join Date: 2002-12-30 Member: 11618Members
Im afraid im going to be abit negative here but how can the game be scheduled for release in a mere 3-4 months. All we have is scripted videos with little to no content whatsoever, screenshots and rhetoric which add up to essentially nothing. It's somewhat unreasonable to open pre-orders already on such spartan game information.
At this late stage coming up to release I would of expected the game to be 80-90% odd complete and highly exposed to the public with some direct back and forth going on about final balance and design decisions.
Coming from NS1 myself and a potential NS2 player, I have to wonder, where is the game?. There is only the kind of fluff and eye candy that is often shown years before gold. Operating under a blackout serves no purpose if you are indeed almost ready. Show us gameplay, show us the maps and tactics, show us everything you have so we can comment on it and maybe help. Show us something more than hype :/.
At this late stage coming up to release I would of expected the game to be 80-90% odd complete and highly exposed to the public with some direct back and forth going on about final balance and design decisions.
Coming from NS1 myself and a potential NS2 player, I have to wonder, where is the game?. There is only the kind of fluff and eye candy that is often shown years before gold. Operating under a blackout serves no purpose if you are indeed almost ready. Show us gameplay, show us the maps and tactics, show us everything you have so we can comment on it and maybe help. Show us something more than hype :/.
Comments
At this late stage coming up to release I would of expected the game to be 80-90% odd complete and highly exposed to the public with some direct back and forth going on about final balance and design decisions.
Coming from NS1 myself and a potential NS2 player, I have to wonder, where is the game?. There is only the kind of fluff and eye candy that is often shown years before gold. Operating under a blackout serves no purpose if you are indeed almost ready. Show us gameplay, show us the maps and tactics, show us everything you have so we can comment on it and maybe help. Show us something more than hype :/.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
i believe if they released the aplha now they would be able to get the beta out in fall.. and maybe the end of year release if all goes well..
but you never know.. everything might be done and all they need to do is tweek to even weapons/ sides up..
that probably dreaming, but u never know
At this late stage coming up to release I would of expected the game to be 80-90% odd complete and highly exposed to the public with some direct back and forth going on about final balance and design decisions.
Coming from NS1 myself and a potential NS2 player, I have to wonder, where is the game?. There is only the kind of fluff and eye candy that is often shown years before gold. Operating under a blackout serves no purpose if you are indeed almost ready. Show us gameplay, show us the maps and tactics, show us everything you have so we can comment on it and maybe help. Show us something more than hype :/.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This echoed my initial concerns too, but I have since read a number of reassuring posts from Flayra that this isn't the case.
Apparently, the "alpha" will be quite a substantially completed build, and there is done more than what we have until now thought. The beta will essentially be fine tuning game balance with everything else intact and ready to rock and roll.
As for why we don't know more about it, you can chalk this up to a few things. First and foremost, I think that until recent months, only the (very extensive) backend was being worked on (though from my understand, all the mechanics/features are done and dusted), and we all know that it's the flashy models, textures and front-end features that draw the biggest crowds. Their procedural code, toolset creation, etc were all big time investments to make the latter part of production that much easier and quicker.
Coupled with the fact that there are only a few developers, and that any time making trailers is time away from the development itself, it's no surprise we haven't seen much until now. That isn't to say we don't <i>know</i> much, because I think they've done an excellent job keeping us abreast of what they're working on, through the blog, podcasts and the vidcasts.
Having said that, I'm anticipating an explosion of gameplay-related information and media in the coming weeks/months, because the very-near release date which is reportedly 1000% achievable, does infer a completedness to date that was previously unpredictable by anyone.
I'm still very confident they'll deliver, despite the big surprise <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
I too am actually dubious but then again it's UWE. They've never let me down, except with the shin-plates on the Onos and that's a small thing.
Now as far as Fall 09, It is highly probable, we dont know how far they are and arent. Just because we arent getting the whole spiel of the act dosent mean that there isn't tons more under this iceberg. I have confidence in Unknownworlds and you should too.
Seriously though, in constellation times we'd get a Beta and it would run for what? One month? Two perhaps? Then the balance was done and the next version was released. These guys know how to work to complete a game for general release. We have to expect them to be aiming for the November period, it's high sales time after all, that would mean Alpha/Beta by September and that's still 3 months away.
Looking at what is actually done already...maps, resource systems, models, and the array of other things we've been shown in the manner that it's been said this project has been built...there's no reason why that isn't entirely possible.
If it turns out to be a bit late...then at least they're in good company (*cough*valve*cough*), either way I don't think we're in a Duke Nukem situation here. Relax, enjoy, it's coming...be happy!
But look it at from mine, and im sure many others perspectives.
I and the people I played NS1 with didn't stick around community wise once we left NS1 during its decline. My last post here was probably over 6 years ago. The brutal honesty is that NS2 has been in development for a long, long time and there was the distinct impression it was vapourware for a few years.
Then out of the blue I start getting emails again from the team some months ago?, which didn't really alleviate that impression at all. Then all of a sudden today I get an email linking to a teaser trailer, new site and an announced fall 09 release.
To say that the content of the email was a surprise is abit of an understatement. Except it all falls flat as soon as the trailer ends, there is nothing there. There is no game to see, only empty fluff. I mean, im not the kind of person who pre-orders on eye candy and nostalgia or faith on a studios previous work, in the last 6 years there's been way too many bombs that sold on hype, especially in the mmo genre. This isnt a knock on Flayra or his team at all, its just the way it is these days.
If you want us to pre-order, If you want to bring more of us old NS1'ers back for NS2 show us a game rather than just art. Were certainly ripe at the moment, Valve continue to destroy Team Fortress 2 with each new patch turning it into a farce and ETQW did not fill the void we were hoping it would.
But look it at from mine, and im sure many others perspectives.
I and the people I played NS1 with didn't stick around community wise once we left NS1 during its decline. My last post here was probably over 6 years ago. The brutal honesty is that NS2 has been in development for a long, long time and there was the distinct impression it was vapourware for a few years.
Then out of the blue I start getting emails again from the team some months ago?, which didn't really alleviate that impression at all. Then all of a sudden today I get an email linking to a teaser trailer, new site and an announced fall 09 release.
To say that the content of the email was a surprise is abit of an understatement. Except it all falls flat as soon as the trailer ends, there is nothing there. There is no game to see, only empty fluff. I mean, im not the kind of person who pre-orders on eye candy and nostalgia or faith on a studios previous work, in the last 6 years there's been way too many bombs that sold on hype, especially in the mmo genre. This isnt a knock on Flayra or his team at all, its just the way it is these days.
If you want us to pre-order, If you want to bring more of us old NS1'ers back for NS2 show us a game rather than just art. Were certainly ripe at the moment, Valve continue to destroy Team Fortress 2 with each new patch turning it into farce and ETQW did not fill the void we were hoping it would.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
To be fair, you aren't exactly the target audience for the pre-order.
You're in a rather unique position where you want to know about NS2 because of your involvement in NS1, but never sought out any details of NS2, nor did you keep up with the development blogs over the last few years by the sounds of things. So your comments about it appearing out of nowhere are rather unsubstantiated, and it would only take a visit to www.unknownworlds.com/ns2 and a flick through the archives to be able to alleviate most of your issues. Yes, there was an issue with financial backing, but that was addressed quite a while ago.
The fact of the matter is, there have been 2-4 people working on NS2 throughout its development, and as such the development time on such a project of this scale has to be reasonably long. We have always gotten what we expected from UWE, and this is no different. If you're comparing this to the development time you'd expect from a 50 man operation, then you're doing them a great injustice, as they have poured alot of personal time and resources into seeing this through.
So why should you pre-order? Did you spend countless hours playing NS1 like I did, over a number of years? Did you reap the rewards of alot of time and attention by the devs to ensure each NS1 patch brought something new and exciting to the game? Did you appreciate how closely the devs worked with the community to bring about all the above?
If so, then you received far more than any full-priced game would ever offer in NS1, and your commitment to NS2 should be a way of saying thanks for providing all that, completely gratis. Oh, it also happens to buy you Natural Selection 2, as well.
And it's only $19.95.
This...is...SPARTA!!
You mean sparse, right?
And don't call me Shirley... (surely)
I suggest you look at the past blogs, pod, and video casts. There's been a steady progression of development after the website came back and the progress has been visibly ramping up this recent months leveraging off the tools Max built. Of course the game was "vaporware" at one point, it has to start as an idea and then take time to build. They had to get seed funding(Zen of Sudoku), put in sweat equity and attract investors, build development tools, and ultimately move away from the source engine because it was too limiting.
If you're trying to get all of you info from a <b><i>teaser trailer</i></b> then yes, it's going to seem a little thin. So welcome back, take a look around to get your bearings and hopefully you'll find enough to entice you to preorder, or at least keep an eye on, NS2.
But look it at from mine, and im sure many others perspectives.
I and the people I played NS1 with didn't stick around community wise once we left NS1 during its decline. My last post here was probably over 6 years ago. The brutal honesty is that NS2 has been in development for a long, long time and there was the distinct impression it was vapourware for a few years.
Then out of the blue I start getting emails again from the team some months ago?, which didn't really alleviate that impression at all. Then all of a sudden today I get an email linking to a teaser trailer, new site and an announced fall 09 release.
To say that the content of the email was a surprise is abit of an understatement. Except it all falls flat as soon as the trailer ends, there is nothing there. There is no game to see, only empty fluff. I mean, im not the kind of person who pre-orders on eye candy and nostalgia or faith on a studios previous work, in the last 6 years there's been way too many bombs that sold on hype, especially in the mmo genre. This isnt a knock on Flayra or his team at all, its just the way it is these days.
If you want us to pre-order, If you want to bring more of us old NS1'ers back for NS2 show us a game rather than just art. Were certainly ripe at the moment, Valve continue to destroy Team Fortress 2 with each new patch turning it into a farce and ETQW did not fill the void we were hoping it would.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
All of that is fine and dandy, you are entitled to your own opinion.
But if you had been actively visiting the site and listening to all of the blog posts they had and all of the twitter updates they put out then it would start to paint the picture that they are much further developed than what the media they have shown us would lead us to believe. Like someone else said in this thread, they are a small team and can't take the time and resources to do many trailers like this. With 4 full time developers going for a Fall '09 release they need EVERY second possible to work on the game.
And you know it's fine if you want to wait for pre-ordering the game. No one is forcing you to pre-order NS2 right now. You can go ahead and wait until the Alpha/Beta start and I'm sure a decent amount of player created media will leak out then which should give you a decent amount of information to form a basis for either buying the game or not. As for a large number of community members who instantly pre-ordered the Special Edition, I'm sure that most of us bought it to support one of our favorite game development teams of all time. We all believe in what Unknown Worlds is doing and we believe that whatever they make, it will be at least some fun <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />. Also a good number of the community wanted to give money to Unknown Worlds because of NS1. I saw many responses from community members who said that all the fun and excitement that they had in NS1 was worth paying the $40 for; they even got a free copy of NS2 with their NS1 purchase <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />. I personally fall into the category that whole heatedly supports Unknown Worlds and even if they don't make their Fall '09 release date, I will still be a major supporter for them. As for if I am worried that my $40 will become vaporware, I don't really think it will happen because they have been working on NS2 for so long and to cancel development right now would be virtually impossible.
Peace.
I got a full refund and I there in turn payed for the special edition out of thanks. Specifically for having confidence in my minor 40$ total investment. I have confidence in unknownworlds to do alot of great things. This is me, and that what you are saying is you. You can wait for the game to come out if you are so hindered by believing that this is still all just vapor ware then watch us who do go ahead and pay, play the game. Who knows, the prices may just go up when its finally released or you might not get that 'black' armor and it <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />.
Sigh, sorry for ranting on, though yes I may be a bit of a fanatic and jumped the gun and immediatly fell in love with that trailer, though I believe that the trailer is the tip of the nice glacial iceburg that unknown worlds has in store for us and if your willing to go through with the ride pre-ordering to show your support or not is of your choice. I already shown my support thank you, I hope that you read through the blogs, and easily provided information by clicking the 'news' button within the whole website and read up before anyone can honestly think right away that this is vapor ware.
No, someone made a very valid point.
I'm in this awkward place where I don't know how much I should say, but I think I would have shared a lot of Random's reservations, had I not seen a very well running engine and a lot of the assets on my short visit to UWE in March.
I'm in this awkward place where I don't know how much I should say, but I think I would have shared a lot of Random's reservations, had I not seen a very well running engine and a lot of the assets on my short visit to UWE in March.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Sounds good enough to me.
But come on, you know you want to spill <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />
I saw the title of the topic and clicked, with the intention of dropping the obvious "Don't call me Shirly!" joke, but you're the second person to make it already. I am saddened.
--Scythe--
UWE know that everyones first impression is the most important. This first impression will be alpha testing. My guess for alpha testing will be a extremely fine tuned game engine capable of running on a large amount of machines, complete gameplay experience, 1 map, community mapping tools and lots of organised play testing sessions to do in game balance changing with cvars. Hopefully the community will chip in with some quality map design that will make it in release version, or atleast a not to distant patch.
It makes me grin very wide that you've said that NZ, a fine tuned game engine is probably the most important out of anything. A game fails/success relies on its game engine. Look at etqw, constant 100fps didn't feel smooth at all. Dodgy netcode ect. were all contributing factors to the hate that built around the game.
I know their is not really any solid evidence on how far they have come, however once the basics are in; models, animations, sounds, gamecode, tuned engine. The rest fall into place quite quickly. Judging by all the developer video's they have released of the tools they are using, integration of everything seems very streamlined and will hopefully suggest a extremely fast development cycle.
But seriously, would you pre-order if you saw a trailer showing proper gameplay and stuff? I think you wouldn't anyway. Most probably you would wait until the game is released and reviews are out. Which is perfectly logical by the way. For me, i just wanted to support this company.
But seriously, would you pre-order if you saw a trailer showing proper gameplay and stuff? I think you wouldn't anyway. Most probably you would wait until the game is released and reviews are out. Which is perfectly logical by the way. For me, i just wanted to support this company.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
They have my SE support as well - looking forward to NS2.
There is not a single player game, so you dont have VO to go over, you need a minimal amount of maps, no custom game script, saving, checkpoints, etc.
Really all they need to do is finish off the engine, ramp out 3-5 maps, anims and art, and do the netcode. past that its mostly balance. could deffinately be doable by end of the year.
I'm in this awkward place where I don't know how much I should say, but I think I would have shared a lot of Random's reservations, had I not seen a very well running engine and a lot of the assets on my short visit to UWE in March.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Nem spills the beans! The game is done they're just implementing the BUS and putting the finishing touches on the skorpian model.
Teh BUS? OMG WUT IS IT?!