Greetings Troopers!
We have some major announcements concerning the mod.
First of all, Dnamro is taking over as Dev Team Lead. He has been with the First Strike team since the early days, integrating singleplayer into First Strike and helping out in other areas. Dnamro's love of all things Sci-Fi and his long standing experience with Battlefield Engine Modding makes him an ideal choice.
Second, after a lot of discussion, we have decided that we can no longer continue development for the Battlefield 2142 game engine as a multiplayer game. The Battle of Hoth map was to be the final major release for the mod, but with dwindling player counts for our events, the loss of the Master Account server and with EA no longer supporting or selling the game there is no longer any way to find new players to keep the mod alive. Which means there is no longer any real point/reason for the team to finish Hoth for the BF2142 mod, which is a great shame.
However, that does not mean we are ending First Strike. We are looking seriously at changing games or possibly even developing First Strike as a stand-alone game on one of the newer game engines. Stay tuned. We will be sure to let our fans know when we make a decision.
In the meantime, Dnamro will continue the mod, at least for the time being as a singleplayer mod. In addition to some multiplayer fixes, he had several updates that were not quite ready to release for 1.6 that he wants to finish up. These include navmesh updates and new singleplayer support for some maps. Currently, we are testing new singleplayer kits that don't use the kit customization menu, since it has issues with offline gameplay. The concept is that the kits will be customized based on the type of singleplayer map: Infantry versus Vehicle focused maps. For example, on an infantry only map, the Rebel Heavy Weapons Specialist kit will gain the Packard Mortar Gun as a secondary weapon along with the standard Mk. 1 rifle. While, the Rebel Heavy Weapons Specialist kit for vehicle maps will have a HH15 rocket launcher along with the standard Mk. 1 rifle. This will give the player the ability to
switch between key weapons on the fly.
The screenshots below illustrate the kit differences in the kit selection menu, adjusted so they show which version of the HWS kit is available on that particular map.
Stay tuned, for more information on the First Strike move to a new game engine!
See you out there on the battlefield Trooper!
If only we got the sdk for bf3 and bf4 such a shame
Good luck guys. I've never played your mod because I don't own 2142, but now that you may be upgrading to something more new; I'm super excited!
just saying but the Cry-engine is all but free!
if only there were some way to make a galactic conquest map. Even just static pictures that you start out from one planet and you have to take over one to get to others and such. Would make the appeal last longer imo.
Still sad I never really got to play this when there were still full servers of it going :(
well we can think like what happens in planetside 2
Entirely understandable. I'm sure you'll find an engine that suits this game!
I'm so conflicted! On the one hand, I'm sad that 'First Strike' as I once knew it has died, yet that New Hope about continuing on a new engine tickles my 'eager happiness' organ.
This is a move you guys should have made ages ago. You have produced some top quality assets here and seeing them go to waste in a pretty much dead multiplayer only mod was depressing. 2142 was a dead end, and I only wish you had seen the writing on the wall before said wall up and collapsed on you. Anyway, good luck to you all in the future, I hope switching to another engine pans out.
Fair comment, but we had our reasons. We were only planning on a few more releases before calling it a day, and with only a skeleton crew Dev team porting to another game didn't seem like a viable option. Plus you have the additional factor of finding a more recent engine versatile enough and capable of doing what we need of it. Remember we're talking infantry scraps, walkers and other vehicles, plus vast space battles all in one package, which is a big ask. The hope is the promise of a new engine will draw in more people hoping to play it, and excite potential developers enough to join the cause and help out. We've got a few engines we're looking into. So could be exciting times ahead. We'll have to see how this goes.
I know you had very good reasons for sticking with 2142, it was pretty much the perfect engine for this. Unfortunately 2142 wasn't nearly as popular as BF2, a big blow to the mod's appeal right from the start. Also, those vast space battles... I loved that part of the mod, but it seems most people didn't. Even when it was active, servers cleared out when they switched to space battle maps.
Yeah, was always a tricky proposition going with BF2142. The mod was originally for BF2, but when the walkers turned up in that game it became the natural choice, but the game's relatively low popularity did hurt us from the get go (I still rate BF2142 as one of the most underrated gaming gems out there, and one of the best Battlefield games).
With the space maps, you can't please everyone, but to be a truly all encompassing and complete Star Wars battle experience space combat had to be an element of the mod, and I feel was something that made the mod truly unique. How many other games have you go from running around as infantry right up to commanding huge battle cruisers? Or defending moon sized space stations via starfighters or turbolaser towers?
The game is very diverse, and that is a big plus to my mind. Sure everyone might not like space, but there are certainly those who do. It is akin to BF2 where some people prefer infantry only maps, which is fair enough, but we have more to offer than that, maps to cater to all tastes.
I would agree with you that 2142 was criminally underrated. I really don't understand what was up with the space maps though, they were so well done but full servers would simply clear out the moment they came up. Space battles were very popular in Battlefront 2, I just don't get it.
Put him on the bf 2.
There are a few issues with BF2, some technical limitations which hampered our development of Walkers. With BF2142 actually featuring Walkers it made it much easier to develop our walkers in that version of the BF engine.
Good luck guys. On the other hand it's sad that such beauty is not seen by many but can't the game be played still trough Tunngle for example? It creates like a LAN connection and it's quite easy to use. It could work with the Singleplayer profiles.
That's one of the reasons we are continuing to develop the mod for single player and coop, so that it can still be enjoyed after we stop development.
What engines are y'all considering? Cryengine? UDK? Unity3D?
All of those to be honest, we're leaning towards one of those in particular, but need to do a bit more research into the logistics of using it to see if it is the engine for us.
I enjoyed it a bit. Good campaigns. It was a great match that 1-0 for Imperials on Jundland Wastes.
Love this mod! Even though i only got BF2142 when you could find people only at those weekend events!
Still playing singleplayer here, and glad to know you guys are thinking of a new project!
It's official, First Strike is merging with Battlecry and will move to the Unreal 4 Engine to develop a free Star Wars stand-alone game. We will post a news update soon on exactly what that means for First Strike on BF2142.
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