Hello,
Many of you might already be aware of our struggle to deliver the most Complete vCoD experience, using ancient ad obsolete tools.
We kept going anyway, pushed by the passion and the need of a strong, SINGLE-PLAYER WWII experience like no other on the market.
But now we're facing probably the biggest obstacle yet. An obstacle we kept under our bed, ignoring it.
We can't ignore it any longer.
I was fixing the Battle of France campaign, adding loads of custom dialogues and refining the weapon models.
And, while working on said models, I noticed the Lewis Gun animations. Or, should I say, the Lack of said animations.
The same applies to the Deployed Bren, the Undeployed DP-28, the Delisle Commando Carbine, Ppsh41, Pps43, M1 Carbine and so on.
The problem is simple, yet unsormontable: we need animations for those weapons.
Martin (Mch2007z, the man behind B2F mod) gave me the tools that are needed to animate weapon models.He warned me that they were basicaly broken and obsolete.
Damn, if he's right.
I tried contact other people that implemented custom animations in vCod before.
No one answered.
United Fronts isn't intended to be a cheap, ordinary mod.
United fronts wanted to be the Ultimate vCoD Single-Player Experience.
Right now, it's not even an acceptable mod, in my opinion.
So, that's it.
just wanted to tell you guys that the project is now paused.
I don't know when an animator will show up and, honestly, I doubt he'll ever will.
I hope I'll hear all you guys soon,
-Marco, the creator of the United Front project.
(P.S.: Of course, every other member of the mod group are free to release their work anytime they want.)
Project delayed. Indefinitely.
The reasons why the 1.1 update probably won't come out anytime soon.
Posted by Marcomix on
Let's hope some people can rise to the call. This mod is too good to be lost among the sea of projects gone obsolete.
As soon as I get my new laptop today or soon this weekend, I'll be sure to work on custom sounds for the custom weapons and so forth. Now I'm thinking you can perhaps send me a list of the weapons you'd like me to enhance with sounds.
For all I know, MAYBE sounds might help give potential animators or modellers incentive.
As Victor said, this mod is too good to be cancelled.
I'll finish the planned Market Garden campaign probably by June, and if there aren't any updates of the mod, I'll put the campaign's pk3 file for download.
Port the maps to Cod2?
That's impossible. And even if was possible, it wouldn't pay off as you already have mods like UF for CoD2.
firstly i agree with others that it's a shame to stop right now. the mod has gone so much lately.
secondly - i had a similar mind phase when i developed Back2Fronts. you just need to accept the fact that you can't do everything you want in the mod.
if only you guys knew how much stuff i got on my hard drive regarding B2F mod that i had to cut off from various reasons. it's several gigabytes of unused stuff. but as a developer - you have to cut stuff away basically to make the mod work reliably and also to have a reasonable release date.
now to speak specifially to your animation problem - i think that most custom guns can use existing animations - with a decent enough result (ppsh41, pps43, m1carbine, g41, greaser, mab38,...). the only exception are the machine guns and delisle.
personnaly, i would delete the delisle completely and replace it with a silenced sten (or welrod for extra challenge).
as for machine guns - i would simply follow CoDUO's style - divide them into deployable (mg34,mg42,dp28,30cal) and undeployable (bren,bar,fg42) groups and that's it.
lastly, if some machinegun (or any other weapon) doesn't work and there's no hope of correcting it - i would simply delete it completely. the best candidates for deleting are breda and lewis i think.
All very good points, indeed. No development process is without the things that were left behind the scenes.
Small thought: As for the machine guns, if Marcomix wishes to keep the Lewis and the Breda, perhaps they can work better as static MG turrets on a map instead of handheld.
The problem about using the same animation set for a large amount of weapons (for example, the mp40, mp38, mp41, ppsh41, pps43, mab38a and the grease gun shares the same animation set) feels like the player is using basically the same weapon over and over again. I think this is something that inevitably breaks the immersion.
My plan for the lmgs was to have the player use them undeployed, but with the limitation that he cannot ADS without deploying them (just like in CoD2: Big Red One). This would have been a realistic implementation of lmgs, since we have records of soldiers during WWII using LMGs in that way (John Basilone is the most famous example).
Moreover, I can't stand the bren used only as an undeployed lmg. It's just not historically accurate.
And, about the Delisle and the Welrod, they share the same main problem: the reloading animation. So, it would be useless to replace a broken weapon with another broken weapon.
Not to talk about the pullout and putaway animations of the M1A1 carbine, that looks very, VERY odd if used on the M1 Carbine...
The truth is: scraping too many weapons would jepardize the essence of the mod itself. I'll give it some thoughts, tho.
You do what you think is right for the mod. I'll try myself and give the animations a go, but now that depends also on just HOW many custom weapons do you plan on keeping despite the snag we hit.
As far as I'm concerned, I seem to be the only one willing to TRY animating these bloody things because some of vCoD's animators seem to be either busy or floating in the void.
well i have to sort off agree about UO's approach with MGs. when i first played it as a kid i was ****** that i can't shoot while standing. but i know why the devs did it - they designed it around the ardennes map to force player into defensive weapon. it's up to you to decide i guess.
yeah, i see what you mean by mp40's anim repetion. but if you use the weapons wisely and not all of them at once it shouldn't be so evident.
i thought that m1carbine is corrected: Moddb.com
same for welrod. i played some african UO mod a long time back and it had custom anims (i think they were ziegen's). it looked OK to me as far as i remember.
I agree on that notion.
Honestly, call me a mediocre conformist, but SOME animation is better than NO animation at all...
👎
I'd rather let Marcomix answer this one though. I was just chipping in my 2 cents. : P
TO ALL SUPPORTING ANIMATORS ON THE UNITED FRONTS PROJECT
Github.com
I stumbled upon this program. It seems to be another animation/modelling tool for vCoD that also supports CoD1/UO.
I haven't used it myself yet (still waiting for my laptop), but I just figured I'd share it with you all in case you want to try it out.
Here are a couple introductory videos to get started and so forth. :)
First of all I'd like to say this is the mod that reignited my love for the first COD, one of the first FPSs I've ever played.
You guys managed to pack so much content in one single mod that you should be proud enough of what you've achieved so far.
I hope you guys are able, if not to get to an absolute ultimate experience, at least to release whatever content you managed to add to the mod sometime in the future, kinda like what BDT did with Operation Market Garden.
It would be a shame to see all this work go to waste because you cannot achieve all your goals at the moment.
That said, thanks again for all you did for the benefit of us lowly players.
P.S. I've noticed some weapon models like the carcano, mab, carcavallo etc. in the pk3 file, but I haven't found any trace of them during gameplay. Do you guys know how to get those weapons, even by console commands?
On the surface, that seems like a more reasonable option in terms of release dates. There are mods out there that have done exactly that:
- Releasing a batch of the newest stuff that's been implemented for the upcoming version (as if to give players a taste), then release the FULL package and call it a 1.1 update.
Yet beneath the surface, it's evident that custom vCoD animators out there are scarce, and I'm still getting the hang of the 3D software to try and "animate" these custom weapons. But frankly, sometimes we just need to accept the fact that we can't do everything we want and will have to improvise with what we have.
It would be interesting to see the 1.1 update bringing all the stuff it's got carrying around, with the exception of leaving the improved custom animations for another update.
It may grind the gears of some, but it's better than leaving a mod floating in production purgatory.
(((*IN ADDITION:* Realistically speaking, this mod IS a freeware project. It's not being funded nor payed for, and it's not compromised by a deadline, if any. So this basically gives its production team as much breathing and stretching room to further build upon this thing in any way they please at any time.)))
The carcano, mab, and carcavallo are Italian weapons and only show up in two missions - Sicily 1 and Sicily 2.