Comments - psy_commando

This comment system is giving me a headache.... >_<

There you go :
Starfox-online.net

We don't have our own forums, too much hassle.
The info on the first page is extremely old. I need to update it, but I got so much crap to do already..

We're on it. But, I rarely post concept on moddb, because their gallery system is just ... and won't allow to have, like a separate gallery for concept and one for work in progress, or one for screenshots...

But on the mod thread in the Starfox-Online forums under the "General Starfox" section, we relatively regularly post concept art. I think its easier to get feedback from a small community, because most won't stay silent and actually give some feedback.

As for the OCs, well, they're not author surrogates, or fursonas or something. It does feel creepily like they have some random traits from me which I never intended giving them. But, I've heard its kinda usual for authors to do that without actually wanting to..

Anyhow, like I said rest assured you're not going to see a depressive, anxious, half-insane, anthropomorphic animal as a character ;)

Also, I have been working on that post for the SFO forums I mentioned earlier, but, we've made some changes recently and I'll have to show the old version of the 3D models. Along with the concept art, though, some characters are going to, or have changed from the concept art.

Yep, that's what I meant.
And the reason is, that, someone once made a very good point that the snes starfox universe was in the future, but not such a distant future, compared to us.

I think I actually read that in an author comment on the Starfox : Phoenix from the ashes fanfic..

We could assume maybe technology evolved differently. And maybe its not been so long since firearms have been phased out.
And given that the CDF are poorly equipped and rather small, keeping that kind of weapon for training new recruits and such would be relatively logical, to keep the modern weaponry where its most needed.

Also, armors made to resist energy weapons usually have poor protection against projectiles in other sci-fi universes such as battletech and others.

Therefore, projectile weapons might be effective against certain enemies.

Its mostly because, we'd like to have some rock/paper/scissors kind of gunplay. A little like Mass Effect, but maybe not exactly the same way. And most likely not implemented as well..

Though, this is still open for debate, and we dropped most of the firearms, and kept only one at this point, its a futuristic multi-caliber assault rifle. As in, it can adjust to a few various ammunition calibers on the fly.

We'll see. I can't tell when people will be available to do some work.. Its not like we're paid and on a deadline !

Eh, I'm really against using that really stupid overused phrase "when its done". So I'll instead say: "Yesterday, except we missed the deadline.." (yesterday in the sense of not June 3rd, but that its late and we should already have released something)

But believe me, if I had any ideas, you wouldn't be asking this question, because you'd already know the answer..

Well, Marc isn't a professional composer, but he's doing pretty good IMO.

And honestly I still do have some issues with some of the soundtrack, but I think he's not really all that interested in my suggestions. But I can't really complain, since its very nice of him to do all this for us !

Though, he might be more receptive to exterior feedback. You should leave him comments on his youtube, his moddb account, or on the mod thread on SFO.

Yeah, and OCs also allow us more freedom than we'd have with SF characters. Its also our backup plan so to speak. The big N answered us with a really confusing letter back when we asked them about making the mod. So, in case of overzealous legal department lawyers(Which I warn that I'd make any correspondence and docs public) forcing us to drop SF stuff(even if I never found any trademarks on the sf chars in the us trademark repo(though mario and co does)), we'd have a "consolation prize" in the form of our original custom assets and chars. Those are crazy times, and we gotta make backup plans..

Weapons are pretty varied, we got: assault rifles, pistols, light machine guns, snipers, rocket launchers, grenades, melee weapons, sub-machine guns. We're also planning in addition to the usual blaster type weapons, to have other types of weapons. Railguns, maybe firearms if we can make them politically correct, a big maybe on lasers(no lasers and blasters aren't the same thing).

As for the CDF soldier, we're still fixing a few things about his 3d model. And it strayed quite a bit from the concept art. But, I'm working on a huge post on the sfo forums, I should post this or next week. I'll include a pic of him in it. Hopefully by then it should be mostly ready.

I'm not going to update the profile very often. Only when big events happen, which are fairly rare.

Mostly because, it doesn't look like it, but it takes an eternity to do !(At least for me with my problems.. And nobody else wanna do it. ) And it only creates hype in the end..

We're much more active on the Starfox-Online forums.

Moreover, we've agreed since the beginning not to make SF do many on-foot missions. Mostly given that, the plot line we chose (the comics) is not leaving us much room for that, and also because its seen really negatively in the community at this point.. But we'll still try to plug in some ground missions here and there.

To refine the on-foot gameplay a little more, and making it more than a gimmick or afterthought, most of the ground missions will be played as a CDF soldier. Yes, an OC. Oooh scary! And there's a bunch of others too ! Though you won't see them really hang around Starfox. *waits for people to grab pitchforks and torches*

(not directed at samaxus12 but in general. And yes, its not everybody that's like that. So now that I'm politically correct, lets move on.. )

Anyways, if OCs aren't your thing, just skip the CDF campaign.
I just had to poke some fun at that while we're at it :P

And, I'd like to add that we're really interested in hearing ideas and suggestions, especially on improving gameplay, since we never made a game before.
Just be sure when you have an idea to have at least a hint of the answers to the "What?", "How?", "Why?", and the "Is it relevant to us?".

This will come in two parts, because moddb is evil..
Well, its hard to tell how it will end up like. When we get the pre-alpha done, I can guarantee you that the next release won't play/handle the same way. That's part of our development strategy.

We use the classic "Release a little, often"(often is relative) and we'll shape the game based on player feedback. That means the first release might be a buggy frustrating mess but we'll try to address that.

And I really don't like how when we talk about a feature of a mod everybody expects it to be and looks perfect, but from our own POV its not as fancy and perfect as it sounds. Hype is bad.

Anyways, sorry about the rant, I suppose I can say a couple of things about it.

Its 3rd person / over the shoulder. We'd really like to add things like using enemy as shield / making a silent takedown, a little like MGS does, but the code for that still isn't written. We don't plan on using regenerating health or ammo. We'll use a classic pickup system.

We'd also like to have a ledge grabbing / climbing system, similar to MGS, Overgrowth and etc.. We got a basic implementation, but we still have unsolved problems. Such as locking the boxes we use to check for ledges to the character model and not the character's "eyes" as they say in source.

And the biggest problem is mostly how to proceed with animations. I heard we should use IK for making the character grab the ledge, but when we climb, do we move the player entity or we just let the animation run and teleport the player at the right position.. And IK is very poorly documented on the VDC..

As for the gameplay, we want to make it a little more than a simple shoot-em up, like a certain game beginning by "***" was :P (Just kidding, not hating)
We hope to make it a good and healthy mix of platformer / shooter / "stealth" / general action.

nope, it was just a management issue. I detailed it on the SFO thread, but we'll write a status report of some sort explaining things in details.

Well, scratch December. We had some internal problems, which are solved now, and also I am in the final weeks of my semester, and schoolwork is pretty overwhelming to say the least..

Neat :)
you even thought of the "boink" sound when you kill someone :D

I wonder if renegade based mods would port to renegade x ?

So, looks like you finally got the coder you were looking for ! :)

That's some great stuff you guys have made ! That AI looks really promising, and you've done a great job with the environment, especially on vegetation ! Looks like a couple of new shaders were needed to achieve that !
Its good to see mod teams that withstand hard times, especially fan games :)

Good point, I made an edit on the newspost.
And it depends on your interpretation of what's an improper microphone !

Pretty much, but I made a small newspost today, it should get approved soon.

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For those that are wondering. I just haven't had the time to post a thorough update yet. Because I want to update the mod profile and overhaul it at the same time, so that will take some more time. I'm no photoshop( gimp in my case ) expert, so it takes me more time to get good results. I'll also rename the mod to the final name we chose a while ago. Which is "Lylat's Last Stand".
So yeah, that's about it.
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Sorry, for the very late response, but I had a hard time finding your comment last time I read the comments.. I really think the comment system is broken here.

Anyways, I meant as a hobbyist writer. Like have you written fan fics or anything else ?

Woops, the messed up comment system kinda confused me :S

I'm working on a fan mod too, and this is just the kind of thing that makes me want to not live on this planet anymore..

All those copyright laws and IP laws are completely one sided, and don't acknowledge fans at all. Basically, if you're a fan of something, you can just go screw yourself as far as the right holders or the law care. They own the thing you love as a fan, and won't let you express yourself about it ! Hopefully, some right holder aren't actually complete dicks about it, and won't sue fanworks !
I'm not against copyrights or IP laws, but I'm against the travesty it has become nowadays ...

And Warner Brothers, while you're at it, why don't you take down all the drawings kids make of your characters, or censor everybody talking about your movies, or even better just sue people thinking about your IPs ! Hey, its their right, they effing own copyrights, they can just go around and harass anybody they want ! Perfectly legal ! I'm sure your MAFIAA friends would be glad to help you with that !

And I really don't get why parody is accepted as fair, but not benign fanwork.. So I can say something is completely stupid and obnoxious and make fun of it, but I can't praise it and say, what if we added space ninjas in it ! Nope, U NO CAN DO derivative works!

Oh, and you may want to post your C&D letter on chilling effect: Chillingeffects.org

And I think the OTW and EFF might be able to help you guys out.
Transformativeworks.org
Eff.org

What do you mean ?

I wasn't blaming you, I was just saying I'm not sure where my comment will end up :S

And no offense, but I think you misinterpreted something. We asked Nintendo if they would mind if we did a fangame. Not for publishing rights or for SDKs to publish on the Wii or DS.

Besides, even if we had the money and staff to do something like that, Nintendo won't let anybody use their franchises. And we're not doing a revolutionary game to save the franchise or anything, we just want to do something that's not bad, and that's made by fans.

(Not sure if this is a reply to the post I think it is. Moddb comment system is utterly broken)
What do you mean you hate to say it ? Its a good thing that they don't care about us !

And I'd rather get no trouble rather than not too much :P

Hey thanks, and we're not really at full force. I'm pretty late on my coding deadlines !

Yeah, that's her, well at least our take on her. I love how she looks too :3 Alain did some great work with her !

Well, I have no idea what RennardFuchs just told you :S
But we got 2 writers already. However if something comes up we could contact you maybe ? What kind of experience do you have ?

What technicalities do you mean ?
I know its a complete waste of money for them to follow up on their C&D should things escalate. But companies, and especially companies lawyers, aren't necessarily rational either..

Working on that. We'll see what we can do.

Yeah, that's on the To-Do list. But right now I'm stuck with a depression, and I gotta manage the team, recruit, code, import assets in the game, and possibly animate.. Moreover, I'm starting to wonder if we're not becoming too visible..

While we actually contacted Nintendo, they didn't give two **** and copy pasted us standard "We can't say yes, but we don't say no either. And get your own legal advice.". So basically, we could get a Cease & Desist if Nintendo feels like it.. However, there aren't a lot of instances of that happening to people that didn't rip anything, and didn't do any profits.

I wish there were laws to give some basic rights to fans, while not negatively impacting the IP owners. It would make so much sense when you think about it. Anyways, sorry for all the extra rambling. :)

I'll try to ask Weronika about the scales.

Yeah, you got a point there. But I kinda promised that to Alain.. And I don't want to look insincere or to disappoint.

And I just announced it. Changing idea now seems a little disorganized. If you have ideas on how to deal with this, feel free to share though.

@Expack: That's pretty much the approach we're planning to take :)

Well we tried to find an acronym to represent the bad guys. And since in the SNES canon they were called the imperial army, we went with that and added Andross to it. So its literally "Andross' Imperial Army"