A Look Back in Time - Part II
Freeworlds: Tides of War took an interesting turn in development in December, largely impart to Qi's amazing new project, Kuat Ship Yards. If you read my first article, Qi was attempting to create a massive base never seen in the likes of Freelancer Engine. I thought he was nuts for what he was trying to achieve. And, still to this very day, I do believe he was. However, his mental faculties aside, using these images as his guide:
He created this:
And because of this amazing achievement in Freelancer modding, Freeworlds: Tides of War was officially on the radar of the Freelancer community. And that's when amazing things started to happen :)
Around this time, Deety, Mirkha, Dok and Super D, from the Freeworlds France Server joined our team. Deety initially focused his talents on AI work. Making massive AI fleets that would populate our systems. He later focused on several other projects which I'll get into in my next article. Mirkha has been working on hitboxes from the start. His work will be included in the next article as well.
It was also at this time in the early months of 2009, that we approached the First Strike mod to borrow some of their amazing starfighter models. After talking to their model development leader, RedMonkey, he and the First Strike Team let use their work in our mod. Not only did we get high quality models, we also got out-of-this-world cockpits. Sovereign, who was working at model conversion at this time, converted the models as soon as we got them and we produced this video:
While this was happening Why485, Solostaran and W0dk4 joined our team. The three were all very well established modders in the Freelancer community and we seemed to pique their interest with our latest development videos and images. Why485 focused on getting the gameplay of Freeworlds: Tides of War as enjoyable as he could. He showed us what we could do with our mod in this video here:
I believe that this video was the impetus that caused the mod team to discuss what gameplay would be like for the mod. Just as a sidenote, for those looking to create a Star Wars mod, having 10-15 Star Wars nerds discuss ideal gameplay is like watching cat fight. Anyways, where was I? Oh right, gameplay discussion. As I alluded to, this was probably the most volatile time in development of the mod. The developers all had a very different idea on what gameplay should be and how canon we should go. After several weeks of debate, we decided it would be best to run three different prototypes. They were created by Sovereign, Why485 and Deety, respectively. Each system was radically different from the other. One had no engine kill another had engine kill increased. One ran canon speeds, the other ran speeds faster than vanilla freelancer cruise. Each was so very different from each other it was really going to be hard to pick just one.
To get an idea of what the one of the system were like watch this prototype video of Why's combat system:
To test the different prototypes, I enlisted the help of 5 non-partisan pilots. Their mission was to critique every single aspect of the gameplay of each prototype and vote for the one they liked best. Based on their feedback, there was no distinct winner. Each prototype had its own strength and weakness. In the end, I ended up merging the best aspects of each prototype into one. With some fine tuning, help from the testers, we ended up with the prototype gameplay we have today.
While the decision on the gameplay of the mod was happening, Qi and Oma started to replace me in the system building project and started to create amazing works of their own. Their early work can be seen in this video:
Qi also started on his new monster project, Mon Calamari Shipyards, with the help of Solo to texture. In the interest of time, for more details on this amazing system, go to this article.
Sovereign, while he was developing his version of a combat prototype system, worked tirelessly on updating our model set. After thousands of hours converting models, textures and several other things, we were able to produce this video:
I think this is good place to stop this article. I've probably overwhelmed you with enough FW:ToW development videos to last you awhile...
In my next instalment, I write about our highpoly models (the 130,000 polygon ISD, 70,000 polygon CR90 Corvette), Mission Systems and the time where we almost lost our entire mod due to a fatal bug we never saw.
As always, any comments, suggestions or questions are always welcome,
Sushi
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Long article, short response - awesome stuff, truly.
Thanks mate. The next article will show the true magic of FW:ToW, though :)
It is a serious problem that capital ships won't be able to spawn AI-driven fighters. Every time I read the news on tides of war, it seems that everything is perfect except the fact, that there are only a few fighters on the battlefield.
Don't worry, there will be a large majority of starfighters in Fw:Tow battles. Actually, capital ships will be heavily restricted : in average fighting, you'll only encounter frigates, carriers, interdictors and destroyers such as the Mc40a, the Strike-class cruiser or the Dreadnaught. Battleships such as the ISD or the Mc90 will only be used for events, because they're so much powerful than you need an entire fleet to bring them down. Eventually, Fw:Tow battles will not be as capital ship heavy as in ToW.
Will players be able to buy every capital ship? (It would be nearly unachievable for a player to buy such ship if you would made the right prizes, so it would limitate itself. Only whole fractions could effort such a prize)
And what is ToW? Is it a parallel freelancer project? In how far does it differ?
Players will be able to buy every single ship put into the game. That being said, something like the Imperial Star Destroyer or MC90 will need the entire faction as it will not only be bought on credits. We're in the process of making a material based economy as well. So like, X amount of credits + Y amount of ore + Z amount of electronics at the shipyards, will then buy you a ship.
As for ToW, that was another Star Wars mod that we merged with early in development. It stood for Tides of War, as Akos12 mentioned. Sometimes, when we talk, we shorten it up, either FW 2.0 or ToW.
So at the beginning every faction has to buy little ships and at the end, the whole faction will have like 10 ISD's to their disposal but cannot use them at the same time? Or do you limit them directly at the shops?
It's going to be difficult for factions to get enough materials, at first, to build their craft. They'll also need metals (through mining), ores (through refineries) to buy even their smaller fighters. Furthermore, trading will also need to be done to keep their fleet. Not only do they need these materials to buy new things, they'll also need it to maintain it. With the dynamic economy Qi and W0dk4 the economy is going to be quite interesting.
I think ToW means Tides of War
So just out of shear hope, will there be a beta or a demo of this?(insert puppy face here)
Sometime down the line, probably. We will end up at a stage whereby we need large scale testing done. One of the Achilles heel of 1.66 was that it came off the shelf with too many bugs and thus, was messy.
Even in the gaming world these days, its hard to see a game that doesn't go through a large scale beta, so eventually, I assume, we will have one - to dig out any final bugs the current test team might of missed or any other niggling problems.
That of course, will happen when it happens (and no doubt, the public will be informed so they can start queuing up a couple of days in advance!!)
Yes, there will be a public beta. When, well, as Oma said, when we feel ready for it to be tested on a large scale.