Greetings Troopers!
Well there has been a bit of toing and froing from EA and DICE regarding the future of their older Battlefield titles since the announcement of GameSpy drawing their services to a close. One minute EA are going to save the games, and then they're not. What this means for the modding community as a whole and First Strike at this moment is still unclear.
Yes, we are looking into possible workarounds. We are facing two issues: GameSpy dropping support at the end of May 2014 and EA dropping Stats server support at the end of June 2014. GameSpy was under contract to provide the web based server management capability to help players find servers for BF2142 and BF2. Since EA is dropping support for BF2 and BF2142, they are no longer continuing the GameSpy contract. This is not a killer for First Strike. It means that players can no longer search for First Strike servers using the interface. Players will still be able to connect manually by I.P. address. We will post the address on the website with instructions prior to cessation of normal server services (now expected to be at the end of June). There are also other server managers that we are working with that are expected to eventually provide this service, such as GameRanger and Xfire.
The other problem of EA dropping server support means that the master server, which validates accounts and tracks stats will most likely be stopped. Without this server, only offline singleplayer will work with BF2142. Blue Entertainment, (website: Revivebf2.com) has plans to run there own master account server for BF2 by the end of May. The group is planning to also do the same for BF2142, but they have not announced a target date for that game yet. We are reaching out to Blue Entertainment and other mod teams to figure out a solution for First Strike. We fully expect to find a solution at some point, but this is unlikely to happen before the end of June.
In any event, we are not quite finished with First Strike. Since the 1.6 release of First Strike, the limited number of Devs we still have have been busy with real life, so work on the mod has been slow. However, we have been working on fixing gameplay issues on Parmel, finalizing the Dathomir Prison Break map for release, check out the eye candy below:
We are also continuing our work on Hoth, though in these uncertain times we may not be sure to what end, but we can at least get some footage of the work so far out to you soon, so you can see what you could have if First Strike does manage to continue.
Either way, keep your eyes peeled for news on a few events that we'll be looking at putting together before the end of June so players can get on and have a few more well populated games of First Strike before EA pull the plug.
Until then...
See you on the Battlefield Troopers!
Hey. We in Russia have long been opened site. The site was dedicated servers on pirate game Battlefield 2142. Here Novgames.ru. I think you'll agree. Their American hookworm server empty. I think you would be able to agree on what that would be some of the servers had a client FIRST STRIKE. And that you could play your game. Then the players would become more and it would be possible to play the feast
I suppose you are offering somewhat a help linking that server's company with fist strike. Someway I don't trust on this option cosidering that group has opened 2142 servers allowing pirate gamers play there...
Hm... I thought I read somewhere that 2142 and BF2 were given a solid alternative? It was a PCGamer article I think.
To be honest, when I last checked out 2142's servers they were usually filled with hackers, buggy games or the servers were just dodgy overall. Stuff didn't feel right deterring me from playing and this comes from someone who seriously loved 2142. Really miss the old days so much...
never believed when EA say they had a solution; MoH Pacific Assault and Airborne still to fresh in my memory to know better.
FS team, you guys should take the BF2142 strip down what its not needed and make a pack with the mod bundle in, for the rest of us. FH2 had a great alternative with they're own Server List Server, but still the Urban Terror game has a alternative community made master server Dpmaster.deathmask.net the guys at xnull.org made a good and simple Server Query that link to a master list.
Good luck
Good luck finding a solution FS team, Im sure other mod teams will rally behind you and help anyway they can!
Keep up the awesome work you hard working dedicated devs!
The images look darkly imoressive. Do you devs know how sky can be programmed to be dynamic, I mean I liked when I played for the first time this game seeing some maps skies, like the Suez one, when those clouds were moving on, how is it possible? Knowing that commonly skies are only 2D images, I dunno how is possible to achieve movement on it, maybe a gif, or is it coded?