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Dusk
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2010 4:34 pm Posts: 1228 Location: Finland
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 Status update
Alright guys - this is what's up:
For the past few months or so AOW2 development has basically stalled down as the engine reached critical mass. Fixing a bug caused five more, the palette change broke who knows how many translations to break, not to mention we never even made our mind what the palette should be. I've been on a hiatus for the better part of this year out of lack of interest because of these issues and I've had time to rethink my strategies regarding this.
What's obvious is that fixing up the current beta release to an usable and maintainable result is unfeasible. It just cannot happen - ACS and Zandronum's netcode cannot handle what I coded into the engine and the palette just won't do it either. We got too ambitious and paid a stiff price for that.
So I'm taking the only other option for keeping AOW2 alive and that is rolling back to r2539 and working off that. I'm delaying the menu plans, I'll obviously have to rewrite the thing and with more knowledge of what works and what doesn't I should be able to pull that off.
Regarding stuff like graphics and the like I'm backporting the good stuff from the beta release (weapon sprites, sounds, Oasis revamp, etc). Regarding the tortoise mech, I'm afraid that will have to wait until I have a new menu code up.
Perhaps the most breaking change is that I've ditched almost all texture resources, AOW will be using the texture pack I created for PFD (some cooperative project we are supposedly supposed to do at MXU), which I consider the best texture compilation I've done yet. I'm really proud of that work and I'm excited to exploit its full potential with AOW. The pack also comes with a palette and color map which contains a good set of color and is more loyal to the Doom palette so less stuff should be breaking.
I will retexture the maps - half of which are again removed, the bad maps were cleared out for a reason, though I kept stuff like 11 (Disk Defrag) and 12 (Hell March) and potentially the namesake map 03. I removed AOW21 though, one city map is enough.
I'm not sure when this new approach AOW will be ready for playtesting. Right now I want to merge in the good stuff from the old beta and migrate texturing to PFD (and let that be the last time I ever rename the entire texture set and change the palette!)
That's all for now. I will post more updates as things progress.
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Wed May 22, 2013 5:25 pm |
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atac
Joined: Sat Jul 03, 2010 11:03 pm Posts: 1065 Location: British Columbia
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 Re: Status update
Glad to hear this announcement put forward.
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Thu May 23, 2013 2:17 am |
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K4r4t3k4n4k4s
Joined: Fri Feb 17, 2012 4:02 pm Posts: 178
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 Re: Status update
Interesting. Nice to see that you have found a way forward. Where can I find the new texture pack ?
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Thu May 23, 2013 11:05 am |
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Dusk
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2010 4:34 pm Posts: 1228 Location: Finland
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 Re: Status update
, with a few AOW ones
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Thu May 23, 2013 11:53 am |
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Konda
Joined: Tue Nov 23, 2010 2:04 pm Posts: 645 Location: Serbia
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 Re: Status update
Now that's the spirit I'm very impressed with your decision to continue work all the way from r2539 even after all the effort you put in the latest beta. That's very brave  I would have surely ragequit'd after seeing that the engine isn't good enough to run something I've worked on for a long time. Still, releasing v15 to the public has its benefits. I think the gameplay in v15 is a lot less frustrating, with a lot less stalemates, in comparison to r2539. I hope you'll keep those gameplay changes (except for the minigun :v). All that's left to say is good luck and I'll be looking forward to your progress (not just me, other players too)!
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Thu May 23, 2013 11:55 pm |
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lawa001
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2010 9:13 pm Posts: 758 Location: Location: Location:
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 Re: Status update
Can the PFD resource be used for other projects? (Credits included ofc)
_________________ <3 YOU TOO
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Sat May 25, 2013 4:40 am |
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Cyberkill
Joined: Thu Feb 28, 2013 1:47 am Posts: 18 Location: Right here, right now.
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 Re: Status update
And I thought this site was going to go down... Glad to see it's back up & this announcement is posted.
_________________ <Bloax> Shit has one super power. <Bloax> It manages to sneak into practically every conversation.
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Sun May 26, 2013 3:05 am |
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Zajaquiel
Joined: Mon May 02, 2011 7:24 pm Posts: 83 Location: Argentina
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 Re: Status update
_________________ [AS] Zajaquiel
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Mon May 27, 2013 4:18 pm |
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K4r4t3k4n4k4s
Joined: Fri Feb 17, 2012 4:02 pm Posts: 178
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 Re: Status update
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Wed May 29, 2013 9:07 am |
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Dusk
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2010 4:34 pm Posts: 1228 Location: Finland
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 Re: Status update
The two ones I linked should be the only ones used. Don't load skulltag_data.pk3!
If you need some additional textures, you can add them to your map no problem, just try to prefix them somehow, "K4*" maybe so that there won't be any clashes.
Also some progress on barrens (mind the pistol, it's through a skins/ wad):
Yeah I know I was supposed to just fix the maps but I got a little carried away as usual
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Sat Jun 01, 2013 11:13 pm |
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Blox
Lead Artist
Joined: Wed Apr 21, 2010 3:06 pm Posts: 415
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 Re: Status update
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Sun Jun 02, 2013 12:33 pm |
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Dusk
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2010 4:34 pm Posts: 1228 Location: Finland
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 Re: Status update
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Mon Jun 24, 2013 1:14 am |
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lawa001
Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2010 9:13 pm Posts: 758 Location: Location: Location:
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 Re: Status update
_________________ <3 YOU TOO
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Mon Jun 24, 2013 2:05 am |
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