Author: hoak <[email protected]>     Reply to Message
Date: 7/25/2004 3:07:12 PM
Subject: A Little Disappointed...

I was a little disappointed to learn that TC will be ported to ET; as I was rather hoping it would be ported to WFF. Certainly the return of the Mod's original Coder is good news and exciting; and ET is a very capable and compelling engine/platform for modding... But I have long been hoping for a 'Linux of FPS Games' (not just engines), and while I'm convinced Shadow Spawn's WFF incarnation of the Fusion engine has that potential, I think (sadly) the WF genera game has gone rather too far out of vogue to draw the critical mass of enthusiasm and contribution to make to make that happen (I'd LOVE to be wrong). Realism is king in FPS game popularity and sales with no end in sight, and a realism game ported or built on WFF, and Open Sourced would I am certain stand the game world on it's head.

The talent, generosity, hard work, craftsmanship and amazing results that Mod Developers relentlessly pour into commercial games -- never ceases to impress and amaze me. In equal measure shrewed business practices, commercial exploitation, shoddy support, and planned obsolescence of commercial games that derails both the potential and long term viability of Mod Developers work beyond a planned product cycle -- never ceases to disappoint (and frustrate) me.

Too often Mod Developers are just putting the finishing touches on a labor of love when the next patch or iteration of the game they were building for is released making their work obsolete; technical support for the title ceases leaving critical issues undressed -- and fans abandon ship due to bugs, frustration, cheats and exploits or all the above; and more often now a vastly more popular title of the same genera is released and all the hard work goes virtually ignored. Typically mod development is under the pressure of all these enevitabilites...

But I'm most confounded and disappointed that mod Developers (Programmers, Level Designers, Asset Artists), who especially in the case of id Software engine games have benefited enormously from Open Source in the form of mature and robust tools, operating systems, technologically and feature rich game source; don't see the applicability and benefit to their own work.

Paranoia and ephemeral pride have the virtually universal end result of thousands if not millions of man hours of work that will become dated, irrelevant, forgotten and even lost. Open Sourced game art assets offer an obvious advantage of letting everyone participate in virtually unlimited collaborative world where work can be edited, improved and kept up to date, where nothing is lost and everyone can actually achieve a little immortality, or at least a less conspicuously finite life span for their work.

Maybe WFF will tear a new hole in virtual game space and stand everything on it's head, it certainly has that potential as the engine is superb, the game is defiantly skill based and fun, and Shadow Spawn appears to have Open Sourced virtually all his work. But I don't think the WF genera has the pull it once had, perhaps a more simplified WFA -- but even there these games are evolved from an audience and development legacy that was more involved, vital, and exciting where everyone was interested in and understood a lot more of the mechanics of gaming and game development.

Again I'd love to be wrong, but I think the Open Source game platform and venue I dream of, where game development is as or more vital, exciting and most has some manner of sustained and maintained reference platform like Linux/Open Source OS development will require a more conspicuously popular game, ala some flavor of the 'realism' genera. TrueCombat could easily have been the ticket... Hopefully I'm wrong and WFF will do back-flips, put some of the game back in FPS games and be a roaring success -- or if not it will attract and support the Mod attentions of some realism project that will...

Anyway, that's my pent up rant from the past five years; I'll be quite now... Happy trails!

St. Paul, July 2004

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