Forums » General

A Warning!

«123»
Jun 07, 2004 Spellcast link
everyone relax. Here's how i view things.

New universe: guild has always said that they want a dynamic universe that they can add to at any time, what can we deduce from this?

how about this:
sector creation is done by some AI module of the code. There is no way that john, andy ray and waylon sat down and hand created 7000 sectors. they would be testing this code on their in-house testbed since it is definitely a serverside function. when it's time to create the universe, they will set some basic parameters, (number of sectors in the system, relative asteroid density, wigits or wigit chains availible, etc) turn the daemon loose and their server comp will create a whole system. then all they do is tie the systems together by adding wormhole areas. hell maybe the ai does that too and all they have to do is specify which other systems they want to link the one being created to. keep in mind that since these are wormholes, the layout of the systems doesnt have to be any spatially logical pattern, a wormhole on the "left" side of a system can easily link to a wormhole on the "right" side of the same system if the devs want it to.


There is a lot of stuff the devs aren't letting us see/test yet because they are trying to make it all work together. Please note that we havent heard a lot out of them in the past several months, they havent posted, they havent been seen ingame much. Some people could assume that this means that they are not doing much, but i highly doubt that. I prefer to think that it means they are getting lots of new stuff finalized and that our new universe release is going to be a huge amount closer to the finished project than anyone else guesses.

story: we dont need to know the story, i highly suspect that the storyline is complete, or very close to it, however the devs have no reason whatsoever to tell us what it is. we dont need to know, it doesnt help us test the stability of the engine.

factions/missions/reputation/balance: once again, the mission code worked almost perfectly right out of the door when we got to see it. We know that the devs were working on it for months ahead of time. I suspect that the real missions are dependant on the new universe. reputation certaintly is, as john has posted at least once that in the new universe stations will have "areas of influence" and that many of our current reputation problems stem from the fact that we currently are unable to get away from any areas that stations can monitor. what we have now is simply a quick dirty hack for the devs to test the basic parameters of the mission/faction/reputation code, since they havent done anything overly drastic to it, I will assume that it functions as expected and it wont come into it's own without the new universe.

in short, lets all take a deep breath and back up a step or two. lets see what happens with the new universe. if a lot of my predictions fail to come true, then i'll start to be a little concerned. On the other hand, the devs have managed to hang on to this thing for 5 years allready, lets give them the benefit of the doubt and not start second guessing them at this point. I doubt that even as pressed as he was john would have sold out to someone who wants to turn this into dance dance space bass fishing 2004
Jun 07, 2004 ctishman link
Okay, Spellcast. Your point is concisely and clearly made. Let's give them some time and see where they're going with this.
Jun 07, 2004 AlienB link
John has said that he's got all kinds of storyline material, but most of it was too embarrasing to release..heh...I think he cleaned it up.
Jun 07, 2004 furball link
Ok... I'd like to ask where everyone here has seen that it's going to be released in a month? EHH? THEY SAID SUMMER RELEASE. That could be anywhere from the end of May to End of August/Middle of September/End of September depending on how one defines summer. Even in the WORST case scenario... that's 3 months folks!!!! So where you all are thinking it's HAS to be released next month... I'd LOVE TO GET what you're smoking!!!!
Jun 07, 2004 Arolte link
/me walks over to FurBall's keyboard and fixes his malfunctioning caps lock and exclamation point key
Jun 07, 2004 furball link
/me walks over to Arolte and chops off his hands with a large meat cleaver for spreading/starting the rumor that it's being released in a month and causing unneeded panic.
Jun 07, 2004 harvestmouse link
/me agrees with furball. summer <> 1 month. and I'm sure that Guild has been developing everything ages ahead of time, and are only touching things up before they let it all loose for testing.

(I'd be very sad if my summer were only one month... far as I'm concerned, end of summer is september-something. that's when school starts for me, anyway)
Jun 07, 2004 Arolte link
With the current funding they have and the deadline that's being imposed by their publisher, I doubt the release date is late summer. That's called optimism. There are two things we know so far that have been said by the devs: 1) No new ships are planned for final release and 2) The current faction system will remain in the final release. There may be slight revisions to one or both of these, but don't count on anything drastically new in those two areas.

So, using the mighty powers of deductive reasoning, we can probably assume that final release is near. With two or more months time they could probably add more ships and change the faction system drastically. But since they've already hinted that such a thing will not occur by final release, it's doubtful they have that much time. Time and time again they've put emphasis on wanting to get the game out of the door. Time is not something they have right now.

I'm just being realistic here. If you've kept track of what's been said you'd know that time is not something the company has right now. I'd say we're looking at a middle or late July release. REMEMBER, the game has an auto-updater and will continue to have major updates long after release. Right now they're aiming for the bare essentials of how they've intended the universe to function so the game is at least worth paying for. So there's no need to panic either way.
Jun 07, 2004 roguelazer link
some of the preview sites mentioned August... And the devs said that stress test isn't even until the end of june. Remember, they've been with SF since before E3...
Jun 07, 2004 ctishman link
August's the date listed on MMORPG.com. That's two months, not one. They very well could pull it off.
Jun 07, 2004 furball link
"With the current funding they have and the deadline that's being imposed by their publisher..."

Uhh Arolte, are you now the GuildSoft bookkeeper AND 6th developers AND SF liason? WHAT in the hell have you been smoking or are you just delusional? WHERE have you heard the funding is running out NOW and that SF has imposed a deadline of sometime in July?
Jun 07, 2004 Pirogoeth2 link
Dude, FB, they've(Devs) said there is a deadline.
Jun 07, 2004 Spellcast link
guys the estimated deadline on MMORPG.com is august 1st, at the least thats 2 months. since its estimated that gives it the potential to roll back a bit. I figure we will see the rollout sometime in august. Probably a full reset and a reopened beta with additional testers in early to mid july.
Jun 07, 2004 Eldrad link
/me looks around for some "Spray on Rumor Control" and a padLOCK.
Jun 07, 2004 furball link
Piro, I never said there wasn't a deadline. Of COURSE there is... HOWEVER, AFAIK, the only thing that has been published is "This Summer". IE there is no concrete PUBLICALLY announced deadline. IMNSHO, Spellcast is probably closest. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised to see a release end of august, beginning of September. IE around Labor day.
Jun 07, 2004 Arolte link
Let me copy and paste what I posted before...

>REMEMBER, the game has an auto-updater and will continue to have major
>updates long after release. Right now they're aiming for the bare essentials
>of how they've intended the universe to function so the game is at least worth
>paying for. So there's no need to panic either way.

The deadline I gave was my estimate. Anybody's guess is as good as mine, so I don't see how your "late summer" argument is valid. Unless MMORPG.com contacted the devs or had a talk with 'em at E3, they're probably speculating too. In any case read the above paragraph to see why it really doesn't matter.
Jun 07, 2004 Moxie link
Since it was mentioned, how important do y'all think original music is to the success of the game? Not at all? Totally? Somewhere in between?

Jun 07, 2004 AlienB link
Not at all.
Jun 07, 2004 Arolte link
Huh? Music? Not much, but it wouldn't hurt. One of the things Parsec is still known for is its good music.

=)
Jun 07, 2004 electric27 link
If music is one of the most memorable things about a game, it probably sucks.