Frog Act posted:

Anyone else play Fallen Earth? It had potential before it went totally belly up

Frog Act posted:

can you elucidate? I really liked the game's basic conceit vis-a-vis skills and crafting, driving cars and doing pvp in the desert was dope, and it honestly had an excellent loot system. when did that happen

quote:

Hi everyone,

It's now been about 3 weeks, and I want to take some time to speak directly to the Fallen Earth players.

First, I know there have been lots of questions asked on the forums. I have spent some time reading many of these, and I found them intricate, well written, and virtually impossible for me to answer right now for reasons that I'll explain below. I also want to acknowledge the many players who have reached out to me offering help or detailed walkthrus of some of the issues plaguing the game. That kind of detail helps. I've been in-game a little messing around with specific mechanics to familiarize myself with some of what has been talked about, and I'll continue to get up to speed.

Second, I don't have a long term plan or roadmap for the game yet. I'm still in the investigation phase.

So instead I thought I would write a short post to talk about where we're at and what we have to work with, because I think that will guide how we proceed.

The codebase for Fallen Earth is split into three parts:

- The original Icarus engine and tool set used to build and maintain the world

- The Frontend client / updater

- The Backend servers

Let's start with the Icarus Engine and tools.

Unfortunately, there is some code missing here. We have one developer who has been slowly reverse engineering the missing pieces just so we can get the tools back up and running. There has been some progress, and we obviously have the output from the engine, which is what the servers operate on. So in theory the tools could be entirely replaced some day. But the editor itself doesn't work right now.


Next the Frontend client.

We have all the code, and it is theoretically possible for us to patch the game or the updater. However this code is significantly old. It requires tools that are more than a decade in age, installations of old libraries, and very customized windows installs to even build everything. It is a matter of time before current operating systems wont be able to run this client. We need to think ahead and start migrating to something much newer and maintained. This means a complete rewrite using the framework of what has been built as a roadmap.


The challenge is that we also don't have any of the source art files. No 3DSMax files. No PSDs. No high rez textures at all. We have reached out to the original dev team to see if we can get these, but in their absence, we will need to create these files from the data that ships with the game. This is not at all ideal, since these files have all been compressed or down rezed to work. But it will at least be a starting point, and it will give us an idea of scope for the art, so we can assess how extensive it will be to rebuild.

Lastly the Backend client.

This is in the best shape. The developer who is currently assigned to the project has been able to piece everything together so that each server can be rebuilt and redeployed. I think this is where we can make the most short term improvement to the game by fixing bugs and exploits. Ultimately we will still want to migrate these systems into whatever the new framework is so they can be more easily maintained.

Where do we go from here?

Please don't read this as Little Orbit giving up, or even us being discouraged. I knew most of this before we took over GamersFirst. I just want to share where we are at, and that it's going to take some time to provide a clear roadmap of how we're going to rebuild. From there, we can look at the design and possible changes down the road.

I am still looking to schedule some time to answer as many questions as I can with players. I'll have Lixil post that update when we get a little closer.

Thanks,
Matt

quote:

This week was E3, so I didn't get a lot of time on Fallen Earth.

We have been able to extract the compiled game issues from the main data file.

We have been able to get about 40% through re-organizing all the C++ code. The main problem was that several core libraries were copied and included several times. It's impossible to know which version is the most up-to-date, but it's clear they aren't all the same. So we've started moving everything into a new repository with each library referenced and only included once. We still have to do this for all the server code and some of the front end code, but we were able to get some of the tools recompiling this way.

Thanks,
Matt

quote:

Hi everyone,

I've started this update multiple times, and for various reasons I set it aside. But my communication with the FE community has honestly been piss poor. Sometimes managing GamersFirst is like drinking from a firehose.

As I stated in an earlier post, I'm frustrated with the game right now. The code is an ancient mess that barely compiles under current development environments. We have nearly constant problems with server lag and stability. We're missing all the source art to the game.

And we have problems with cheaters. Above and beyond everything else, this last one is the most problematic.

I would prefer to spend our money on fixing the game - not on expensive anti-cheat. But at this point I can't ignore the issue any longer. Since my options are limited on the front end, we have begun working on a custom server-side cheat detection system. This wont be an overnight solution, but at least we can largely introduce it without disrupting the game - or even patching. I do want to thank several members of the community who stepped forward and helped provide copies of various cheats. Those are helping us tune things, so we can properly detect cheaters.

Aside from anti-cheat, we are making progress in a number of other areas.

The core server code is being completely written from the ground up. I would estimate we are about 10% complete so far. There's a lot to do, as Fallen Earth is a big game that supports a lot of features. I don't want to get everyone's hopes up. This is slow and tedious, but I'll keep updating the community.

Another area we have been working on is the lack of source art. I'm happy to say that we have been able to successful export a sizable amount of static game geometry, materials, and textures so we can recreate them in another engine. Our strategy is to first bring everything over so we can make sure the maps and areas still fit together properly based on the server-side data and placed instances. From there, we'll make a PBR pass on the materials. For those that don't know, PBR stands for Physics Based Rendering, and in a game like Fallen Earth, we can vastly improve the look of the game by simply adopting better rendering methods. After that we'll make a pass to tessellate and upgrade world terrain based on the original height map data. And then we'll look at specific upgrades to characters, monsters, etc.

The initial progress bringing over buildings is far enough along, that despite my better judgment, I'm going to provide screenshots of a small area we mocked up in-game. This is just work in progress. Still so much to do, but it's is a good start.

I said come in! posted:

Asherons Call was great, I wish that game didn't have to shut down. Apparently the only thing that actually killed it was that it was using licensed software to run it's servers and it cost something like $10,000 a year. If Turbine had their own server software for the game then it would still be alive.

Zaphod42 posted:

Its really turn-based combat with automatic turns set by ticks. Its much more of a strategy game than an action game. Its closer to Final Fantasy than it is to Diablo.

blatman posted:

is Rift good again or is it still dogshit?

Jintozook81 posted:

Define a good MMO? The term has become so broad, and so many different types have emerged. Players all want different things out of them. I suppose a "Good" MMO is whatever makes you happy.

Glenn Quebec posted:

Kaysette posted:

oof

Pants Donkey posted:

How the gently caress is Trion even still around? They had what, one mild success with Rift, and at least two duds? There was also that voxel game that was clearly trying to scoop up players from Cubeworld (which actually released recently ). Oh, and an MMO...RTS that died in the crib.

Are they just the Uber of developers, taking in cash from idiot investor who know Trion’s gonna strike it rich any day now?

cmdrk posted:

wheres the drat project 1999 of AC?

Biowarfare posted:

Huh, apparently Trion is = WildTangent, and the only place I've seen WT stuff is adware and malicious toolbar crap.

kedo posted:

It's mostly the latter. Most MMOs these days (let alone most video games in general), simply aren't made with mechanisms that accommodate that sort of emergent gameplay. SWG and UO are the only ones I can think of that were open-ended enough to allow players to do the sort of thing you're talking about. The introduction of instancing and the elimination of player housing and non-combat styles of gameplay took a lot of the heart and soul out of the genre, but they also widened its appeal to pull in a hell of a lot more players.

DRWN posted:

What was a good MMO?

Ultima Online? Probably.
Evercrack? Most likely.
Eve Online? Maybe.

In my opinion, they were good because the genre was new to us. We didn't start off playing those games by multiboxing 19 accounts and creating afk farming bots. Well, some of us did eventually.
Most of us liked the idea of an adventure and meeting new people on a platform other than the one called IRL. It was fun, it was moderated.

In UO, catching a fish, cooking, and trying to sell it in front of a bank was good, fun, and felt natural. Then you could try to save up for a boat, or maybe try out mining. But you could lose everything, you could be scammed, you could be robbed, you could be pissed. You wouldn't send a ticket because someone looted your poo poo. In EQ, you could actually discover a map. Find a gnoll cave, get acquainted with the people who go there, make friends, and grind somewhere else together. These games weren't even perfect. They were actually very limited, UI was bad, balance issues, illegal scripts, bugs were rampant.

bewilderment posted:

"Towns are a lobby, everything else is instanced" doesn't always work as a model but a bunch of MMOs are heading that way anyway even if they nominally have an overworld. If you're not levelling a new job then FF14's open world is basically devoid of other people most of the time and right now it's only populated because the current event incentivises participating in low level public events.

CYBEReris posted:

the catch with ffxiv is that you really have to enjoy the journey. like 90% of the people I know who bought a skip burned out of the game because they weren't invested at all in the ongoing story or the characters. they'd enjoy one raid tier and then peace out.

a lot of the quests are more of an excuse to get you moving between points to fill in the world and set up plot points that get knocked down later.

Zaphod42 posted:

But in EQ when you die you don't just get kicked back to your respawn location, but you lose experience and even drop all your loot, which you can potentially permanently lose. That's more harsh than dark souls! And yet mooooost of the time in EQ if a party wipes its not particularly toxic. It sucks, but you don't usually attack each other even when things go really, really bad. People usually apologize and you work together to get back to your corpses or hire a cleric or something. So that goes against the grain of investment being a major factor.

punk rebel ecks posted:

Paying for expansions is fine to me if it has as much new content to warrant a $70 price tag. It's not really an expansion pack if it offers a 40 hours long main story quest and tons of extra stuff. And since the game will cost $40, it's already severely discounted due to my membership.

Zaphod42 posted:

And even Cyberpunk, the people in those deep dives weren't really "lying" because they had plans to build those things, and half-built or even mostly-built lots of it, but they had to rush release and cut lots of things because they were buggy and even then it was crazy buggy. But they didn't lie, they just didn't know that the management would rush it out the door without letting them build all the things they'd already designed and advertised.

To get back to MMO chat, I've never actually played dark age of camelot but I've heard so many things about it, its one of the few big MMOs I've never at least tried. I should try to find a private server because it really does seem like the best Realm vs Realm MMO ever from how everybody talks about it.

FrostyPox posted:

I dl'ed EQ2 because I want to see if it's as bad as I remember.

Bad animations, questionable graphics (yeah, yeah they were going for "realistic" in 2004 but I can't help but feel like I'm playing Reboot: The MMO). I never liked how the game looked.

Bad spell effects

Forgot about the loving insane ability bloat when I looked at screenshots of higher level players, literally 6 hot bars full of abilities

Never clicked before, still doesn't click now.

Kevin Bacon posted:

do mmorpgs go to heaven? is tabula rasa, fallen earth, vanguard saga of heroes, star was galaxies, asherons call, wild star, the matrix online etc just hanging out up there somewhere, waiting for us?

jokes posted:

Gonna circle back to MUDs