Question For Esf Team...Not Newbie Question

I know for fact that hl2 engine using updated verison of hl1 engine and its very high chances theyll have something to port it over i been hearing rumors people are thinking about this for current mods for hl1 that never got finished and people want be able to use a new advance version with new capabilitys if it can be ported will you guys continue to work on it after its become compatable with hl2 engine or will you just pass it on or will project just be dropped?

If this question is annoying you dont have to answer and can delete topic if its a huge disturb.

>>http://forum.esforces.com/showthread.php?threadid=27132<<

If you had looked 2 centimeters up you woulda seen this ._.

-UltraPerfectCell

It's kind of hard to understand what you're saying, that entire thing is one big sentance.
If you're asking if the team is going to port ESF to HL2, the answer is no, it has been stated many times, and <a href="http://forum.esforces.com/showthread.php?threadid=27132">here</a> to end discussion of it.

*edit* Dangit, you beat me with the link!

Besides, HL2 is stricktly high end, we have many, many fans who cannot play ESF at more than 25 fps. Changing to HL2 would kill of more fans than you can imagine.

Yes, but Cuc -- you need to take into hand, the beams that absorb the map, they cut fps by 5-10 each time it happens.

And in ur sig, what is Okatgone Systems? :]

I already know hl2 wont support anyone with below 30 fps and it sad but the fact is the video cards wont all be supported so you will be forced to go to store and buy another one unless the video cards manfacture can make update for it to run at full fps but they already stated many video cards wont work i heard it would support majority nvidia cards and radeon =\ especial if you have low fps. the reason is becuase hl2 is based of advanced version of hl2 engine so they didnt exspect all players with same videocard and low fps on hl version to be compatible with this >_< but im fine i get max fps on every server and when i host everyone gets max and 30 ping ahahahah but i aint very dedicated =)( well thanks for answering the question guys

One last question would i have to ask permission to create Earth Special Forces 2 for Half Life 2?

I would imagine that if you wanted to keep the name an many of the gameplay features ESF will have when it is done that you would have to ask Masta about taking it into HL2 yourself (And to answer your question, Kame-Haka, Oktagone is a hosting/web design site, Greg is the CEO of Oktagone).

Wait wait wait! Yall seem to have been misinformed on HL2.... It is NOT just for highend. HL2 is designed to work on dx7, dx8 and dx9 cards. To have all the eye candy on, well yeah, youll need the latest and greatest; but to just play the game you can have a piece of **** computer and get good fps.

So theme of the day is "HL2 will work for everyone!"

And ESF team, i think yall will be shooting yourselves in the foot by not porting to the source engine. You as creators and designers will have much more creative freedom w/ the new engine and can make a game that is 100x better than the current one. Sierra designed the engine so that porting would not be terribly difficult. I personaly would be willing to pay yall to port it to the source engine.

Just my 2cents

yea most of the games that u'd think would take more out of ur comp i get 100fps constant on. Like in unreal 2003 i get 100 fps... on hl i get about 25-30. And if there is a tool to convert a HL1 mod over to Hl2, imo think it's a great idea.

Cucumbas rite youll need at least a constent 100fps in esf to hav a good enuf comp for esfhl2 if esf went hl2 itll only hav bout 20 fans playen with the crapy comps esfers hav :talk:

ps: hl2 has exaly the same requirments as ut2k3 and i got 1.4ghz and geforce 2 and 512 ram and ut2k3 plays at 20fps lowest details

:no: to esfhl2

It seems that all of you have not read very much about the source engine. I suggest that you all go read more. Everyone on any system should be getting around the same fps b/c teh engine scales w/ the DX version card you have. So everyone will be getting 100fps...just some people will have horrible gfx while others have incredible looking gfx.

***IMPORTANT***

Heres a direct quote from the August 2003 vol 8, no 8 Issue of Maximum PC, "It's Coming. HL2. Can you hang?" page 30: "In most other PC games, the final render looks the same regardless of the hardware the game is running on -- older cards will just yield slower fram rates than newer cards, all effect settings being equal. But Half-Life 2 is different. If you run Half-Life 2 on an older card, it will simply default to lower-quality models, fewer unique textures, and even a different kind of sky."

default is the important word of that exerpt. if something can be defaulted, it can be set and locked by a user. that means there are people who will instantly mess around with the settings, up the resolution, turn on the better models etc.

as for unfinished hl1 mods starting up again with hl2 thats highly ammusing. if a mod dies in production its not because the engine cant do what they want it to do, its because they loose interest. after an initial flurry of activety with hl2 exactly the same would happen. not saying that would happen with esf if they chose to do it (which they wont) but if a mod dies before reaching release alpha's no ammount of work will resusitate it.

Half Life is a crappy engine framerate wise, there is no getting around that. I always get higher framerates in Quake 3 games and it's a newer engine designed for better visuals. Half Life 2 is apparently going out of its way to appeal to users with older systems so it might not be such a bad idea to move it over somewhere down the line. Besides, if the code for HL is really that similar to HL2 I would imagine you'd be able to run a half life version as-is, and a ported HL2 version with enhanced visuals and maybe some additional features that HL doesn't support.

Cucumba said:

Besides, HL2 is stricktly high end, we have many, many fans who cannot play ESF at more than 25 fps. Changing to HL2 would kill of more fans than you can imagine.

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I disagree. Even though I know the game is not going to HL2 I would make a guess that, with the advanced poly count capabilities and rendering horsepower of a newer engine--using these same simple models--we could have huge levels and huge framerates along with them.

The reasons for the framerate issues have to do with the polys involved in the explosions--at least, this is what I suspect, since when there are a lot of explosions, even my Radeon 9700 Pro is brought down to 20 from a solid 100fps otherwise.

I think that what happens is that we have pushed the Half-Life engine to it's absolute limits as far as rendering polygons goes. With an updated engine this limitation--as well as several others--would be inexistent. Porting the graphics would make it seem not quite as pretty as it could be, but I'd make a vague guess at saying that Half-Life 2, once installed, if used to play an ESF mod adaptation to it's engine, would not be such a memory hog, since the polycounts and detail levels would be INSANELY low compared to what it is meant to do.

Of course you'll still want to not even bother if you have under a 1ghz machine, but it might not be as horrible and impossible to run as everyone thinks. And for what it's worth, all the p2-350's out there who don't have jobs or waste their money need to be forced to join the crowd and move on. There is nothing I hate more than games where the graphics are dumbed down so that they can work better on Voodoo2s and **** like that. I'm sure anyone whoi worked hard to get a 2000 dollar rig feels the same when the dev team for a favorite title spends months making a patch that fixes the color palette for 16-meg Matrox users and fixes a crash for people with onboard 8-meg graphics cards, while meanwhile you struggle with some annoying bug or problem that has to take a backseat, even though you paid 2500 bucks for a machine to play on, and the dudes doing all the whining are mostly just suffering from dialup lag and are too stupid to realize they're practically trying to download thousands upon thousands upon thousands of kilobits of information at a very rapid rate with a tin can on a string for their modem on their dad's nice p2 Compaq Presario desktop that he uses for Lotus apps at his ****hole office job where he repeatedly donates part of his paycheck to his loser kid so he can stay subscribed online and keep his whining as prolific as his endless amount of personal free time will allow.

Wow...that turned into a rant. Sorry guys. :0\

some ppl dont make enough money to get a good rig... i know what ur saying.. and i know its a *****.. but i work and help out with bills around the house when i need to... the rest of the money goes to what i want... just now im actually having enough money to go out and buy comp parts... im working hard to get money but some priorities have to be set first with money than just spending it on comp parts... maybe like food and ****... i hate it when ppl rant about ppl with low end machines that they are too cheap to buy a good one... well i dont know about others... but im here helping out... buying food... paying bills... and the little money i have left... i save it for comp parts...money isnt just a easy thing to come by... especially in miami... the salary is WAY low down here cause of immigration and all but im getting into too much detail now...

Well you all seem to have forgotten about the team. After creatiing what the have, you're asking them to throw it all away and move to another engine? I know i would never do it, and it's unfair to ask for them to do so much work for nothing.

neither would i... its there decision.. and theres alone.. wether i got a new comp or not.. i would play esf on HL 1 all the way...

Phatslugga said:

Well you all seem to have forgotten about the team. After creatiing what the have, you're asking them to throw it all away and move to another engine? I know i would never do it, and it's unfair to ask for them to do so much work for nothing.

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Uh...they wouldnt be "throwing it all away"...they would port their existing code/models/etc. to the source engine which is 88% compatible w/ hl1. Basically, it would not require too much work for the team to switch. And they wouldnt be doiing "so much work for nothing," they would be doing the work to allow them to be more creative and leave room for more expansion. And also to just make the game all that much better...

I agree it would be too much work to port, and I love ESF no matter what.

I understand we aren't all fortunate enough to be smart enough with our money to have a couple of grand left over for a sick computer like mine. All I'm saying, is that it's incredibly annoying when you say, "omg my fps is like 3, devs fix it, this suxors omg lol!!1!!1!11"

I did not pay 2500 dollars for this machine for them to have make patches based on the fact that people have junkbox computers. Almost all of ESF's conventions revolve around that type of problem. You couldn't get a good ping in 1.0 so you lost head-ons. They had to waste their effort and time changing it. For THEM, because people like THEM go "omg bug found, my fps is so bad, this gaem is soooo laggy lol omg!!" and then we spend months milling over the problem, only to have the person post their specs and it be a p2-233 with Voodoo1 8 meg card in it, on a monochrome monitor...with AOL for internet.

The fact is, it ****ing annoys me senseless that when I play a game online, it can only work as well as the biggest loser computer running it. Do you know how much more powerful the technology would be if developers didn't have to work in such limitations? If they could not mind if people who think minimzed netzero accounds should have 20ms ping times?

The games would be hella better. That's what would happen.

The install files would be smaller, the modeling work would be tighter, all the maps would be bigger, and we would be able to not care if no one can run it. The fact is, the industry's at that point now--they can do so muchc ool stuff and only about 50% of us can do it.

This is why I say Half Life has such a lousy community. The SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS are so low that any complete jerkoff can get the game, download a mod, and ***** ***** *****.

What annoys me is when they have to cater to low end machines. And that's what the real argument is about HL2. Noit necessarily about ESF on HL2, but HL2 itself is fundamentally making all the 12 year olds on their dad's pentium2 compaq presarios upset because it isn't as accessible. Mark my words, the community for that game will be much more secure and mature because of it.

SaiyanPrideXIX said:

Mark my words, the community for that game will be much more secure and mature because of it.

Click to expand...

I hope you're right, that's a point I never thought of until just now.
I have quite a few friends who lack computer... common sense, and run rather low end machines. They comment on their FPS and graphics, and constantly criticize the mod, as if that is why their computer cannot handle good graphics and display.
I don't have an incredibly good computer, but it's fairly new, and can handle the games out there now quite well, and I get ticked whenever people do that.
It's hard enough as it is to create a game or a full conversion mod like ESF, and then on top of that you have to bend over backwards and add fixes to raise the FPS on someone's Pentium II from 15 to 20, by toning down graphics for all users, most of which are running capable machines.
I'm not asking them to, nor nagging anyone, but I personally think it would be wise for ESF to move to HL2 in a year or so's time.