ESF Release Schedule - Important

[Z Power]

Oh hey Lexis, how are the Dinosaurs doing?

 

[Lexis]

Hi ! What dinosaurs? Ermm do I really want to know ? :O

 

[Deverz]

I'm sorry, but it's really not plausible at all.

KANON, KANON KANON, KANON KANON, KANON KANON, KANON KANON, KANON KANON, KANON KANON, KANON KANON, KANON KANON, KANON KANON, KANON

Thread banned

 

[Z Power]

Wait... WHAT HAPPENED TO THE VOTES LOL ?! All of a sudden the poll is towards one phase ?! Wow...how did this happen lol ?

I was taking a dib at you for that^. People have been complaining about it since page 44, and you just noticed. Which is why I asked how were things in the Mesozoic era.

 

[Lexis]

Thread banned

Win.

@Zpower - Ah good one. Yeah I was pretty surprised about how things went 180 degrees. Not saying they are faked or anything as It wouldn't make sense since the team make they're decision regardless of the poll.

 

[Michno]

Well the people has spoken, phrase 1 it will be

democracy is the root of all good

 

[Lexis]

You do know that the team will still pick what they think is best

 

[vector]

Here is a little rule.

A release will only happen after 4 weeks of no bug fixing.

i have an idea .... give all the testers ONE MONTH BREAK!!!! WOOOOT then release game khekhekhe

 

[IFlip92]

i have an idea .... give all the testers ONE MONTH BREAK!!!! WOOOOT then release game khekhekhe

=> then have Open Beta clone. No thanks ^^.

If this poll is so useless, why make it in the first place? What does knowing what the community want bring to the table if the decision doesnt fluctuate? I think making a poll with people's age would've been more interesting in this case.

 

[vector]

=> then have Open Beta clone. No thanks ^^.

If this poll is so useless, why make it in the first place? What does knowing what the community want bring to the table if the decision doesnt fluctuate? I think making a poll with people's age would've been more interesting in this case.

i think it gives a chance to talk about it .... for a long time it's been "taboo" to even mention anything BUT a full release .... but now we are actually discussing it out in the open .... seeing all the pros and cons of BOTH options. (and even getting teh opinions of those that dont forum whore all day long , been waiting on the sidelines just checkign and preparing)

option 2 pwns option 1 though hahahahha

 

[Grega]

Hey I welcome the wishful thinking, but it still makes me wonder: if the waiting for this game has been lasting for about 10 years now for some people (hopefully I'm not confusing things again) how much of those ten years did the development of the filler features actually take. I'm not saying that what they are doing is wrong if my concerns for this prove to be valid when this game will be released.

Edit: Examples for those who don't know what I'm talking about: Games that suffered from feature creep ended up in 1 of the three ways:-This is a general example but it should have to do and that is, Cancelled they never got released and nobody heard of what became of them or how close they where, if they were ever close, to releasing them.
-The other thing is Duke Nukem forever - I suppose everybody knows a thing or two about this one.
-The third is Fallout 3. This is the only one (I'm not actually sure if it is even a valid example for this) that survived feature creep and beat it as far as I know, but only because they got lucky and got in the right hands. The game still remained with scars because of it, with things like bugs, gliches, and the fact that fallout ,,hardcores" were not happy with it because it was like Oblivion even if it was a good game.

The fact that we still see nothing but pictures and very rarely see things like a video that is longer than a minute of features is jet another big concern.

I hope, for this games sake and for the sake of the potential it has to become one of the best ,,Total-conversion" mods out there, that you are indeed right, and the fact that we should not get an early demo will not prove to be a lost opportunity, or possibility of the rebirth of this game.

WARNING WALL OF TEXT!!!

I guess you are a bit confused with the 10 year thing.

ESF was first released in 2001 with the Version Alpha 1.5 i believe (or was it 1.3). Then it went all the way up to Alpha 2.0 in 2002, when ESF Beta 1.0 was released.

Now the Alphas only had beam combat (Think BFP with beams that dont look like lasers ^^) And after the alphas the game developement was pretty much restarted-

Beta 1.0 introduced a melee system, 1 transformation per character and scaled characters down by 4. With this the levels seemed 4 times bigger and the "new" simple melee system was pretty much a hit.

In 2003 Beta 1.1 was released. It included some new maps a few bug fixes and some new attacks, the beam jump (there was a bug that allowed you to beam jump off player characters directly) and changed the melee head on winner from the person with the lower ping to the one who had more KI in his pool.

Then in 2004 ESF Beta 1.2 saw the light of day. It was significantly slower in speed, but it introduced the double tap swoop system allowing people to swoop in any direction (and not just forward like in 1.0 and 1.1) along with a changed simple melee system (no longer requiring a lock on to swoop and proper head ons), the advanced melee system (the DDR clone that people hate so much) and throws.

Thorough the rest of 2004 ESF beta 1.2.1 was released. It had a couple of bug fixes and it increased the speed of the advanced melee arrows. It also had a nasty crash bug which gave it the nick name ESF Millennium edition ^^

Then mid 2004 ESF Beta 1.2.2 got released Fixing the crash bug and adding 2 new maps. And later on in end 2004 a map fix release was made that fixed both the gero maps and added esf_arrival. That was called ESF Beta 1.2.3

So basically the last stable ESF release was in 2004.

Development continued on ESF Beta 1.3, and due to a leak issue in early 2006 the Open Beta releases were made. They continued all the way up to 2008. The Open Beta releases were exact copies of what the Dev team had working at that time and were not really well received by the public, so the last Open Beta was then released under the name ESF Open Beta Final in 2008.

Then just after the last Open Beta release, it was decided to scrap what we had due to the poor community feedback and redesign the game starting with melee. Those meetings went on for about 2 months and we went though a lot of different aspects of the melee system to arrive at the one we have ATM. At the same time the coders created what i call Generation 2 maps. Meaning a Half Life BSP map file used as collision detection with a VBO model placed on to of it. This later continued to the Generation 3 maps which dont require the BSP file for collision (only for HL to recognize that a map with that name exists).

So basically the Open Beta Final is the last way point where the entire game was pretty much restarted in production.

This is the second major restart of the game design So the current version (the one known as ESF:Final) is only in development since 2008. The mod itself is 11 years old though.

People saying "I've been waiting 10 years for this" are more or less just stating that they are with the community for that long, not actually waiting for ESF:F that long.

Since ESF:F has only been in production 4 years now and a couple of months.

Another thing that was decided is that there will be no more restarts. We are to finish ESF:Final, and let it run its course as the last ESF Version to see the light of day.

And we are pretty hell bent on making that release to.

As for the videos. You should refer to the 2 live streaming sessions that we had for videos that dont include features. Just a bunch of devs/testers playing the game with the public able to look at it.

The reason why videos are of features is because random gameplay vids are not news, nor are bug fixes, since they are usually not even seen by the observer of a video unless its a GFX issue.

Thats also the reason why there is so few videos. We did a melee system presentation, so thats old news, there were streams showing gameplay (not news but the public saw it). So the only worthy videos are either new effects dalte added or features that get added. And as a result there are very few videos. The POTWs are also just random pictures that we take. They dont really have anything to do with "new stuff", just random shots.

 

[InfamousC]

How do I make sure that my HL is verified? It has a blue '?' on it?

 

[Z Power]

If you own Half-Life, ie, HL is activated in your steam account, go to the link below and follow the instructions. You will then get validated.

http://validation.esforces.com/

 

[IFlip92]

@Grega that really shed some light on the Timeline history of the mod. Personally I found it very enlightning since I have only been with the mod since 1.2 onwards. Reading that really gives me a sense of what you guys been through on this awesome adventure to create your very own view of the perfect DragonBall Z game. Must of been great to be able to craft your own experience from scratch and I think you guys should be very proud and I really hope that when you actually finish the mod the way the team always intended, it will really bring a strong sense of achievement in your lives, to each and every one of you. I know Im talking as if its coming to an end, but it feels like its closing in, and in fact it will only the beginning^^.
Thank you ESF Team.

 

[Damaera]

I would just like to edge in real fast and state that the Alpha did in fact, have a melee system. It was pretty underwhelming and barely did any damage, so I can understand why Grega decided to leave it out. Definitely good times, though. I had a lot of fun playing those early updates.

 

[Grega]

Alphas melee system hit about 1 time out of 50 >.>

It was impossible to use. BFP had a system that hit more than that of the alphas ^^


Oh yea and another feature of the alphas.

Big Bang Attack. The most overpowered thing in the game XD

 

[Damaera]

The thing about the melee in Alpha was that you basically had to stand still the entire time to actually make use of it. If you both were moving, it ended up being a pain in the ass to hit someone with it. And even when you did land a melee attack, each hit took such little health away from you.

 

[Grega]

Even while standing still it missed 90% of the time.

Me and Karrde tried it for that april fools video a couple of years ago (i wonder if anyone still has that)

 

[Nick_Da_Wizard]

I am happy to wait, few years waiting so a few wont bother me more.
I like the idea of a 2 part thing, The forum activity will decrease dramatically though haha

 

[Plakman]

What the hell is kannonball

It's basicly a dead mod but it's fun
a while ago some ppl used to make games with it in steam esf chat.
ppl... basicly hlev and damaera i think.