Why don't you just release it?

New Member
✔️ HL Verified
Joined
Aug 17, 2005
Messages
25
Best answers
0
Ok so first of all I was a fan of this game a looooong time ago.

When you guys started to develop the new version I was excited. The beta was promising and fanbase was still here. This was 2008-2009. At that time you guys wanted to finish it by 2010 and maaybe 2011.

At 2011 I like most others realized that something was wrong. The classic "It is done when it is done" answer was given for every inquiry. I have to say this is not an answer.

After that I just visited esf webpage 1-2 times a YEAR and I was never surprised. Everytime I visit I see some screenshots showing some (now outdated since making use of shaders and bringing in all those effects is no longer a big deal. Heck almost every new game even use tesselation) effects, nice animation, art but that's all.

I understand that none of you are getting paid to do this and I appreciate the effort you put in this. But this is not an answer to the inquiries either.

I wasn't going to bother creating a thread but when I looked at the updates I felt the need. So you have corrected a minor texture bug and added a frigging ship is that it? Who the f..k cares? If these are the only problems you have then that means the game is perfectly playable and should be released, if not then that means you are using the precious labor on extremely minor things instead of finishing the game.

Again I know that you are not getting paid and this is VERY time consuming. But in that case there is one simple truth that you have to admit. The game is no longer being developed.

It has been years, we got old and many of us no longer play games. Still with the release of DB super this game can really be popular again.

So JUST RELEASE WHAT YOU HAVE AND LET THE COMMUNITY TAKE OVER. Lot's of kids these days are actually learning, training on 3d game design and you can make this game improving with the help of them. Also with popularity you can also get donations(I know you can not sell this one due to compyrighted material but donations should not be a problem).

I am not sure if I am even going to check this thread again because this game became a thing in the past for me now. Still you can still do something and not let it die like this...
 
Member
Discord Member
Joined
Jan 18, 2006
Messages
325
Best answers
0
Location
Western Australia, Perth
I agree that the hype has well and truly gone now. I honestly believe the correct thing to do was to release the game in two phases (they had a poll) and the two phase release lost by a small margin. One transformation is enough, and I dislike the idea of having to wait longer for more transformations (obviously this isn't the only thing holding the game up). At least with the two phase release, people would have stopped asking, "When is it being released?" because the game would be out. Without a doubt, there would still be inquiries in regards to when the second part was being released, but I feel like those would be few and far between - most people, if not everyone, would be happy with the first phase.

I wonder if, deciding to go against the two phase release, the team went for a more laid back approach - that would make sense, don't you think? If they had to release phase one, they would have to get the base game in a working condition, which we know it isn't at right now. Where as with a full release, they could take their time and focus on developing whichever aspect of the game they wanted to, maybe even going as far as to leaving the major issues to last simply because they are harder to do. I really hope I'm wrong with this assumption.

- upon review, I've decided that I come off as a crazy conspiracy theorist in my second paragraph. -endlog.
 
Last edited:
New Member
★ Black Lounger ★
Joined
Mar 26, 2012
Messages
26
Best answers
0
Location
South Africa
So I am very much in this boat with the OP.
I have been following this game for almost half of my life and i am 26 now. I have even been a small part of the dev community for a while.

The general feeling and consensus i have with the teams involved is that no one really has drive anymore. No one gets excited about small things and no one is interested in pushing for progress. For all intents and purposes the dev is dead. (Comparable to other projects that are moving "slowly") . I have been loyal for a large part of my human existence, which truthfully should not be taken lightly by the developers as we dont get more time or another life and you have a community that has given theirs to your promises and commitments. Think about it.

Get this game out and running, i am a developer and would love to start taking a crack at the game and addons. Know a ton of people that would like to as well but no one trusts the developers enough to get involved at this stage.

Anyhow, i hope to play this game soon as i am a gamer at heart and have followed it with my friends who some have moved abroad and some have children and some have married. We still talk about the game and cherish the times we used to bunk school to play it.

Hope my post makes a difference!
 
Member
✔️ HL Verified
🚂 Steam Linked
🌹 Regular Rosé
Joined
May 9, 2014
Messages
200
Best answers
0
Location
Im
As much as a "preview" of the Final game would be nice so the community could be accustomed to the fast gameplay and experience the new mechanics and give feedback on that, i dont think it would help finish the game at all.
Maps and characters for the Final are a lot harder to make due to their increased quality and for that reason not many people show up to help because they cant come even close to whats required, so releasing the game now wouldnt help finish it, instead people would be making shitty models and maps which dont fit at all in the new version because they wouldnt feel incentivized to make it better given the game was out in a way, i mean ZEQ 2 released it for the community and most plp are still just making crappy models of AF characters and other useless shit for the game.
Right now if someone wants to help making models they need to match a certain quality to make it in and they have something to look forward to, which is probably having access to the inteam verison of the game, but they have to deliver quality models or maps to gain access to it.
If the game were to have a phase, you wouldnt see quality models but rather reskins and recolors of existing models plus recycled beams and noisy soundeffects, and that wouldnt help the game at all, the only thing it would help in is feedback but they probably will do a stress testing closer to the release anyway.
 
G-Bear
✔️ HL Verified
🚂 Steam Linked
Discord Member
Joined
Nov 28, 2002
Messages
764
Best answers
0
As much as a "preview" of the Final game would be nice so the community could be accustomed to the fast gameplay and experience the new mechanics and give feedback on that, i dont think it would help finish the game at all.
Maps and characters for the Final are a lot harder to make due to their increased quality and for that reason not many people show up to help because they cant come even close to whats required, so releasing the game now wouldnt help finish it, instead people would be making shitty models and maps which dont fit at all in the new version because they wouldnt feel incentivized to make it better given the game was out in a way, i mean ZEQ 2 released it for the community and most plp are still just making crappy models of AF characters and other useless shit for the game.
Right now if someone wants to help making models they need to match a certain quality to make it in and they have something to look forward to, which is probably having access to the inteam verison of the game, but they have to deliver quality models or maps to gain access to it.
If the game were to have a phase, you wouldnt see quality models but rather reskins and recolors of existing models plus recycled beams and noisy soundeffects, and that wouldnt help the game at all, the only thing it would help in is feedback but they probably will do a stress testing closer to the release anyway.
You are underestimating the quality of the community. Like OP said, most of us have grown up and got real jobs.
Despite not being (directly) in IT, even I can program, C#, VB and an ERP specific language.
Imagine the fans that are actually doing something with game design.
Besides I can remember that a lot of the current staff are former fans, so yeah not really a good argument from you.

But you have to ask yourself as the ESF DEV team, are we really going to finish ESF in the next 2 years?
Is there enough progress to extrapolate to see the game done in the next 2 years?
The longer the DEV team waits, the more backward ESF will get in terms of graphics and gameplay and the less the game will be played.

This discussion is getting old though. They we probably answer it with, it will be done until it is done and alas no progress towards a sensible discussion will be made.
 
Member
✔️ HL Verified
🚂 Steam Linked
🌹 Regular Rosé
Joined
May 9, 2014
Messages
200
Best answers
0
Location
Im
If the community is so good then why dont they help them right now ?
There were 2 projects i think that were proposed to the community to finish, project Tien and the buu map and neither of those got finished so why would the community help them after the phase is released ?
If someone from the community was skilled enough to help they would be doing it right now, all those supposed "skilled" designers would have showed up by now if they had any interest in helping ESF.
Dont get me wrong, a phase could help the game in many ways, but finishing it wouldnt be one of them.
 
Lost in space
Banned
Joined
Dec 29, 2014
Messages
253
Best answers
0
or maybe do it like zeq2-lite have done it, with SVN and once an update comes out just update the svn until the final version of the mod
 
ESF Old Timer
✔️ HL Verified
🚂 Steam Linked
🌟 Senior Member
Joined
Mar 4, 2007
Messages
646
Best answers
0
Location
Netherlands / Fryslan Boppe @ Drachten
or maybe do it like zeq2-lite have done it, with SVN and once an update comes out just update the svn until the final version of the mod
Dont think they gonna do that.
They want to release it when its done.

And personaly I think they are right because they are still busy with it.
And next to that ESF isnt zeq2-lite!!
 
Active Member
★ Black Lounger ★
✔️ HL Verified
💻 Oldtimer
Joined
Jul 14, 2002
Messages
8,229
Best answers
0
Location
December
The reason why ZEQ2-Lite was released the way it was, was because Brad had made the game open source. He wanted people to contribute to the game and essentially do whatever they wanted to it, so he released the game and its assets/source on SVN. ESF won't ever be an open source game, so it would be pointless to follow suit in ZEQ2's footsteps.
 
Lost in space
Banned
Joined
Dec 29, 2014
Messages
253
Best answers
0
well yeah, esf isnt open source, but the incomplete mod could be shared via svn, we know there is a developer svn... so people can play, feed the hype, the game crashes xD and wait for a more stable build in the future
 
Active Member
★ Black Lounger ★
✔️ HL Verified
💻 Oldtimer
Joined
Jul 14, 2002
Messages
8,229
Best answers
0
Location
December
That would

1. be pointless, and

2. completely kill the excitement and build up of the final release.

There is no point in playing an incomplete mod just because you're excited, you'd be setting yourself up for disappointment because it would be buggy and have incomplete features. Besides, this was already done with the Open Beta and the community reacted pretty poorly to it.
 
Member
🎈 Advanced
Joined
Mar 26, 2005
Messages
44
Best answers
0
Location
Tychy
Someone still thinks that community will finish the job... yeah sure :p
 
Legacy
★ Black Lounger ★
Discord Member
Joined
May 13, 2007
Messages
174
Best answers
0
It's up to developers to do what they want with their creation. If they want, they will never release it. To public. Might play and enjoy themselves only. End of story. This non negotiable. If you enjoy negotiation process, just go to a local market and negotiate as much as you want. This is a development. Development is a process. That's the beauty of the development because you can always come up with something new and create something better. Creation of something amazing -- now this is art. Art never dies. Art is never finished. Only forgotten.
 
Last edited:
Freelance Mappzor
✔️ HL Verified
🚂 Steam Linked
💻 Oldtimer
Joined
Nov 21, 2003
Messages
17,065
Best answers
0
Location
Stairing at the Abyss
or maybe do it like zeq2-lite have done it, with SVN and once an update comes out just update the svn until the final version of the mod
ZEQ2-lite was released not as a game, but as a learning platform for aspiring developers. Its a sandbox for learning how to code, model and so on. It is not a game to be played competetively or any other way. Well that was the intent behind the lite version. ZEQ2 itself is on hiatus development whise. U believe they were last looking in to the unity engine.

So no the ZEQ2 team didnt release a game, it went on hiatus. What they released was a sandbox for developement training. You people just got a really REALLY wrong impression.

Case and point. Straight gameplay debate is pretty much a warnable offense on the ZEQ2-lite forums. Mention a clan and youll probably get banned. Mention issues with people ingame and youll get assaulted.
 
Active Member
★ Black Lounger ★
✔️ HL Verified
💻 Oldtimer
Joined
Jul 14, 2002
Messages
8,229
Best answers
0
Location
December
Mention a clan and youll probably get banned.
To be fair, I think a large factor with banning clans had to do with the constant clans that people would make and the feuds that people would have with them.
 
Last edited:
Freelance Mappzor
✔️ HL Verified
🚂 Steam Linked
💻 Oldtimer
Joined
Nov 21, 2003
Messages
17,065
Best answers
0
Location
Stairing at the Abyss
To be fair, I think a large factor with banning clans had to do with the constant clans that people would make and the feuds that people would have with them.
True, but you still get the shaft if you start talking about servers and gameplay. Ignore that and you will also get banned.

Basically any ZEQ2 lite discussion that is not developement related is grounds for warnings and a possible ban if continued.
 
New Member
Joined
Oct 24, 2014
Messages
23
Best answers
0
The game is done , they just need to fix some maps and add all the wanted caracters . But from what i heard the team is thinking at adding some extra features , so this will be taking some time to . Maybe 2017 will be the lucky year :) ..
 
crazy love "ESF" player
✔️ HL Verified
🚂 Steam Linked
🍂 Regular
Joined
Nov 5, 2010
Messages
104
Best answers
0
Location
Earth
I just want ESF don't like ZEQ2-Lite :D
 
Legacy
★ Black Lounger ★
Discord Member
Joined
May 13, 2007
Messages
174
Best answers
0
I just want ESF don't like ZEQ2-Lite :D
Not again... Just read two or three posts again what Grega said. That was a spot on. Yet you still say something irrelevant like that.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top Bottom