Zeth, may I ask what is your reason for continuing lite?
I am not. I haven't invested in the project in years. The forums, SVN, and site are funded and moderated by fans.
As Grega mentioned, I'm only there for consulting purposes to help people with questions.
You have admitted its not meant to be played as a proper game. You have also said that, simply put, it is meant for the community to make custom content for. But for what purpose? Just to see its effect ingame for a few minutes and then move on? The closest comparison I can think of is what Grega compared it too, GMod. But GMod is made explicitly for manipulating content in an environment where manipulating said content is far more natural and intuitive. You are actually able to direct cinematic with GMod.
What about individuals who use ZEQ2-lite as a tool to record and create fan-fiction series like
this?
In lite there is no game balance to speak off. Just a couple basic functions that end up giving an impression that there IS supposed to be a "playable" game behind it. But there is no way to play the game when all you have to do is hang out in a corner, charge for half an hour, and then simply one hit kill anyone you feel like.
Besides the aforementioned comments I made regarding it being designed for extending and not playing, approaching it on a server with maximum power level would have alleviated any kind of one-hit kill or "charging for half an hour" occurrences.
When I first tried Lite, when it was first announced on Moddb, I was actually hoping the game will be fine tuned for actual play. The mods and addons would just add to the experience. But nothing like that ever happened. The controls didn't improve. No balances were implemented. I was rid of a chance to play a good DBZ game once more. I am just not able to see lite's function, where its neither a test bed for custom content machinations, nor is it an actual game.
As I explained multiple times, the project was designed for people to actively engage in involvement and finish -- not to be a polished (or even working) experience out of the box. The blog and moddb post explained this. Any and all updates and advancements were always intended to come from individuals like yourself. If you even downloaded it to test, it should have been on the premise that you wanted to modify and fix any of the problems therein.
I think the point is you've "corrected" everyone's perceptions as to what Lite is and isn't, and so delaying the inevitable, that being the end of this "conversation", serves only to make yourself seem as if you're ranting and further sow discord between the two communities.
Why would I want to cause problems between the two communities? There's a shared pool of users as well as former developers of ZEQ2 working on ESF -- some of which I'd like to bring in to future commercial projects. If anything, I would actually like to IMPROVE relations by becoming more actively involved in the community and development discussion relating to ESF.
Anyone who was going to be swayed toward your way of thinking already has. Those who haven't will remain unchanged. Lite is a game. Lite isn't a game. Lite is a testing bed. It is dbz simulator. Whatever. Frankly, I doubt anyone really cares what your intentions were when creating whatever it is Lite is supposed to be. People want a game. People want to play it. If it isn't a game, and isn't really meant to be played, and certainly won't be updated by you or your team, there's really no reason to carry on about it. We gain nothing from this discussion
Kind of rash to assume everyone "wants" a game, isn't it? Researchers and game designers/theorists hardly care about having a game as much as understanding and organizing the complex systems involved and determining how they can be further improved. Making something interactive or DBZ-influenced doesn't instantly qualify it as a game.
What I hope to gain at this point is some dispersal of the overflowing negativity/hate when I'm doing nothing but trying to peacefully explain the state of things.
I think it is inferior because I'm comparing it to ESF. You say this is a comparison I should not make because ESF is an apple and Lite is a unicorn. I say I don't care, because I just want to play a game that doesn't suck. I'm not going to devote my time to something that is barely playable (even if it was never meant to be "played") when I have what I view to be a superior alternative at my fingertips. Apples to Unicorns. I get it. I still don't care.
What kind of reaction are you hoping to obtain by declaring your distaste in a forum discussion? What's the point of ignoring absolutely every point I've made and still saying you're going to use ZEQ2-lite as a toaster even though its marketed as a wrench? I don't understand how professing personal opinions helps a technical conversation move forward.
That is all well and good, but what could easily be summed up in a paragraph seems to morph into a treatise on a subject no one cares about whenever you're involved. Your posts aren't accessible. They're 15 page long posts that maybe 3 out of however many people populate this forum will actually read, and so they really add nothing but white noise to the discussion.
See, why would you say "no one" in such a hyperbolic way when there are obviously individuals willing to comment politely and objectively. Even Sub has done so in his responses -- which I VERY much respect.
That's great. It really is. But we aren't buying what you're selling as most of it seems like contrived bullshit pulled out of the aether, which is then used to explain why your turbo looks like shit.
Not sure what you mean by 'turbo', but nothing in my explanations are contrived. The explanations and classifications remain the same way they've been for practically ever. You can pretty much ask anyone who has an understanding of the history behind the project or relations with myself.
If you have an example of what your miraculous turbo sprite looks like, that'd be super. But until then, what we've seen and what you posted doesn't change the opinion that, especially compared to that found in ESF, looks pretty shitty.
Why must everything be so flat and cosmetic when it comes to this discussion? My counterpoints were about the possibility of the system and the flexibility of the design more-so than the specifics of one possible, programmer generated mockup. Use your imagination and apply some divergent thinking on the core concept!
That might be true...if this was simply street fight to halo. This is dragonball to dragonball. And the systems are alot more similar than I think you realize. I'm not sure if you've play this one but the "zanzoken" is essentially the same skill, except for in ZEQ it can be adjusted to go shorter or further. But I've never seen it go so far that I couldn't keep up with a simple mouse turn. The flight was fast enough to keep up with it as well. ESF's "zanzoken" is alot faster and used frequently/quickly, and it also has the same travel length all-around.
So I really don't see how it's poorly scoped. I suppose I could do a video of both for you. The differences are fairly minor.
They are both Dragon Ball Z based, sure, but would you really attempt to compare a Dragon Ball Trading Card Game to a console game? If you find those mediums too indistinct, what about Hyper Dimension (a DBZ 2D fighter) compared to one of the earlier ESF versions? Both are indeed DBZ, but both have different emphasis on how aiming and player interaction options are served up.
Is it the fact that ZEQ2-lite is presented in a 3D third-person-manner, perhaps? Curious. Let me ask you this. Would you feel the comparisons of lockon/accuracy still relative if ZEQ2-lite was done as a turn-based game (but still had the same presentational aesthetic)?
I can live with that, ZEQ2 isn't a game. It's a personal project for anyone that wants to learn the fine art of adjusting settings. So why don't you work on it a little yourself? It could be a very good game if you put some time into the "project". And yeah, excuse me for thinking a game would be playable. Silly ol' me, I should have assumed immediately that it was just an unfinished project. It certainly doesn't PRESENT itself like a game, or anything.
If time permitted and a team of active developers were available, we'd likely continue the (currently on hold) ZEQ2 project instead (which has entirely different ambitions actually aiming towards a game-oriented goal). Currently, most of the developers are occupied working on a flagship project for our studio startup.
To be fair if you take no context from the release itself, the initial taste of aiming towards a game is apparent since it was initially intended to be one back during its actual development in 2005. Our intentions for exposing the files, availability/involvement in continuation, age of the project (plus existence of a NEWER iteration), and explanations surrounding the release and history are what make set the stage as something else.
Not really, tbh. This debate only keeps me interested because you keep finding new and gradually more ridiculous subjects of defense to add in. At first it was a misunderstood game, then it's actually incomplete, and now it's an...experience? I think that's what sub said? If it's incomplete and not meant to be played, just stop with the defense. We obviously don't understand and you shouldn't feel any need to debate it's relevance.
The explanation surrounding my posts hasn't changed. It's always been incomplete, designed to be community-driven, and is usually misunderstood by individuals looking for nothing more than a functional/fun DBZ game. However, that's not to say it's an entire failure in the department of attracting developer-types who grasp the goals at hand. It has pulled in a few great intellectuals over the years that now are involved with other projects. It's just that the majority of people who search for DBZ fall in a younger demographic and often have no ambition towards game design goals -- although its still molded several of these types into fairly capable artists/programmers as well! If you need something crudely analogous, ZEQ2-lite is the community/youth center for DBZ.
Well, I was mocking his position when I called it an experience. It was just a ridiculous extrapolation on the idea that it somehow is not a game.
Humans as a collective define the standards of definitions and organization. Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to venture down an interpretive road of "what is truly 'art'?". I'm simply saying that our qualities of identification expand and become more and more rich (and often convoluted) as time goes on. It's easy for people to generalize and just dump anything new they see into a familiar category so they can come to terms with it more easily, but that doesn't necessarily mean that EVERYTHING should be offset by broad labels and be expected to always match to things similarly compared. Is a training simulation machine at the DMV a game? Is throwing rocks at abandoned warehouse windows a game? What are we constituting as a game here? You may presume it's a shared definition, but is any activity whatsoever where you can have enjoyment applicable here? Or is it more about having an environment where you have rules of play and win/loss conditions? ZEQ2-lite's lack of the latter is why I push it away from the category of a 'game' -- no matter how much it may have originally meant to be or could potentially be one day. As it stands, it's just an interactive sandbox.
