Developer Journals

Developer Journal: trepid_jon

Posted 1 decade ago Team Lead / Project Manager
Random cz2 screenshot?


So moving on, they're gonna cancel Latin.

Back in July, hunted had its first playtest. Since then, we've playtested hunted lots of times just like all the other maps. Here are some random screenshots from yesterday's playtest...






The screenshots are widescreen because I recently got a BenQ 20" widescreen LCD monitor. It's nice havin' an LCD monitor with a high native resolution like 1680x1050. I still have my old 17" 4:3 LCD monitor as well so I can extend my desktop every now and then, which is really useful when I want a reference picture or two up while I'm mapping.

Speakin' of that July dev journal, I guess I should update you on the portal idea. I had forgotten about that idea until I looked at that dev journal just now, which should give you a hint about what happened to the portal. Might have been cool, but we're just going with a more normal escape area. So yeah, just lettin' you know in case you were wonderin' about the whole escape portal thing.

*EDIT*

So Jesse convinced me to put these others up that I had taken out earlier...


I took them out because the first one really shows the empty road which shouldn't and won't be empty in the end, the second one shows the missing tower in the escape area that should and will be there in the end, and the third one just seemed a bit too random even though I like the look of that room. But then Jesse let me know how I showed even more random and stupid screenshots in that July dev journal. So I put them back in.

Skadaaaaaap!

O&A XM 202

Developer Journal: trepid_jesse

Posted 1 decade ago Map Design
Hang on, wait... what?

So, Jon and I were standin' around naked in the kitchen comparin' our goods and he had just told me about this really... really wholesome video made by this Christian inspirational group he had watched, and somehow my last dev journal came up.

Apparently, he said it sounded like I was slammin' mirv, FC and rebo.

That, haha... that wasn't my intention. I was just trying to point out that they're not around much anymore, and it sucks ass. It sucks cause they're really god damn awesome at what they do. They're just really capable in the stuff that they do, and so it'd just be cooler if they could be around more. FF can and will be finished even if they can never come around to being as active as they were, but their involvement in FF has been gi-fookin-normous, and it'd just be great for everyone if they'd stop being selfish assholes, give up their own lives, and just work on FF fulltime.

I don't mean they're kind of awesome, ok. I mean, those 3 jackholes could get together and make FF by themselves if they had the time and if they had a badass art guy like decs. They really could do this, I don't think you realize how wide their ... nevermind.

decs... he's got some problems though, and it's directly related to god damn boiled bread, cause hot water burn baby.

Developer Journal: MrBeefy

Posted 1 decade ago Texture Artist
In case you're on the fence about net neutrality, I've got an article you should read:

http://www.ramprate.com/marketcommentary/neutrality.html

Basically, like most everything on the earth, money drives decisions. There are people looking to profit more from the Internet. If you can do anything to fight it, here's a reason that hits close to home.

Developer Journal: Schtoofa

Posted 1 decade ago Team Lead / Project Manager
So you probably have an idea about how FF is going... or do you? Either way, here's some info for you. No one in particular has asked these questions.

Q: How's the beta going?
A: Pretty well, I think. As expected, we've uncovered a bunch of new bugs. The beta testers are great and cooperative. Their fresh perspective on FF is appreciated and helpful. Thanks, FF beta testers!

Q: Why isn't the FF beta open to everyone yet?
A: In the modding world as far as we can see, a mod beta is really a release. I mean, a mod really is always a work in progress. Appending "beta" to the end of a mod name is really just an excuse for saying "we know we have bugs, but we're going to give you this software anyways!" Well, shoot, I can tell you right now FF (whether or not it has "beta" in the title) is not going to be completely bug-free once we release it, but we're doing our best to make it stable and fun. So the FF beta isn't open to everyone yet because we're not ready to release it.

Q: Speaking of stability, how's FF's performance?
A: While playing in a conventionally full server (~20 players), the performance isn't that bad. Ambiguous phrase, I know. Some good news, though, is that we've spent very little time optimizing FF so far, and if it performs decently right now under most circumstances then we're in pretty good shape. Some maps cause players to have worse FPS, but we're working on it.

Q: Why haven't there been any main page / media updates since that crazy Dustbowl video was released?
A: Good question. As we get closer to releasing FF, it makes sense to build up some hype through media releases. Although we've made some good progress since we released the video, FF exhibits some fundamental problems (like those referred to by jesse in his latest journal) that need to be fixed. I guess I haven't championed any updates for a couple of reasons, namely because I've been investing time in other areas and I didn't want to give out "just a few screenshots" following a video like our Dustbowl clip. We'll probably end up doing the latter anyway, but a big part of me really wanted a full release to follow the video. When will you see the next media update? Not sure.

And now onto a more free-flowing write-up...

I will say it's depressing we're without rebo, FC, and mirv (for the most part). They all have invested so much time into FF, and for that we're thankful. We're just selfish and want more of what we can't have :) Some folks have stepped it up in the meantime, though, and as you can see on our job openings page we'd love to fill some more slots to help speed things along.

If you're curious about how the bug fixing is moving along, here's some background info first. We use a bugtracker system called mantis, and it's proven to be very useful. The dev team members and beta testers use this system to enter in and record bugs, and on the dev team side we use it to assign issues to people (so people know who needs to fix what). In our mantis system you'll find entries for anything from missing models, sounds that need to be tweaked, programming problems, map props needed, etc.

Here are some bug tracker stats for your viewing pleasure:

# of bugs fixed so far in the month of November: ~40
# of bugs fixed total: ~1000
# of known bugs waiting to be fixed: ~200

As tempting as it is to extrapolate: "Well, they've fixed 40 bugs in November so far -- 21 days, so that's an average fix rate of ~2 bugs per day... so FF will be out in 100 days!" ... yeah, don't do that. Many of the bugs are related (so a fix of one will indirectly fix a handful of others), some are super minor, others are more difficult to solve, and so on. Some are so minor that maybe they don't need to be fixed in an initial release. I just figured you might find the numbers interesting!

So lastly...

Q: Okay, no really. Enough BS. When the hell is FF coming out?
A: We really are shooting for a December 2006 release. It's an agressive goal, I'll freely admit, but we're going to haul ass and do the best we can to meet that goal.

Developer Journal: trepid_jesse

Posted 1 decade ago Map Design
Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame!

I've had this high quality dev journal waitin' for Paul's approval for a month, but I guess my topic wasn't good for a dev journal.

FF feels close, but maybe it only feels close cause we know what's left to do, and to new people it still looks assholishly far away? Some shitty shit has happened lately, which has namely been mirv and FooleyCooley not being around. I don't mean casually not around, but I mean I haven't seen them in months. I think mirv has made a couple random posts on the dev forums, but he's basically been gone for awhile, I'd say a month or two, but maybe that's too much. Definitely at least a month. FooleyCooley has been gone for a long ass time, though. He had some shit to do with finding a job, or somethin' about his dad walking in on him playing with some kittens, but whatever it was, he's not around no mo'. I guess maybe they could show up one day in the future, but I'm doubting it. Actually, I was doubting it a month ago, but since then there hasn't really been much thought of, "Hey, when are those whores coming back?" There's been times when we've sat around waiting and hopin' someone becomes more active, but that's proven to be really dumb in the past. At the same time, there's just some shit we can't do without these people, like rebo, we need his balloon knot here to talk to us.

They just got busy with more important personal shit I guess, or maybe mirv is in jail cause he mailed out too many copies of this tape that he made of he and I tag teamin' ... well, it was pretty awesome.

So, Patrick O'Leary from Virginia Beach, Virgina has been doing a lot more coding shit with mirv gone, but we've brought on some other coder, but he's not around much cause he's some programmer at some company and they're in crunch time or some shit. So, DrEvil has been doing other non-bot related coding, ohhhh and Paul has been coding, too, I forgot all about that until just... now, f--- you shark.

With FC gone, decs has had to do more shit that he typically doesn't do, like compiling/animating shit for the v_ weapons. He modelled, skinned, animated, and had the regular shotgun in game after 4 days, which is awesome. That probably sounds retarded though, I mean, you'd think by now we'd have all the weapons fully in the game, right? Everything is in and working properly, minus whatever tweaks and shit, except for the sniper rifle and the autorifle (or whatever it is that's going to replace the autorifle).

Character models are still f---ed, though, and have been for a looooooooooooooooong time. I think since they were created they were jacked up? Not for sure about that, but I think... they have been? I mean, all the characters are in the game, and animated but there's all kinds of shit that needs to be fixed with them, and these fixes are needed so shit like animations/skinning can be finalized. Unfortunately, rebo has also been pretty much dead to us for awhile. He makes guests appearances sometimes, but we don't speak his name much anymore. He has some shitty job where I guess he never gets to leave work, or when he gets home from work he ain't give a shit about no stupid mod, so he just beats his pillow to death cause he can't go to sleep cause he's gotta go work another shift.

At least, I think that's how it goes down, I mean, who in the hell is a math major but works construction? You can't do construction over here unless you first prove that you can swim, run, and keep your head down.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that, I honestly believe we'd all already be playin' FF if mirv, FC, and rebo could've been around normally (4 or 5 hours a week) over the past several months. They some critical bitches.

Lots of the maps are done, or getting really god damn close, I think. We played shutdown2 today, and it was fun shit. We had an orgy on the error model train cause Mark failed at committing the model.

Oh, there's a beta going, and has been going for awhile. If you aren't in it, you weren't asked to be in it, which means you aren't cool or like to bake brownies.

Seriously though, goto the CPL this year cause Jon and I are gonna take over a booth, and give out copies of FF whether or not this mod is "done." Tell your friends.