Just a short one this time to make up for my monster one last time. 21st birthday was 2 days ago and I'm leaving for swtizerland in 2 weeks! I'm going out and celebrating every few days at the moment! Once I leave (1st August) it may be the end of my involvment in FF (playing or developing!!) I hope not though.

Monkey almost done, playtesting is currently taking place and theres only a few 'small' things that people want changing. Having a hard time getting HDR to work well though, the contrast between the base and yard means looking out over bridge can seem way too bright. Trying to sort it out. But the general thoughts have been good so far! Performance reported to be better... I should damn well think so

There will be a _b3 release of medieval soon too. I'm pretty happy with it at the moment! Playing with a "ruin" to be placed on the surrounding landscape, currently it doesnt look anything like a castle ruin. Any modellers wanna do one for me? lol Also trying to sort out my teleporter exits to throw you in the right direction! As soon as I do them I'll have a new release.

Hope all of you are well. Thank you all for your continued support and keeping this game alive! Especially all you guys in #ff.pickup ;)

Star date: F*ck The World!

Life has begat moi a fecundity of failure, meaning life sucks. I've been forced to reformat the hard drive on my laptop. As if that weren't bad enough, I came back home from work today to see my computer off. So I did what anyone would do... I turned it on. Then, out of the ordinary, the fuses blew and the power to my house went out. So we flipped the switches to return the power, and of course I turned my computer on. Rather than the usual stupid windows boot up screen, I heard scratches-- nasty scratches. "What could it be," I thought? And then I realized that two of my hard drives on my desktop computer were... guess what? That's right, they crashed. My Western Digital hard drives, the brand I always swore to, had died on me. So now, I hate Western Digitals and I hate Seagate. I've always hated Intel, but now I hate them even more. Don't ask me why, I am not a man of logic (not now anyway).


Today, I've been left with a 4 year old 120GB hard drive, and a laptop with a virus infested windows partition-- but don't worry, the linux partition is fine (for now... knock on mother f*cking wood).

I have to ask myself, with all honesty, why so many bad things could happen. What have I done to deserve all these bad things? Why couldn't I have gotten 1 more point on my final last month to get an A instead of a shitty A-? Why has the backup hard drive died. Why does Norton not know anything about this stupid virus. Why have I lost all my Kung-Fu movies and Anime that I've spent YEARS collecting? Why!? WHY!?!?!?!?

Spare me your pity. My beef is with God (and Western Digital, and Intel, and Seagate, and jkkJcBtT.dll, and Asus and...).

I recently remade this old TFC flash video for FF...

http://images.trepid.net/just_a_game_ff.html

ff_2fort is being made by shadow, and I think it's turning out great

On a side note, I like to make werewolf movies.

With Regards To Updates And Fortress Forever 2.1

This post has been split up into 2 parts. The first is a short and sweet message, the second is a longer read, but has more information (and my personal feelings) I entreat you to read both (if possible).


I.
Please try to realize the amount of time that has been put into 2.1. This will not be the final patch to the game. If any single element does not work -- it can and will be fixed in future patches, just as problems found in 2.0 are being fixed with this release. I humbly ask-- saying it, however, can be taken two ways-- 1) you are in a position with no power, or 2) you are being condescending-- either way it damages the message. I ask the people to stop arguing amongst themselves. If there is a serious problem, talk to me. I don't want to make fool out of myself, and I'm sure you don't want to either. It only makes things worse.


II.
What, with computer woes still aplenty (ps Gator, Avira didn't work), it seems I've been dragged into this, albeit unfortunately. Many people seem to be complaining about the 'Hard Cap'. I'd like to address this as tactfully possible, so please don't misconstrue my words to be harsh or acerbic. If, per chance, I have not conveyed my message properly, it is not for you or anyone else to attack me or anyone else on the development team (coder, mapper, and what have you). Having said the aforementioned, let's get started with business.

First off, I have made it my personal goal to listen to each and everyone of you out there. Many of you know I have been an active listener. I have read your comments online and have done everything in my power to earnestly hear out the people. However, just because I listen to you does not give you the right to impose things on me or the development team. The dev team has a very hard time trying to do what we do. When people make posts and questionnaires that undermine us, it makes things even more difficult. Please refrain from making posts attacking our decisions.

It takes a lot of time from our ends to accomplish things. Some of you who've played TFC remember 1106 and the changes that were made. Some of you remember the STA rules about chop hopping in TFC as well. There are times when as individuals, we cannot agree with the changes that are made to a game. Yet, despite these changes, it is our duty to silently acquiesce (agree) to the decisions and choices that were made by those above us. This doesn't mean that you ought to shut your traps, this means that we ought to take our time before we protest. Simply put, certain people in the community have been protesting changes that they haven't physically-- and I use this word liberally, mind you-- experienced any of these changes.

It is our goal to make FF 2.1 as friendly as possible. Let's not argue here. My own personal agenda-- and on that note, my own opinions-- are my own (and my own only). Each of us have our own opinions, and I will respect your opinions, even if we don't meet eye-to-eye on some things. Any qualms I have are to be addressed by those of equal caliber, meaning that if I have a beef with something, I will discuss it with the dev team, not you.

Let's not argue here. A lot of time has been put into 2.1 already. Before anyone protests, first give it a chance. We can always make changes in 2.2. Let's not be hasty.

I ask the people to stop arguing amongst themselves. If there is a serious problem, talk to me. I don't want to make fool out of myself, and I'm sure you don't want to either. It only makes things worse.

You're craz-you're crazy, man. You're crazy! I like you...but you're crazy.

Last week, I started converting FF's source code to the Orange Box code. It was an insane task, to say the least. First of all, nobody else wanted to do it. I mean, everyone wants FF to use the latest version of Source, but nobody wanted to do this psychotic conversion that Valve has forced on all the old mods. Granted, a mod would have an easy integration if it didn't modify any base files, using nothing but brand new files specifically created for that particular mod. FF's not like that, though. Yeah, FF's code uses a lot of unique files, but we also did a lot of base modifications. Luckily most of those modifications were commented well, and now even more of that is better commented and separated from the base stuff.

1 week, thousands of differing files, and hundreds of compile errors later, FF can now be played with the Orange Box engine. OOOoooOOOhhh!!! There are quite a few bugs to work out, however, so 2.1 won't be using this code unless we fix all the major bugs within a couple weeks.

After getting past the initial problems of FF crashing immediately upon startup, during map load, and lots of other similar spots, I finally got into the game...but I couldn't pick a team or class, and therefore couldn't spawn. I could go into thirdperson, though...


Wow, right? That's so Orange Box.

The first thing I noticed was this...THING...on the left. Said something about "Server" blah blah, like I cared. I later confirmed it's the chat window. Well, part of it. It's this little spot/coffin where all the received chat messages go to hang out forever. It's basically the worst thing imaginable.

Anyways, I couldn't move or look around in firstperson, but I could look around in thirdperson (as a side note, Valve greatly improved thirdperson mode with a moving camera that has collision, among other cool things). So once I could move the camera around, the next thing I noticed was that awesome Orange Box motion blur effect...


This is called a town. It's where everyone hates you and makes fun of you.

The problem with picking a team and class had to do with the way the new code handles console commands. FF has a special way of making some console commands, and most of the console commands use this special method (team, class, +gren1, dispenser, cloak, etc...pretty much everything you do in FF that's directly related to FF). Long story short, I fixed that crap and some other crap dealing with different crap and was then able to look, run, shoot, and do all that other minor stuff FF needs to be considered a game.


WARNING: if you don't like motion blur, you'll hate every single one of these screenshots, because I was literally shaking the mouse to make all of them blurry, haha...



In the Orange Box engine, your flashlight casts dynamic shadows off objects.
(including yourself when you're in thirdperson)



In 2.1, hunted's dirt hole is a vent (finally).


Blur slideshow, WOOH!


Apparently the flamethrower's particles aren't drawing.
Just another reason to revamp FF's effects using the new particle system.
It will be so nice.




More blurry 2.1 hunted.


Some blurry 2.1 cz2 as well.



I don't know if redux wants this seen yet, but it's blurry...so nobody's really seeing it.


2.1 has swim animations, y'all!

So by having FF use the Orange Box engine, we get motion blur.

The other new things like vgui videos, the new version of Hammer (lighting preview, what?), the new particle system, the material and commentary editors, steam avatars, and so forth...all of them mean nothing in comparison to the greatness that is motion blur.

r.