[OLD] Website Updates

[Raven]

We're focused on DC for time being, then RD!

[Mister_Prophet]

It seems to me that you are doing most of the work here, Prophet. Can you keep up the momentum on all these projects?

The only real "BIG" one is RD, and if I focus on one of the smaller satellite projects at a time...well, it's not too rough then. Either way, DC is the one currently on the fast track.

However, I did put out another recruitment bid, and like I always say...the more people I have the sooner.

[Jet v4.3.5]

What kind of differences are we talking about in both the Skytown and Seven Bullets reboots in terms of fix up things (such as bugs, new mapping replacing things you didn't like before or that just didn't make sense, gameplay stuff (including AI and specific fights), story and mapping (These were joined because I'm curious about how anything at all story related would relate to maps, such as the Pit in 7B), and then the content and concept particulars being brought from RD into these projects?

[Mister_Prophet]

What kind of differences are we talking about in both the Skytown and Seven Bullets reboots in terms of fix up things (such as bugs, new mapping replacing things you didn't like before or that just didn't make sense, gameplay stuff (including AI and specific fights), story and mapping (These were joined because I'm curious about how anything at all story related would relate to maps, such as the Pit in 7B), and then the content and concept particulars being brought from RD into these projects?

Well nothing is concrete yet, but this is pretty much what I want to do;

1. New Skytown will lose the Jeremy War location in lieu of another, although the "mission" aspect of it will be largely the same, with Jones on a commando mission to use a Skaarj ion weapon on the Kran, and then sabotage the place. The background genocide will become a bigger part of it, and I am going to remove the whole warrior Nali subplot (but keep the principle antagonist in changed capacity). Because the whole location will be different, that means new layouts and new gameplay. It will probably be more than one .unr, via sublevels. The biggest change is that it will be released with a new Seven Bullets, serving as the prologue to that project. It'll have some RD USM guns and Nemesis Core stuff.

2. The Seven Bullets rework will feature pretty much all the old maps with some removals of less interesting sections, which will be replaced by sublevels. For instance, the prison from Waff's map will be removed completely and replaced with a larger sublevel, and all the exterior maps will have a better skybox. Will feature more elements from RD into the gameplay and interface. The Pirates will be removed and replaced with new human pawns, likely a derivative of the ones from Dead Cell. All the cutscenes will be new. Drago and Crowley will have new voice acting and new dialogue. All the logs will be rewritten and updated, as well as there being new entries. RD guns will replace all old versions, and some weapons will be excised altogether. Combat will be more like DC and some early styles of RD's system. There will be a few new maps to be made for intermediate transitions and toward the end (a new level between the Drago battle and the Scarred One battle). The Skaarj will resurface later in the game as well. Darkbeat's music will be phased out. That's...really the gist of it.

[Hellscrag]

Pretty ambitious stuff. I await further news with interest.

[Mister_Prophet]

Pretty ambitious stuff. I await further news with interest.

The benefit is that with Dead Cell we'll lay the groundwork for new Nemesis projects, and the fact that Seven Bullets has already been completed and released. Plus, it helps that as of 2005, the pack has never been plagued by any long standing bugs that would warrant a huge update. We get some breathing room there.

Skytown is a different story, but I think it's small scaled enough that the mapping will take the brunt of the work.

[Jblade]

The website's been down for me for the last several weeks...is it a beyondunreal problem or something?

[UB_]

BeyondUnreal problem. They're getting a new partner so it will take a while before everything goes back to normal.

[Jblade]

Oh cool, glad to see it's not a permanant problem - thanks

[UB_]

Okay now it's getting out of hand
did BU forget to revive any of their other links in the newspage? Not even the fileworks works.

[TheIronKnuckle]

Yeah, it's really shit. And they haven't reported real unreal news for ages. I know there's not much of it these days, so it's fine if they make news posts about all this other crap which I'm not interested in to keep the mainpage alive, but that makes them all the more slack for not reporting actual unreal news when it does arise. The 227 patch for example.

Nalicity isn't coming back, and now even fileworks is borked. argh

Of course, I understand that it is just a massive fansite in the end, run by fans in their spare time. People who have to deal with RL and Jobs and monies and all that crap. There's no need to lecture me on it But it still sucks that BU is slowly decaying, and has been for the past couple of years. In my mind, BU is the place where the entire unreal community really "Comes together": It hosts so many sites, and pretty much everyone uses the forums to some degree. If BU dies, the wider unreal community is going to fragment quite badly.

Thank God (and Hellscrag and Sana ) for USP. The difference between BU and USP is that at USP the community as a whole has a real sense of purpose, and I say that it is that purpose alone which keeps this place alive. That purpose is mapping.
I believe that so long as there is one project in "USP development hell", this place will live on in anticipation. It makes me wonder what will happen when Firestorm, TCO, SP2D, and so on finally DO get released. As I see it, this community sustains itself because it is an unconventional community of artists and art critics (where the art is Unreal mappage). So... what will happen when, in 10 years, the promise of new artwork to come has disappeared? What happens when the major projects are all completed? I can't see another project on the scale of Residual Decay or Firestorm being announced for this old engine, let alone completed. And I don't think that the smaller projects have the same power to hold a community of this size together.

The pessimistic realist in me says that when the day comes that there are no more projects in production, USP will die off very quickly. But the optimistic dreamer in me says that before that happens, every USP member still around will pool their talents and collaborate on some final project that will truly demonstrate how far we have come with our mastery of this old old old technology.

[UB_]

The BU Userbase doesn't care anymore about the old Unreal titles, just new games (deal with it! Frankly I am almost in the same boat too). So that's why there are no news about 227 or whatever.

Also BU is full of PC elitists, anti-Epic trolls and Duke Nukem fanboys that think that DNF will be the game of the decade - seriously, it looks awful and generic.
You can't say a different opinion because they think they're cool and all right on what they say.
This is my own view on the matter. I may overreact but that's what I think before posting in here.

At least there are still many nice guys, really fun posts and the Classic Unreal forums are great.

[Tarydax]

To be fair, a lot of stuff only gets posted in the news section when someone puts it in Off Topic. The only BU moderator that actually reads and posts in the Unreal section is NeoNite, and I haven't seen him on very much. It could be that nobody noticed; most of the time I don't even check the Unreal section because there isn't much that's new. But you probably are right, there just aren't very many people over there who care about the old Unreal games, which is a real shame.

Good thing there's still UnrealSP.

[Mister_Prophet]

I have no control over the dead links atm. Not too concerned because I don't have anything new to report anyway. I'm mapping and being quiet about it. That's all I can say. And Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat are making that hard lately.

Still, I will not stand to have this topic degrade into an anti-BU thread. I for one enjoy the service BU provides and they've supported us personally for a long time now (Red Nemesis). That's one of two websites by my count. I know some people are sad to see the eye move away from Unreal, but one can hardly blame BU for that. It's in their title; Beyond Unreal. Epic are the ones who have demonstrated no desire to return to Unreal, if anything I think it's remarkable that BU still keeps ties to the lineage at all.

[UB_]

And Portal 2 and Mortal Kombat are making that hard lately.

Good game choices

And no Epic is just scared to develop an Unreal 3. Everyone knows it's impossible to make one by now. Maybe if it was still year 2000 and Epic & DE were in charge of it, there would be a chance.
Unreal is not popular enough so it's not even worth for them beginning the big project. Doing something at the level of Unreal with modern technologies will probably take almost 10 years.