Lost Colony causing a stir in the MMOFPS community

#1 Couldn't bother watching trough it all, talk about boring.

Have you got a link to the site selling this? I can't believe it.

#2 There's another thread similar to this one with links.

When I looked at it before they claimed PS3 support. Now it looks like they've dropped that. The 'demo vid' just looked like starter.fps to me...

[*shrug*]

#3 Wow, I've never been so unimpressed by a game before.

#4 I googled the game and found the site first try and must say, the forums (what tiny bit I read) are very educational. Heads up for anyone launching a game's website and game before you truly have anything to show...

... I must have missed something...

I don't know really what to say but although the site looks nice there's no meat. Just the forums.

They're not using TGE, they're using a modified version of TGEA. But no screen shots (Unless the site code doesn't like my browser) but most of the section links are dead - not a good sign.

Lost Colony

#5

Quote:
The 'demo vid' just looked like starter.fps to me...

Except that the starter.fps actually looks better.

Quote:
They're not using TGE, they're using a modified version of TGEA.

No one said they were using TGE :) Did you watch the video? It looks horrible. They changed one weapon model, one player model and placed an interior and called it a game?

Edit: Wow, I read the forum and those guys talk alot of crap. New NetCode in TGEA? Right..

#6 I love these quotes:

Quote:
"We are using Torque Shader which is entirely different engine and terrain engine than Torque stand-alone."

Quote:
"The Netcode which connects clients is also different than Torque."

Quote:
"We are using TNL and made several modificaitons to allow hundreds of players on a continents."

Quote:
"Then we have the physics engine which we put together using portions of UT, Havoc, and Newton."

Quote:
"We are also working on a 64-bit version for Lost Colony, allowing those that have 64-bit processors to play the game."

#7 Im speechless.

#8

Quote:Except that the starter.fps actually looks better.

lol - true. Essentially what I was trying to say was I didn't see anything new - it looked like standard Torque to me. I wasn't going to bash their art because I can't do any better :-)

#9 Sign me up!! LOL.. (laughed so hard my side hurts) Man I wouldn't even have showed this crap to my friends. Let alone take pre-orders. LAME LAME LAME!

I seen some funny vid's on U-tube in the past... but this is to funny.

#10

Quote:No one said they were using TGE :) Did you watch the video? It looks horrible.

You're right. No one HERE said that... hmmmm, I must have read it on their forums and transplanted it :P

The technical stuff sounded very suspect as you've pointed out Stefan and visually, nothing to show what work they've done (if any). It's all rather scarry really :)

I'm with Andy and you, there's nothing new here just a slight modification of the... visuals... that in comparison make the TGE demo look like a AAA finished game ;)

@ Andy - I suspect you could do better since since there's not much "art" here to bash :D

#11 Indeed, and all the false talking on their forum make me want to puke. Just so you didn't miss it, TGE and TGEA have different network engines. ;)

Honestly though, I'm not bashing their art. I'm bashing that they take preorders for nothing. And all the lies.

#12 It didn't look too bad for someone getting started with TGE-A, but there was absolutely no meat to the deathmatch-style play. I would have like to have seen a level walkthrough for the single interior to see how balanced the map is for DM-style gameplay. From what I saw, it seems to have four exits and a central hub to move between levels (two stairways?) and was setup in a linear fashion which is common among FPS games with split-screen (since the players can always see where the other is, and creating similar areas in maps will help keep it fresh rather than always giving away the location at a glance). I like a little more variation to my interiors. The terrain, however, was a monotonous series of hillsides with no decoration and very little to see. Any movement, or indeed any"decoration" on them would be another player since there was a lack of cover. It would be extremely simple to spot your enemies. I would have implemented a cross-hair since the targeting was suspect. I saw nothing of physics other than the standard forces applied to explosions and such. The solider pack was well utilized, however.

I'm not sure who posted the "weapons of LC" video on YouTube (linked off the side of that one), but it was the TGE 1.5 demo video. Which I found somewhat humorous.

It is by no means a production-quality display, but it is a better start than a lot of projects. Mainly because it started.

EDIT:
@Stefan
Yeah. I found the pre-orders thing to be EXTREMELY odd on top of releasing a non-production quality demo video.

#13 Hmm.. the other thread suggests it might be a scam. I think this is quite possibly true.
Why are their forums quite busy?

#14 The worst part is that are buying content from 3drt.com and GG and saying that they hired the creators of that content to make them.

Im dead serious, hey are clamming this.

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps/posts/list.m?&topic_id=88000005120

#15 Well if it's TGEA its not using the Atlas terrain thats for sure. My starter kit is more of a game then this thing is at present.

#16 I wonder if Symantec likes them using there company name for an empire?

How unoriginal can you go?

1. Lost Colony we all know really is reference to the Auraxis colony storyline.
2. Three Empires with almost the same storylines and color schemes.
3. Using a major software company name as an empire.

Do they think people are stupid to not notice it's a complete unoriginal ripoff plan wise.

No screenshots of product allowed but they want cash and also to ban anyone demanding
a screen of this RC1 which is supposed to be ready in a few days.

Since when has a major game.. a game that is supposed to be good enough for monthly fee
not shown a screenshot?

Edit add LC staff on "hitbox" question from there own forum:

Quote:StateOfShock
Staff Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 875


I think there's some confusion here. We do use next-gen Netcode which has been fantastic on our tests so far. We are using a next-gen game engine, a shader engine, a terrain engine, and a physics engine (player physics will be adopted in mid-January).

Since Lost Colony took the next-gen path with the game, we support Dual-Core, 64-bit processors, DX9 and DX10, HDR, Pixel Shaders, and about a dozen other technologies too far to name.

We took this step which was well planned. We see the industry heading for DX10 fast, and we want to be there to support it. Forget about DX8, it wasn't worth our time and effort to support the older hardware. Video cards are now reasonably priced for the budget consumer, those that can support all of the technologies I stated.

However, the downside to supporting newer technologies are bugs. Being new, well, we're going to have a few problems here and there, but, it's worth the investment to build on newer technologies than it is to fix older bugs on a DX8 platform.

I think for the most part, and because Lost Colony is so new, we can't determine how the newer Netcode is going to perform. It may not have those 2ms-4ms gabs. We won't know until we get some weapons on the compatibility test server (which we are hoping will be today).

What some people are already confused about is how the "client" works, and how we have implemented our security measures. When loading the client build for our product, everything goes into memory. Remember, we only provide a 20mb (at the most) client build for you to download. Everything else we've done is on the server. A person cannot change the client files or change the files while running the game. If the files are changed, the server will respond during login "You do not have the correct version... " and so on. It reads your files in memory. When the files are already in memory, it's too late to change the files on your harddrive.

The only way a person can hack our game, is if they gain access to our server, which is supported by 2 firewalls and other measures of security. Now, if for some reason a hacker gains access to the server (it hasn't happened to any game that I know of.. atleast for the server itself access) then problems could happen. However, you can not hack Lost Colony using the Client build software that we built.

#17 For the content that they have, 20m client references seem huge.

#18 @Randy:

SystemOfChock makes other completely untrue statements about how Torque works in other threads. If you're looking for some humour and there's none on TV, check out his posts. He clearly has no clue what he is talking about, he just tries to look sharp.

#19 It's wierd cause there are only a few of us that say drop the old hardware support for TGEA and I don't remember anyone from LC being in on those TGEA discussions. Also reads like some of Phil's recent .plans about DX 10 and new hardware.

Well bah humbug I hate to be a grinch on Christmas. Maybe I can eat crow on the 1st when they have the full production launch?

#20 Wow, this is awesome. So, all one has to do is make a promise of delivering a kick-ass game using the best technologies and people will throw money at that?!

I'll be writing 10 games next year. Future posts to follow regarding how to prepay.

Merry Christmas.