FlashThunder's "After The Wall" - what happened to it?
by Mike Stoddart · in General Discussion · 02/21/2003 (7:43 pm) · 6 replies
A while ago there was a Torque based game being developed called "After The Wall" from FlashThunder. Does anyone know if the game is still being developed? Or is the project dead and buried?
Thanks
Thanks
#2
02/21/2003 (7:50 pm)
That's a shame; it had potential.
#3
Well I was the one running and designing the After the Wall project.
And sadly it stopped somewhere in production.
Its the good old story.
Internet production companies with no money to paid its emploiers will have a very hard time getting finished.
The main reason is that without pay people starts to push deadlines to the point where no work is being done.
Our biggest problem was that we were never able to find coders/scripters willing to actually work on this thing.
We had a lot of 3d modelers and skinners.
Historical researchers, soundfx, mappers.
We had a big and very supportive community of almost 300 registered gamers. An active IRC channel.
But sadly no coders.
So I ended the thing and moved on to smaller projects.
// Karsten "Clocks" Viese
02/22/2003 (12:10 am)
HeyWell I was the one running and designing the After the Wall project.
And sadly it stopped somewhere in production.
Its the good old story.
Internet production companies with no money to paid its emploiers will have a very hard time getting finished.
The main reason is that without pay people starts to push deadlines to the point where no work is being done.
Our biggest problem was that we were never able to find coders/scripters willing to actually work on this thing.
We had a lot of 3d modelers and skinners.
Historical researchers, soundfx, mappers.
We had a big and very supportive community of almost 300 registered gamers. An active IRC channel.
But sadly no coders.
So I ended the thing and moved on to smaller projects.
// Karsten "Clocks" Viese
#4
Sorry to hear that; I was looking forward to playing "After The Wall".
Do you have any old media that could be donated to my WW2 project? Or if any modellers reading this have some spare time, drop me a line.
Cheers
02/22/2003 (9:47 am)
No wonder I couldn't find a WW2 modeller - you had them all! :PSorry to hear that; I was looking forward to playing "After The Wall".
Do you have any old media that could be donated to my WW2 project? Or if any modellers reading this have some spare time, drop me a line.
Cheers
#5
Just dont expect a deadline :)
// Karsten "Clocks" Viese
02/22/2003 (4:47 pm)
Drop me a line maybe we can figure something out.Just dont expect a deadline :)
// Karsten "Clocks" Viese
#6
You know, a good WWII game could have been a great thing.
Here's my vision for the game I would like to play:
I'm talking about a game that gives you a feel for what it's like to be part of a team of soldiers.
One possible way to enforce team play is the use of a counter called moral. Moral goes up when you're near your squad and you're not under fire, and it goes down when squadmates get killed and you're under supressing fire, as an example. If moral goes down too low, your soldier hits the dirt and finds cover, i.e. the player loses control of his avatar. Maybe at this point only an NCO or an officer could inspire his team. This is actually quite a profound addition to the FPS experience.
non typed communications would also be important, the NCO points his cursor over the enemy position and presses the 'c' key (whatever) and his squad hears him yell, "covering fire, 1oclock" while a little targeting rectile appears over what the NCO is pointing too. These types of communications could add a lot to game play. Perhaps following orders adds to moral? who knows.
There hass got to be some WWII field manuals around somewhere that talk about squad-squad engagements (I /think/ a squad is about 13-16 soldiers) so this would be a good start.
As the game grows, you could do platoon-platoon engagements (50 versus 50) and if it really takes off, and enough tweaking is done on the engine, maybe company-company (150 v 150) but this may be unrealistic, and it's certainly very long term.
Again, the goal is to enforce teamwork: supressing fire, flanking missions, etc. Flanking missions often require the flanking squad to be hidden by terrain AND to have the enemy soldiers ducking for cover.
I suppose one way of realistically engineering such a game would be to release just one weapon on each side, an M1 versus a KAR, and slowly add on weapons. Maybe having plenty of weapons is easy to do, depends on modelers I'm guessing.
I think that what would make this hard is:
1) Doing good research to find fun squad-squad engagements, and then adding higher type engagements platoon-platoon, etc.. There will be a huge temptation to add all kinds of weapons that may not necessarily be all that common, sniper rifles, flame throwers etc... I think it's better if you stick to the bread-and-butter of the rifleman.
2) Making sure my whole morale scheme actually adds to the gameplay, tweaking this is going to be hard. People could find work arounds that destroy the spirit of this system, so it has to be really well thought out.
3) Persistence of players is a hard problem to address in these types of games. I mean, what happens when people die? Perhaps they could go to a basic training map until the game is over? Is it bad or good if the death map is less fun than the real game?? =)
4) How do does a team choose its NCOs and Officers? A bad one could destroy the squad, which in and of itself is not a bad thing. It's only bad when one person could ruin the game for 25 others.
5) Vehicles. It's a shame to have an engine that's got such strong vehicle support, and not implement them. It could be fun to actually get the squad together and drive them to a rally point, but adding tanks changes the whole dynamics of the game, this is a point where research is going to be key.
6) Artillery, motars and guns are an important part of these engagements, maybe mortar men could be bots. Artillery is sufficiently behind the line that you don't have to have men manning it.
Any comments?
Perhaps you could convince me to be a coder, I don't know much about torque or graphics programming, but I'm a real expert at C, many years of experience, and I'm a quick study. The person who would convince me to code would have to be the one who is going to make a game close to what i have outlined =)
n
02/25/2003 (9:57 am)
[EDIT: Cross Posted to Game Ideas]You know, a good WWII game could have been a great thing.
Here's my vision for the game I would like to play:
I'm talking about a game that gives you a feel for what it's like to be part of a team of soldiers.
One possible way to enforce team play is the use of a counter called moral. Moral goes up when you're near your squad and you're not under fire, and it goes down when squadmates get killed and you're under supressing fire, as an example. If moral goes down too low, your soldier hits the dirt and finds cover, i.e. the player loses control of his avatar. Maybe at this point only an NCO or an officer could inspire his team. This is actually quite a profound addition to the FPS experience.
non typed communications would also be important, the NCO points his cursor over the enemy position and presses the 'c' key (whatever) and his squad hears him yell, "covering fire, 1oclock" while a little targeting rectile appears over what the NCO is pointing too. These types of communications could add a lot to game play. Perhaps following orders adds to moral? who knows.
There hass got to be some WWII field manuals around somewhere that talk about squad-squad engagements (I /think/ a squad is about 13-16 soldiers) so this would be a good start.
As the game grows, you could do platoon-platoon engagements (50 versus 50) and if it really takes off, and enough tweaking is done on the engine, maybe company-company (150 v 150) but this may be unrealistic, and it's certainly very long term.
Again, the goal is to enforce teamwork: supressing fire, flanking missions, etc. Flanking missions often require the flanking squad to be hidden by terrain AND to have the enemy soldiers ducking for cover.
I suppose one way of realistically engineering such a game would be to release just one weapon on each side, an M1 versus a KAR, and slowly add on weapons. Maybe having plenty of weapons is easy to do, depends on modelers I'm guessing.
I think that what would make this hard is:
1) Doing good research to find fun squad-squad engagements, and then adding higher type engagements platoon-platoon, etc.. There will be a huge temptation to add all kinds of weapons that may not necessarily be all that common, sniper rifles, flame throwers etc... I think it's better if you stick to the bread-and-butter of the rifleman.
2) Making sure my whole morale scheme actually adds to the gameplay, tweaking this is going to be hard. People could find work arounds that destroy the spirit of this system, so it has to be really well thought out.
3) Persistence of players is a hard problem to address in these types of games. I mean, what happens when people die? Perhaps they could go to a basic training map until the game is over? Is it bad or good if the death map is less fun than the real game?? =)
4) How do does a team choose its NCOs and Officers? A bad one could destroy the squad, which in and of itself is not a bad thing. It's only bad when one person could ruin the game for 25 others.
5) Vehicles. It's a shame to have an engine that's got such strong vehicle support, and not implement them. It could be fun to actually get the squad together and drive them to a rally point, but adding tanks changes the whole dynamics of the game, this is a point where research is going to be key.
6) Artillery, motars and guns are an important part of these engagements, maybe mortar men could be bots. Artillery is sufficiently behind the line that you don't have to have men manning it.
Any comments?
Perhaps you could convince me to be a coder, I don't know much about torque or graphics programming, but I'm a real expert at C, many years of experience, and I'm a quick study. The person who would convince me to code would have to be the one who is going to make a game close to what i have outlined =)
n
Torque 3D Owner Jeff Wilkinson