The room is spinning...

[gopostal]

TeamSpeak is pretty easy. If you guys need a server I think I can provide, I'll have to check my VM host's ToS.
Barring that, let's make our own damn game! This community is chock full of talented artists, programmers, level designers, and game developers, probably more so than any other online community I've seen. Not only that, with the kind of people we all associate with we could easily do a successful Kickstarter campaign if we activated our social networks. If a hundred other small indie teams can put out a successful product, there's really no reason we couldn't.

I'd be fully on board for something like that. I just finished Food Fight and I've been looking for something to transfer into working on. I've got a 10 slot Gameserver server that's only running a demo of FF for people to playtest. I could tack on a teamspeak immediately if this gains traction.

At the very least why don't we have a BUF weekend? I'll set it up any way the group wants and let's see how many people would show up. It would be a good gauge of how many people talk and how many people would actually be there.

 

[cryptophreak]

Excuse me for turning up here since 2003.

lol. Nobody is paying attention to you, let alone blaming you for anything. Calm down, dude.

 

[dotnetbeast]

Apoligies for not being on here as much as I used to. Busy with school, family, and this music.

I'll try when I can.

 

[DarkED]

I'd be fully on board for something like that. I just finished Food Fight and I've been looking for something to transfer into working on. I've got a 10 slot Gameserver server that's only running a demo of FF for people to playtest. I could tack on a teamspeak immediately if this gains traction.

At the very least why don't we have a BUF weekend? I'll set it up any way the group wants and let's see how many people would show up. It would be a good gauge of how many people talk and how many people would actually be there.

I think that's a fantastic idea. Let me know where and when.

I kinda gave up on my own game (too ambitious, no help, no funding) but I've still got this burning desire to make a game. As in, something that is actually a polished marketable product. It doesn't matter if it's simple, it just needs to be fun. The problem is that I can never seem to find like-minded people and I feel like this kind of project could really pull the community together. It's something to rally behind and be proud of. And hell, we might even make a few bucks and end up being a real studio.

 

[Hunter]

We need a FragBU EU too so pings are better for us and we can find people playing when we are .

Would a FragBU be UT? UT2004? UT3? current UT alphas?

 

[Sir_Brizz]

I would lean towards current UT alphas. Complaints with the current state of the game might make for interesting topics here if people were actually engaged. That's how previous UT games ended up working out (see: my huge rants about minigun many times ).

I also wouldn't be opposed to helping with a BU community UT4 mod. We did the BuF Bonus Pack in UT and there is nothing stopping us from doing something like that again for UT4. And it could include whatever content we wanted.

The real strength behind any gaming community is simply playing games together. Even when UT3 fell flat and most people lost interest in it rapidly, this community was still fairly active because we were playing Borderlands and Left 4 Dead together frequently. I know everyone has a life these days and setting aside any time is a huge pain, but many of the active community members during 2k3 were no different and they made an effort to at least show up to the twice a week for a few hours a night FragBU events. That ended up drawing a lot of people here because we played the game together, we talked about the game a lot here, and it was an interesting place to be.

I agree that forum activity across the board is generally declining because of social media in specific, however forums offer focus on shared interests that most social networks really fail hard at. I think a lot of people like to contribute on forums, there are just a few things that keep them from doing so consistently. If we could identify those few things maybe we could get people more active here.

 

[gopostal]

We need a FragBU EU too so pings are better for us and we can find people playing when we are .
Would a FragBU be UT? UT2004? UT3? current UT alphas?

Gameservers is great (this is not a plug for them) for letting you change things up. Currently the server is New York/New Jersey but I can move it easily. If the majority of players would be EU then I can set it up in London, Germany, Paris...they have spots all over. I've just found that NYNJ has a fairly acceptable ping for everyone.
The server is running UT as that's what I do most of my work in. I've run 2K4 servers though so it's not a big deal if that's the decision. I'm going to get with DarkED and see about gathering a consensus on what is wanted.

 

[Hunter]

I think we could have both US and EU running at the same time so there is space for everyone.

What about Rocket League? Maybe get some BU tournaments going?

 

[Zur]

The winddown of the forums is in part due to social media as some people pointed out.

Also, UT4 should have supported co-op out of the box. It's such an awesome and engaging way to play a game.

P.S: I stopped UT and gaming in general due to me trying to fix my personal life.

 

[Syri]

I've been lurking a little... mostly moved on to other games though, as I found I enjoy playing games more when I'm not so bad at them, and I'm really bad at first person shooters.
I've also been writing a lot, I'm almost halfway through writing my first novel, and have more I want to write, so my gaming time has been rather limited as a result.

 

[DarkED]

I would lean towards current UT alphas. Complaints with the current state of the game might make for interesting topics here if people were actually engaged. That's how previous UT games ended up working out (see: my huge rants about minigun many times ).

I also wouldn't be opposed to helping with a BU community UT4 mod. We did the BuF Bonus Pack in UT and there is nothing stopping us from doing something like that again for UT4. And it could include whatever content we wanted.

The real strength behind any gaming community is simply playing games together. Even when UT3 fell flat and most people lost interest in it rapidly, this community was still fairly active because we were playing Borderlands and Left 4 Dead together frequently. I know everyone has a life these days and setting aside any time is a huge pain, but many of the active community members during 2k3 were no different and they made an effort to at least show up to the twice a week for a few hours a night FragBU events. That ended up drawing a lot of people here because we played the game together, we talked about the game a lot here, and it was an interesting place to be.

I agree that forum activity across the board is generally declining because of social media in specific, however forums offer focus on shared interests that most social networks really fail hard at. I think a lot of people like to contribute on forums, there are just a few things that keep them from doing so consistently. If we could identify those few things maybe we could get people more active here.

These are some good ideas. However, I'll go ahead and say now that I have no interest in doing a mod, especially for a game that isn't even half-finished. I have zero interest in UT these days, or really multiplayer in general. I'd ideally like to work on a new IP, something with a strong campaign that is playable solo, but could include MP/co-op. An MMO is a possibility. Think Destiny on a smaller scale. I'm just leaning toward keeping it (whatever it would be) commercial; I turn 30 in two days, and at this point in my life I simply don't have the time to devote 30 hours a week to projects that aren't going to give anything tangible back.

With that said, I'll happily help with other things we've discussed if you guys settle on a mod.

I'm going to get with DarkED and see about gathering a consensus on what is wanted.

Sounds good, I sent you a reply

 

[Hunter]

If we do some BuF Pack things then you may not have to do much work as the entire community will contribute.

The problem with the UT alpha is just that, its an alpha. Had we been given a tease of a beta demo with a couple of maps we would probably be more interested in it because it would seem more complete.

 

[DarkED]

If we do some BuF Pack things then you may not have to do much work as the entire community will contribute.

The community (or, at least those willing and skilled in some aspect of development) contributing to a project is kind of the whole idea here. Otherwise, it all falls apart. However, in my opinion there is exactly zero incentive to do a mod pack. You might get some community recognition, and it could give a boost to forum usage, but that won't get us much farther. It's not 1999 anymore; there's currently an overflow of talent in the industry, and game studios aren't drafting amateur mod authors and level designers off the street like they did in the old days.

I was a UT mapper for years but I'm no longer interested in improving other people's games. It's a losing proposition and it's time to get serious. I would like to break into the industry, and the best way to do that now is to develop a game. If it's a good game it could re-invigorate our community as a by-product.

 

[Hunter]

I was a UT mapper for years but I'm no longer interested in improving other people's games. It's a losing proposition and it's time to get serious. I would like to break into the industry, and the best way to do that now is to develop a game. If it's a good game it could re-invigorate our community as a by-product.

Is this because you've got older and have some goals? What about the teenagers who don't have anything but UT4 and the willingness to make maps or mods?

Everyone starts somewhere at the least an shrinking community like ours can do is help new talent.

 

[DarkED]

Is this because you've got older and have some goals?

Yep.

What about the teenagers who don't have anything but UT4 and the willingness to make maps or mods?

I would say those people really aren't our concern? I don't care about them. Please see next point.

Everyone starts somewhere at the least an shrinking community like ours can do is help new talent.

Newcomers now have a wealth of free online resources to help them get started if they want to make maps or mods. There are now literally hundreds of hours of tutorial videos on YouTube for any given tool you need to learn, including UE4 and UDK. That isn't even mentioning the official UE4 documentation, or the countless how-to pages and wikis. When I started with Unreal in 1998 absolutely none of that existed. The best you could do back then was to read Epic's UnrealEd reference manual (which was largely useless as I recall) or join #unrealed and hope somebody there knew how to do what you needed to do.

Plus, UE4 isn't the only good engine tech around. After working with both, I personally think Unity is better for a smaller team. It's not as advanced in the rendering department but the Unity toolkit is more mature than UE4's and is definitely easier to work with. Unity has the simplest asset pipeline I have ever seen and it supports more platforms.

 

[Hunter]

Very valid points, about the wealth of information out there.

However none of the youtube videos, online resources, etc provide feedback on hook up people to make map packs, mods, etc.

 

[DarkED]

Very valid points, about the wealth of information out there.

However none of the youtube videos, online resources, etc provide feedback on hook up people to make map packs, mods, etc.

This is what Google is for, and BU already has a Content Development section. Once again this isn't really our problem, and we shouldn't be trying to make it our problem because there are twenty other forums/communities out there that already deal with this and do it better than we ever will.

As a side note, I think you're missing the original point here. It's my opinion that we should consider renaming BU and moving it's focus entirely away from anything Unreal-related (because that's a long road to nowhere) and towards something that is newer, more relevant, and has at least some reasonable chance of future support. UT4 might have the attention of some die-hard fans right now, but I don't think it'll be interesting to the community at large until it's much closer to a final release. At the rate they are currently going that could easily take three or four more years. This forum might be totally dead by then. Even if it isn't, who is to say that UT4 won't be a massive disaster? It's still in alpha and it's already kinda looking like one. I'm not getting my hopes up

 

[Selerox]

UT is dead. Utterly.

It died the second UT3 turned out to be no things to no people. I fully believe that it's failure was down to Epic completely failing to under their past players and their potential new players. But the boat had largely already sailed after the fiasco that was UT200x. No-one was willing to trust Epic with the series and it turned out they were right not to trust them. By that point people had moved on and UT was a nostalgic memory.

And that's the problem. UT is a memory. It's a faded old-skool series that most players are too young to remember. Unless you're in the 25-40 age bracket, changes are you've never ever heard of UT. let alone played it. The few that do can try to recreate what was there, but they'll fail. Because so few people remember, and even fewer of them care any more. They've moved on.

I know it sounds thoroughly pessimistic, but I really do believe that this is it for Unreal. It might carry on an as engine name, but that's all. They'll be no further games, aside from a disjointed community project. That's not UT, that's a mod with unrealistic aspirations. Epic no longer cares, they're happy to rest of rapidly-fading laurels. The glory days are gone and all we're going to have left is memories of the halcyon days of 1999-2004.

Those halcyon days that ended over a decade ago.

They're not coming back, my friends.

 

[gopostal]

I'll let you in on a little secret: the ones of us left still making things do it because we quite simply just enjoy the process of creation. I spent multiple hundreds of hours over the last few years building and refining Food Fight and the demo server for it is D-E-A-D. It got a hundred downloads, mostly people who archive files I'd bet, and almost no feedback. Know how much sleep I lost? None. In fact I warned the project head far ahead of time to expect just that.

I don't do dev for 'fame and glory'. Instead it's because I love the process of having an idea and birthing it out into the UT world. In FF there is a gun called the Saucier that fires loads of hot sauce (insert joke here) that stick to and burn all kinds of things. The twist is that the fire can spread. It will burn across a pile of boxes and the entire room will be lit if you don't take care. Even running across a burning carcass can catch you on fire. I spent weeks working all of that out and enjoyed every minute of it. Yeah, no one gives a shit about it but I do and that's plenty enough to keep me going.

If DarkED wants to helm a project then I'll surely throw in. I'll do that because I like it, not because UT has >X players. I spent a few months coding for DayZ Epoch and it was terrible. Yeah, there were hundreds of players all the time but it's not nearly as instant fun as UT is.

Anyway I see the "Guys the UT ship has sailed long ago" posts and although I certainly understand the reason for the statement it bothers me that people fail to see that there are many more reasons than that to stick around.

 

[DarkED]

If DarkED wants to helm a project then I'll surely throw in. I'll do that because I like it, not because UT has >X players.

I don't have to be at the helm, I'm just happy to help out

It's just not fun for me when I know I'm going to bust my ass on something nobody will ever see/play. It didn't bother me in the past, but now I have a strong desire for my work to at least be tried out even if it's only by a small group of people. Luckily it's not hard to make that happen these days what with Twitch/YouTube, Greenlight/Desura, and all of the other marketing tactics and easy distribution methods.

I spent a few months coding for DayZ Epoch and it was terrible. Yeah, there were hundreds of players all the time but it's not nearly as instant fun as UT is.

We ran some DayZ Epoch servers when it was popular. Epoch wasn't really an unknown, it was an extremely popular re-spin of DayZ and had THOUSANDS of active players for a while.