Should campaign be improved?

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Rman Virgil
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Re: Should campaign be improved?

Post by Rman Virgil »

bendib wrote:I appreciate the sentiment, but how long will the campaign last before it's broken in another version? We saw what happened to the 1.10 balance mod and NTW mods.

Think about this!
Yes. Been a prob for awhile. But it is recognized and, if i'm understanding what i'm reading correctly the last couple days, long-term solutions going forward are being seriously explored. :hmm:
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Last edited by Rman Virgil on 11 Jan 2013, 01:59, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Should campaign be improved?

Post by Rman Virgil »

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bendib wrote:Redemption and Legacy do not carry the canonical warzone brand, so they are free to do as they wish. You have a responsibility to the heritage of this game. I do, however, go by the idea that "All Legacy is Warzone 2100, but not all Warzone 2100 is Legacy.", meaning that it's canonical Warzone with a diff logo and maintainers. Multiplayer balance changes, UI changes, engine changes, etc have all occurred, and those, while some questionable, never really affected the playing of the campaign, the heart of Warzone.
It doesn't need a transplant or a bypass or any modification at all. Just port it to JS, PLEASE! Have all the fun you want making the new, altered campaign a mod, I just want the standard campaign to be pristine.
I think this best expresses, in totality, what is at stake in preserving the canonical campaign, as Pumpkin created it, here.

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Re: Should campaign be improved?

Post by bendib »

Rman Virgil wrote:.......
???????
Rman Virgil wrote: Yes. Been a prob for awhile. But it is recognized and, if i'm understanding what i'm reading correctly the last couple days, long-term solutions going forward are being seriously explored. :hmm:
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There is a rather large difference between exploring ways to fix these mods and actually fixing them, and this mod has been unavailable for what? A year? Is that what should happen to the standard campaign? Or worse? Port to JS, Make it a mod!
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Re: Improving the campaign - Alpha 1

Post by Duha »

bendib wrote:Then allow me to say my opinion on the matter: I don't care if it's a little harder. I implore you devs to undo ANY changes to the campaign! This is a direct blow to the game's history, in what seems to be a series of unnecessary changes in the game raining like howitzer shells! Take a step back and think about what your users want. Please. Multiplayer has changed much over the years, but the campaign has always been the same. Keep it this way? Keep the campaign solid? Just convert it?
Why not try to make campaign better?

Progress is "direct blow to the game's history".
Denying progress is path to the ash heap of history.
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Re: Should campaign be improved?

Post by Rman Virgil »

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Improvements to the Cam should be a mod as the simplest solution..... as opposed to UI changes.

I meant solutions to rampant mod breakage over the years which eventually discourages modders because of the continuous, endless, cycle of fixing breakage which takes away from the energy and inspiration to improve their work artistically.

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Re: Should campaign be improved?

Post by Rman Virgil »

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@ Duha: We are not against "improveing" the original campaign. Just disagree on the fate of the original - it shouldn't be flushed down the toilet like dodo. It should be preserved. And that the "improved" campaign should be presented clearly as a mod alongside the original, intact. I believe in respecting the work of original creators while being inspired to new works directly based on it. This would also create a learning opportunity and if you look at the Liberation README file written by WZ Creators you will see that one of their motivations for liberating the WZ source was to afford learning opportunities.
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Re: Should campaign be improved?

Post by aubergine »

For anyone who follows github commits on the master branch, Per is currently chipping away at making it easier to put campaigns in to mods.

Did anyone seriously expect a campaign port not to allow the port to be packaged as a mod? :P

There will almost certainly be some changes in the port to JS. Mostly just cleaning up cruft and other mess -- as in implementing it properly, not necessarily changing how it plays. But there will almost certainly be some minor tweaks to gameplay as well -- and they are just tweaks (like a <10 lines of code per mission or something).

Anyone can take that mod, once it's available, and with extreme-ease (like crazy simple compared to the current campaign scripts and stats) change it to make it 100% identical gameplay to WZ back in 1999 if they so desire. Really, there's nothing stopping anyone taking it and turning it in to whatever they want it to be. And if a pure vanilla 1999 balance version is made, I'm sure it will be widely adopted by people who played WZ back in 1999.

But for everyone else, who wasn't playing WZ back then, I'm pretty sure they'll be after versions of the campaign that go in the complete opposite direction and make some massive changes (whilst sticking to the same storyline I assume).

I mean, I loved some aspects of the campaign - it's story and the fact you had to sort of creep around and play cat and mouse with an enemy that possessed superior firepower, etc. But other than that, it was somewhat boring after a while. I got to a point where I was like "Is this ever going to end?" -- it just seemed to go on forever. Admittedly, I can now finish the cam in a fraction of the time I could when I first played it, but still end up getting bored towards the end. And the way the campaign plays is completely different to the rest of the game -- after a while you start to see how dumb the campaign AIs are (like really, really dumb).

As for mods breaking, well, that just shows how brittle WZ of the past was. Classic example is the discussion about "modlets" in the ideas forum that's going on at the moment.

With current (old) way of modding, if you want to change even 1 character in a stats file, you've got to clone the *entire* stats file. Duh! Now your mod has a version of the stats that is practically guaranteed to get out of synch with the game. :annoyed: And if another mod wants to change something in that stats file, well you got yourself a mod conflict. :stressed: It's completely nuts.

Modlets, if implemented (and there's already some sample code written and being played with), will allow addons to apply their changes or additions with absolute surgical precision. They'll no longer need to create clones of entire files, instead they'll just define the little change they want to make and that will be 'overlaid' on to the main stats file. If either WZ or the mod gets updated, the chances of stuff breaking are greatly reduced.

Also, modlets would, for example, allow someone to apply WZ 1.0 balance to 3.x without breaking other mods! It would be like cats and dogs *acutally* living together in harmony.

And this sort of mindset is being applied to everything going forward. There's been 13 years of stuff breaking, let's do something about that eh?

Pumpkin did a great job back in the 90's, but stuff has moved on in leaps and bounds since then and there are just better ways to do stuff now. If we leave WZ in 90's, then as soon as the hardcore fans start popping their clogs it's game over for WZ and it becomes abandonware.

What do you think the Pumpkin team would prefer? Abandonware or some updates to the campaign and modding system? :wink:

BTW, I found the source code to the NTW mod and original balance mod (here if anyone wants it) -- currently not possible to do that without using old wzscript approach (which is brittle and thus broken as mentioned earlier in this topic). But the new modding features are nearing a point where all of that would be "implementable" in a much more sustainable manner.
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Re: Should campaign be improved?

Post by aubergine »

And as if by magic: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10467
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Re: Should campaign be improved?

Post by bendib »

I just responded and my reply was deleted or never appeared. Fishy.
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Re: Should campaign be improved?

Post by bendib »

aubergine wrote:Really, there's nothing stopping anyone taking it and turning it in to whatever they want it to be. And if a pure vanilla 1999 balance version is made, I'm sure it will be widely adopted by people who played WZ back in 1999.

But for everyone else, who wasn't playing WZ back then, I'm pretty sure they'll be after versions of the campaign that go in the complete opposite direction and make some massive changes (whilst sticking to the same storyline I assume).
Those people don't know the damage they do by insisting such things. I have only played Warzone since 2009, so does that mean I fall into the category of people who should want this game's history destroyed? I don't think so. I can see the big picture.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of what the devs have done in the past was excellent work, but some things must NOT be altered. The canonical campaign is one of them. If you people want to play something new, then quit trying to change the game itself and either make mods or find another RTS.
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Re: Should campaign be improved?

Post by aubergine »

Forums are a bit flakey at the moment - I've got in to habit of copying my messages before submitting, as I've lost several posts already. If a post fails (eg. gateway timeout error in forums) I just wait until forums are working again and paste from clipboard.

Anwyay, viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10467 <--- it *is* going to be packaged as a mod.
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Re: Should campaign be improved?

Post by bendib »

I hope you're right. I really do.
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Re: Should campaign be improved?

Post by Rman Virgil »

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I think I understand all that's been written here includeing the referenced links which I read prior.

However, I don't think I have made my position clear enough so I'll give it another shot.

(BTW, pre-lib WZ was not "brittle". Cross platform dev post lib made it brittle.)

First, I started critiqueing the canonical camapaign some weeks after it's release in April of 1999 - and for years since as I've played it countless times for various reasons. Have also come up with ways to vastly impove it over that span (IMHO) - many tested and some yet hypothetical. But never once did I think my improvements should supplant the original and I will now get to the reason for that.

Before Pumpkin Studios created WZ there was zero, zilch, nothing, a blank slate, aka, tabula rasa. That is a special type of creation that is universely acknowledged and, to my knowledge, there's been no groundswell in RL to obfuscate that fact in any of the art forms. Original WZ is a work of art.

Everything created within, around or from original WZ is derived, to one degree or another, and not that special whole cloth creation - which is what I think should always be acknowledged.

Perhaps this distinction can only be appreciated if you can create whole cloth (that is from raw materials like a blank canvas and pigments, a language or musical notes and chords, for example) or have tried to and have utterly failed.

An example...

I love musical mashups (or sampling) when done well but I am glad that the original art works from which they are derived are not obliviated and remain intact and pristine regardless of how their merits may be judged by those other than their original creators.

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Re: Should campaign be improved?

Post by Emdek »

Can't you just agree to have both modern and classic versions of campaign shipped with game?
Both done using JS and available on the same level of menu?

Moreover, AFAIK for long time (years) campaign is no longer identical to original one, like some changes in Nexus weapons in final mission etc.
Also I believe that if original creators would carry on this game for more years then they would also make changes to campaign but most probably they wouldn't ship original version.
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Re: Should campaign be improved?

Post by Duha »

bendib wrote:
aubergine wrote: Those people don't know the damage they do by insisting such things. I have only played Warzone since 2009, so does that mean I fall into the category of people who should want this game's history destroyed? I don't think so. I can see the big picture.
I think we can create history memorial. Lets name in 2.3.9 :)

Where was good USSR tank T-34-85. It has glorious history very long duty (used in wars all around the world form 1944 till 1995) At current time most of this tanks used as monuments. History is not forgotten but progress is moving forward.
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