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Blood Frontier is Dead. Reasons are as follows. This was originally intended to be an e-mail.
The summary: Quin's gone, this will be moved to a different engine and commercialized. The real world, paying bills, and the people that I love are more important than any online community ever will be.
I'm sorry - that's the way it is.
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This is nothing like what I said or was saying. I said fine to the community project, I don't like it but I give up - but I wanted to see the retail project closer to what the game was supposed to be. What part of that sounded like "delete all the community content"?!?
I don't know what your issue is. You bXXXX that I didn't participate and BF needed direction(both true), and now that I'm participating and trying to provide direction I'm not wanted. You've spent the last several months making me out to be the villain, which only makes my job impossible.
I don't see why now should be any different. It seems to be what you're good at.
Finally getting things moving forward again and providing a more limited scope so that we could move on to other things and let the community have BF seemed like a worthwhile idea to me. If you'll read the dXXX e-mail THAT was the goal. No, I don't like the community game as is. I hate it. It's not good. I didn't say I was not going to work on it unless blah blah blah, I didn't hold it for ransom. Don't pretend that I did.
If our differences were irreconcilable, my next course of action was to simply hand it over and ask that you replace all of my art. But if all you're going to do is screw me over and make me look like the bad guy, then fine. That's what I'll be.
As you ask, so shall you receive.
I'm terminating everyone's stake in the project and moving it to a new engine. The SVN is available of course. Source is there. But for now, BF is effectively dead. Congratulations.
Nobody wants to talk, nobody wants to discuss, nobody wants to disagree, and nobody wants to listen. Nobody wants to argue, nobody wants compromise. Nobody cares. And I am tired of fighting it.
-Tony
RE:
CIA-60: r6200 by qreeves (http://bloodfrontier.com/svn/6200) -> (150 files in 17 dirs) ->
[21:38] CIA-60: changed everything to how Acord wants it; removed all community-inspired
[21:38] CIA-60: contributions that \"decreased the quality of the game\", removed all
[21:38] CIA-60: \"unnecessary\" modes and mutators, removed impulse system and slowed movement,
[21:38] CIA-60: removed shell ejections
[21:38] quin: This is my final commit.
[21:38] quin: Due to creative differences and increasing hostility I hereby resign my position as the lead developer for Blood Frontier.
[21:38] quin: I will continue to run the Blood Frontier master and \"Beta 2\" server as long as is necessary, I will however not be maintaining an SVN server.
[21:38] quin: I am going to work on my community-driven game; those who are interested please feel free to contact me for more info.
[21:39] quin: Goodbye Blood Frontier.
[21:39] quin has left
RE:
This is abbreviated, but I think at this point both of us would be happier if we were no longer working on the
community game. Essentially, we leave as-is, add ONE decent co-op gameplay type that can use all our maps.
While a story mode would be great, it is a LOT of work and I would rather move on to working on versions
of BF that we have more control over(I feel that quality has decreased from all the community input) and a
side-scrolling BF schmup.
-Tony
Co-op play type
Summary: Players must survive consecutive rounds of more and more powerful zombies.
Rules:
Each round is divided into two phases: The collection phase and the battle phase.
The collection phase is 20 seconds long
During the collection phase, weapons spawn and can be collected
There are no monsters during the collection phase
At the beginning of the battle phase, uncollected weapons disappear.
The battle phase is limited to 10 minutes
Monsters spawn during the battle phase.
The number of monsters that spawn depends on the round
100 x round numbers spawn during a battle phase. So during round 1, 100 monsters
spawn. Round 2, 200 monsters and so-on.
All the monsters do not spawn at once.
Monsters spawn out of sight and immediately hunt the players
When all monsters are dead or 10 minutes have passed, the round is over.
(note: If a player drops a weapon in battle, it sticks around and disappears when
the collection phase begins.)
Players that are dead will take control of a random monster during the battle phase.
Players that are dead respawn as players during the collection phase.
Monsters increase in power each round: Speed and Hit Points improve.
Monsters: There are four types of monsters.
Walker: Your regular run of the mill zombie. It moves slower than the players and
attacks with it\'s claws. When it hits a player, the player\'s X/Y momentum stop.
It also has a quick leaping attack that can deal more damage and also stops the
player, but it has no airborne control.
Berserker: A bigger, meaner, tougher, faster version of the walker. Instead of
stopping the player, it delivers more damage and knocks the player back. It can
also stomp, which stuns nearby players and delivers a little damage.
Tesla: The Tesla zombie is a little tougher and faster than a walker, but can throw
lightning bolts and has a shock area attack. Essentially, it is a zombie sniper.
Crawler: Crawlers are much faster than walkers, have a few more hit points, and
because of their low height can crawl through spaces the players can not. It
attacks with it\'s claws or by spraying a fan of acid.
Weapons: Same as they are, I will update the rocket launcher model.
Players: The player model will be replaced
Maps: This allows us to use our large stock of smaller maps with no need to create
new or giant maps.
Monsters: Two down, two to go.
Menus: Menus should remain as is
HUD: There will need to be an indicator in co-op showing how many monsters are left.
Campaign/Story mode: We will move this to the retail version.
RE:
Sorry if I ticked you off with my griping. I just don\'t really enjoy playing BF at this point - the movement mechanics feel horrible, staying airborne actually gives you better control than running on the ground, which encourages everyone to jump like rabbits and makes area effect/spread weapons overly effective. This is why the shotgun is such an apparently deadly weapon, and even the plasma feels more powerful than it actually is. The weapons don\'t exist in a vacuum.
I realize that it is a community driven project now, so I\'m going to stop giving any feedback on it. Nobody wants to hear it, and it just frustrates the sXXX out of me - same as it did at the end of Beta 2. That being said, I think we need to do a little sawing for the final version: A smaller handful of monsters - maybe 4 good separate ones, and co-op game play focused solely on hunting and killing X amount of monsters in waves. Plot can be detailed in a text box as the map loads. At this point, I\'m feeling more and more that if it\'s going to be a community driven project, we need to release it to the community and call it done quickly.
I\'m going to continue to produce content for both this and the planned retail version. Player model, 3 more zombies, a decent map or two dedicated to co-op arcade wave killing, one or two quality maps and we call it done.
I will want significant changes to the retail version to bring it more in line with what I had originally envisioned. That means less skatey movement, weapons balanced for some other purpose than deathmatch, far fewer, more focused game modes, changed jump mechanics(A single double jump, and the player can only pull it off near a wall), and some other things. In other words, a lot of the default settings will be completely different.
I just don\'t feel that the game as it is will be well received right now, precisely because there has been such a focus on player input that the result is something that only suits the wants and needs of our very small hard core player base. New players are going to be lost, or they\'ll find the experience totally unenjoyable. I hope I\'m wrong but I suspect I\'m not.
I know that we\'re very close to a new release, and I am working on the player model, but it\'s taking time. It may be one of the most complex models I\'ve ever done. If push comes to shove, I can strip out the skeleton of the old one and modify it with camera_tag and the like, but it will be done soon.
I\'m working on a sawed off version of the co-op plans. At this point, implementing a bunch more stuff for a game I have no creative control over whatsoever feels really pointless.
-Tony
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