Starsiege 2845: Alpha Tech Release
polycounter lvl 18
Been a long time coming but the mod turned indie game project Ive been working on for about 3 years finally has something to release. Its an alpha, meaning feature incomplete, quite likely buggy, and not even on the same engine (torque vs tse) as the final, but its out and playable. 
currently exclusive to filefront http://www.filefront.com/
Download and have fun.
Most everthing I've done for the project didn't make it into this mini release, but there is One herc (mecha), the goad, that is mine.
Edit: Thanks asir.. what a thing to slip my mind
project site is [url="HTTP://www.starsiege2845.com"]HTTP://www.starsiege2845.com[/url]
currently exclusive to filefront http://www.filefront.com/
Download and have fun.
Most everthing I've done for the project didn't make it into this mini release, but there is One herc (mecha), the goad, that is mine.
Edit: Thanks asir.. what a thing to slip my mind
project site is [url="HTTP://www.starsiege2845.com"]HTTP://www.starsiege2845.com[/url]
Replies
Congrats man, thought the day would never come. heh. Definately grabbing this. [and not just to see my stuff running around
You should post a link to the game's site btw.
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If Clancore is a volunteer organization, will anyone make any profit off of Starsiege: 2845? The multiplayer portion of the game will be distributed for free; there will be no profit involved. Upon completion, the singleplayer campaign will be turned over to Vivendi Universal, who will have full discretion regarding pricing, and methods of distribution. Clancore, however, will not be compensated if VU decides to attach a fee to the singleplayer campaign.
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You really agreed to that??? Sounds like the worst deal ever
Anyways, it looks quite cool. Are there any plans to support Linux (and/or Macs)? Should be easy to do since the Tribes engine supports both AFAIK.
Amazing work, I'm seriously glad to see this coming to fruition.
The engine is fine, they have been developing this for years. You don't just switch engines mid development if you want something to actually be finished.
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That was part of my point... switching would have added even more time to a project that had already been extended. I know several of the guys on that crew and I'm glad to see their group progressing.
But it is still a great effort by the team. I'm looking forward to more single player content.
And yes we did agree to not make profit off this. Its along the lines of "Hey We want to use your IP and make a game! Course we can't pay you for IP rights, or distribution, or anything else, but we really like the IP and don't want it to die." So frankly a non commercial agreement for free use of a large companies still current IP is rather fair as I understand these things.
Linux very well may get a port. Mac isn't likely. All depends on how the TSE conversion goes. Even if we didn't switch we'd have to do some major re-writes of parts of the render pipeline to improve object occlusion, a better LOD system etc, to improve performance to the point where we really want it. Even still migrating to TSE shouldn't be horridly difficult.
And I can't state it enough, but please remember this is a pre-beta version of this game, so bugs are to be expected, and the performance isn't optimized. We are really pushing Torque to its limits with a lot of our content, as it was developed for UT2k4 (or an equivelant) in terms of texture size and polycount.
Thanks for your support.
Edit: as far as it feeling like a T2 mod, well yes part of that is torque, but the bigger part is that this is FAR from finished.
A brief comparison of features between the ATR and final release:
Alpha Tech Release
* Engine: TGE (the engine with which Tribes 2 was produced)
* 3 HERCs
* 1 Flyer
* 1 Support vehicle
* 5 infantry weapons
* 12 HERC/vehicle weapons
* CTF/TDM gametype
* Pre-loaded HERC configurations
Final Multiplayer
* Engine: TSE (next generation of TGE)
* 19 HERCs
* 6 Flyers
* 4 Support vehicles
* 9 Tanks
* 2 SCARABs (Infantry Heavy Armor)
* 15 SCARAB weapons
* 28 Infantry weapons
* 39 HERC/vehicle weapons
* Completely customizable HERC configurations
* 8 gametypes
Thanks guys, and frankly switching from TGE to TSE is the least of our worries. I mean we started looking at battlefield 3 years ago, then promptly changed to UT2k4, which was then going to port to Tribes:Vengeance as part of our original agreement with Sierra/VU, but that didn't work since T:V was changed so much from UT2k4, and more importantly didn't sell or hold its community well, so we renegotiated to produce a standalone game rather than a mod.
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Me and the other TAC devs went through this same route. It was difficult to determine a different engine when your target audience doesn't like many of those other games.... atleast consistantly.
We really did want to make something on T:V, but Sierra just dropped the ball too much on that game. I was one of the strongest voices against what they were doing with that game in the beta stages, but the kept telling me 'don't worry, you need to trust us'. Hopefully they finally realize what I was getting at. The hardest thing for us was the lack of modibility.
Anyways, I need to stay off my soap box. I know some of the guys in your texture group from the old skinners guild days. I've been rooting for you guys for a while now