Future of RS ?

[cleef]

So, now that RTW 2 has been released I was wondering what are the plans for this beautiful mod ? I sure hope the team behind it will continue to work on it at least for some time...

I was wondering if there's a possibility we might see 1 turn campaigns for the other factions, or maybe new factions (provided it's possible).

[Risasi]

See: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...o-all-RS2-fans

[High Fist]

Maximum number of factions is being used, unfortunately. That's what the "Swap" factions are, they're put in but Sparta is taken out (and are part of the Greek City States)to accommodate them.

[Leeham991]

The next time is getting CA to give the RS team rights to the EXE.
AI overhaul, unit sizes increased to realism levels, taking the limit off of the amount of units and factions available in the game, unfouling diplomacy, advanced battle formations, advanced animation fixes, etc etc, changing city population properties, fixing campaign AI, patching the game so it works properly with multi-core processors, etc etc etc.

Unfortunately this probably wont happen. I even heard from many friends that the steam version of Rome got patched shortly before Rome 2 was released which has made it crash so often it's unplayable...


Maybe it's time for a fund raiser to get together and buy engine rights, release a retail version of Roma Surrectum?

[stackero]

The next time is getting CA to give the RS team rights to the EXE.
AI overhaul, unit sizes increased to realism levels, taking the limit off of the amount of units and factions available in the game, unfouling diplomacy, advanced battle formations, advanced animation fixes, etc etc, changing city population properties, fixing campaign AI, patching the game so it works properly with multi-core processors, etc etc etc.

Unfortunately this probably wont happen. I even heard from many friends that the steam version of Rome got patched shortly before Rome 2 was released which has made it crash so often it's unplayable...


Maybe it's time for a fund raiser to get together and buy engine rights, release a retail version of Roma Surrectum?

You know I've always wonder about that. IF CA would ever sell the engine rights for Rome 1.
Wonder how much $ it'd take to convince them to.

Likely too much or not at all, Fearing competition and the creativity of our modders who would embarrass CA with superior games made with an old engine compared with CA's most recent modern releases . Wait, RS already does that. But think how much more they could do if the could really get under the hood of that engine.

Bu would be curious if CA would put a number on it. We should ask the modders first just how much more they could do and what they think it would be worth.

[Josura]

I doubt that CA will ever sell Rome 1 engine... Why? Because if anyone can upgrade Rome 1 engine and fix some bugs/AI/etc, then no one will buy and play that broken Rome2TW and other CA games :-) CA is the only one company that releases this kind of games and thats why they can afford to release so broken and bad games and customers will still buy it.

[=Vastator=]

BTW i heard that CA said during the last year modding summit that they have "lost" the source code of Rome I...

[Leeham991]

Is that the same as how they 'accidently' released a new Rome 1 patch on steam which broke it shortly before Rome 2 was released?

[Risasi]

Is that the same as how they 'accidently' released a new Rome 1 patch on steam which broke it shortly before Rome 2 was released?

Are you serious!? Got a source to back that up?

[Leeham991]

Are you serious!? Got a source to back that up?

I have a few friends who got the steam version of Rome and say it got a minor update recently which seems to have done nothing but cause an insane amounts of CTDs. I haven't done a search, but if it is widespread it probably got noticed on some forums around the place.

[Risasi]

I poked around on the forums immediately, but could find no information on any such thing happening. That doesn't mean I don't believe you, but I don't think it is widespread. However, that further solidifies my resolve that I hate Steam. It's like the firearms debate. It's not about the guns, it is about control...the golden age of computer gaming was 2005. For everything since then we haven't really "bought" any software title, we are merely leasing.

Just another reason that the Roma Surrectum team should stick to the RTW and M2TW engines. ;-)
I have managed to make backups of my RTW CD's. It shall be running indefinitely. M2TW is not far behind it. Right now it will run at least as long as my disc media holds out. I'm sorry I can't say the same about Empire and the following titles. I guess tell your friend to buy a backup copy on disc media from Amazon or something...

[dvk901]

BTW i heard that CA said during the last year modding summit that they have "lost" the source code of Rome I...

So they have said before, when we begged them two separate times to change some of the limitations in RTW. Apparently, they have no one capable of opening an exe file, changing a few numbers, and recompiling it. BS! They just don't want to do it...period.

[stackero]

BTW i heard that CA said during the last year modding summit that they have "lost" the source code of Rome I...

NO, NO, tell me its not so, tell me its just hearsay. While my hope of CA ever releasing or selling the source code was low, I still could dream what that would mean for the TW Rome modders and the possibilities. But if truly lost, well bummer.

However, I know that maybe 6 or 7 years ago I was lurking through Rome's mods to find one to play and in one of the posts in a thread, don't recall which, there was a guy who claimed he went into the code and changed something to improve game performance and a few other things to enhance the AI.

I don't remember all he said, but I remember people posting back about the illegality of some part of what he was doing, he posted as long as it was for his own private use there would be no legal problem, but still, some posters disagreed.

My point about this is, even if the source code is lost, and CA would sell the rights, would it be possible for somebody to break the code, or do you think the guy was just feeding us bs?

What do you think, if you're feel qualified to answer.


I wonder if this post should be a thread?

[Leeham991]

Modding was the life blood of gaming in 2004-2008 as I remember it. In fact from what I see it was the big anti-PC year around the release of the xbox360 which did it. For some reason everyone thought that computers would never be more powerful than the xbox, and even though computers were considerably better even at the time of release, and within 6 months considerably better computers were available for average income people, it made game developers put all their effort into console with very badly made PC ports. I have two games from around the time, Hell's Highway, which is default to xbox controls and has a fixed resolution which doesn't fit PC monitors, and MoH Airbourne, which has no graphical options at all. Both are considerably worse in the graphics than games released a short while earlier which were actually made to run on PC.

That is when I noticed that developers started treating games as a way to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible, and not as an art form which can be rebounded from modders to improve the next title. CA has always hated the modding teams for Rome, but at least they left the engine open to modding, though of course keeping some very annoying limitations... As far as I can see there is still not a proper full conversion mod for Empire, even after all these years.

Rome and the Rome mods will die, but not because they are no longer good, but because the gaming industry will make a massive effort to destroy it.

I should bring up the game Red Orchestra.
A professional mod for Red Orchestra, Darkest Hour, remained very popular for a long time. The modifications used by the 29th ID, a realism unit in the game, increased the realism, playability and fun of the game while reducing server errors and glitches. This annoyed the developers a lot, and when the Darkest Hour team was officially drafted into the Red Orchestra team it annoyed them even more. What they decided to do, when they were set to release Red Orchestra 2, was to go into Darkest Hour, break ballistics, delete many of the official maps, added a code which prevents custom weapons being added to the game, switch some of the weapon sounds with some arcady sounds which seem to be electronically generated, and messed up vehicle physics.
This lowered the player base a little, though not quite enough. The 29th ID fixed a lot of things, making the servers playable again, which was just as well because Red Orchestra 2 was a terrible terrible piece of crap. It was just another dumbed down Call of Duty game, but with a few utterly pointless gimmicks which cannot be used in gameplay with any real effect, just adjustable sights and a broken cover system which leaves your unnatural big hit box open to be shot.
However this just angered the developers. As a next step they added to the server list a bug which prevented 29th ID servers from showing up, as as the only stable and often full servers in the game this meant that anyone who wanted to play couldn't. They were found out on this, and though they didn't want to put the work into removing the error they did put up the server IP on the news page, though many say the news page was hacked to add the IP addresses.
Upon the release of Rising Storm, a stand alone mod for Red Orchestra 2, a new update was added to Darkest Hour which added a lot of bugs which drove away even more players. "Valve Error", which randomly won't let many people join any server, a bug where no servers show up on the server list, and a bug which makes the game crash much more often than it used it, even in beta.

That is the best example I have of a dev team deliberately trying to kill an old game, though I hear it happens for many things, including Company of Heroes 1, the COD series and even Tropico.

[Risasi]

They didn't lose it. They just "misplaced" it, but found it again later. It doesn't matter though.

- CA won't release it.
- CA won't sell it, at least not unless they go belly up. Think Matrix acquiring the Close Combat series.
- Nobody will crack it (at least not to release to the public).

We are just going to have to live with what we have. Honestly it's not the end of the world anyway. RTW and M2TW will likely have continued use for years to come.

Personally I would love to see someone take a GPL'ed engine. Then build a generic hybrid turn-based empire building / real time battle system like we have with the TW series. But I'm not holding my breath on that either. This has become a niche market and likely will wane like all the flight simulation games. Either that or it will get watered down and homogenized with RTS aspects and turned into something more appealing to the console gamer masses. Oh wait...we have Rome 2.

[stackero]

They didn't lose it. They just "misplaced" it, but found it again later. It doesn't matter though.

- CA won't release it.
- CA won't sell it, at least not unless they go belly up. Think Matrix acquiring the Close Combat series.
- Nobody will crack it (at least not to release to the public).

We are just going to have to live with what we have. Honestly it's not the end of the world anyway. RTW and M2TW will likely have continued use for years to come.

Personally I would love to see someone take a GPL'ed engine. Then build a generic hybrid turn-based empire building / real time battle system like we have with the TW series. But I'm not holding my breath on that either. This has become a niche market and likely will wane like all the flight simulation games. Either that or it will get watered down and homogenized with RTS aspects and turned into something more appealing to the console gamer masses. Oh wait...we have Rome 2.

Your right, its not the end of the world, but it starting to feel like the end of TW games as we've known them, and damn, you sure know how to depress a guy, especially a sappy one like me.

Yea, we still can look forward to medieval 2 someday to bring us a Rome game and who knows maybe CA will improve R2 to greater extent than we think. Did I hear someone laugh.

Rome 1 with mods has not been just a game to me, but a kind of tradition, its in my blood, a place to escape into. Just like people go to movies as a kind of escape to feel relaxed and untroubled, Rome TW has been my main escape into an ancient world I've read hundreds a books about since I was a kid.

Yes, I have other hobbies, hunting, a little fishing when I get the chance and I love a good book, but yea, I got the TW blues today. Crying in my beer already, thinking about it all and that game they call Rome 2. No, don't look,('sniff, sniff') just turn away. Turn away.





I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity - Edgar Allan Poe

[Risasi]

I don't know why you have the blues. RS 2.6 has been great so far. No, the graphics aren't as good (plasticky, creepy) as Rome 2...but I'm fine with that. It will continue to run on a Windows (XP, 7 and 8 for sure) machine for quite some time. I hold out hope someone will get it functioning as well on *nix operating systems. And heck, even Feral ported it to Mac's. It's available in the app store. Many of the mods run on it too. I just wish we had a version of RTW (AND THE MODS) available to run on tablets.

And we'll not even get into M2TW. I think just between these two titles alone we will have many thousands of hours of gameplay for us who wish to see past the facade of what has become the PC gaming industry.

[stackero]

I'm being a little over dramatic with a little humor thrown in, but does still express my sentiments. No doubt about it, RS2 is my savior and favorite. I have a very intense campaign going now with the 2.5 with Primo's 4 tpy submod. When completed I'll jump into 2.6. I Prefer 4tpy games so I can role-play my generals, adds another game within the game, but can play 2tpy game and still injoy myself.

And yes some day I believe we will see M2 start turning out Rome era games. I've played more than a few of it's mods, many good ones, but I'm always drawn back to the Roman tw era, my first love. She's never lets be down.

Don't tell anybody, but I haven't fully given up on R2. I'm holding out hope that maybe within a year, Rome 2 will be improved and expanded to a degree our modders can save it, making a game worth playing. It has some good features, but man, it needs so much work and its hard to see CA spending much time or much of our money getting very far in all three areas; AI, Campaign and tactical. Still we can hope. I heard someone laugh again.