Where is everyone?

[MakerOfGames]

Where did everyone go? I came back to check things out and posts are weeks apart with most forum sections having their latest posts over a month ago. It's very depressing.

I myself have moved on to Unity 3D. Waiting for RF2 became too much and the nice features in Unity free were enough to suck me in. But every now and again, I feel the need to come back. Hoping that its different than before. And that maybe RF2 hit a new milestone and there are new users and old users with an active forum. Sadly, I only see everything continuing to stagnate.

I even see less of a presence of some of the mods and other forum leaders that I grew accustomed to seeing. I know, I haven't been on in quite some time myself so I am not complaining about others leaving. (EDIT: My last logon was Dec 11, 2011? That can't be true! I know I have been on the forum since then, I guess I just never logged in)

I do miss the comradery of this forum. I have stopped visiting the Unity forums as the people there just don't give off the same vibe that I got here when I joined so many years ago. I certainly did love the social aspect of game development and the energy and passion that everyone here shared for creating games. I sometimes long for the old days when RF wasn't out of date and I was learning game design on a Pentium 4 with 1GB Ram and a 32MB Nvidia TNT2 graphics card. Those were the days. When this place was full of life and so many game demos and prototypes.

So what is the plan for RF and RF2? Is there any plan for the future of RF and the forum? From what I read in posts around here, I could not find definitive answer.

[Veleran]

It seems there is no developer and progress for RF2.I do not know to which engine the others went,they can post here to tell us feedback of other engines anyway.

I will browse the torque 3d forum but i do not know yet enough about it to say what i will do.
I know for sure that an old free mmo rpg Heroes of Newerth was done with torque ,and is still online.
I was first interested in torque back in 1999,but it cost 99$, i found genesis and a little later RFand forgot it until now that i heard that Torque 3d has become free.

[bernie]

So what is the plan for RF and RF2? Is there any plan for the future of RF and the forum? From what I read in posts around here, I could not find definitive answer.

megatop asked directly over a month ago

is rf2 coming out or not

and it was never answered. I think we can take it from the silence that it is a dead project. If you look at the repository paradoxnj has in his signature http://www.sf.net/projects/realityfactory2 there have been no updates for over a year (last update was 2011-06-01) that speaks for itself.
Personally I am building a game on neoaxis which is free for non commercial stuff & $100 if you want to sell the game. If you do sell a game you only have to sell about 4 games to be in profit, so really its as good as free and its fairly easy to use. The forum isn't as good as this one but its not bad and people are helpful. I haven't had a lot of time lately due it illness but things are moving forward slowly.
I haven't tried the torque engine yet but from the sound of things it looks promissing. I intend to give it a try when things improve a bit more ( I am on the mend as they say ).

[MakerOfGames]

Glad to hear your on the up and up Bernie.

I think RF2 would be salvageable as a project if significant work would be done to publicize it. However, re-watching the videos for RF2 from AndyCR and having worked with other game engines and seen how other more modern engines work, I think RF2 might be behind the times before it even had a start. Not just because its an engine in its infancy, but from what I read and remember, RF2 was going to be RF but with a more modern engine. From seeing what else is out there, I'm not sure there are many people who would be interested in that. Now if RF2 has the goal to be a modern engine with the simplest way to create a game, then there is a huge market for it. However if it mimics RF just for the sake of being an upgrade I can't see it going anywhere. RF was nice, but there are now better ways things can be done, the menu system being the biggest thing that jumps out at me. Its nice to directly place x/y values but really a scalable solution would need to be made for how many different resolutions and size monitors there are now.

I think with a dedicated website, regular updates and declaring it being open source and contacting open source online news sites to get publicity it might stand a chance. Especially if its marketed to Mac and Linux users while maintaining cross platform abilities. It wouldn't even hurt to contact universities to see if any computer science courses need something practical to code in their class. Since its open source they could then contribute their work back to the project.

I don't want to offend anyone with these thoughts, or have them feel like I'm coming back from a long hiatus and telling everyone how it should be. This is just what came to mind when I started to think "What would it take to bring life back into the project and the forums here?". Really, I'm not sure what could be done, but wanted to share my thoughts anyway. Maybe get a discussion going.

All else this forum has got me thinking, how much work would it be to build an online forum for all game devs? A universal place for any game maker to discuss their project post demos, get feedback and even talk about anything unrelated? That's what I miss most about this forum. The enthusiasm and support that every gave for any project. If I only had the resources to pullit off, I would love to make a forum that embodied the feeling of RF back in the early to mid 2000's. But I know this is a pipedream, but I might want to try someday.

I guess so long as this forum is up and some of the regulars that I remember are still here I will try my best to keep in touch and maybe eventually post something such as a demo or project update once I get enough time and progress made.

I do know that there are many of you here that I feel I can really call friends. And I know there are many more that once were here that I felt were friends as well. I really would hate to see this community fade out completely.

[Juutis]

I think RF2 might be behind the times before it even had a start

I have to agree. AndyCR's RF2 was just RF with a modern graphics engine as far as I can remember.

However, I think paradoxnj's vision of RF2 would be well worth implementing. I love the idea of a game engine that would be as easy to get started with as RF but would allow the user to heavily modify the engine with scripts. Basically the whole engine would be a collection of scripts. Only the very core would be hardcoded. The engine would ship with a default set of scripts which would allow for easy and quick game prototyping, just as RF does. Users could then write their owns scripts and share them with the community. Over time there would be different script-sets available for first person shooters, RPGs, adventure games etc.

I do not know to which engine the others went,they can post here to tell us feedback of other engines anyway.

I'm currently working on a solo project with Panda3D. I find it a nice and fun little engine with a simple enough API for me. Integrated Bullet-physics is also a huge plus. The project itself is nothing big, just a little project to keep me entertained.

I've also been developing a more serious steampunk RPG with a bunch of people for the past three years. We're building our very own game engine for the project.

I know for sure that an old free mmo rpg Heroes of Newerth was done with torque ,and is still online.

Heroes of Newerth isn't a MMORPG, neither is it done with Torque. With a quick Google search I found a free MMORPG called Minions of Mirth done with Torque. Maybe that's the one you're referring to?

[MakerOfGames]

My game project has pretty much been reduced from my young ambition of a full game to a hobby right now. I have scrapped the story countless times and changed core mechanics to implement many times over. I spent a few years with Unity now and have put in a lot of time learning all the in's and outs and am just now getting some actual tangible progress.

I think the best item that I have going for my Unity project is that I recently made a controller script that allows me to set up to 4 local controllers and 1 keyboard/mouse input. I thought having local multiplayer would help inspire me to stay on task and be able to better and more easily share my progress with others by letting them and I play when I would demo it. I think it will do its job well. Nothing like being able to test and demo collaboratively. Eventually I would like to have a fully customizable network/local multiplayer system. And better yet some good game mechanics/story so I can get everyone excited for my project.

[Veleran]

Google search I found a free MMORPG called Minions of Mirth done with Torque. Maybe that's the one you're referring to?

Yes,that is it.I had played it a little a year ago.I was confused because my eye caught an advertisement banner called Heroes of Newerth at mmohut website which i had opened to another tab at the same time when i was typing that post.

[Wraps]

I'm using unity. I told you guys that with pnj in charge of development of rf2, that it'd never come out. I still use rfeditpro---nothing builds buildings faster---and have almost all the assets I need. Just gotta do a lot of convertin'.And I think Windows 8---i'm not changing from my android phone---is gonna kill a lot of open source/indie development.


I still own a copy of Gamecore3d----it's interface and tools are still , i think, tons better than anything else out there.Easy to set up shadows, which unity3d free doesn't have, one of the greatest sky systems ever implemented in a game editor, very simple way to set up diffuse and normal maps and shaders on objects. The underlying engine had tons of bugs, though....and it didn't render " right". If you guys want, I'll show screens of the various tools. ( engine is dead, developer killed it. )


and juutis---i'd love to see some stuff on that steampunk rpg of yers.



i loved this forum. You guys were about as close to friends as an aspie like me can get.

[darksmaster923]

Sad to see this forum die. First time I joined up, I was in middle school. Now I'm in college. Had some good times here, really got me started in game dev.

Pretty sure I still have the most posts on the forum though.

[Juutis]

and juutis---i'd love to see some stuff on that steampunk rpg of yers.

There's some stuff in our devblog, but nobody has bothered to post news in almost two years. Unfortunately, that's pretty much all I can give you, the rest of the stuff is a huge work in progress.

[steven8]

I had to leave for some time to take care of my father. Fortunately he is doing pretty good now on his own. I have just been working to take care of the fam. Teaching my eldest son to drive now. Don't know which of us is more nervous.

[Juutis]

Just dropping by to post this:

Oh wow, steven8. It's been a while. Hi!

[steven8]

Hey, Juutis!! How have you been?

Looking forward to Christmas? Assuming we get past the 21st. . . .

[Juutis]

Been doing fine, although pretty busy with my studies and work. I've landed a job at one of the fastest growing software companies in Finland. Too bad this all takes up the precious free time I could be using to work on my projects.

I'm not a Christmas-person, but that doesn't keep me from looking forward to it. It's one of the rare times me and my siblings (who are scattered pretty much all over the world, from India to the USA) all gather under the same roof.

How'bout you? Are you here on the forums for just a quick visit or here to stay? (Not that it matters anyway, the forums are pretty dead. )

[steven8]

Congrats on the job!! With studies and the work, projects always suffer. However, the experience you will gain will pay off in the end, once it's just the job. Then you can devote free time to that!!

I doubt it will just be a quick visit. The forums may be somewhat dead, which is to sort of be expected, since the industry has kind of passed RF by, but I believe I may stay awhile and make something. I love RF!!