Star Trek Armada and Fleet Operations futute

posted on March 28th, 2009, 7:06 am

Okay guys, i was thinking about this a little while ago but here the facts

Armada is getting old it was made 8 years ago, and lets face it, armada 2 wasnt very popular, if it had been fleet operations released then instead of armada 2, we would have alot of support, but not alot know about us, and those who do, alot dont have the game,

now theres not anything wrong with playing an older game, alot of us do it, but guys, we already know people with vista have some problems with the game, and with the breakthroughs in pc, armada might be to old to run, i mean heck, windows 7 comes out in june, and its not to soon to think about our future,

im not saying we need to make any huge descions now, but we do need to think about it

so lets discuss it

1st off let me start with some reasons, the fleet operations modding of armada 2 will decline

#1 well first off, armada wont be able to run on some new operating systems, well have to make alot of patches, but one day, it just wont work,

#2 some peopel will loose interest with newer games out there

#3 peoples discs will get scratched, thelly loose them, wont be ale to get armada 2, we loose people

#4 eventually theres only so much we can do to update fleet ops

#5 we dont know if we will still be able to have online games, at some point, it might just not work, weve had so many probs alreayd with oos


Now we can start to discuss, what we need to do:

#1 well, first off, i think theres one distinction we need to make, Fleet Operations, is not soley for armada 2

#2 as of yet, i havent seen any real worthy star trek game to mod


so what we need to do i see only a few options

#1 creat a new engine, basically getting away from armada, so basically our fleet ops community right now, but making it new, so that we can go on with the new tech

#2 wait for another star trek game to come out worth modding to fleet ops style

#3 just find another rts game ops, thats newer and mod it

#4 suggest that somone make another game

#5 present a gameing company(activision, maddoc, maybye others) , with fleet ops, and see if theyd go into marketing and creating, star trek fleet operations

well thats all i can think to say now


bottom line, tech is evoulving so fast, armada is 8 years old, soon, it wont work and fleet ops will die, and if we wait till then, nothing may happen, if we do somthing now, maybye somthing will happen, but i see fleet ops disolving in a few years......

[Braunbaer]

posted on March 28th, 2009, 7:51 am

Last edited by Braunbaer on March 28th, 2009, 7:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Well, you could start making an ISO of your CD.

If Armada 2 should stop working on Windows at some time, install an emulator or a virtual machine and run there the latest working version of Windows.

How to sell a game which is based on another game, which rights the FO teams do not own? The improvements compared to Armada 2 are there, but I doubt that it is enough so you can start selling FO.

You are right, there is nearly none good Star Trek game out there worthy modding, but many good RTS games. FO will be hard to sell in its current state, especially talking about the engine.

You said, we need to create a new game engine. I didn't know you had anything to do with the development of FO. Interesting. Well, most of us don't. I'm glad you want to join the team. 

[...]but i see fleet ops disolving in a few years......

Most games do. But you can run older OS in virtual machines and bring those games back to life.

posted on March 28th, 2009, 8:24 am

Why should anyone stop modding Armada II. There is the example of StarCraft which still has lots of fans.
Armada II is a cult game, because it's the best strategy game from the Star Trek universe and because of that, I don't think people will stop playing or modding it.
You have the point of missing CDs, but there are many solution: You can make a backup disc of a clear A2 install. You simply can copy all of the files on your hard disk, and it works (at least, it works for me with XP). You can patch it with NoCD patch, you can even make a copy of your Armada II CD, or you can even download the CD image via torrent. I know it's illegal but the hell! You bought that CD once and you wold buy it again if you could get it anywhere, but you can't you paid for the game, so I can't see any moral problem of getting it via "unofficial" channels.

Of course if anyone has the time and skill to make a new strategy game of Star Trek, I'll welcome him

posted on March 28th, 2009, 9:56 am

Honestly, Fleet Operations will remain an Armada2 mod. We have no fears for the future. Our community is growing and i don't think the Armada2 community will die. There are even quite some people playing Command and Conquer (1), Civilisation (1) or Battlezone (1) today, with an active community.

Speaking of the technical subject: We already have extended Armada - just compare Fleet Operations to Armada2 - and will do so in the future. We also edited the engine and will continue to do so, the Armada Engine is quite capable and does not need to hide compared with modern games. It just needs a little love here and there.

We can not - and dont want to - publish Fleet Operations as a stand-alone game, as we do neither have marketing rights on Armada2 nor on Star Trek. Fleet Operations is a fan project, nothing commercial. The character of the game would change if there would be a $-factor in it - we will keep it the way it is, thats what we wanted to achieve in the first place.

[runaway]

posted on March 28th, 2009, 10:48 am

Last edited by runaway on March 28th, 2009, 11:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

sign optec's post 

#1 not anyone will buy Windows 7, and hey if it works on vista it should work on Win 7. And any game has this problem not only Fleetops. Do you think any of the released games today supporting win7 ?

#2 there will ever be some new games. Doca and Co are not Activision pumping out a new COD every year.  Nice games have nothing to fear and we can say fleetops has found it's ecological niche .

#3 come on, we are in the 21st century, do you think it is a problem to get a image of a Armada 2 CD?
If you have a CD make a image, if you don't have a CD... i think there are many ways to get one.

#4...

#5 yes there were some OOS Problems?! But why do you think the aren't able to be patched and fixed in the future? If the internet will changes, no game would work  or what do you mean?

Yes Armada 2 is not the youngest game but FO improves it so much that it is prepared for the future very well.

I just can say, great job, really one of the best games ever seen/played

P.S. if i get my traineeship at the stock exchange we can speak about donation

posted on March 28th, 2009, 1:38 pm

@Ray320

Why start this thread? It's quite obvious that virtual machines will be around to support older games. For example: I have a Nascar racing game for Win95 that runs off of MS-DOS. I install it into my XP, and it runs better than expected thanks to my virtual machine, but the sound isn't supported because of how advanced my driver and card are, when compared to Win95's arsenal. The point is: Armada will always be running off of advanced computers, if only because of a Vista virtual machine on a super-advanced comp that uses a Quantum prossecer and DNA-based memory storage that transfers data to the proscesser through fiber-optic cables, or whatever.

@Optec

I can't believe what you guys have done with a game older that my godson. The Battlezone engine, as you have said, is quite pwerful and versitle, and one day I got bored and compared it to the Legacy engine. Basically, the A2 won because of it's versitality, but that's just my opinion. I really hope that this mod carries its legacy through the generations, and lasts as long as the FO team, at least.




Really Off Topic: In Beta2, what's the NO IMAGE image from ? I've always wondered where you guys got it, but never really cared until now, 2, 3 years after it became obsolete.

posted on March 28th, 2009, 9:54 pm

okay, so i see some of my points may not happen,

but at some point they may, i love this mod, ill still be playing it for a while but heres an part of what i said that i think needs to be strongly considered and pushed forward and made possible for idea, that might help more

now last night, i was just trying to throw out some ideas in a respectable post, but i think that somthing needs to happen for fleet ops to really catch on


Okay here it is:

Fleet Operations, need to drop Armada 2, now dont misunderstand me, we keep the game the same, we just need to get rid of the dependency on the armada cd, and the armada engine and such

heres some reasons why

#1 we can get away from all that legal stuff with armada 2

#2 we will be able to manipulate the game in many new ways, such as adding todays tech to make the game more complex and better graphics, plus other things (like campaign missions!), and things not posible now becuase of those restictions can be enabled

#3 the needing of cds or any other means of getting armada 2 will be no longer needed, people will just be able to dowload it from fleet ops, which could greatly increase our uses, because it will be easy for people who dont own armada 2 any more, or people who never knew about it, to download it very easy

#4 we can use some other program for multiplayer, like hamachi or somthning else, so that we doint have to have the game open, to know whos online


and there are many more reasons, but really, the benifts outwiegh andy porbelms that might come with switching, and in the long run, it will be the best decision


now fleet ops team before you make a comment, just think about it, cus right know i can already here one of your possible responses, (the fleet ops team is happy with usinng armada 2 engine, and we can already mod and maipulate it ver easily, etc. etc. etc.)

but i know that you guys do have some problems, with various restictions, such as you cant do campaign

so in my opinion, this is a better option for the long run, and will pay off greatly for the fleet ops team, and community

posted on March 28th, 2009, 10:24 pm

ehm, yea. at the moment we find an open source engine that act exactly like the armada engine we will switch.

but honestly, moving a game to a new engine is very very time intensive and the benefits do pay of in the very very far futur - take a look at duke nukem for example. we would need at least a year to get the first colored polygon on the screen along with a game engine (its not just about the graphics.. basically i already helped in writing a graphics engine in a few month that was quite modern, but a GAME engine is much much more then just some colored pixels). As none of the team wants the community to wait for 3 years just to redo all the content and code a proper game engine, we wont do anything in that direction. We have not that many coding problems at and are pleased with the engine, Fleet Operations can already do more then you can see in the current releases, more graphics updates will follow in the next patches (eye candy is not only the engine, but also the content that needs to be updated )

we already discussed that topic and took a look into several engines - also the idea of coding one ourselves - but for our project profile thats not a real solution, so we decided to stick with the Armada engine and improving it - something that worked out okay so far

posted on March 28th, 2009, 10:31 pm

Hopefully eventually *fingers crossed* the A2 engine license will expire/be allowed to expire and you guys will be able to even alter those irritating portions of the engine without worry (*sigh* I remember back when that whole "we won't host V3PR because you altered the game engine" happened on A2 files...).

posted on March 28th, 2009, 10:46 pm

well y dont you guys, get a few fleet operations people on here to make a game engine, or just kinda copy and past the armada engine, but leave out the parts that have limitations, and just write those?

posted on March 28th, 2009, 11:34 pm

>:( Maybe it's because the hard-coded parts are typically the most sensitive parts of an engine, and also the most complex!

posted on March 29th, 2009, 1:09 am

......./sigh.

posted on March 29th, 2009, 2:00 am

You can't "copy and paste" an engine Ray, because we don't have it 

posted on March 29th, 2009, 3:11 am

okay.............. well basically, i just think it would be a very good investmant for the future

posted on March 29th, 2009, 7:55 am

I agree with you, Ray, but only partially. It would definitely be incredible to see FO in the future as either it's own game, or on something sweet like Hegemonia....or....EAW...I don't know, pulling off the top of my head. The thing is, asking the devs to make their own engine or re-coding the ENTIRE game for a different game, just to make an already fine game into something that would be the same...just seems redundant to me. Maybe eventually in the future when it's impossible to play A2...but I don't see that happening for a VERY long time. IMO, it's just not practical at all unless absolutely required.